Re: RARA-AVIS: TLS mentions Hammett, Chandler

From: Brian Thornton ( tieresias@worldnet.att.net)
Date: 18 Aug 2005


Bill wrote:

> My attention was caught this morning by the opening lines of Paul
> Seabright's review of the recent book FREAKONOMICS: A ROGUE ECONOMIST
> EXPLORES THE HIDDEN SIDE OF EVERYTHING (by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen
> J. Dubner), in the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (5 Augusut 2005):
>
> "This book should be read at a single sitting: it is written with great
> fluency and brio, and the real substance of the earlier chapters will
> generate enough momentum to compensate for the light weight of the book's
> second half. At its best, it has the pace and the mock hard-boiled charm
> of a collection of Hammett or Chandler detective stories. Steven D.
> Levitt is an economist, not a gumshoe, but he looks out from his office in
> Chicago with the same curious eye for a puzzle, the same disinclination to
> believe the pious self-descriptions of the ambitious and the greedy, that
> move Philip Marlowe in Los Angeles."

Yeah, well, I don't think Chandler's ever gone out of style in our culture, and it's a cynch that Hammett is coming back into style again, in no small part because of the release of the complete "Thin Man" movie series on DVD.

Who would have thought that my cozy-reading grandmother would be crowing about something associated with Hammett being released? What with the disdain he had for the work of such writers as Christie and Sayers and their wealthy, respected, social-climbing (or slumming) detectives, it's probably enough to have poor Old Dash spinning in his grave.

Brian Thornton

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