I always felt that Robert Martin was too quiet and
introspective a writer to find much purchase in the noisy
Fifties. He wrote well and honestly about the human condition
and his people were folks I knew well from my own
experiences. He was especially good with women in
trouble.
Very few writers are rediscovered, I've come to realize.
Those who last seem to have been popular in their own time. I
just re-read The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chabers (you
want spooky, he gives you spooky, and he also gives you a
portrait worthy of O' Henry of NYC at the turn of the last
century) and in the edition I have the intro writer talks
about how Chambers was re-discovered. Well, he was a
best-seller for many years, albeit of soapy novels for women.
So his name was familiar to the horror critics of the 1920s
who realized that he'd written a collection of horror stories
worth looking into.
There are of course exceptions--obscure writers are
occasionally raised from their graves to find enormous new
audiences waiting for them. But as I said I tend to think's
rare. Congrats to Felton and Niebuhr for excellent work on
this excellent writer.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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