Agreed. He had a handful of lousy books, but I'm hard-pressed to find a crime writer with as many great novels as Thompson (The Killer Inside Me, Savage Nights, Recoil, A Hell of Woman, A Swell-Looking Babe, Pop. 1280, The Criminal, After Dark My Sweet, The Nothing Man, The Getaway etc.)
Jon Bassoff
New Pulp Press
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "jacquesdebierue" <jacquesdebierue@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Burton Smith <kvnsmith@> wrote:
> >
>
> > Yep. Donald Westlake wrote the screenplay, which certainly helped.
> >
> > Jim once stirred the pot here by daring to suggest that Ross Macdonald
> > was a more consistent writer than Chandler. Well, Thompson's output
> > was far more erratic and inconsistent than Chandler's. Some great
> > peaks, but also also some real valleys, seems to be the general
> > consensus. His alcoholism definitely had a negative effect on his work.
> >
> > His reevaluation and subsequent cult following dates almost
> > exclusively from the eighties reprints by Black Lizard books, and as
> > more and more of his work resurfaced, it soon became clear it wasn't
> > all golden.
> >
> > It's been posited by more than one observer of the mystery scene that
> > Thompson went from being one of the genre's most underrated writers to
> > one of the most overrated.
> >
> > Too late for him to enjoy, of course, but the bitter black joke might
> > have been one he'd have understood.
> >
>
> Without denying that some of his work sucks, I would not say Thompson is overrated. He had a special magic that no imitator has been able to replicate... He could sound both lucid and crazy at the same time. I have a suspicion that he is not from the pulps but a literary descendant of the great John Dos Passos (Ellroy is another descendant, more obviously).
>
> Best,
>
> mrt
>
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