can you give an example of hammett writing badly? i'm not challenging it; just interested.
also, what short stories were used for FML?
--- On Thu, 11/4/10, James Michael Rogers <jeddak5@cox.net> wrote:
> From: James Michael Rogers <jeddak5@cox.net>
> Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: "The Long Goodbye" -- More heresy
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Thursday, November 4, 2010, 8:07 AM
> I wouldn't have said it was padded,
> per se. I would say it was, um, loosely constructed. And
> badly plotted. I do completely agree with you that it is
> horribly sentimental. It always mystifies me that so many
> readers think it is Chandler's best book rather than
> Farewell, My Lovely....a novel that, to my mind, does a much
> better job of merging tenderness with ugly subject matter
> (the short stories that FML is taken from are perhaps better
> still). To be more heretical, I even prefer The Little
> Sister to Long Goodbye.
>
> As to the comparison of Chandler and Hammett - the eternal,
> joyous argument- I again come down on the side that Chandler
> never wrote as badly as Hammett could, but also never wrote
> as well. To my mind, The Glass Key is even better than
> Falcon. I think that The Glass Key is literature with an "L"
> and stands with any book of that decade....it's a jolly
> sight better than To Have And Have Not, for instance.
>
>
> James
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jack Bludis
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 17:50
> Subject: RARA-AVIS: "The Long Goodbye" -- More
> heresy
>
>
>
> I said:
>
> >>I recently re-read "The Long Goodbye." When
> I finished reading it, I managed to find the movie
> on-line.My heresy? The movie makes more sense than the
> book.<<
>
> And it elicited some response as to what I meant.
> James Michael Rogers said:
>
> > I'm assuming that he means the plot and mystery
> in Long Goodbye is a convoluted mess and that the movie had
> to clean that up a bit just to make it fit into the time
> format.<
>
> JMR was almost right in interpreting what I
> said--but not quite.
>
> Damn the time frame to fit the movie. For me, the
> book was a mess. It was full of characters who seemed to be
> there as space fillers--padding if you will.
>
> The book itself, in my opinion, made only moderate
> sense from the opening, although Chandler wrote such
> brilliant prose that he keeps us reading.
>
> There were too many long political-philosophical
> passages that didn't quite fit the theme, although some of
> such passages did.
>
> The book felt padded to me.
>
> The movie was more hard boiled that what I perceived
> as the extreme sentimentality of the book.
>
> All that being said, I still believe Chandler is the
> best of the hard-boiled writers--although I again say, "The
> Maltese Falcon" is the best of the hard-boiled novels.
>
> Jack Bludis
>
> "Shadow of the Dahlia," a Shamus finalist novel at
> Amazon.com
> and BarnesandNoble.com New edition trade-paper,
> Kindle, and Nook
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
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>
>
>
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