hammett and chandler Re: RARA-AVIS: "The Long Goodbye" -- More heresy

From: sonny (sforstater@yahoo.com)
Date: 04 Nov 2010

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    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
    >
    >
    >     rara-avis-l-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
    >
    >
    >



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