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

From: James Michael Rogers (jeddak5@cox.net)
Date: 04 Nov 2010

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    "One Hour" is pretty bad. "Woman In The Dark" is not so good. I never cared for "The Big Knockover" either.

    I don't have my copy of Killer In the Rain handy, but "Try The Girl"springs to mind as used almost in full for FML. "Mandarin's Jade" was also used and maybe one or two others.

    James

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: sonny
      To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
      Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 19:00
      Subject: hammett and chandler Re: RARA-AVIS: "The Long Goodbye" -- More heresy

        
      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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