tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post5760737176450849642..comments2024-03-28T10:31:55.774-07:00Comments on The Passing Tramp: Oh, Ross! Ross Macdonald and His CriticsThe Passing Tramphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-46754320554030360852022-09-18T16:42:53.212-07:002022-09-18T16:42:53.212-07:00 I don’t go to crime fiction for dullness and repe... I don’t go to crime fiction for dullness and repetition. The sinsofthefather was not an appealing theme to me as a young reader, nnor later, but anyway.Lawrence Block’s book so titled is crisper and more colorful and deeply felt than any MacDonald, to me. He. had an impassioned relationship by mail with Welty, so that rave was certainly not unbiased. IMHO Margaret Millar wrote the far more interesting novels, not relying on a series character or formula.Howardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10303415117941715155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-36293168120959516872022-08-09T08:17:36.032-07:002022-08-09T08:17:36.032-07:00I was thinking though of that phrase the "Gre...I was thinking though of that phrase the "Great American Novel." Every man--and it always seems it was a man--with writerly inclinations was supposed to want to write it.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-66517838068512128312022-08-09T08:15:55.141-07:002022-08-09T08:15:55.141-07:00Great Canadian-American crime writer, as was Marga...Great Canadian-American crime writer, as was Margaret Millar.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-44787564066103847442022-08-09T04:18:55.965-07:002022-08-09T04:18:55.965-07:00A Great American Novelist... and a great Canadian ...A Great American Novelist... and a great Canadian one. Brian Busbyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04120341319506205062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-71029929440618083992022-08-08T11:42:32.011-07:002022-08-08T11:42:32.011-07:00Xavier, your comment led me to look up Rozovsky wi...Xavier, your comment led me to look up Rozovsky with very interesting results! I see he liked the plotting of The Galton Case but hated the psychologizing. His 2011 piece had so many comments, including some from me, near the end, where I am quite critical of RM myself. My initial reaction to RM, including The Galton Case and The Chill and The Drowning Pool, was decidedly unenthusiastic; but I stuck with it and really liked The Ivory Grin and some others. Recently I read Zebra-Striped Hearse and thought it was brilliant. On the other hand, I read Doomsters and Sleeping Beauty and Blue Hammer and didn't like them much. <br /><br />Rozovsky very definitely dislikes the psychologizing, particularly the Freudianism. (I noted wryly Archer's use of the term gestalt; Rozovksy derided RM Archer having a "delayed gestalt" in Galton Case.) It definitely put me off The Chill at the time, I even zinged it in an Amazon review. I have no idea of Rozovsky's politics, while I will tell you I was more sympathetic to the Right in the days before Trumpism, as it's called now, but was rally Tea Partyism before that and Buchananism before that and Bircherism and McCarthyism before that. <br /><br />I definitely think there can be a political inflection to criticism of RM, just as there is with Mickey Spillane and GA detective fiction, etc. Chandler himself, God knows where he would be. I could definitely see him blasting "woke" attitudes and the progressive left. This is a man who wrote that he would have supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War and never, that I have seen, evinced any sympathy with the civil rights movement, but rather complained how you couldn't trust "colored" domestics. Chandler may have hated psychiatry, but he might have benefitted from some. And God knows Mike Hammer was psychotic.<br /><br />Roskovsky highly praised the plotting of RM but then in a 2018 post on he declared he had not been able to "get" RM so it sounds like more reading, if there was more, didn't improve things for him. It's different with me. It's definitely true though that some hard-boiled fans want their hard-boiled, well, hard, regardless of ideology. (And Spillane has liberal fans.) Really, how can you call the later RM books hard-boiled at all? They are family murder dramas. <br /><br />Interestingly Jacques Barzun, a conservative of sorts, praised the wisdom about youth in a couple of RM's books, Zebra Striped Hearse and Far Side of the Dollar, though he tired of the stuff by the later books.<br /><br /><br /><br />The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-73004865551496758672022-08-08T00:52:00.790-07:002022-08-08T00:52:00.790-07:00Teachout is not the only one to have commented neg...Teachout is not the only one to have commented negatively on Ross MacD's use of psychology; Peter Rozovsky - not a conservative - has done too</a> and with almost similar arguments. Neither was he unique in calling Archer "soft-boiled": it was also a perennial complaint of the noir fundamentalist wing of French mystery critics. Hard-boiled fiction, like GAD, is a very codified genre that comes with some expectations and MacD's main "offence" I think was to defy them. Xavierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05702919450638993709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-87914836789579679462022-08-07T22:03:57.107-07:002022-08-07T22:03:57.107-07:00Yes, I've read five books of his lately and it...Yes, I've read five books of his lately and it's a mixed bag. But at his peak he was very good and the writing is lovely.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-89342047113917660232022-08-07T11:31:18.139-07:002022-08-07T11:31:18.139-07:00I feel RM's decision to use Archer as a lens r...I feel RM's decision to use Archer as a lens rather than a main character works against him, rather; it cools our interest in his stories. But, like his wife, he came up with some marvellous turns of phrase - like 'She was trouble looking for someone to happen to' ['The Wycherly Woman'] and: 'Down in the dark street, sailors were standing around in disconnected attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls waiting for orders.’ ['Sleeping Beauty']Christopher Greaveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07920334128279638785noreply@blogger.com