Off-topic Question

Adam Thornton · 18 May 2008, 03:36 · from 2008-May.txt.gz

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From: adam at io.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 22:36:32 -0500
Subject: (urth) Off-topic Question
In-Reply-To: <482f9eaf.9d.4072.4700 at mail.rochester.edu>
References: <482f9eaf.9d.4072.4700 at mail.rochester.edu>
Message-ID: <022DED5E-76A4-4320-981C-B17561729755 at io.com>

On May 17, 2008, at 10:12 PM, dcooperv wrote:

> You could probably put Hammett and Chandler in there, possibly on the
> irreligious side. I say this only because (IMO) it's near-impossible  
> to have an
> intelligent discussion of the genre without acknowledging these two,  
> given the
> significance of their contributions. I always saw them as  
> existentialist more
> than anything else really. Of course, existentialism does not preclude
> religiosity by any means (and nothing bugs me like a false  
> dichotomy!). Read
> Dostoeyevsky and Martin Buber for good examples of this.
> Can you give us a more specific idea of your thesis? If nothing  
> else, this could
> spark some enlightening conversation.

And, man, Chandler is underrated.

That's some complex and delicious stuff there.  Marlowe is *so* much  
smarter and better-educated than he lets on; one of my favorite not- 
quite-reliable narrators (there's the Wolfean connection).  As far as  
I'm concerned, _The Big Sleep_ is one of the great books of the 20th  
Century.  Chandler is--hey, another Wolfean connection--a genre writer  
who was *spectacularly* good, not just compared to the rest of the  
genre, but period.

Adam

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