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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Chandler actually wrote a critical essay on detective fiction: If I can just mildly step aside from hardboiled fiction proper and focus on Chandler himself(please stop me if this is too far from the thread) that essay is really interesting. Especially when you compare it to John Dickson Carr's "The Grandest Game in the World" which argues the exact opposite from Chandler, focusing on the idea of 'fairplay' detective stories as opposed to hardboiled stories. I always found the Chandler and Carr 'rivalry' so to speak more than a little interesting. It's almost funny how strongly they contrasted each other. If I read a novel about two writers who contrasted each other that much, I would take a step back and say "Alright, this is stretching the limits of my suspension of disbelief a little." They both represent their schools of detective fiction to an almost cartoonish point that I feel like talking about their differences is a good way to talk about the genre as a whole. Both had similar past connections to England, issues with alcohol, more than a little skeptical of the concept of family, were deeply pessimistic about the modern world, and died when they were 71 years old. Another curiosity about them, and maybe this is just me and my selective memory, is that both gave women more character than men in their plots, albeit in different manners. At least I find myself remembering women surviving the plots of both their novels a lot more than men did. Their literary techniques contrasted each other very strongly in those two points though - women and plot. Chandler tended to go for more blatant, sexually charged metaphors while Carr went for a more mysterious, alluring tone. Women also played different roles in both their books. One difference I always noticed is that in Carr's works, even the more action oriented ones, the woman is usually in charge of the 'chasing' in the romance while the opposite holds true for Chandler. Not to say that Carr was a feminist, but his work did display a certain respect for women, which was admittedly sometimes diminished by displaying a self-aware confusion towards them(not entirely unlike Wheel of Time, for a reference point). Plot is how they most strongly differed. Chandler posed that "Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic" while Carr was very much of the opposite opinion. Carr emphasized the idea of a puzzle plot, while holding borderline contempt for statements on human nature, while Chandler held the opposite opinion. Carr was a strong defender of the puzzle and Chandler was one of its biggest opponents...which brings me to the next point in which they become very similar. They were both somewhat hypocrites. In spite of Chandler's open dislike for puzzle plots, more than once he ventured into the realm of the fantastic. Chandler's criticism of classical mystery fiction being unrealistic is ridiculous once you consider how many murders his private investigator stumbled upon. He departed from reality just as often as he didn't, only he engaged in a different kind of fantastical. I vaguely recall Kingsley Amis saying something of the sort about Chandler in "My favorite sleuths" but I could be remembering it wrong. In addition, stories like The Lady in the Lake aren't really that far from your average puzzle plot. Likewise, Carr who professed a love for the fairplay, went just as back on his word as Chandler did while writing And so to Murder which focuses more on character, humor and plot as opposed to a mystery. Their feud was always interesting to me, because they contrast each other so strongly. They are both my favorite writer of their respective subgenre, but darn it if it isn't fun to read Carr talking about Chandler's novels. quote:[...]goes Anyhow, sorry again for the mild derail, I just find that the criticisms and discussion of that particular essay are really interesting. Chandler's essay is pretty much the definition of the hardboiled genre for me, so discussing it is a bit fun for me. Hopeford fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 23:15
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