tea:

What a neat bday present, sumi!

An intriguing essay by a horror writer and fan on The Trouble With Horror. Useful also as a reading list of great horror novels.

Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog is currently giving me genre literature shudderfits -- he asked the Horde for help because he was having difficulty getting into The Big Sleep, feeling that although it's very witty the plot just doesn't hang together and the mystery doesn't make sense. The Other Noir fans got there before the Chandler fans did (one of the latter muttered, "We must have all been nursing our hangovers"), and most of the advice seems to run along the lines of, "Put it down, and go read Hammett instead."

Granted, if you really, really want to like classic noir and really, really don't like Chandler, "read Hammett instead" isn't bad advice, but GOOD GOD, MAN, whatever possessed you to read Chandler for the plot? He has many virtues as a writer, but plot is exactly none of them; if you're itching for a seamlessly crafted, faultlessly balanced and logical mystery Chandler is about the last guy you should be going to. How is this not a truth universally acknowledged?

How is this not a truth universally acknowledged?

Because lots of people don't know that? I mean, why should he? Isn't it fair to pick up a book by a renowned but not all that presently trendy author and expect a plot to hang together? Or are people that expert in Chandler before they read him for the first time?

Well, he's been watching noirs for a while, and he is himself a writer and editor who reads a lot, including reading writers writing about other writers, so... yeah, I am mildly surprised that he didn't know the basic geography before plunging in.

I'm not faulting him, exactly -- it's a genre, not mainstream general interest, with its own separate rules and conventions. I'm more amused than anything else (except at the Chandler-bashers, who can go soak their heads), because once you do dig into the genre at all it's such an unremarkable given.

JZ, I love that story about how when they were filming the Big Sleep they couldn't figure out who had killed the driver (I think that is who it was) so they called Chandler, who also had no idea.

Well, he drank. I also don't think the rules mattered a whole hell of a lot. My grandfather used to drink and call for the cancellation of Alfred Hitchcock presents every Sunday. My grandpa's main problem may have been lack of internet. That said, I prefer "The Long Goodbye" to "The Big Sleep." By Chandler standards, it's very cohesive. Hammett lovers dig him, and we pinko communists do have to stick up for each other, but I have to say I like Marlowe better than Sam Spade.

My grandpa's main problem may have been lack of internet.

My grandpa was involved in local politics, and also drank mind-boggling amounts of whiskey. And he would get on the phone, all drunk out of his mind, and call up his politician buddies.

He would have been a terror if he had the internet.

JZ, I love that story about how when they were filming the Big Sleep

Two of the "they" being William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett.

Two of the "they" being William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett.

Yes, I forgot about that part.