Quote of the Week: Raymond Chandler
I've been rereading “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler’s essay on the state of mystery fiction as it was in 1944. It’s a super-interesting piece. While some of the writers he references are no longer widely read -- or even read at all -- most of what he shares here is entirely thought-provoking and worthy of sharing.
I could pull a dozen quotes from this super piece. Two dozen. It’s a little bizarre to me that so much of this essay resonates over 60 years after it was written. Here, however, is a single thought, one of the many from this piece that seems to have picked up absolutely no dust:
I could pull a dozen quotes from this super piece. Two dozen. It’s a little bizarre to me that so much of this essay resonates over 60 years after it was written. Here, however, is a single thought, one of the many from this piece that seems to have picked up absolutely no dust:
As for “literature of expression” and “literature of escape” -- this is critics’ jargon, a use of abstract words as if they had absolute meanings. Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds.
Comments
And I'd be proud of the name, too, Billy. I'm a huge fan of Hammett's, still. (Well, of his work. He might not have been so fun to hang out with all the time.)