RIP Mickey Spillane

Book Guy, I was OK until I hit partial differential equations. I just couldn't picture them in my mind, and the professor was so annyoing that I had little interest in trying. BTW, upon further reflection, my example may have been an economics course, that would make more sense.

But Margaret Atwood sounds interesting. Can you recommend a specific book (LOL)? Do any editions come illustrated with photos?

BTW, to illustrate one of my earlier points, I'm convinced that the main reason that Hemingway is so widely read is because he's a fairly easy read. Writing is communication, and if you're difficult to read you aren't communicating very well. It may be artistic as hell but it isn't good communication. That's not just my opinion, I was taught that in a college writing course and I agree with it.

Funny how the writing courses get right down to the basics, but the literature courses obsess on post-deconstructionist structural non-phenomenological bulldookie ...

After I've read a book that took some extra effort, if I think it would have communicated better had it been easier to read, I would consider that poor communication. More often, however, I realize that the style it was written in was out of necessity, and that to remove any of the difficulty would diminish its effect. Once you've made the effort, you don't think so much about the difficulty unless it was bad for other reasons.

FONDL: I utterly agree about the notion of critics not getting it. (I don't agree about differential equations. That's the class that convinced me not to be a math major! Too many physicists abounding ...) There are SOME things that we can be, mildly, over time, sure of.

For example, I'm sure Margaret Atwood can't write, and the only reason she's continually assigned by female professors to female students in college classes is that her biggest seller is the story of a college girl learning about her sexuality thanks to her female professor.

By the way, the last job I got fired from was in a Marketing department at a publisher. Go figger ...

Book Guy, let me tell you a true story from when I was in graduate school. I was taking an advanced marketing course which included a requirement to do a research project and make an hour's presentation in class. I had no idea what to do that would be relevant, so I finally decided to do a lengthy mathematical analysis on some extensive marketing data. I made that choice specifically because I alone in the class had an undergratuate degree in engineering and was the only one, including the instructor, who knew anything about calculus. For a whole hour I spouted differential equations, most of which was wrong (I didn't have time to get it right), but no one knew that but me - it was total bullshit. But because nobody had any idea what I was talking about I got the highest grade in the assignment and the only A in the course.

I believe a lot of critics are like that - when they don't understand something they feel obligated to praise it, otherwise they'd have to admit their lack of understanding. I think an awful lot of very questionable art of all types, including literature, receives unwarranted praise for exactly that reason. I don't buy it - I know what I like and that's all that interests me.

Chandler was of course right when he earlier stated the obvious - it's all about marketing. Different authors are classified differently so that potential buyers know where to look for the stuff that's aimed at them. Those classifications imply nothing whatsoever about quality.

Yeah man, lay off. Geez. Get your lowbrow child-like literature out of here and into the McDonald's along with all the romance bodice-rippers and other pot-boilers ... :)

Shadowcat: you don't read Penthouse "Letters"?

Shadowcat: reading your reviews, I figured you were a Memphis denizen. I'm thinking of moving to Atlanta (for work, not for the clubs, from what I've heard). What do you think?

Book Guy: Sorry, I was describing what made me speak up for "well written" mysteries at the time. I realize you have since clarified your attitude about snob lit, heirarchies, high and low cultures, etc. I'll lay off now.

I don't buy into the "hierarchy". :) Sorry to make it sound like that. My point was, that some of the best-written works are NOT members of the traditional academic "canon" and instead get read a lot, but not respected. That's why I brought up my three favorites -- Amis (Kingsley), Waugh, and Chatwin. They are NOT usually taught in academia. Waugh's later "Brideshead Revisited" gets a lot of attention, mostly thanks to the very good movie, but it's not representative of his earlier, nastier, snarkier works. The other two are largely considered "popular" but, to people outside the academe excellent. I was just interested in titles in other genres. Geez, seem to have twigged an anti-snob button ...

Book Guy, here are a few suggestions for mysteries:

Patricia Highsmith, 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' - Written in the early 50s, made into a movie a few years ago with Jude Law and Matt Damon. Might be ruined if you remember the movie too well. Very clever plotting and psychological storyline. I think you'd like her elegant prose style.

Sarah Waters, 'Fingersmith' - Historical lesbian crime story set in turn of the last century England. Incredibly immersive narrative style with a richly imagined, detailed recreation of the nitty gritty of Victorian life on the streets. The BBC recently made a movie or miniseries of this. I'm not sure whether PBS has shown it. They did show an adaptation of a similar earlier novel by Sarah Waters, 'Touching the Velvet', which was great, but not really a mystery.

Jon A. Jackson, 'A Hit on the House' - Detroit writer's best in his series featuring frumpy, curmudgeonly detective Mulheisen. The series is very good in evoking the broken down hellhole of a city that Detroit has become. The opening scenes of this book contain a chillingly real shooter's view narrative of the "hit" in the title and then some.

When I praised good mysteries as "well written" and some pretentious novels as the opposite, I mainly meant to point out that the heirarchy Book Guy seems to buy into isn't so clearcut. I also enjoy a lot of mysteries and pulp genre stuff that isn't particularly well written just for the visceral rush, shock value, lurid campiness, sheer energy and exhuberance. I mean, LOOK AT THE BOOK JACKETS! How can you NOT LOVE what's inside? I put Mickey Spillane in that category. My favorite of that type is Jim Thompson, although parts of his books are brilliantly written.

Another point is that many types of "elevated" literature had their beginnings as the trashy pop culture of their time, the novel itself being the most obvious example. Any look back at the course taken by music, movies and visual art in the 20th century should tell you not to accept labels of high and low art at face value.

I don't agree at all with FONDL that well written must mean easy to read. That may be a good measure for newspapers, but I also enjoy writing that challenges all readers and pushes the limits of language, like Faulkner or James Kelman. When I was a kid, I usually read books that were more advanced than my reading level. I haven't lost my appetite for that as an adult. However, I don't equate difficulty with good writing, either. It should be appropriate to the story's purpose, and it should reward effort by communicating something more meaningful than a word puzzle.

If we're going to talk about the whole "de gustibus" thing, no thanks. We don't need to talk about the definition of well written versus poorly written, or how some people prefer one thing over another and how in someone's opinion ANYTHING is good. That type of sophomoric navel-gazing should have gotten out of your system by the time you got your High School diploma. The English language has great practicioners. The closer a book's prose is, to them, the better the writing. "Liking" isn't an issue. One's taste isn't in question, since one's taste is BEING formed.

Book Guy, if we're going to talk about what is well written and what isn't, I think we need to define what we mean by that. For me, being easy to read is part of the definition of "well written." In my opinion, a book that is difficult for a well educated and intelligent person to read and comprehend is by definition not well written. And that's especially true if we're talking about fiction.

I'm sure a lot of mystery writers and writers of other best-selling novels could write "literature" if they chose to do so. But they'd rather make a good living and write books that appeal to a large number of people. In my opinion those are the well written books.

ROFL @ Chandler. I didn't mean I liked writers I didn't like. I meant Bellow and Davies were the TYPE of writers that I would like, just not them in specific. I really like, in specific, the Brits I mentioned -- Waugh, Chatwin, Amis -- and I generally like the experience of reading a Bellow, though I have to admit it is hard work. I couldn't think of other authors "in that category" at the time I wrote the post. Updike, Nabokov. There's some Americans.

I guess my expression "plot driven" was inaccurate, too. What I'm trying to say is NOT "I'm a snob about mysteries and disdain them because they aren't REAL literature" (which seems to be how you've taken me) as much as "I don't usually enjoy light reads." In fact, when the lit is DELIBERATELY "light" it's more enjoyable to me, than when it's someone without much of a brain trying to act like he has too much of one. Hence the Wodehouse.

I agree about Dan Brown -- no style, badly written. I couldn't get all the way through the first chapter of "The Da Vinci Code" without "garden-path" experiences sentence after sentence.

Garden path? You know, you get led down the wrong (grammatical / meaning) path, then you have to go back to the start and try again. Classic example: "The engine raced beyond its capacities exploded." At first, one reads "raced" as a past active verb until a reader gets to "exploded," at which point he has to go back and re-cast "raced" as a past passive participle modifying "engine" and let "exploded" be the verb instead. A reader is tempted along the wrong "garden path."

That's a clear indicator of bad writing, for me. Margaret Atwood does it WHEN READING HER OWN PROSE OUT LOUD. Makes it self-evident she doesn't know jack squat about communicating. (Not to say I'd be any better. Sometimes someone who can appreciate literature can't create it. I'm totally like that about drawing. You should see the idiotic crap I try to submit as editorial cartoons to the local weekly!)

Anyway, my preferences are for crystalline prose, some kind of social investigation (usually class- or category-based), a general degree of snide disdain for or distance from the world and social foibles. Austen was the precursor. So, Waugh, Chatwin, Amis as mentioned; Bellow is tough but worth it; Roth bugs me, too many whining Seinfeld types; but in all of that I don't end up with many mysteries. Maybe they serve a different purpose? I read a James Lee Burke once, and a Tony Hillerman once, and didn't like either one.

So, can you recommend a "true mystery" that nevertheless fits some of my criteria, to the degree that I'm likely to enjoy it? I welcome your suggestions. I'm just finishing up a weird read -- Orhan Pamuk's "The New Life", very metaphysical, to a fault -- and need something more down-to-earth.

Looking forward to suggestions! And I recommend to all and sundry, that you ... no wait (I just deleted my suggestions). I'm going to start a new thread, "Monger Literature". See you there!

I tend to categorize mystery authors into two groups: those who write fun reads but they're not particularly well written, and those who really write well. I'd put James Lee Burke into the former category, along with people like Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Patricia Cornwell, and a whole bunch of other popular authors. For me the second category includes far fewer names: Dennis LeHane, Sharyn McCrumb, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, Carol OConnell.

There's also a couple other categories, I suppose, of those who fall half way in between but tell especially good stories, like Bill Pronzini or William Tappley or Randy Wayne White or Robert B. Parker; or are especially clever and amusing like Lawrence Shames or Laurence Sanders. It's kind of hard to tell how good a writer these guys really are because that's not what they're trying to do. Anyway I find it fun to bounce around among the various categories, and there aren't enough really well written books to keep me occupied all the time.

I admit to having low brow tastes. I've read some "literature" and didn't think it was as good as much of the stuff I normally read. But then I read largely for entertainment, I'd usually rather read a book that's entertaining but not perticularly well written than the other way around. I loved "Da Vinci Code" although I didn't care nearly as much for his other books, they were too similar, I felt like I was reading the same book over and over again. I also enjoy the Harry Potter books, I think they're very clever and highly amusing.

I also go to movies for entertainment. I almost never enjoy a movie that wins awards. I usually prefer ones that get bad reviews.

Chandler, I totally agree with your first point. I once attended a presentation by a very well-known and successful author who writes both mysteries and general fiction. She was asked which was more difficult to write. She answered that mysteries were much more dificult, because the author has to do everything that the general fiction writer does, eg. develop setting, characters, dialog etc., and in addition she has to fit it all into a tight mystery plot that holds together logically.

I've attended a lot of book signings and mystery book conventions and have heard a lot of the top mystery authors speak. What I find most fascinating is that most of them say that when they begin writing a book they have no idea where it's going or how it's going to end. I always had this image that they first developed a detailed plot concept, then outlined the book and filled in the characters and dialog and stuff. Apparently most of them don't do anything of the sort. Most of them start by developing some key characters and then they let the characters create a story as the book develops that's consistent with who they are. In other words once the characters are invented the book writes itself. That sounds incredibly difficult to me.

Book Guy, I guess I'm the opposite, I like a good story. If there's no story I find a book to be pretty boring.

Suggest you read "The Man Who Invented Florida" by Randy Wayne White. It's mostly about a character (in both senses of the word) who is an old-time cracker. Paul Levine's also include some crackers from the Keys. There are some excellent Florida-based writers, I never have any trouble finding books to take on vacation.

Book Guy: What I like aboout good mysteries and plot driven literature from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Poe to James M. Cain is that they are well written. One of the marks of good writing is how it reveals character and themes through action and dialog. Show, don't tell, as they say. 'Da Vinci Code' is not representative, as far as I can tell.

I don't care much for novels about intellectuals and academics where action and dialog are replaced by directly telling the reader everything through the thoughts of a supposedly smart character. They don't show, they tell. They lack imagination and they even lack hot women.

Why do you say you prefer writers you don't like? Because they look good on your bookshelf?

Minnow, his first 10 or so books were reprinted in two hardback volumes of five novels each (they aren't very long by today's standards.) You should be able to find them in a good used bookstore.

I just don't generally like "plot driven" literature at all. I recognize that, for example, "The Da Vinci Code" could indeed be a mystery, or a thriller, or any of a number of other genres, but for me it's style-less and lame. Written for an eighth-grade sensibility, both in mentality and in grammar. I prefer "modern greats" like Evelyn Waugh, Bruce Chatwin, Kingsley Amis; I suppose Saul Bellow and Robertson Davies, on the American side of the pond, but I don't like Davies and I find Bellow a tough (though inevitably worthwhile) slog. There aren't any "light reads" in my bookshelf, really; except one P.G. Wodehouse, come to think of it.

I picked Hiaasen out of a hat because I'd heard of him through my family. As I said, we're 10th generation born in Florida. That's RARE and we're PROUD to say we're Crackers. :)

Doggoneit FONDL, I am going to used bookstore to pick up some Mickey Spillane books. I'll try not to let reading them get in the way of SC visits, though.

FONDL: The reason is marketing. What makes a book a mystery is that it is written for and marketed to people who read and buy mysteries. I hope that clears it up for you.

Chandler, I can list a whole bunch of so-called mysteries where no one gets murdered. One in particular by Dorothy Cannell is really funny, they spend the whole book trying to solve a murder and at the end of the book the guy who was supposedly murdered shows up, he had gone out of town and didn't know anyone was looking for him. I can't for the life of me figure out what a book has to have to be classified as a mystery. Makes little sense.

Here's to Mickey Spillane and Darren McGavin who 1st brought Mike Hammer to life. The dark and eerie way Mike Hammer was done was the quintessial view of the American PI's. All other series about PI's were just spectres to the gendre. And yes Stacey Keach was another perfect fit for the tough guy Mike Hammer.

I agree with FONDL about Carl Hiaasen. He's too wacky for my taste. I usually enjoy the beginnings of his books but have trouble finishing them they're so predictably farcical. Also, his heroes and heroines are usually too dull for me to care about.

As for defending the merits of mysteries (people still question that?), I know I've read my share of so-called literary novels that were so shallow and formulaic in their New Yorker-style self-approval, a murder or two or ten would have been just the ticket.

Book Guy, I do like Carl Hiaasen, but he's not one of the authors that I read frequently. Two reasons: his books tend to be a little too slapstick for my tastes, and I generally prefer series - I'm lazy and I don't like to learn all new characters every book. He reminds me of Donald Westlake, who I think is a better writer. But if you like funny books about FL crackers, suggest you also try Tim Dorsey.

I personally feel that the distinction between mystery and general fiction is very arbitrary and not very meaningful. For example, how do you classify "The daVinci Code"? At some level nearly all fiction is mystery. If you're avoiding mystery writers you're missing some awfully good fiction. People like Laurie King, Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River" and "Shutter Island" sure read like general fiction to me), Sharyn McCrumb (her most recent novels are only mysteries in the very loosest sense), Carol O'Connell, Lawrence Block - mystery writers all - are writing some of the best fiction there is today IMO.

FONDL, do you enjoy Carl Hiaasen? Though he's famous for having written "Striptease" (which became the Demi Moore movie) I think he has a great bead on good-ole-boy behavior all across the Sunshine State. As a legitimate tenth-generation Cracker, I have to say there's not much left to Old Florrider, but he (and Jeff Klinkenberg) are still kickin'. But I don't like genre fiction, whether police stories or mysteries, so I'm interersted in an expert's opinion.

Chandler, I go to Florida on vacation twice a year and I always take along several mysteries set in Florida. I read almost all the Lawrence Shames novels while in Key West. (I recently reread them all.) I've read almost every Randy Wayne White book while at a beach on the southwest coast of Florida, in fact his latest book is sitting on my bookshelf waiting for my next trip in November.

I think a lot of strip clubs are making a huge mistake by moving away from their seedy past and trying to become gentlemen's clubs. They don't realize that the seediness is part of the attraction, it's a place where real guys can escape today's fern bars and other phony upscale places once in a while. The very term "gentlemen's club" when used to describe a strip club is an oxymoron; gentlemen don't go to strip clubs, they're too busy hanging out at the country club. Give me a semi-seedy nieghborhood joint with strippers any day.

FONDL: I've often thought about parallels between crime novels and strip clubs, too. Both deal with the difference between the official rules and how things actually works. And both teach you lessons on how to get along or get ahead in a world of gray areas. While one involves a search for truth, the other is a search for pussy. But sometimes, each is finding both.

For me, it goes back to the time when I made a few trips down to Tampa and read a lot of Laurence Shames and other Florida writers. That's another parallel. I like how both crime novels and strip clubs are closely tied to setting. Before visiting a city's strip clubs, reading a hardboiled detective story from that city might even give you a feeling for how to expect the clubs to operate.

"I The Jury" the first Mike Hammer novel was first published in 1947. I started reading Spillane when I was in college in the late 1950s. He, along with a couple others like Richard S. Prather and Jonh D. MacDonald, got me hooked on mysteries. I still read 2-3 mysteries a week. And I still reread the old classics regularly (I've read the Travis McGee books in order from "The Deep Blue Goodby" to "The Lonely Silver Rain" - I have them all in hardback - at least 4 times.) But nobody could set a dark mood like Spillane. His books are a real walk on the wild side, which is exactly what I look for in strip clubs. I like a little seediness now and then, too many clubs today are becoming too refined.

Mickey here's to you tough guy. He was a big bear of a man who wrote like he lived. You were either a good guy or a bad guy. I wonder if he ever visited any of the clubs in South Carolina where he lived the last 30 or so years?
FONDL: You must be an older gentleman you read books most people just watch tv. Mickey's first book was published in the late 40's. I guess everyone only knows the Mike Hammer tv show with Stacy Keach.