I don't want to sound disrespectful, but you're citing >>popularity and consensus<< as a measure of a written work's value? Lemme see here... up until 1492-ish, an absolutely huge "consensus" of people absolutely >knew< the idea of a spherical Earth was preposterous and that if you sailed too far out to sea you'd...fall off the edge - if the monsters didn't get you first.
In the 1920s "Mein Kampf" was a runaway bestseller in Weimar Germany. So that had to be a work of huge value, obviously. (I jest, clearly.)
So Spillane himself shares that erroneous view - which is irrelevent, Keptin. There is the artist, and there is the art. Confusing one with the other is a classic error any first-year logic student could spot blindfolded. A person capable of grievous errors in public statements about artistic apparaisal, popularity and even politics is still perfectly capable of creating brilliant art despite those errors. Take a look at music. Most of the rockers whose music I love have profoundly corrupt political attitudes - but they create spectacular music regardless. I've read such boneheaded statements by Spillane before, and there is clearly a different mindset at work in the Spillane repeating stale bromides about popularity and the Spillane writing brilliant, almost poetic larger-than-life fiction. The one is, as I've said, irrelevant to the other.
More to the heart of the matter: The truth or falsity of a given proposition is a fact utterly independent of its particular adherents. That includes, incidentally, your blatatant, first-year-logic-text example of the Poisoning the Well ad hominem fallacy. Whatever you may impute about my political motives in criticizing Hammett in no way alters the fact of his ineptitude as a writer - which I believe I demonstrated adequately here with just a few examples from the first few pages of his most famous book.
In point of fact, and as mentioned above, there are other goose-stepping leftists whose art I consider to be phenomenal, breathtaking, awe-inspiring and yes, some of the most timeless art I've ever experienced. I dislike their profoundly mistaken ideology, of course, but their art is great enough to blow right past that and relegate it to its proper place as an incidental detail - and that's even when that ideology spills into the lyrics of a song, for example. What I cannot abide is an ideologue who's not only wrong intellectually, but is a rotten, incompetent artist to begin with. Worse than that is the spectacle of such a vacant fraud being used to smear genuine talent...
Your comparisons themselves are extremely odd: On the one hand you're making excuses for why Hammett's work is garbage even as you tacitly acknowledge the fact, on the other you're criticizing Spillane's novels because "they're pure fantasy."
This brings up another of my peeves: People who don't seem to understand the difference between literature and journalism. Your assertion "pure fantasy" begs the question: "as opposed to what?" Literature is, by definition, "fantasy." That is, literature is the fictional projection of what might be, and, in the case of better writers, what >ought< to be, as Aristotle put it.
"Down to Earth, real-life writing" is commonly known by its more economical term: Journalism. If you are a writer too shallow to have any particular ideas as to what the world ought to be like, or even to speculate as to what it might be like, you write about what it "is."
Which is why the bulk of today's television consists of "reality shows," and why the bulk of today's cinematic output consists of flashy technical effects - used as a dazzling veneer to conceal a gaping void where a decent, timeless story ought to be.
I disagree entirely - diametrically, to be accurate - with the notion that Spillane's characters are devoid of ethics. Mike Hammer >>lives and breathes<< ethics - it's the core of who he is and the motivation behind literally everything he does, and his seething, gut-level hatred of killers, thieves, rapists and the like is (get this:) both admirable and ethical. No, in the "real world" you can't go out and do extreme violence to people even if you know for certain that they're murderers, rapists and other miscellaneous types of evildoer. But in fiction you can - if such action takes place within a properly-defined context and serves to advance the plot and theme.
Hammer's methods are not legal in the "real world," but taken together as a contextual whole with his character and his actions, they are 100% ethical fiction. In the "real world" you are required to prove your case in court even if you know your perp is guilty as hell. Fiction's only requirement in context of ethics is that you, the writer, have established as a certainty in the mind of the reader that the perp is in fact guilty. There is an entirely different standard of proof vis a vis ethics in fiction than in reality - but people who believe fiction must be thinly-veiled journalism won't understand this. Again, fiction is specifically not journalism (neither is the reverse supposed to be, but the Rathers and Brokaws and Moores don't seem to have clued into that particular fact just yet.)
This is the classic conflict between naturalistic fiction (i.e., journalistic fiction,) versus romantic fiction. Romantic fiction refers to an almost completely-defunct form of literature that concerns itself with timeless moral lessons and plots driven by moral choices, rather than reports of happenings with no necessary logical or even causal connections between them. Think: Victor Hugo, or more recently, Ayn Rand and Rod Serling. Spillane's fiction is not of the stature of Hugo, but it's of the same school of literature - his characters are driven not by chance or whim, but by conviction and moral choices. That, folks, is the mark of a great writer, even if the writer himself considers his own work, unjustly, to be cheap populist pandering.
The argument we're seeing here to the effect that Spillane's work, because it projects ideals (a.k.a. "fantasy,") is somehow "inferior" to work that records day-to-day events passively, is the same kind of mindset behind the fact that mindless trash like "Moonstruck" can receive Academy Award treatment, while timeless morality plays like those in the "Star Trek" series are trashed as "all spectacle, no substance" by writer Orson Scott Card in his unintentionally-hilarious LA Times article of May 03, 2005.
But you know what? Despite the fact that Card has his head placed firmly up his arse on his appraisal of the "Star Trek" series, he's an excellent writer of science fiction. It's just that fiction writers should never attempt to be journalists, or vice-versa.
Spillane's stature as a great writer will continue to grow, even though Spillane himself, in a bizarre hyperextension of modesty or whatever, apparently doesn't think so.
reply
share
cliodule
19 years ago
What rubbish. Here's a nickel's worth of free advice: if you're going to lecture somebody else about their poor logic, you should first make sure that your own is beyond reproach; and if you're going to act like you're the only grown-up in the room, you'd better make sure that you really ARE the only grown-up in the room.
For example: I did not "make excuses for why Hammett's work is garbage." I said that his work was uneven; that his short stories are far superior to most of his novels; and that his literary reputation (at least among critics) rests on his short stories, rather than his novels. You've here committed the fallacy of attacking a straw man.
Looking back over my post, I find that these points are crystal clear--and yet, you never address them in your reply. All I see is more claims that Hammett's work is "garbage," and that Hammett is a "vacant fraud" and a "rotten, incompetent artist," based on the same, single piece of evidence--the first few pages of _The Maltese Falcon_. Thus, in addition to attacking a straw man, you've committed another fallacy--the fallacy of hasty generalization.
I could go on, but there's no point: this isn't a logic class. Let's turn instead to your bizarre ideas about realistic fiction--bizarre, that is, for someone who claims to be a student of writing. No student of writing would claim that realism is somehow equivalent to journalism, or that "if you are a writer too shallow to have any particular ideas as to what the world ought to be like, or even to speculate as to what it might be like, you write about what it 'is.'"
I laughed out loud when I read that. I'm sure 19th-century French realists like Gustave Flubert or Emile Zola would have been startled to be told that they were mere "journalists" who had no idea what the world _might_ be like, or _ought_ to be like. Even the most cursory reading of _Madame Bovary_ would reveal that Flaubert had some very clear ideas about what the world _ought_ to be like: it _ought_, for example, to be swept clean of Romanticism--the yoke under which Emma Bovary labours.
Saying that realistic literature is "journalism" is like saying that realistic painting is "photography." Here's another nickel's worth of free advice: Ayn Rand is not a good guide on the subject of aesthetics; in fact, she's really not a good guide on any subject, philosophical or literary. At least Spillane's novels are readable--unlike, say, Rand's.
Beyond that, I see nothing in your post that requires a response. If you prefer comic books without pictures to real novels, then go ahead and read them--it's a free country, and to borrow another phrase from Spillane, you're welcome to all the salted peanuts you can eat. But don't try to pretend that they're caviar: you just look and sound foolish when you do that.
reply
share
scott_craft2000
19 years ago
Interesting. I think both Spillane and Hammett are good writers. Both of them have sold a lot of books. So it is only a matter of opinion which writer is indeed better.
reply
share
ggulcher
19 years ago
(Wow - ain't been back in a while. Guess I need to keep tabs here...)
Well Cliodule I'm certainly glad you saw "nothing in my post that requires a response." Beyond...that. D'OH.
I'll just comment on your, errm, "non-response." I promise not to tell anyone that you, errm, "non-responded."
Further logical gaffes: "No student of writing would claim that realism is somehow equivalent to journalism, or...etc." This would be a vacant ad hominem, the argument from intimidation. I'd ask if you'd care to explain why this is so, but I assume that if you'd had any valid argument in support of the assertion you wouldn't have flopped into an ad hom and left it at that. (And "a handful of Spillane fanboys"? I haven't witnessed that kind of juvenile name-calling since I left 6th grade...) On this point you're blithely sticking your assertion "realism is somehow equivalent to journalism" right into my mouth. If you dare to re-read my post, you'll find that I was contrasting, on the one hand, realism shorn of what you disdainfully call "fantasy," with romantic fiction on the other - which not only is not hostile to realistic elements but is the school of fiction that makes most vivid use of them. Which would make you guilty of... the straw man argument. And hypocrisy.
Speaking of things that are left unaddressed, you seem to have suddenly lost interest in the weight of your "consensus," argument, which was the entire substance of you previous post - 'can't imagine why...
As to your Flubert[sic] and Zola examples, you'll find nothing in anything I've written here to indicate a belief that naturalistic writers aren't also capable of elements of romanticism in their work. I would hazard the generalization that most artists express mixed premises, and some naturalists even manage to create work with tangible - often stunning and timeless - projections of "the world as it ought to be." Hammett just ain't one of them, sorry to say. But tally up another count of the straw man for your column.
Your characterization of "comic books without pictures" as opposed to (Hammett's) "real novels" - which you'd apparently forgotten that you yourself had just finished asserting are far inferior to the best of his "uneven" work - has the status of a floating epithet (ditto the comical swipe at Rand,) since it's belched without a shred of supporting argument. And even the epithet itself is hollow - ever heard of Frank Miller? Katsuhiro Otomo? Steve Ditko? Yeah, I know - stupid questions.
I find this reversion to arbitrary, unsupported potshots to be typical of people hostile to unconventional artists who also refuse to toe the vestigial leftwing line - such as Spillane. And I knew mention of Rand would serve as a great instructive tool: It works kinda like an intellectual silent dog-whistle - it never fails to prompt the canned one-liner epithet from any vestigial leftwing ideologue in the vicinity. In any event I have yet to hear a single convincing argument against any significant tenet of Rand's philosophy following any such schoolyard taunt, or in any other context. 'Apparently dangerous territory for her detractors, and always cheap entertainment for the rest of us.
reply
share