Instant holepoking at a legacy
Like Ed Gorman, I get the feeling that the weekend piece in the NYT by Frank Prial on Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) seems just a bit, I dunno, pointed? But judge for yourself with comments like these:
How long the Ed McBain books will hold their huge audience is anyone's guess. Mystery writers go out of style. Hunter, as Ed McBain, was once considered by his publishers to be the logical successor to Erle Stanley Gardner, whose crime novels sold by the millions half a century ago and who is virtually unreadable now. Even the powerful police novels of Joseph Wambaugh are rarely mentioned today. Tastes change: Martin Cruz Smith's Moscow detective, Arkady Renko, is a far cry from the detectives of the 87th, and James Ellroy's intense, dark stories of Los Angeles have nothing in common with the formulaic Ed McBain stories.
But there you are in the airport, and your flight has been delayed. You've read the papers and had a drink. Luckily, there on the newsstand shelf are half a dozen Ed McBains. Relax: Detective Carella will take good care of you for the next three hours.
Well golly gee, just wave your nose in the air a bit more, buddy.
Maybe the problem that some folks have is that McBain's work, while almost never pedestrian, was hardly ever flashy. He just produced good book after good book at a pace that most writers can only hope to dream about. And while I'm sure that history will have its say in due course, can't we wait till the guy's actually buried?
I forgot to mention that he's wrong about Erle Stanley Gardner. Nobody reads him anymore? Every one of his Perry Mason novels is in print and I hear that the A.A. Fair novels (which Larry Block( among many others including me consider to be Gardner's best work) are also to be repinted soon. Man this dude brought a whole lot of baggage to this piece.
Posted by: ed gorman | July 11, 2005 at 10:00 AM
You're totally right, Ed. I read both the Mason novels and A.A. fair novels regularly because I know they're fast paced and a good read.
Speaking of Ed McBain, though, there is on thing that I'm certain he'll never be forgotten for: writing the screenplay for Hitchcock's The Birds. That's one of my favorite movies, and McBain (or Hunter, whichever you wish) practically crafted the entire story with Hitch. While it was taken from a Daphne DuMarier story, they just took one thing from the story--the birds--and rewrote the entire thing.
Posted by: Christopher Gooch | July 11, 2005 at 11:16 AM
Baggage he seems to have picked up from "Newgate Callendar" somewhere along the way. As for Arkady Renko vs. the 87th, it's pretty unfair to compare a series of five painstakingly written novels published over a 25-year span to a roman fleuve that reached ten times that length in less than twice the time. (Well, probably less than ten times the length, since the 87th books were all shorter...)
And I want to see this magicial airport bookstore that has half a dozen McBains, if it's not the Powell's outlet at Portland.
Posted by: Ron | July 11, 2005 at 11:27 AM
Essentially, Prial's saying that we're likely to forget an astounding body of work because of something as ephemeral as modern taste? The man's insane. Perhaps it's because McBain is prolific (which automatically points to "less worthy" for some bloody reason). Either way, the man's hardly cold.
Posted by: Ray | July 11, 2005 at 11:49 AM
Wasn't Prial the wine critic? Based on this piece, I would no longer take his advice on any vintage.
Posted by: Laura | July 11, 2005 at 11:58 AM
More on the supposedly unreadability of Gardner: a few years back, I was in a bookstore far from home, and found an old paperback that I bought and read for the rest of my trip.
It was a non-fiction crime book that was over 50 years old at that point, but I thought it contained some of the wisest and most perceptive opinions on crime, on prisons and rehabilition, on drug policy, and on juvenile crime, that I had read in a long time.
I'm sure no one will be surprised to learn that that book was Gardner's *The Court of Last Resort*. I'd love to see someone do a reprint edition of that, ideally with added background information on Gardner and the court.
Posted by: Dwight Brown | July 11, 2005 at 02:49 PM
Good writing *never* goes out of style. Mary Roberts Rinehart published for nearly 50 years; she's still read today. Agatha Christie published her first book in 1920; yup, still read today. How lucky we were to have the consistently excellent work of Evan Hunter/Ed McBain for some 50 years and in so many areas: novels, plays, screenplays, teleplays, short stories, children's books. I always thought the publishing of CANDYLAND by Hunter & McBain was an inspired idea.
Posted by: Elizabeth Foxwell | July 11, 2005 at 04:27 PM
"Wasn't Prial the wine critic?"
Apparently, he's still dealing in grapes. Sour ones.
Posted by: John D. | July 11, 2005 at 04:38 PM