taking the bit in her teeth…

Hi everyone!

Thanks for Sarah for letting me sit in (again). Any excuse to hide in my air-conditioned office and cruise the web is welcome. And before anyone makes a crack about cat writers in the dog days, let me begin…

Lead off, word on the Dorothy L is that Barbara Seranella went home from the hospital yesterday. Good for her, good for all of us!

Onto the testier stuff: As Sarah noted, I’m a novice at crime fiction. I like to think that my prior experience in nonfiction would have toughened my hide, but reading blogs like Tess Gerritsen’s don’t necessarily help the nerves. Gerritsen’s already taken flak for posting her disappointment at only hitting #17 on the NYT chart, and more recently has decided/confessed that the posting was a mistake, the result of her own best-selling writerly insecurity. So although I only dream of that kind of success (who invented the term “midlist author” anyway?), she does have my sympathy when she writes, “The same things that hurt you at the bottom will hurt you at every other level of your career.” It’s just so easy to misstep in this strange public-private world (just ask Michael Gee ). To blog too often is to blurt. Any sympathy out there? (Thanks to David J. Montgomery for that link.)

I’ve also been wondering for the past few days if anyone was going to comment on Adam Cohen’s Op-Ed piece in Monday’s NYT about “The Thin Man” DVDs I believe you have to register to read it, so in brief it discusses Hammett’s strong socialist beliefs, which he more or less betrayed in the Nick and Nora novels. Cohen goes on to discuss the economic necessity of giving readers what they want in hard times and how perhaps our current climate of fear and financial insecurity is what have made the DVDs into Amazon’s top sellers. For those who only know Hammett through the Myrna Loy-William Powell movies, it’s a nice eye opener, although part of me bristles that any Hammett should be dismissed as escapism. Plus, isn’t it possible that these movies are popular now because they’re good? I mean, in these days of action adventure movies (and don’t get me wrong, I loved “Blue Crush”), maybe we’re just craving witty dialogue. What do you hardcore Hammett fans think?

By the way, I’ve heard that the new DVD features a brief interview with the otherwise silent Theda Bara. Supposedly, she has a lovely voice.