I remember reading the essay by B. R. Meyers when it came out in the Atlantic. My main impression was 'strident'. Sure, many modern novels are overwrought, but I like Cormac McCarthy's dense prose. I actually got a shiver reading the final passage of Suttree. In fact I think I drove Jean crazy with my constant demands that she listen to the various passages I was drooling over. So now Meyers is coming out with a book length version of his essay, the better to tell us what is okay to read, I suppose.
The folks on Metafilter speculated on where Raymond Chandler would stand in Meyers' pantheon, and one came up with the perfect response:
Raymond Chandler doesn't need a defense, see? He's always had the iron to get the job done; and every nancy critic with a typer in town can go suck dum-dums.
Strictly speaking, it doesn't sound anything like Chandler, but it was still a hoot.
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