One writer on another …

… Ivebeenreadinglately: Westlake on Hammett and The Thin Man. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

This is what good criticism does: it makes it hard to read a book the same way you read it before you encountered the critic's take on it. I would have read The Thin Man again eventually, but would I have seen in it the sense of dislocation and loss that Westlake showed me?