Editing Mickey Spillane (section)

==Reception==
Early reaction to Spillane's work was generally hostile. [[Malcolm Cowley]] dismissed the Mike Hammer character as "a homicidal paranoiac."<ref name="rlg">Robert L. Gale, ''A Mickey Spillane companion'' Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2003. {{ISBN|0313058482}} (ix)</ref> [[John G. Cawelti]] called Spillane's writing "atrocious," and [[Julian Symons]] called Spillane's work "nauseating."<ref name="rlg"/> By contrast, [[Ayn Rand]] publicly praised Spillane's work at a time when critics were almost uniformly hostile.  She considered him an underrated if uneven stylist and found congenial the [[False dilemma#Black and white thinking|black-and-white]] morality of the Hammer stories. However, Rand condemned the political views expressed by Spillane in his Tiger Mann novel ''Day of the Guns'', describing the book's cynical protagonist and his "semi-governmental gang" as being "shocking and rationally indefensible", as Rand opposed the use of force unlimited by any framework of rights.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://newideal.aynrand.org/ayn-rand-speaks-up-for-mickey-spillane-part-2/ |title=Ayn Rand Speaks Up for Mickey Spillane |last=Milgram |first=Shoshana  |date=December 21, 2022 |publisher=[[Ayn Rand Institute]] |access-date=March 10, 2024}}</ref>

Spillane's work was later praised by [[Max Allan Collins]], [[William L. DeAndrea]],<ref name="wld" /> and Robert L. Gale.<ref name="rlg" /> DeAndrea argued that although Spillane's characters were stereotypes, Spillane had a "flair for fast-action writing," that his work broke new ground for American crime fiction, and that Spillane's prose "is lean and spare and authentically tough, something that writers like [[Raymond Chandler]] and [[Ross Macdonald]] never achieved."<ref name="wld"/>

German painter [[Markus Lüpertz]] claimed that Spillane's writing influenced his own work, saying that Spillane ranks as one of the major poets of the 20th century. American comic book writer [[Frank Miller]] has mentioned Spillane as an influence for his own [[hardboiled]] style. [[Avant-garde music|Avant-Garde]] musician [[John Zorn]] composed a piece influenced by Spillane's writing titled ''[[Spillane (album)|Spillane]]''.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}