When I said "want to write like that" I was meaning in regards to the reception it would receive from readers. While all those books mentioned are great literary classics, I'd find it very hard to believe any of them would be offered a publishing deal if they were written and submitted today by some unknown author.
For instance, just a brief read through the sample of The Maltese Falcon available on Amazon shows an over abundance of adjectives and adverbs (a consequence of the distant PoV) that by todays expectations would cause it to be thrown straight into the editor's bin, which explains the critical reviews on Amazon mentioning excessive repeated description. Just looking at the higher rated 3 star reviews shows what I'm getting at. It's probably one of those novels that's best seen through rose-tinted glasses.
Whether or not people can still write as well as the esteemed classic authors of the past is debatable, and more to do with how we are taught to write now compared to back then. I also see it along the same lines as the music industry. Nostalgia makes us think about classics like The Beatles, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Queen, Rolling Stones, I could go on.... and we look at artists now and think they will never be as good. But if a new band came along, playing the same music as say, the Beatles, with all the same styles and tunes, it's very unlikely that they would even make it into the top charts. Their only fans would likely be those of us who can still remember the good ole days and can still show some respect towards that style of music.
Why would anybody want to set themselves up to fail like that? Times change, people's tastes change, and writing style has to change with it.
