I get that, I would never fault someone for not reading them due to that stuff as I’m not a fan of it either. I love the books, and I understand that he keeps at least some of it in to maintain the “noir vibe”, but I’m definitely in the camp of thinking they’d be better without them.

Fortunately, he seems to have grown as the stories have continued (which makes sense, considering the first one was written as a college student) and cut that stuff way down.
That said, I can certainly understand someone not wanting to read the earlier stuff to get to that point.