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Re: RARA-AVIS: hb libertarian
On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, michael david sharp wrote:
: To the first question: in its pessimism about the competence of
: governmental institutions, the hard-boiled attitude of much 30s-40s
: fiction does (vaguely) have something in common w/ what appears to
: be an increasingly libertarian American electorate.
If the first person meant "libertarian" in the sense of whacked-out
gun nuts holing up in Montana, I don't see any connection. If he
meant people who want to be left alone, I'd agree there's some
similarity. But a hardboiled dick would be as equally skeptical of a
free-market capitalist as he would of the government, I think. He
knows it won't make much of a difference. He'd still have to wade
though the same crap and corruption every day.
There's quite a bit of sentiment against the rich in hardboiled dick
stories, I suppose because it's so easy for the rich to buy their way
out of any trouble.
Did Mike Hammer ever deal with any really rich families? I wonder
what Spillane made of them.
: > On another tact, I'd be interested to hear hb-slang for 'artist.'
I haven't seen anything. But your average hardboiled type would
probably be pretty sarcastic when commenting on anything "modern."
Bill
--
William Denton : buff@vex.net <-- Please note new address.
Toronto, Canada <-- I'm not at io.org any more.
http://www.vex.net/~buff/ Caveat lector.
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