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RARA-AVIS: Academic Definition of Hard-Boiled
At 11:37 PM 02.02.97 -0500, <RKING@VUNET.VINU.EDU> wrote:
>
>From BENET'S READERS ENCYCYLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LITERATURE (HarperCollins,
>1991), edited by George Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leininger:
>
>"hard-boiled fiction.
>prettifications of the Conan Doyle school and an attempt to apply
>the literary lessons taught by such serious American novelists as
>Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. Hard-boiled fiction seems to
>have appeared first in a magazine called the BLACK MAST (founded 1919),
>and its development was closely associated with the editor, Joseph
>T. Shaw. Many critics today feel that the first full-fledged
>example of the hard-boiled method was Dashiell Hammett's story "Fly
>Paper," which appeared in August 1929 in BLACK MAST. In 1946 Shaw
>compiled THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS: EARLY STORIES FROM BLACK MASK,
>including stories by Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Raoul Whitfield, and
>George Harmon Coxe. To these names should be added W.R. Burnett,
>Jonathan Latimer, and Peter Cheyney. Later, hard-boiled fiction
>in a particularly violent phase became hugely popular in the Mike
>Hammer novels of Mickey Spillane."
>
>This seems to me to be a fairly fitting definition, and mentions
>many of the concepts and ideas put forward by members of this list
>during the last few weeks.
>
Sorry, I don't believe this kind of "lilterary" encyclopedia. It may be
one of the many "definitions" (plural) of hardboiled fiction, but these
editors know very little about hardboiled fiction, or read it very rarely,
or regard it as a lower form of so-called "literature." I don't think
these guys have read Black Mask stories. The first Op story is "Arson
Plus." These guys should not have forgotten Carroll John Daly, however
poorly he wrote.
If it has convinced you, it's okay, but it does not satisfy me. If you
want an academic definition, please try a mystery encyclopedia. Sorry,
being a member of the so-called Big Chill Generation, I tend to disbelieve
academic types of any kind.
Hammett was not influenced by Hemingway or Dos Passos. I believe Hemingway
was influenced by Hammett instead.
Jiro Kimura, non-academic type
*********************************************
Jiro Kimura
Kanazawa, JAPAN
e-mail: jkimura@nsknet.or.jp
The Gumshoe Site (http://www.nsknet.or.jp/~jkimura/)
*********************************************
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