I dunno.
How hard-boiled could a *sensitive* dude without a girlfriend
be? Ask
Philip Marlowe.
How hard-boiled could a *politically-correct* dude be? Ask
Dan Fortune or
Matt Scudder.
How hard-boiled could a *gay* dude be? Ask Dave
Brandstetter.
How hard-boiled could a *breast-feeding mother* dudette be?
Ask Ms. Tree.
How hard-boiled could a *sensitive* dudette be? Ask Kinsey
Milhone.
How hard-boiled could a *feminist* dudette be? Ask V.I.
How hard-boiled could a *non-sensitive* dude with a
girlfriend be? Ask Mike
Hammer.
How hard-boiled could a guy that reads books and contributes
to discussions
like this list be?
I'm talking here about hardboiled characters, not necessarily
hardboiled
novels. Yes, I know, none of these characters are truly 100%
hardboiled all
the time, but they all seem to have the right stuff when it
counts. Maybe
that's what I was rambling on about yesterday. How to me,
hardboiled
attitude and character are more important to me than mere
hardboiled plot.
Marlowe was a romantic sap, and he seemed to function all
right. Granted,
lately I wish Hawk and Susan would just elope, and someone
would come along
and really beat the snot out of Spenser (someone he could
never overcome in
a rematch), but surely a hard-boiled dude can also be
sensitive. In fact,
until about The Catskill Eagle or so I thought Parker handled
it pretty
well. It's a thin line, fer shur, but if you want cold,
unfeeling violent
brutes, watch NFL football in between beer commercials.
It's easy for a big, brawny cop or private eye to be tough,
and the genre's
sure crowded with 'em, but how hard is it for Joe Normal,
with a wife,
kids, a beer belly and a minivan, to maintain his edge? To be
a tough guy
after years of not having to be? This is part of what makes
all those old
pulpy one-off, average joe books so good--the conflict
between being hard
enough to protect the garrison, yet gentle enough to be
allowed to enter
it. Which is probably why so many of the he-man woman-hater
PI's are so
lonely. Who would live with them?
Like Marlowe said in Playback, "If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't
be alive. If I
couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be
alive"
And it wasn't that long ago, Eddie, that critics were asking
"How
hard-boiled could a *British* dude be?" Ask Nick Sharman,
right?
And now that I've said my piece, I think I'll go sulk.
Kevin Smith
Web Guy for The Thrilling Detective Web Site
For info, mailto:kvnsmith@total.net
"Well, I'll have some rotten nights after I've sent you
over/But that'll
pass..."
- Seeing the Real You at Last (Bob Dylan, via Dashiell
Hammett)
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.