Frederick Zackel (fzackel@wcnet.org)
Sat, 12 Jun 1999 09:26:15 -0400
I second the suggestion that Miami Purity by Vickie Hendricks
is worthy. Her heroine makes Frank & Cora in Postman
Always Rings Twice seem like sexual babes in the wood. The
sheer determination to better herself and the strength of her
personality is stronger than Moll Flanders ever showed. Her
life is tougher than yesterday's pizza.
Hey, don't I got a knack for words!
Actually, the lone wolf part is where the hard-boiled starts
to set in, I think. Is that lone wolf an obsolete mythology?
Can we as a society afford it? Think of those psychos who
step out of the shadows and blow away a half-dozen people at
the post office or convenience store. Every one of them is a
lone wolf. What do his neighbors all say afterwards? He was
quiet, kept to himself, etc.
Part of the lone wolf mythology is he is willing to sacrifice
himself to the good of the community. Yes, all heroes do
that; soldiers, firemen, policemen. But the lone wolf is
making all the right choices and stands alone when he acts.
He risks all. His most powerful weapon is that he can walk
down these mean streets. At night. Alone. Against the shadows
and all the evil they contain.
The best part of hard-boiled is its ritualistic
aspects.
My favorite Indiana Jones movie is the one where Indy sails
up the River of Death. Oh, you don't remember seeing it? But
that plotline--the hero sails up the river of death; will he
return?--is the basic quest story.
What the lady dicks have introduced to the genre is a sense
of community. They have extended families. For better or for
worse they have changed the genre.
Is that family connection a bad thing? No, I don't think it
has to be. In the Odyssey Ullyses sails up the river of death
(i.e., goes to Hades) and meets . . . his mother. She hung
herself out of despair of ever seeing her son come home.
Yeah, I think that book is hard-boiled. As well as being one
hell of a horror story.
Another part of the hard-boiled is the fantasty aspect. I
close my eyes and imagine I'm Marlowe or Spade or Hammer or
... Not just fans, but writers do this too.
It seems to me the essence of hard-boiled is a willingness to
sacrifice all, even life itself. To consciously and
deliberately sail up the river of death, knowing you might
not come back. That's why there are so few heroes and so many
of the rest of us.
At the end of The Maltese Falcon, Spade shudders when Effie
tells him Archer's wife is waiting outside. She's the River
of Death.
Sue Grafton wrote . . . writes . . fantasies of what being a
PI is like. But she has grown rich from those stories. She
cannot turn her back on all she has "earned" and "acquired",
so her later books no longer work as well as her first books
did.
She can't be a lone wolf, so Kinsey Milhone can't be a lone
wolf, can't be hard-boiled.
Read Miami Purity. That gal sails up the river alone.
Best wishes to all
Frederick Zackel
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