I agree with Kevin this is a good list--which is one reason
why I stay.
The reason I joined is that I needed to become more familiar
with hard-boiled writers--both to define the sub-genre for
the MacGuffin and to understand why readers are attracted to
it. What I've learned so far:
1) HB readers categorize Classic Detective Fiction with "cute
cozies" in the same way Classic Detective Fiction readers
identify HB with Blood & Guts and male chauvinism.
2) HB includes far more authors than I would have supposed.
Raymond Chandler still "feels" to me like a Classic Detective
rather than a HB, but this has more to do with the increased
"onstage" violence in all detective fiction, even cute
cozies, rather than with the work in its historical
context.
3) HB readers, like readers of Classic Detective Fiction,
compare the best of their preferred subgenre with the worst
of the other subgenres (Hammett compared with unnamable males
who write under female pseudonyms about cats and
chintz.)
4) HB has become identified in the minds of many as violence
for the sake of violence and all-pervasive corruption, the
same way Classic Detective Fiction has become identified with
cute pollyanna-style amateur detectives with cats who
talk.
I still skip all the pages of car chases, fist and foot
fights, descriptions of torture or the tortured, and laugh
out loud when the hero survives a dive off a cliff in a car
that bursts into flames, to bound back up the cliff in a
single leap, to jump on the car of the escaping thugs, where
he clings to the back bumper while rogue cops in the
accomplice car shoot him several times. But he only lets go
when they reach their destination where he jumps off,
breaking both legs but only one arm, and rolls faster than
the speed of light down a hill while pulling out his cell
phone to call -- not the police to tell them where he is --
but his girlfriend to save her before the cops torture her.
And he lives to star in more storied after that. I skip those
too.
Sharon
-- Sharon Villines, Editor MacGuffin Guide to Detective Fiction, http://www.macguffin.net MacGuffinL, History & Criticism of Detective Fiction http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/MacGuffinL
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
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