On Thu, 27 Jan 2000
billha@ionet.net wrote:
> So a noir world, darker than the souls of those
caught in it? Reinhold
> Niebuhr's wrote a book in the 20s or 30s, Moral Man
and Immoral Society:
> thesis is something like individuals have sin, but
combinations of
> individuals (corporations, unions, society) create
more badness than
> the sum of the individuals.
This sounds like a good analysis, but one must remember that
there are only couple of HB writers who can analyze this
situation (Chandler, Hammett, Stark, Ellroy to some extent,
Pelecanos from those few pages I've read so far), most of
them simply describe it. And do this somewhat unconsciously.
This doesn't diminish their achievements.
> I would agree, except for the proletarian view of
the rich as born
> and brought-up bad--they're different from you and
me, as Fitzgerald once said,
> and I think many HB novelists would agree, though
not in the positive way
> Fitzgerald may have allowed. I'll qualify that to
say that Chandler, for
> instance, seems to distinguish between the ones that
made the money (the
> entrepreneurs) and their children, who always had
the money.
In Chandler, those who made the money, are described with
nostalgia
(like father Sternwood). So far you're right. But doesn't
Chandler also point out that you can't make the money without
being bad? Or at least becoming a failure, like the author
(kingdom for a name!) in "The Long Goodbye". Hardboiled
literature is proletarian, has always been that - the pulps
were for the working men (women? I don't know). Hence the
racism in early HB, the rich had the privilege to have a
tolerant view towards minorities and women. So the goddam
S.S. Van Dines seem more liberal than most of the
pulps.
> And it's a society that favors the rich and
powerful--in the US that
> translates into a country that hasn't lived up to
its promise, so a larger
> sense of social betrayal that perhaps can't be
transferred to other
> countries(?).
Well, maybe it can, since there seems to come a lot of
interesting hardboiled stuff from Britain. But maybe this
explains the fact that the most interesting hardboiled
literature in the US seems pretty dark and desperate.
> Hence the special satisfaction of social or class
revenge
> when someone rich or connected gets to suffer, in
part because the PI or
> character causing the suffering is outside
the
> social-judicial-governmental network.
But there's also sadness, like in Ross Macdonald.
Juri
jurnum@utu.fi
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