Keith sed:
> For instance, James M. Cain repeatedly told me that
he did not
> consider himself
> a "hard boiled writer" because, even in his darkest
work...He disliked
being
> associated with Hammett and Chandler, and never
published a tale
> in Black Mask.
That Cain didn't "consider" himself hard-boiled really
matters little whether or not he is. Hell, James Joyce always
maintained that he wrote for the so-called "common man."
Reading the first page of Finnegan's Wake shows that his
saying that is horse doo doo.
Whether Cain likes it or not, he's squarely within that
hard-boiled tradition. Now, at the same time, Cain, like
Horace McCoy and Cornell Woolrich, sort of stand outside
traditional hardboiled. And that distinction is the
difference between noir and hard boiled, which has been
hashed and re-hashed here.
The fact that Hammett and Chandler were "worlds apart" in
style is likewise makes little difference in whether or not
they are within the hardboiled realm. IMHO, hardboiled, as
well as noir, are terms that are broad enough to encompass
plenty of different styles without leaving the genre.
As for Burroughs, while I'm one of those who don't consider
him to be within the hard boiled tradition (notwithstanding
the very hardboiled Junky and Queer), in all fairness I do
recall a mention in his biography (Literary Outlaw?) that he
was very much influenced by a particular pulp writer whose
name I forget.
By the way, when do you expect the Black Mask website to be
up?
Tribe
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 12 Apr 2000 EDT