Someone wrote:
>You're right, but I'd classify only original black
blues as hardboiled,
>since it was born out of violence and attempts to be
a man. The white
>blues has just been a little too, well, cozy for me.
They play too well
>to be truly incorporated into the bad hardboiled
world.
I beg to differ. Playing the race card is just silly,
especially when it comes to art. Listen to some of the work
of Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie or Johnny Cash, none of whom
are usually cited for their playing (or, God knows, their
singing), and tell me that ain't the real folk blues. Hard
and tough as hell, and they didn't just play it--they wrote
it.
The logic that says only blacks can play the blues,
hardboiled or otherwise, would be like saying Europeans
wouldn't know the blues if it pissed on their legs. No matter
how noble or well-meaning the intentions, romanticizing or
mythologizing an ethnic group is just the flip side of
racism.
But this musical hardboiled thing has been done to death here
before, anyway. Codifying what is or isn't hardboiled by some
arcane, outdated requirements (shoes? fedoras? gender?
setting? race? nationality? the writer's former occupation?)
is nothing but
"fetishisation," as Jim Sinclair termed it.
To narrowly define a literary genre, especially one which
relies so much on attitude and spirit and feel as the
hardboiled genre, is to strangle it.
And speaking of attitude and all that, let me say "YES!" to
whoever recommended John Shannon. This guy writes. His
surreal take on L.A., coupled with a sort of bruised
romanticism that's reminiscent of Ross Macdonald and Stephen
Greenleaf (and that's a good thing), is some of the best new
stuff I've read in years. Compelling, literate, and sometimes
heart-breaking. His new one, THE POISON SKY is just out in
paperback. Check it out.
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
An A&E Mystery.com Site of the Week
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 19 Apr 2000 EDT