--- Duane Spurlock <
duane@emazing.com> wrote:
> "Sometimes I think America's most
enduring
> contribution to literature is the
> hard-boiled detective story. Created by
Raymond
> Chandler...are we being addressed by
another
> ill-informed reviewer?
Yes, we are. Although I agree with the first statement,
obviously Hammett was writing years before Chandler. We've
recently had this discussion on here, but my own vote for the
creator of the HB private detective sub-genre, at least, goes
to Carroll John Daly.
Whether or not he invented the HB genre itself is a little
more debatable and depends, in part, on how you want to
define HB. I myself often find it extremely difficult to draw
the line between actual HB fiction and "close but no cigar."
Like any such catagorization, it is the invention of readers
and critics, not authors, and it is largely artificial, with
a great deal of overlap between genres. It's useful for
writing a syllabus, for example, or deciding what authors to
include in an anthology. But it can cause as many problems as
it solves, or attempts to solve.
Sorry--someone apparently slipped a soapbox under my feet
when I wasn't looking.
G.
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