a.n.smith wrote:
<<You may think he is wrong to do this, but Ross
Macdonald
*was* part of the hard-boiled school. His early work echoed
Chandler's Marlowe books, but then he found this new voice.
True, it was more psychological than external, but that
happened to the gothic, too, which grew from its formula into
a more complex label when Frankenstein came along. Just
because it was a shift doesn't make it less hard-boiled. He
just took the loner PI idea in a different
direction.>>
I think that, after The Galton Case, Lew Archer is no longer
a hardboiled detective. He is a tired, pessimistic detective,
a pretty polite and civilized one, a compassionate one. The
classic hardboiled detective could just as easily have been a
criminal; not so Archer. To be sure, this transformation of
the hardboiled PI into a noble knight started with Chandler's
Marlowe, but Marlowe is still a violent guy who cuts a lot of
corners and cracks heads in order to get things done. He is
still of the old school, a detective from the pulps. He lives
in danger and has fun with danger. Post-Galtonian (!) Archer
does not have much fun, he just goes ahead and takes on
cases. He is watching people and analyzing them.
<<I've always seen Macdonald listed with the
hard-boiled writers, so your comment puzzled
me.>>
Yes, that's the conventional placed assigned him, but we have
to be careful with labels. This is rara-avis. We like to make
things complicated...
Best regards,
MrT
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