--- Dick Lochte <
dlochte@home.com> wrote:
>
> Jim Doherty writes:
>
> I'll allow that Holmes (and, for that matter,
war
> vet
> Watson) are tough men. But they're not
hard-boiled
> because toughness isn't all there is to
it.
>
> "Hard-boiled" means tough AND colloquial.
It
> implies
> a certain "blue-collar" ethos that Holmes
and
> Watson,
> staid Victorian gentlemen that they are,
simply
> don't
> have.
>
> In other words, though they may walk the walk,
they
> don't talk the talk. And, to be hardboiled,
talking
> the talk is almost as important as walking the
walk.
>
>
__________________________________________________
>
I basically agree with Mr. Doherty, and disagree with Mr.
Lochte. "Hardboiled" means more than simply
"tough". Today I bought a first edition of James Jones FROM
HERE TO ETERNITY (for a buck, ridiculously) and Jones is a
tough writer, and was a tough guy, no doubt about it. But he
wasn't a hardboiled writer.
> I don't believe language is a crucial part of
being
> hardboiled since, in
> literature at least, it's about attitude and
action,
> not talk. Nor do I
> think that blue-collar ethos is a
necessity.
No, sorry, I think both are required. Regarding blue-collar
ethos (never heard it discussed that way before, but I like
it) the hb attitude almost
*requires* a kind of workmanlike, "let's get our hands
sweaty" approach. Whether bs or not (and frankly, I think
it's mostly bs), the idea is to emphasize gritty
"reality".
There's
> a long line of
> British clubmen -- from Bulldog Drummond to
James
> Bond -- who have their
> hardboiled moments.
I really like Ian Fleming's work, but I think you grievously
misunderstand Bond if you ever classify him as "hardboiled".
He comes from a far different tradition, the school of
British Adventure Writing that had it's start in Victorian
England.
Now Quiller, on the other hand....
> Lawyers like Perry Mason or Steve
Martini's
> character (name momentarily
> escapes me) have at least a touch of the
hardboiled
> in them.
The first Mason, THE CASE OF THE VELVET CLAWS (? right
title?) is a hb book. Mason is seen as a sort of Spade-like
character, willing to twist the law to serve his own higher
ideals of justice. I like Gardner's work generally -- he's a
wonderfully readable author -- but later books are much
tamer, maybe "medium boiled", if anything.
The one Martini book I read many years ago I absolutely
hated, and have never gone back to him.
I don't get one blue
> collar vibe from the
> chess-playing poetic Marlowe.
But Chandler's wide influence on the genre suggests that most
people really *did* see him as some kind of idealized "common
man". If you learn a bit about Chandler and his life then
yes, Marlowe can be appreciated on other levels, but I really
think most saw Marlowe as simply a tough, heroic American --
an idealized protrayal of what this country wishes to think
of itself.
That goes double when
> it comes to Spencer
> and Elvis Cole.
Well, I have little regard for either Parker or Crais, both
of whom seem to me to be working late variants on the
Chandler formula. Certainly the best Scudder novels, to pick
a guy off the top of my head, portray him as a working class,
no-nonsense joe.
Going back to Holmes, if getting
> out the needle and
> shooting up after a tough case isn't hardboiled
then
> what are we talking
> about?
Far from being hardboiled, I would call Holmes the ultimate
Bohemian. Remember, the Holmes stories were written mostly in
the 1890's, the height of the Decadent movement in England.
Holmes really seems influenced by that -- he's a kind of
languid artiste who takes drugs to better endure the boredom
of the world. In most of the stories crime is presented as
just another "fix" for him.
This doesn't make the stories bad -- I grew up on the
Sherlock Holmes stories, and love them now. It just makes
them not hb.
doug
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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