Jim originally wrote:
>It implies a certain "blue-collar"
ethos...
But a lot of folks seemed to have missed his point, so he
tried again.
>I'm talking about an attitude here, not a
background.
Yes. The thread was wandering off into the hills for a while
there, but I think you're on to something good.
There is that common man vibe in most hard-boiled detectives.
Even Hammett's (and later, Hollywood's) Nick Charles, who had
scads of dough, thanks to Nora, definitely had that common
man thing going.
And Chandler, as usual, had something to say about it in The
Simple Art of Murder: "He is a common man or he could not go
among common people."
On another list, there's been much discussion lately about
class in mysteries, and I think that's one of the appeals of
good hard-boiled detective and crime novels -- the ability
for the protagonist to move from class to class, be it, for
example, Marlowe asking questions in a "shine' bar or
sweating like a pig in General Sternwood's hothouse, but
always remaining his own man.
Holmes, for all his rough edges, never really struck me as a
common man. He always seemed rather aloof and smug to me,
condescending even, closer to Poirot than Marlowe.
A rough litmus test for a hard-boiled detective -- could you
see yourself having a beer and shooting the shit with the guy
or not?
FEARSOME PREDICTION: Someone will say, "Hey! Unmistakably
hard-boiled so-and-so doesn't drink beer..."
-- Kevin -- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
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