have we been here before?
Mark wrote:
>>I agree with you that men are more likely to be
on
>>this list than are women
>>only because of its subject matter.
and George wrote:
>I recently told my wife an idea I had for
a
>hard-boiled publication. Her response: "Can't
you
>come up with something that women will like
too?"
>G.
I do think that "classic hard boiled" is probably more of a
guy thing demographically; the stories are mostly by and
about men. And it's also partly self-fulfilling. A lot of,
say, Elmore Leonard and Larry Block stories over the years to
today have been printed in "men's magazines" from Esquire to
Playboy, which women are generally less likely to buy in the
first place. I mean, I'll read Esquire or GQ for the stories
but I don't think that now or ever I would have picked up a
Playboy for the articles (do they still have fiction?) I
don't care if they're great articles, there's too much "you
know I don't really wanna look at that" to wade through, not
to mention the process of buying the thing in the first
place. and I mean, if my boyfriend bought it, he's not gonna
show me (hey honey there's a great new Keller story between
the naked movie star and Miss February) and if my brother
bought it I don't wanna *touch* it. If i'm gonna see these
stories it's only gonna be a few years later when someone
decides to anthologize them.
I'm being a little facetious here, but this is a genre that
has been traditionally marketed to men, and while I'm sure
there are many enterprising women who have sought these
writers out over the years, we're not likely to stumble on em
by accident.
And it's clearly not violence that turns off female readers.
The fan communities for "Homicide," "Oz," "the X-files", etc
are heavily female, even shows that do seem to skew to a more
male audience - NYPD Blue, the Sopranos, Law & Order -
attract a substantial female following. I know plenty of
female fans of all of the most violent and hardboiled writers
I can think of, and in fact the whole "forensic" genre
(Cornwell, Reichs, etc) is heavily female. I wouldn't call
most of these books hard-boiled in the sense it's used on
this list (outside rara I've most often seen the term used
generically for anything that's violent, gorey and non-cozy)
but they're generally at least as violent and almost always
gorier than a lot of what we'd call "true" hardboiled.
just a few scattered thoughts, here, not trying to make any
big point. i've found that most generalizations about who
reads what turn out to be wrong.
-
He got thirty years for lovin' her/ from some Oklahoma
governor,/ who said
"everything this doughboy does is wrong" - Tom Waits
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