I have received a book by William R. Hunt entitled _William
J. Burns & The Detective Profession 1880-1930. In the
book's final chapter, he makes the following argument
statement
"Fixing the influence of anyone's career on as mirky a field
as literary creation is a risky enterprise that is outside my
bounds. It could be argued, however, that Burns' dubious acts
and fall from grace were more important in fixing the place
of the private detective in literature than his much-praised
exploits. the detectives in thousands of novels since the
time of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are generally
flawed and at odds with established police
organization...
He argues that without Burns' fall from grace, the public
would not have been as willing to accept "flawed" detectives
such as Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, or Lew Archer.
"Sophistication had reached a general level of acceptance of
a hero or, sometimes, anti-hero, who walked the seamy side of
life, yet produced adventurous, satisfying results."
Can anyone tell me of a fuller treatment of this
argument?
Bill Harker
wharker@earthlink.net
-- # 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/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Mar 2003 EST