Jim:
"Even assuming that you're right about the paucity of new PI
fiction in the mid-60's (and you're certainly not altogether
wrong), you seem to imply that only PI stories are
hard-boiled, and that spy stories are specifically not
hard-boiled."
I didn't mean to imply that. I certainly recognize that spies
can be hardboiled (although Bond doesn't quite fit my idea of
hardboiled, either, but that's application again). I was just
arguing that a change was happening, using PIs as an example.
And although PI fiction, in particular (and maybe hardboiled
in general, but I haven't really thought enough about that),
seems to pick up steam after wars, I think there is something
qualitatively different about the work of the post-Viet Nam
era. It's still clearly hardboiled in the classical sense,
but some of the best of it seems to be exploring and
questioning the implications of those conventions (not to say
this wasn't done before).
Mark
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # 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 : 15 May 2004 EDT