Great points, Kevin. Most private eye stories--almost all of
them have the same relationship to reality that most western
stories have to the historic west.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Burton Smith
<kvnsmith@...> wrote:
>
>
> Jacques Debierue asked:
>
> > What exactly does the real present-day PI do?
Surely he can't be
doing
> > much "divorce work", or chasing the proverbial
"missing daughter"?
> > Does he even drink or want to? Does he have or
need an office, or
does
> > he work from home and his SUV? Who hires
him?
> >
> > I ask these things because life has changed so
much since the
classic
> > era of the PI with bottle, pretty and/or
motherly secretary,
hostile
> > cops (except for one who remains grudgingly
loyal), etc. etc.
>
> Well, you do realize it was always a fantasy,
right?
>
> Fiction is not real life. Fiction has to make sense
of some sort.
> Real life doesn't operate under those
restrictions.
>
> Even Hammett's so-called "realism" was pretty much a
romanticized
and
> tidied-up version of life in the Pinks (a quick
perusal of his
> article "From the Memoirs of a Private Detective" is
mostly tall
> tales and bullshit), just as Chandler's take was a
romanticized
> version of the lone wolf operator.
>
>
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