Mark,
Re your comments below:
"This is my problem with the idea of hardboiled, or even
Hammett, being Marxist lit. While a PI's ironic detachment
may lead to his or her seeing a lot of what goes on within
capitalist society with skepticism, it does not make him or
her a Marxist. Even if the critique of society jibes well
with a Marxist analysis, it does not mean a Marsit solution
to that corruption is being proposed. Individual capitalists
are exposed, and a certain degree of corruption is
presupposed, but rarely is the entire system attacked. I
can't think of a single PI who is out to foment revolution.
Not even Michael Collins's PIs, who often do go on to expose
the system itself as corrupt, and not just the individuals
within it."
At first blush, the whole notion of a single, heroic
individual who uncovers crime and corruption and sets it
right seems to be at odds with Marxist philosophy.
But, there are hard-boiled PI writers who are absolutely
"in-you-face" about their radical opinions.
Gordon DeMarco's Riley Kovachs is probably the most obvious
example. In Kovachs's world, it is the capitalist system, not
merely the corrupt individuals operating within it, that's
the problem. And Kovachs really does seem to be biding his
time 'til the revolution comes.
The political rhetoric is so consistently leftist that the
fact that Kovach is, himself, a small businessman, and
therefore a capitalist, at least in a small way, though
apparently a technical violation of the whole Marxist
"anti-individualist/anti-capitalist" premise, seems less a
contradiction than a submission to the accepted conventions
of the hard-boiled private eye story.
The point here is that, just as it's incorrect to assume that
hard-boiled in general, or hard-boiled PI in particular, is
inherently lefitist, it's just as incorrect to assume that
it's inherently right-wing. It's just a story-telling
framework, and works for all political points of view, or NO
political point of view.
As for assuming that Gordon DeMarco is a radical leftist just
because Kovachs is, Al's assertion that we can't presume an
author's opinions from the opinions of his character is
objectively hard to argue with. Just the same, I think
generally that's the way the smart money would bet.
JIM DOHERTY
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