T,
Re your comments below:
"Being colloquial doesn't have much to do with it, in my
opinion."
Oh, c'mon, T! Style is an integral componet of hard-boiled,
and the style is colloquial. It was precisely the fascination
with American vernacular, particularly as used by Hammett,
what drew both Chandler and R. Macdonald to the form.
"Tough (and sometimes cynical) would describe many hardboiled
characters."
No, it doesn't. Tough (and sometimes cynical) characters who
express themselves IN A PARTICULAR WAY are what describes
hard-boiled.
"Gutman does not speak the vernacular but is about as tough
as they come."
Maybe he's tough and maybe he's not. To me he's just vicious
and treacherous, and that's not the same as tough. But even
if he is, it's his precisely his refined manner that keeps
him from being hard-boiled.
And that refined, cultured manner is meant to be a stark
contrast to the TRULY hard-boiled Spade.
And, Miker, Holmes clearly is NOT hard-boiled. Hard-boiled
writers were responding to, and, to a degree, against
precisely the style of crime fiction exemplified by Conan
Doyle. If Holmes had been hard-boiled, writers like Hammett
and Chandler would have been emulating him, not trying to do
something entirely different.
JIM DOHERTY
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