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Re: RARA-AVIS: Hello 

William Denton wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, Davis Skene Melvin wrote:
> 
> : I'm the new kid on the block.  My interest in hard-boiled detective
> : fiction is wrapt in my interest in crime fiction in general and
> : Canadian crime fiction in particular, of which latter I am THE
> : bibliographer, having just published: CANADIAN CRIME FICTION
> : 1817-1996; an annotated comprehensive bibliography and biographical
> : dictionary of Canadian crime writers,
> 
> Hey, nice to have you here.  I heard an interview with you done by
> Shelagh Rogers, I think, on the CBC a little while back.
> 
> Do you know of any Canadian novels that qualify as hardboiled?  Howard
> Engel's Benny Cooperman mysteries are usually held up as being about
> as close as a Canadian can get, we being a quiet, retiring people.
> The books are quite good, but Benny's more softboiled, or even poached
> (and he loves to eat egg sandwiches).  I prefer Eric Wright's Charlie
> Salter books, but they're more Canadian police procedurals (until
> recently, I think he's changed a bit lately).  Are there any Canadians
> who write more classically hardboiled stuff, or twisted noirish
> things?
> 
> Speaking of bibliographies, I have pretty well finished off Ross
> Macdonald (I don't know if I mentioned that before), John D. MacDonald
> and James M. Cain.  JDM was quite a demon, he really pumped them out.
> Again, corrections are welcomed - thanks to Michael Sharp for a lot of
> additions and corrections to the JDM biblio.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bill
> http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/biblio/
> --
> William Denton : buff@vex.net     <-- Please note new address.
> Toronto, Canada                   <-- I'm not at io.org any more.
> http://www.vex.net/~buff/         Caveat lector.
> 
> -
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RE Canadian hard-boiled
The hardest-boiled Canadian writer was
John Frederick Brock Lawrence, 1907-1970,
who wrote a hardboiled cop series set in NYC for the pulps in the '30s.  
Frances M. Nevins Jr wrote a good article about him for _Armchair 
Detective_, vol.25:no.1, (Winter 1992), pp60-70.
For Canadian writers setting hardboiled stories in Canada, the closest 
approximation yet to a US-style private eye is Montreal private eye Lee 
Harms IN _Harm's way_ by "Aleister FOXX", (i.e., Alan Annand), NY: St 
Martin's; 1992.  Annand has also written some `Rock 'em, sock 'em' 
Don-Pendleton-type thrillers as by "Alan Marks".
Otherwise, if you equate `hardboiled' with the `needlessly brutal', 
there's always Laurence Gough's Parker & Willow police series set in 
Vancouver.
Benny Cooperman is definitely not hardboiled.  The gritty, hard-edge 
style is not really to the taste of Canadian authors.  Whereas the 
American criminous ideal is the private eye as gladiator engaging the 
villain in physical combat and shooting his way to a resolution -- 
justice triumphing as undertaker, Canadian crime writing is more subtle, 
more psychological, more caring.  Not for Canadians the anarchistic 
libertarianism of the hardboiled private eye carousing as he pursues a 
career of vigilantism.  If our villains are to be brought to book, we 
want the state to do it.  Canadians don't trust entrepreneurs as lawmen; 
we don't believe in privatizing justice.  Americans are romantic and hope 
for Justice; Canadians are realists and settle for Law.  American popular 
culture idolizes the sociopath, the alienated who cannot relate and get 
along, and thus purveys an American dream that is in reality a nightmare 
of anarchy, a community of fear in which the hand of every person is 
turned agaisnt each other.  So we have the American demand for guns, for 
in this dystopic arena where one must be a gladiator to survive it is the 
best-armed who have the best chance -- weapons make the man.

In my view, the three American authors who have best expressed this view 
of American society are Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross 
Macdonald.  It is interesting that all three were outsiders.  Hammett 
came up from the underclass, while Chandler and Macdonald were both, 
despite their birth, culturally British because of their upbringing.  All 
three transcended the genre and wrote mainstream literary novels.  John 
D. MacDonald was a repetitive hack and Robert Parker is a self-indulgent 
disappointment.  Hammer by Spillane represents the amoral Fascism 
adumbrated by John Lawrence, (supra).

And here I stop before I slip into lecture mode, as befalls retired 
professors from time-to-time.

David Skene-Melvin
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