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RARA-AVIS: Defining American Hard Boiled
In his delightful rant about the differences between American and Canadian
detective fiction, David Skene-Melvin wrote, in part, the following:
"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..."
I think that's a pretty good unsympathetic summary of American hardboiled
detective fiction, at least as defined by early and middle practitioners.
As John Cawelti pointed out (Adventure, Mystery, and Romance), a key
difference between the English (&Canadian..., still?) classical and
American hardboiled traditions was in the depiction of the society and its
institutions, especially the cops and the courts. Whereas in the English
tradition, the police and courts may lag behind the P.I., they can, as
Skene-Melvin observes, be relied upon to do their job once the hard work of
detection is done. It is precisely the absence of this reliability, a
distrust of the orderly operations of the police and the courts,
particularly as they deal with organized crime and "the rich," that makes
it necessary for the P.I. to go outside the law (like the cowboy, I
suppose) in order to break through the official barriers to detection and
to carry out or allow a violent and unofficial justice, that is often a
kind of revenge. To my mind, it is these elements, together with the
first person narrator, that help CREATE the hardboiled tradition.
As I remember, Cawelti speculates that hardboiled detective fiction
explores the contradictions inherent in our success ethic, or the
inequities that result from democracy. If the p.i. is sociopathic, then
the society must be so judged, both labelled from the outside. Of course,
Chandler would not agree, and wanted his protagonist to be good enough for
any world. In most library discussions I have led, the participants will
readily agree that Marlow is quite good enough for his world, but for any
world? Not so sure. (Some would say he's too good to be convincing
nowadays.)
Perhaps the question is whether p.i.'s can be convincingly/sympathetically
hardboiled in a society that is depicted as essentially regular and
law-respecting. Is that why the modern English and European mysteries seem
to tend toward police procedurals, and the hard-edged stuff is more likely
to be found in adventure stories where the protagonist is part of the
criminal element or espionage element getting the better of worse criminals
(like Ross Thomas or Leonard fiction in the US)?
Hope this stirs the broth a bit.
Sorry for the length. Like Professor Skene-Melvin, I'm an academic. Give
me a sentence and I'll take a paragraph. Or more.
Bill Hagen
English
Oklahoma Baptist University
billha@ionet.net
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