: Is this archived? I'd be interested in reading the thread
on this topic.
Discussions of what "hardboiled" really means crop up every
month or
two. Poke around the archives and you'll see something.
I've saved some of the messages and intend to turn them into
something
a little more formal sometime, but who knows. People bring up
points
like Chandler's noble knight, urban settings, cynicism,
corruption,
violence and alcohol, to name a few, but for every point
there are
books that are hardboiled that are just the opposite.
It seems like most people here more or less agree on
what's
hardboiled and what isn't. We have categories like:
- hardboiled
- sort of hardboiled
- outsiders think it's hardboiled, but it's not
- it really is hardboiled but you wouldn't have thought
so
- noirish
- tough procedurals that could be hardboiled
- pretends to be hardboiled but it's not
- just because it has a P.I. doesn't mean it's
hardboiled
- other stuff we won't even mention
: So, if it's not a sore issue ... why isn't a slasher novel
or why
: can't a slasher novel be hard-boiled unless it's written by
Ellroy?
Or perhaps Michael Connelly, or William P. McGivern. There's
nothing
to say that they can't be hardboiled, but most of the ones
i've read -
and I'm getting pretty sick of the sub-sub-genre - are gory
thrillers,
and while they may seem tough they don't share a lot with the
history
of hardboiled fiction. I don't think of Thomas Harris as
hardboiled.
Bill
-- William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector. "Let's keep the party polite."
# # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.