M Blumenthal asked:
>Could Marlowe, Bosch or Elvis Cole have lived
elsewhere?
Hell, yeah. But they might not be quite the same Marlowe,
Bosch or Elvis Cole. The question of LA's inherent connection
to hard-boiled seems to rest on the shoulders of Chandler.
Certainly, pre-Chandler figures like Hammett, Daly, Decolta
or Latimer didn't need LA. And nobody has suggested they're
not hard-boiled because their cases happen in the wrong
town.
Of course, plenty of writers did use LA in the early days,
but plenty of them also lived there. But after Chandler, it
seems way too many of them simply couldn't imagine a private
eye anywhere else. Particularly hacks.
Such was the force of his writing and the almost mythological
world that he created, that had Chandler settled in Newark or
Kansas City or Chicago or Vancouver, we may very well be
asking what it is that makes those cities inherently
hard-boiled.
The other factor, of course, is Hollywood. Why set the film
3000 miles away when you can film it a few blocks away?
Interestingly, radio eyes didn't seem as LA-obsessed. But
then television came along and more than made up for
it.
-- Kevin -- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
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