RE: RARA-AVIS: Theme of the month - Los Angeles

From: Anthony Dauer ( anthony.dauer@verizon.net)
Date: 07 Sep 2001


Blue collar? Sorry, don't buy that one as a definitive characteristic and neither would Dashiell Hammett from what he wrote. Blue collar schmoes don't work for the DA or are detectives. They might enter those professions, but those professions are white collar by the very nature. They talk the talk for their culture. If we're going to limit the definition to a speech pattern a lot of dicks are going to fall off the plate.
  

--
Anthony Dauer
Alexandria, Virginia

Judas is looking for a few Femme Fatales for its next issue:
http://www.adau.net/judas_ezine/
-----Original Message----- From: JIM DOHERTY Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 11:14 PM
I'll allow that Holmes (and, for that matter, war vet Watson) are tough men. But they're not hard-boiled because toughness isn't all there is to it.
"Hard-boiled" means tough AND colloquial. It implies a certain "blue-collar" ethos that Holmes and Watson, staid Victorian gentlemen that they are, simply don't have.
In other words, though they may walk the walk, they don't talk the talk. And, to be hardboiled, talking the talk is almost as important as walking the walk.
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