Mark,
> By this definition, James Bond is not
hardboiled
> because he speaks well.
I never said he was hard-boiled. I personally don't think he
is. He is, partiuclarly as Fleming originally wrote him, an
upper-class British snob. Fleming, for that matter, was an
upper-class British snob. Look at his reaction when he first
learned that Sean Connery (an enlisted man in the Navy, of
all things!) had been cast as Bond. He thought Connery wasn't
enough of a gentleman. He came around later on, true, and
even made Bond part Scottish (something never mentioned
before THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, Fleming's only post-movie
Bond novel) in deference to Connery's background, but
originally he was very upset because Connery wasn't elegant
enough. Was (dare I say it?) too colloquial.
> And what about Hannibal Lecter? He's
downright
> eloquent in his speech.
Again, although I think the books he appears in are
hard-boiled, or at least that an argument can be made that
they are hard-boiled, Lector himself is not. Elegance is
probably as close to an absolutely disqualifying
characteristic as there is.
> There also seems to be a class bias here.
Upper
> class cannot be
> hardboiled?
I wouldn't want to close out the upper classes absolutely,
but generally I think that's true. Hard-boiled crime fiction
is the fiction of the working class. Cozy or traditional
crime fiction is the fiction of the upper class. That's not
bias, because I'm not saying one is better than the other.
I'm only pointing out the obvious differences. Hercule Poirot
is not the same sort of character as Sam Spade. They are both
good, valid characters, but they don't spring from the same
tradition.
> What about Jason Starr's upwardly mobile
characters?
> They seem pretty
> damned hardboiled to me in the way they pursue
their
> goals; does their
> speaking well rule them out? I haven't read
McCoy's
> Kiss Tomorrow
> Goodbye yet, but isn't the main character
a
> well-educated, son of
> privilege? I'm guessing he speaks well,
too.
I haven't read Jason Starr (I thought he was a crippled PI
character in the DC Comics universe; who am I thinking of?).
I've only read McCoy's pulp stuff. The characters in stories
like "The Mopper-Up" were definitely "regular guy" working
men.
JIM DOHERTY
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