I'm reading Richard Neely's THE PLASTIC NIGHTMARE (aka
NIGHTMARE) (1969) right now. No spoilers, but if you like
books where a guy wakes up with complete amnesia and doesn't
know who he can trust, you won't want to miss it.
It was written in 1969 and set in San Francisco, but it's
about well-off people in their late 30 or 40s, and so far I
haven't seen any mention of anything hippyish. It got me
thinking about how hardboiled and noir writing went through
the sixties and into the seventies. Science fiction changed a
lot in that time, but how did HB writers deal with it all?
John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald discussed the new scene,
but McGee and Archer weren't going to drop out and get with
it. I haven't read Westlake's non-Parker books from that
time, but as Richard Stark he wasn't having Parker protest
anything or get mellow. James Crumley started writing then,
didn't he? Did he come out of that generation, with some of
those attitudes? Is there anyone else?
Hardboiled and noir writers had been writing about paranoia,
corruption, fear, drugs, alcohol, violence, and sex for
decades. Did they not need to open up or rebel against the
establishment? Mysteries have certain rules that need to be
followed (the criminal should be caught), which puts some
restrictions on things, but the more general classification
of crime novels doesn't require this. For all that other
writing, and other genre fiction, was affected by the
sixties, from what little I know about that time, I don't see
many changes.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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