Even though my previous contribution to this discussion seems
to have been lost to time or the delete key, I will suggest
that I'd bet the majority, at least, of writers for BLACK
MASK and later DIME DETECTIVE, etc, were acutely aware of
what their colleagues were doing. Whether or not they thought
of themselves as world-changers, I'm not sure, but I suspect
they had some sense of what they were doing to crime fiction
as it then existed. TM
-----Original Message----- From: Sidney Allinson [mailto:
sidneya@shaw.ca]
Graham Powell:
>The group of hardboiled writers that formed
around
> Black Mask in the '20s (including Hammett, Daly,
Paul Cain, as well as
> editor Joseph Shaw) clearly felt that they were part
of a movement, that
> they were doing something new and
different.
More likely, they just felt they were part of a group of
writers whose manuscripts were being accepted regularly.
Without exception, Black Mask writers were simply journeymen
freelancers, working for a couple of cents a word;
unpretentions down-to-earth scribes with an understanding of
their market. I'd guess they'd be honestly puzzled by being
categorized as artistes in any particular literary
movement.
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