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Re: RARA-AVIS: Re:What is hardboiled? (long) 

On Tue, 7 Jan 1997, Bill Murray wrote:

: It seems to me that it's a case of apples & oranges, depending on
: what you mean by hardboiled. Based on the examples cited: Spade,
: Hammer, Archer, etc. I take it that you equate hardboiled fiction
: with detective fiction.

No, by no means.  I just wrote something trying to explain what I
meant, but then deleted it.  I'll try again.

I've noticed a trend, especially in modern "crime fiction," to have
open endings.  Crime fiction is different from detective fiction, in
that crimes take place but often aren't solved the way we usually see.
In Elmore Leonard's books, say, you can have some gangsters or hoods
pulling a heist or killing someone, but there doesn't have to be any
detective racing around searching for clues.  _Pulp Fiction_ is like
this, too.  I can't think of too many other examples, but you probably
see what I mean.  Crime fiction, as I define it, is a subset of the
larger genre I might call Crime Fiction, which includes everything you
mentioned.

What I'd been musing about is that perhaps this difference is
something that could be used as a rule of thumb to separate crime
fiction from hardboiled (detective) fiction.  Is Carl Hiaasen
hardboiled?  No.  Does he write crime fiction?  Yes.  Detective
stories, mysteries?  No.  Of course, he closes his endings off, so
I'll have to ignore him.  Is Elmore Leonard hardboiled?  Is _Pulp
Fiction_?  I'd say no.  It was pulpy, it had gangsters, maybe even
some hardboiled characters (is there a parallel between Butch, the
Bruce Willis character, and the boxer in _Red Harvest_?) but it itself
wasn't hardboiled.

Partly this was in an attempt to narrow down what hardboiled fiction
(perhaps modern, hardboiled detective fiction) is.  People say writers
like Elmore Leonard are, but I don't think he fits these days - he's
certainly no Mickey Spillane, but maybe that's something to be
thankful for - and maybe these open endings are one way to point up
that he doesn't.

I'm probably still not making myself clear.  It's late and I've been
dealing with a stupid NT program that is supposed to help web browsers
talk to databases.  Maybe people can just ignore my attempt at
explaining what I meant, and say if they think Elmore Leonard and
writers like him qualify as hardboiled.  Or, hell, bring up something
new. :)

Bill
-- 
William Denton : buff@vex.net     <-- Please note new address.
Toronto, Canada                   <-- I'm not at io.org any more.
http://www.vex.net/~buff/         Caveat lector.

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