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RARA-AVIS: Hard-Boiled: "Fly Paper" 

On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Richard King <RKING@VUNET.VINU.EDU> wrote:

>After mulling over the discussion about trying to define hard-boiled,
>I thought I'd check with a library reference book and see what it said.
>It does not contain the term noir, however.
>
>From BENET'S READERS ENCYCYLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 
> (HarperCollins, 1991), edited by George Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and
Phillip >Leininger:


[SNIP start of definition]
 
>Many critics today feel that the first full-fledged
>example of the hard-boiled method was Dashiell Hammett's story "Fly
>Paper," which appeared in August 1929 in BLACK MAST. In 1946 Shaw
>compiled THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS: EARLY STORIES FROM BLACK MASK,
>including stories by Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Raoul Whitfield, and
>George Harmon Coxe. 
>
>This seems to me to be a fairly fitting definition, and mentions
>many of the concepts and ideas put forward by members of this list
>during the last few weeks.

Yes, it does, but here we also have a use of the term 'hard boiled' which
is equivalent to 'Black Mask'.  

The trouble with some of these general reference works is that their scope
is so broad, they treat very little in depth.  Much more valuable, IMO, are
specialist works which devote space to in-depth explorations---pretty much
like we've been doing in this thread over the last couple of weeks, except
perhaps with a few more quotes and footnotes ;-)

I wrote in an earlier post that Philip Durham discusses 'The Black Mask
School' at length in an essay with that title in David Madden, ed., *Tough
Guy Writers of the Thirties*.  Not every contributor to *Black Mask*,
however, can be described as 'hard-boiled' (Erle Stanley Gardner, for
example: a well known contributor to *Black Mask*, but not a name one
associates with the term 'hard boiled')

>Has anyone read "Fly Paper?"

Yes, it has what must be the best opening line of all time:

"It was a wandering daughter job."

"Fly Paper" is reprinted in *The Big Knockover and Other Stories* edited
and with an introduction by Lillian Hellman, which is still in print and
should be easily available.


Eddie Duggan
------------------------
"Gee Toto, I guess we're 
not in Kansas any more".

Ronnie Reagan to Maggie Thatcher, 
on the sinking of the Belgrano.
---------------------------
A What They Might've Said Sig. 
 #1 in an occasional series
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