I don't see how not including women as "hard-boiled"
dismisses them in the
least. Hard-boiled is not some pinnacle of success to reach
in order to be
considered a good writer ... it's sub-genre period. Men and
women are not
alike no matter how much we preach equality ... we are not
only physically
different, but psychologically different as well ... it's not
a sign of
inferiority that we are different ... we're just not the
same. There's
nothing wrong with a subgenre which presents a male point of
view and
another which presents a feminine one. We really need to get
off this PC
bullshit and get onto celebrating the differences instead of
trying to
broaden the definitions to the point of generality at best.
No one was
created equal and no one ever will be. Thank God ... what
boring world
that'd be.
RE: Above
The last thing I ever thought anyone would accuse me of is
political
correctness. Nor do I think that writing a story that falls
under the
rubric of "hard-boiled" is necessarily an indication of
quality. I like
Hammett. I don't like Robert Parker. They're both
hard-boiled.
Similarly, I Grafton. I don't like Paretsky. They're both
hard-boiled.
Not including them as hard-boiled when that's clearly what
they are, and
clearly what they're trying to be, is dismissive, at least in
the sense
that it dismisses them from this list which, as I understand
it, is devoted
to discussing hard-boiled mysteries. And that's
short-sighted.
Nor is including them within the category somehow failing to
recognize
their femininity. The fact that a character is tough and
colloquial
doesn't mean that their individual approach to investigation
won't be
different from any other tough, colloquial character. One of
the things
that would naturally contribute to individual differences
would certainly
be gender. This is no less true for *writers* of tough,
colloquial crime
fiction. - Jim Doherty
--UNS_gsauns2_2924932734--
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.