> If we define "hardboiled" as a private eye; then we
don't have
> any females who fit that description.
???
How about:
Sharon McCone?
V. I. Warshawski?
Cordelia Grey?
Anna Lee?
Kinsey Milhone?
Kate Brannigan?
Hannah Wolfe?
Just to start with, as private investigators of the female
persuasion.
Their hardboiledness, or not, is something to be
discussed.
> In fact, we're running out of men, too,
> unless you count historical fiction,
We needn't restrict ourselves to contemporary fiction (ie
late 1990s).
> So then we have to include members of the
> police force and there are plenty of women characters
who fit that category:
I think this is where we begin to diverge.
We don't 'have to include' the police at all; in fact I would
suggest
that there is an antagonism between the detective and the
police officer
which is almost de rigeur, from Dupin and Holmes through The
Op, Spade,
and Marlow to, say, VI who, even though her father was a cop,
still
maintains some tension between herself and the police, and
I'm sure
there other rara-avians who can cite further examples.
> Now the "noir" aspect of all this is
broader:
I'm not convinced that 'noir' and 'hardboiled' are
synonymous.
Last time this was discussed there was no watertight
definition of
either, but I think it's fair to say most rara-avians would
see these
two categories as distinct from each other, although there
can be, and
often is, considerable overlap between the two.
> no one knows for sure, unless I'm missing something
the exact derivation--could
> be the French movie critic's term "film noir"
referring to American "tough,
> real-life" thriller mysteries as opposed to twee
English puzzle-solving
> mysteries; but "film noir" may have derived from the
Black Mask pulp magazine
> that published Chandler et al, at a time when private
dicks were willing to
> break some rules to get to the truth. Or maybe the
term comes from "serie
> noire" the French string of pulp stories very similar
to Black Mask.
When French publisher Gallimard launched the Serie Noir
imprint in 1945,
American 'pulp' and hardboiled authors were reprinted in
French, along
with European crime writing. American films became available
in France
after the end of WWII. In 1946 film critic Nino Frank coined
the term
'films noirs' to describe what he saw as a new mood in
American cinema,
which was obviously drawing on the same mood as the American
texts in
the Serie Noir.
> Maybe we
> should just say that we discuss any fictional crime
novel which is suspenseful
> and fairly tough-minded, in which the protagonist can
be a criminal or not,
> female or male, sane or insane, that has that
wonderful noirish je ne sais
> quoi. In this sense I'd vote for including Thomas
Harris and Caroll O'Connell
> and Ruth Rendell.
Maybe and maybe, yes, yes, yes, and oh yes. But no, don't
know and no.
In talking about hardboiled fiction, there is a particular
world view
that is, AFAIA, simply absent from Harris and Rendell (dunno
about CO'C)
which, to take one aspect, is the ambivalence about
corrpution: on the
one hand there is a dislike for the corruption that permeates
social
institutions: the police, judiciary, government, etc., while
on the
other (and here's the ambivalence) the protagonist also
appears corrupt,
or has an m.o. similar to what we might call a crook.
<aside>
Bill, is it possible to begin to compile an FAQ?
</aside>
ED
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