<<Yes, there are many examples of characters working
within institutions
that
can be construed as hard-boiled in a noir setting. I really
did try to
explain "noir" and "hard-boiled" as best I could, so don't
want to
repeat
myself except to reiterate that if we confine our
protagonists to
private
eyes, we're in deep trouble.>>
But "we" (that is, this list) don't confine ourselves to
private eyes.
In the reading list (which represents only a small fraction
of the
discussions) we've had Chester Himes (sui generis
procedural),
Thompson's The Killer Inside Me (serial killer!), Patricia
Highsmith (a
Ripley book), Charles Willeford (The Burnt Orange Heresy -
about as far
away from PI literature as you can get), the Pronzini-Adrian
anthology
(which has all sorts of stories in it, not just private eye
ones), James
Ellroy's Hollywood Nocturnes (not PI), and Walter Mosley's
Devil in a
Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins has no idea of how to be a
detective, and in
fact isn't one...). Perhaps you've been misled by the "rara
avis" motto.
<<They are a dying breed, because in real life they are
becoming
obsolete, except for those very institutional bureaucrats who
work for
big agencies behind computers and , for divorce cases, hire
sleezebag
photogs.>>
If I recall correctly, Chandler never claimed that Marlowe
and his
exploits resembled the reality of private detectives, about
which he
seems to have known little. He claimed that he tried to
be
**stylistically** realistic, which is an entirely different
thing. If
you look at Carroll John Daly, the father of the hardboiled
PI, I think
it's clear that Race Williams is a product of his fantasy and
sense of
humor rather than an intended realistic portrait of a private
detective.
A private detective, then or now, would not go very far if he
shot as
many people as Williams did in one book! The same goes for
Whitfield's
Joe Gar, Nebel's Cardigan, Bellem's Dan Turner, Latimer's
Bill Crane,
Norbert Davis's man-dog team of Doane and Carstairs, and so
on. My point
is that the PIs we discuss here were and are a literary
invention in
order to tell a particular kind of story.
<<So, for those of us who have already read and reread
all the great
hardboiled writers>>
This is quite a claim and I'm glad you're able to make it. I
am nowhere
near that point.
<<and would like to discuss hard-boiled and
noirish
in a contemporary setting, why not include new crime
novelists whose
poin of
view is that of the killer (and a serial killer is really
iften just a
killer
who gets away with it) or that of an FBI profiler, or even
the victim?>>
I see no reason not to read such books, nor a stated
intention in the
list to avoid such books as long as they are
hardboiled.
<<Must we read only new crime novels set in the past
(or great oldies
Out of the
Past)?>>
No, not at all. The reading list is ad hoc, based on titles
and authors
that people bring up spontaneously.
<<After all, the very reason the French adored American
hard-boiled
fiction by Chandler, Hammett, MacDonald, Cain, et al, was
precisely
because
these authors were writing about the real world, about their
times as
opposed
to the cozy English mystery writers.>>
See the comment above about writing realistically versus
portraying the
"real" state of affairs. By the way, which fiction can aspire
to really
portray the "real"
"as it is"? Even historians write a literary version of the
facts they
are able to gather; there are interpretations, points of
view, all sorts
of a priori assumptions that conspire against any
purported
"objectivity".
<<Is it simply because Harris doesn't steep his prose
in attitude, but
keeps it dry, well-researched, and well- plotted--or what?
And why not
O'Connell? And yes, Rendell, not Vine? I find the atmospheres
of these
writers very noir, indeed. All who agree, say
aye.>>
Nay... All right, I give in. How about reading his Red Dragon
(my
favorite among his books)?
And how realistic is Harris? And which current crime writers
would you
say meet the criterion for realism that you are
applying?
Regards,
Mario Taboada
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