Hmmm...let's see, there was Mike Hammer, the only one I can
think of who
was particularly proud of his military service, and makes a
point of
mentioning it. And what a well-adjusted example of manhood he
was. Has he
finished painting those steps with blood, yet?
Of course, there are several others who served (McGee,
Spenser, Elvis Cole,
John Cuddy), but there's probably even more who didn't
(Marlowe and Spade
come to mind), so I'd really have to disagree with the idea
that "the
heroes of the hard boiled fiction...are typically military
veterans."
There's certainly far more common shared characteristics than
military
service, nor would it a distinguishing characteristic.
And I'm sure, that as we move into a hard-to-romanticize era
of pushbutton
videogame warfare, we'll see less and less of them proudly
boasting of
their military career, as though it's some kind of proof of
righteousness
or manhood.
I think a big part of it in the forties and fifties was that
giving a
character a background in the military was a common way, and
a quick
shortcut, to showing them as "worldly" men, men not
unfamiliar with
violence or death. But by the sixties, and right up to today,
in the
absence of "good" wars, which seem to be have been replaced
by an endless
series of nasty little police actions, insurrections, civil
wars and other
localised atrocities, hardboiled protagonists who are
veterans of the
military tend to be rather disillusioned, morally ambivalent
about their
experiences, and less likely to boast about them.
**************************************************
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
This month: New fiction by Burl Barer and Kim Sellers,
and a look at the 1998 Private Eye scene in our P.I.
Poll.
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