1. "wise guys" is usually associated with mafia types, espec.
since
Pileggi's book (source of Goodfellas movie). Right so far?
But it seems
to me that hard-boiled novels & movies of the
30s-40s--before mafia
"awareness"--often used the term for good guys with a mouth,
like Marlowe,
or anyone with a mouth. So how did the term get narrowed to
mafia
gangsters who are not usually portrayed as being that swift
with the
repartee?
2. In an article on Eric Ambler, a critic refers to the
phrase "calling a
spade a bloody shovel." [In Coffin for Dimitrios, the
protagonist has
written a novel called "A Bloody Shovel" which the critic
wants to assert
is part of an allusion to Sam Spade.] I could find "calling a
spade a
spade" in the Oxford English Dictionary (just handy in a
neighboring
office), but nothing on the "bloody shovel." Had fun with
this question in
the hallway, but now our inquiring minds would like to know:
Is this is an
English slam on censorship or euphemisms, which itself, at
one time,
couldn't have been printed because of the "bloody"? Or
what?
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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