"In looking at recent threads on this board, there seems to
be a lot of disagreement as to whether Hardboiled's a style
or a world view. Now I'm not saying there isn't a downbeat
attitude to it, but let's be realistic. These were not a
bunch of existentialists sitting around in a cafe, expounding
on their philosophies. They were the fictional equivalent of
newspapermen, which many of them were. They wrote for very
little money, so they worked fast, and they wrote for a
market that demanded action and violence. If you look at how
much most of them wrote, you'd realize they were making their
Underwoods sing like machine guns. Don't get me wrong, a hell
of a lot of them were very intelligent, and their personal
philosophies came out in their work. But they were pragmatic
writers who understood the medium. And much of the H-B school
was based on very clipped sentences describing action. I
think to understand the H-B writer, you have to realize they
were writing for a market, and for a living. I wouldn't
reduce it to a formula, but as far as getting published, they
knew what sold."
Bingo! It's also worth noting that many of them, including
Hammett, wrote
in a variety of genres,
including supernatural horror, and "weird
menace" which was
supernatural horror, with the superantural element
explained away as a hoax
at the end. They wrote what the market they
were writing for demanded
that they write.
JIM DOHERTY
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