On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, William Denton wrote:
> I'm no weak sister. I can take it. What does he say?
Can you summarize?
Jopi Nyman says that the hardboiled literature (and not just
detective fiction) arose when the women stepped into the
man's world, i.e. the so-called public sphere, and men
started to feel uncomfortable. And some guys came up with the
hardboiled stuff, where men could still feel like men and
take no shit from any woman or any unmanly man. Nyman claims
that all hardboiled fiction is an attempt to get control over
the world and the women and everything and the sadness so
familiar in the genre comes from the failure of that
attempt.
Furthermore, Nyman claims that the hardboiled fiction is an
attempt to escape into the past, into the world of Frontier
ideals, of Theodore Roosevelt and Natty Bumppo. So hardboiled
fiction, although praised for being radical socially and
otherwise, is a reactionary form of literature because it
abandons history.
Here you have it, neatly summarized. Of course the overall
argument is much better developed, but this is just about
it.
Juri
jurnum@utu.fi
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