On 30 August 2000,
marianne.macdonald@lineone.net wrote:
: I happen to think that this is a great time for crime
writing and that
: in part this is because a lot of boundaries are being
crossed.
: Perhaps this makes some people uneasy?
It doesn't make me uneasy, but it makes me see stuff called
hardboiled that isn't. A PI who carries a gun and drinks, a
decent citizen who gets mixed up in corruption, anything like
that, can be done in such a way that people who like other
kinds of mysteries will call it hardboiled. We've all got
standards and definitions of what is and isn't, and sometimes
they'll be met and sometimes they won't.
Compare it to jazz: to many, Kenny G is jazz, and Nigel
Kennedy can swing hard when he wants, but no hardcore swing
or bop or new thing afficionado would be caught dead
listening to them. Still, people buy them and all manner of
awful lite jazz and think they're getting the real thing.
Some of them can't take the full power of Basie or Mingus.
Some people venture into the soft, raw white of mysteries and
think what they read is hardboiled. Others look out from a
dried-up, rock-hard yolk, and others are in between.
Everyone's feeling of what counts is different. It takes all
kinds to make a world.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 30 Aug 2000 EDT