Anthony wrote:
>A definition can't go so far from the original that
the definitive works no
>longer fit within the genre. When that occurs you're
not talking about the
>same genre any more.
But that's my point. Hardboiled now is not necessarily
hardboiled then. But maybe it's still hard-boiled, once you
get past the outer trappings. Because I still contend that
hard-boiled is mostly about attitude and feeling and tone,
and if that's the case, then the definition will always be a
bit elastic. And like an elastic it can stretch, but will
return to its original shape. The trick is not to stretch it
until it breaks.
Or, we could leave it on the shelf,and make the definition so
rigid that nobody can touch it without fear of it shattering.
Me, I think the genre is more robust and tougher than
that.
What can I say? I'm a lumper, you're a splitter. (Thanks, Dr.
Bob)
>Hammett and Chandler (among others) set the
definition
>and newer works don't redefine that as much as they
interpret it ...
Ah, but if you had defined hard-boiled back then as what
Hammett or, say, Whitfield wrote, then perhaps Chandler
wouldn't have qualified. After all, Hammett had pretty much
stopped writing by the time Chandler started. Maybe there
were a bunch of hidebound traditionalists in 1935 or 1942
having this same argument, saying that this upstart Chandler
wasn't hardboiled, because he didn't write like Hammett did.
Too flowery, all these similes and metaphors, you know. But
somehow, back then, the definition stretched to include
Chandler. So does that mean Chandler isn't really hard-boiled
because he he didn't fit whatever the definition was in 1928
or something?
>A genre is alive as long as
>someone's reading it not whether or not someone is
still writing it.
Well, we'll have to disagree on that one. If nobody's writing
in a genre anymore, that means it's probably not very popular
anymore, or has perhaps lost its relevancy. And is therefore
not very accessible, save perhaps for academics and other
obsessives. You can read all the ancient languages you want,
but that doesn't mean they're living languages. At best,
they're on life support.
>So what if a work is excluded from being labeled as
hard-boiled. It doesn't
>cease to exist does it? No, it's still there to be
enjoyed. Everything
>doesn't have to be labeled "hard-boiled" to be good.
You water it down too
>much and you stretch the genre to the point of
meaninglessness.
Obviously, whether something is good or not has little to do
with its being hard-boiled. And vice-versa. And I'm not
suggesting we water down the genre. But I don't think we
should limit the genre to some pre-set, simplistic, rigid
formula that depends on relatively minor details such as
weaponry or technology or style of dress or gender or setting
or whatever, that ignores the attitude that lies at the very
heart of the genre. It wasn't the Continental Op's plots or
Race Williams' guns that necessarily made those stories stand
out, after all -- it was their attitude, something to do with
cynicism and integrity and self-reliance and toughness and a
certain unflinching honesty, a willingness to impose their
own moral vision on a less-than-perfect world, tempered with
a little skeptical idealism.
I still contend that Grafton's Kinsey Millhone is a
continuation (a conscious one, in fact) of that tradition.
Whether she does, in fact, continue the tradition or not, is
a topic I think is worthy of discussion on this list.
Certainly, it would make for a hell of a lot more fascinating
topic than my spelling, anyway.
--
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
Take our new Search Engine for a spin! -- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Sep 2000 EDT