I wouldn't call it a myth at all ... I find the hard-boiled
genre when it was formulated to be the American response to
the realism movement in Europe within the mystery genre at
about the same time. Realism is a vital element to the genre
to the point that without it I'd argue that the piece wasn't
hard-boiled. 'Course their realism and then there's realism
... just depends on how anal retentive you are as to which
you follow. I'm a gray is the color of reality man myself ...
I leave the black and white decisions for others to
grasp.
All authors including (or especially including) diarists or
historians write even nonfiction from a subjective point of
view ... reporters report the reality of our daily existence
with a subjective slant based upon their own beliefs as well
as their perspectives ... history is his-story quite
literally at times. Oh, there's undeniable facts of course
... Lincoln is dead ... but take the (at times 'undeclared')
war with the natives of America and the colonial interests of
Europe ... the popular (conservative) view of history at one
time reported the invading forces victories as battles and
their defeats as massacres ... when an objective eye shows
that both occurred at the hands of each side, but quite a bit
more often by the side with the superior technology. Calling
it a war ... while defensible ... is a subjective view as
well ... not that my Choctaw ancestors would mind, they
traded their culture for the invaders at the beginning.
Anthony
-----Original Message----- From: Chris Routledge Sent:
Friday, September 08, 2000 8:32 AM
I realize this was tongue-in cheek, but isn't this one of the
myths of the hard-boiled, that it's more realistic than other
forms of crime writing? Since when did a lone detective solve
anything, for example? As a literary form the hard-boiled
gives a subjective impression of reality - for commercial
reasons (among others) hard-boiled writers perpetuate a
popular
(and not necessarily accurate) view of reality in order to
sell more books. It's the sensibility we're buying into, not
the reportage. If I want hard-boiled reality, I'll go for a
walk along Liverpool docks at night - but I don't want it
that badly, so I'll stick to Horace McCoy.
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