sorry about the font problem. i had no idea. my ignorance
abounds in this area as in many others.
kevin's comments re the gender division in hardboiled
readership is something i've been chewing on for the past
year. what you say gives me hope for my new school of
feminist hardboiled (i'm the only member of this school that
i can find, mind you). i think women are very interested in
hardboiled -- i know they read a lot of true crime -- but
there are few female protags i can get behind. like none.
except (of course) my own. i don't know that my experience is
typical among female readers, but at this point i still
prefer male 'hardboiled/crime/noir' writers to female,
because among the females writing 'mystery' currently i find
no voices
(except my own) who reflect the steel you find inside a woman
who has made her way alone, without her girlfriends standing
by, esp. through the maze of single parenthood and putting a
meal on the table every night, as anthony's mother did. those
women don't have the time or the opportunity to sit down and
tell their stories. and they're the ones i want to
read.
i must also add that i have not found a female character
written by a man, within this genre we discuss here, that i
find believable, with the obvious exception of gary phillips'
clarice, a teenaged single mother, in perdition usa. in 'old
school' hardboiled, you have women that are sexy, evil, etc,
but they are two dimensional, and they always cave to the
greater might of the male. i think many male writers are
stuck in this respect because most men just don't understand
the way womens' minds work, and if that's so, don't try to
act like you DO understand, or you're going to look stupid in
the eyes of your female readers. some writers are fortunate
to have a naturally epicene voice, and they're the ones who
should try to get inside the opposing gender's head.
i just know that when i read a male trying to write a female
protag and it doesn't work, i want to kick his ass. and when
i read a female writer trying to write a female protag that
supposedly COULD kick someone's ass, but only after she talks
to her cat and folds the laundry and leaves her mom a phone
message, i want to kick HER ass. all of this ass-kicking is
of course figurative.
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