>Why did all those tough dicks work so cheap
when
>they kept getting hit on the head?
By gad, sir, that's an interesting question. To which some
cynical answers could be given, I suppose, although not by me
because I'm trying to give it up.
Money - just working for the money - is buying in to the kind
of society that Hammett and co. despised. A vast proportion
of the villains (no, I haven't counted) are rich men. These
detectives are of the people: workers not capitalists,
victims not victimizers.
Money corrupts. The essence of these tough dicks is a kind of
sometimes-involuntary (if that makes any sense)
incorruptibility. So work done for some kind of moral
imperative is 'pure'.
>He pities and scorns people who go to dull jobs to
pay for
>their dull lives in dull plastic modern society.
Those are the same
>people that would read about him.
The readers might be forced to pursue their "dull jobs", but
they too dream of not having to work just for money. The
"American dream" is relevant to this. Catch me on a bad day,
and I will talk at great, great length about the varieties of
wish-fullfilment which underpin crime fiction generally.
(Think of Raffles, by the way. Think of Ripley.)
(Buy me many drinks and I will continue to discuss
traditional/cosy detection, sf, romance, the Western, etc etc
etc, at boring length, deep into the night.)
One of my favourite relevant heroes, who always casts light
on this sub-genre for me despite the fact that he rode a
horse, is Shane, who was working for his keep.
Marianne
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