Jim Blue,
Re your comments below:
> If that were the true test Jim, I'm not
certain
> Marlowe or Lew Archer
> would make the cut. Marlowe certainly didn't
see
> himself as "Blue Collar,"
> only as his own man. It would also be difficult
to
> include guys like Spenser
> and Elvis Cole in the hard-boiled group, though
I'm
> not sure how hard I want
> to argue for their HB credentials.
> It's a marvelous old chestnut of a discussion,
"What
> and Who are
> hard-boiled?" and we've done it many times here,
but
> it's tough for me to buy
> working class as a deal breaker for membership
in
> the club.
Marlowe once said he never married because he didn't like
policemen's wives. Therefore, he thought of himself as a cop.
And police work was at the time
(and to a degree still is) seen as a blue collar
occupation.
Same with Lew Archer.
In any case, I'm talking about an attitude here, not a
background. Phil Marlowe, Lew Archer, Joe Friday, Steve
Carella, Matt Helm, etc. etc., etc., see themselves as fairly
ordinary guys who are good at their jobs.
Holmes sees himself as an extraordinary man, a creature of
pure intellect. And the exaltation of pure intellect puts his
stories squarely in the
"classic tradition" of mystery fiction. It was Holmes and, to
an even greater degree, his ilk (Philo Vance, Hercule Poirot,
Roderick Alleyn, etc., etc. etc.) that the original
hardboiled writers were reacting to. They weren't following
the Holmes tradition. They were breaking away from it. I love
the Homes stories, but to somehow twist things around so that
Holmes is included in the hard-boiled tradition is to misread
both the Homes stories and the hard-boiled tradition. Are the
Holmes stories any less entertaining, or well-written, or
important to the history of crime fiction for NOT being
hard-boiled? Of course not. Must a mystery be hard-boiled
before we can admit to liking, on its own merits, and on its
own terms? Surely not.
As for my definition, which is to say "tough and colloquial,"
excluding to many obivously hard-boiled characters, that's
the first time that particular criticism has been leveled at
my definition. Usually I'm told that it's far too broad and
expansive. It would certainly include Spenser and Cole.
JIM DOHERTY
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