Marianne,
Re your comment below:
> And I don't see why it isn't just as much a sign
of
> failure of the
> imagination and personal weakness.
I was speaking of murderers in fiction, though in both real
life and, very often, in fiction, I agree that murder is a
personal failure and a sign of weakness.
In fiction, however, a murderer can be hard-boiled (at least
as I've defined it, but if you disagree with that definition,
let's save that for another thread) because s/he is
physically tough and has a working class ethos. Richard
Stark's Parker, for example. On the other hand, I'd venture
to guess that Agatha Christie never created a hard-boiled
murderer on her toughest day.
My point was that Casper Gutman's willingness to commit
murder, betray his colleagues, or shrug off his misfortunes,
didn't make him hard-boiled. His being tough, or at least
tough-minded, didn't make him hard-boiled either. Neither
were any of these things what KEPT him from being
hard-boiled. What kept him from being hard-boiled was his
studied elegance of manner. It was precisely that kind of
studied elegance that Hammett, Chandler, Nebel, and, yes,
Daly, all were revolting against when they created the
hard-boiled mystery.
> man who is at least
> close enough to being a murderer that he is
putting
> his feet up on death
> row at the moment, and believe me this guy
is
> neither hard-boiled nor
> strong in any sense: he is a fool and a victim,
as
> much as the man he did
> (or didn't) kill. His physical toughness
is,
> believe me, irrelevant.
Here I've got to register some disagreement. He may be a fool
but, unless he's innocent, he's not nearly as much of a
victim as the guy who was murdered.
JIM DOHERTY
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