> Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 09:25:36 -0700
(PDT)
> From: JIM DOHERTY
> Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: critical studies on
the
> origins of hard-boiled?
>
> Jess,
>
> Re your question below:
>
> > Does anyone know of a good critical study
on
> the
> > origins of hard-boiled,
> > especially the genre's 19th century
dime
> novel
> > roots? I'm looking for a study
> > which examines the influence of the Old
King
> > Brady/Old Cap Collier/Nick Carter
> > genre of dime novels on the early
> hard-boileds. Is
> > there such a thing?
>
> There are books which talk about how dime
> novels
> eventually transformed into pulp
magazines.
> However,
> thay emphasize the changes in the
magazine
> publishing
> indutry. Aside from the fact that Carroll
John
> Daly
> was clearly influenced by the melodrama
he'd
> grown up
> with, I think you'd find that the influence
of
> dime-nvel detective stories on their
> Prohibition/Depression-era descendants would
be
> negligible. The social phenomenons that
> contributed
> most to the rise of the hard-boiled crime
story
> was,
> first of all, World War I which
desensitized
> readers,
> particularly men, to violence, second of
all,
> Prohoibition and the rise in gangsterism
and
> corruption that accompanied it, and,
finally,
> the
> Depression, which solidified the cynicism
that
> had
> been growing all through the '20s.
I think you'll find more of a continuity in the definition of
masculinity, as seen in the figure of the dime novel
detective and the figure of the hard-boiled detective, than
you're willing to credit. Readers desensitized to violence?
Check, got that in spades during the hey-day of dime novels.
Gangsterism and corruption? Check, got lots of that, too.
Economic depression? Yep. The figure of the hard-boiled
detective has the trauma of WW1 behind it, but in nearly all
the other important ways the hard-boiled detective is an
updated version of the Nick Carter strain of dime novel
detective, rather than a radical break from tradition.
> If anything, you could argue that
hard-boiled
> influenced the dime novel characters.
When
Nah, you couldn't, if only because dime novels weren't
published when hard-boiled first appeared. I realise this is
quibbling over definitions, but I was being exact when I used
the phrase "dime novels." Dime novels are a 19th century
phenomenon. After the early 1900s they just weren't around
any more. There were certainly adventure and detective
magazines between the demise of the dimes and the rise of the
pulps, but they weren't dime novels.
I'm interested in the influence of 19th century detective
characters, as seen in the dime novels, on the
hard-boileds.
> Nick
> Carter first appeared in the 19th Century,
he
> was a
> "Great Detective" more or less in the
tradition
> of
> Sherlock Holmes (for all that he preceded
> Holmes by
> perhaps a year).
No, sorry, he wasn't. When he debuted he was a dime novel
detective in the tradition of Old Cap Collier and Old King
Brady, which meant heavy on the action and light on the
cerebration and deduction. The change to a more Holmesian
characterisation took place only circa 1904, when Street
& Smith and Amalgamated Press, the British owner of
Sexton Blake, reached an agreement to begin rewriting each
other's stories. (The demand for Blake and Carter stories
outstripped the supply, even with worthies like Frederic van
Rensselaer Dey cranking out material.) Blake was somewhat
Holmesian at this point, so the Blake stories, rewritten to
incorporate Carter, showed a Holmes influence.
But even then Carter's Holmesian attributes were only
superficial. The Carter stories were always more concerned
with adventure and exotic enemies than with deduction and a
well-crafted crime.
I suppose the proper answer to my question is that no, there
is no such animal, and that I should write it
myself....
jess
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Sep 2002 EDT