In a message dated 11/17/2002 10:58:12 PM Eastern Standard
Time,
buff@pobox.com writes:
> I suppose crime writers didn't have to be any
different than other
> writers: they could write about the Depression, or
not. Jim Thompson was
> out there living it and working for the WPA, but he
wrote about it later.
> Hammett was boozing and mostly not writing. Chandler
was out of work from
> the oil business, if I remember right, and turned to
writing to make
> money. Did Okies or Hoovervilles crop up in any of
his short stories? I
> don't remember any. Prohibition wasn't repealed
until 1933, and the
> gangster network didn't disappear with it, so that
provided a hoods, guns
> and violence, without the poverty.
>
> One would think that crime writing would be closer
to the down-and-outers,
> the street life and gangsters, but on the other hand
the
> pulps weren't for
> realism, they were ten cent tickets to somewhere
else.
Bill, While I think you're right about the pulps being a
means to escape the Depression and the hard times, it seems
to me that the "Crime Writers/early Noir" authors dwelt on it
more than the hard boiled PI writers. I haven't read all of
the era's big names, but those I have, such as Chandler and
Hammett seem to be writting stories that could just as easily
be set in other times (indeed I think of Marlowe more as a
WWII era guy more than a 1930's era character) while those
novels I've read so far of James M. Cain and Horace McCoy and
Edward Anderson seem to have the Depression era as an
essential part of the background. Anyway, that's just my
take. Of course, when reading a pulp from the period the
slang and the cultural references tend to firmly anchor the
story in my mind in the 1920's - 30's milieu. But I think
you're correct in saying that the main goal of a Daly or
Whitfield or Gardner was escape for the reader first. Of
course some incorporated the times more than others. It might
be interesting to go back and read some of these guys with an
eye open for just such allusions. Steven
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 27 Nov 2002 EST