On Saturday, February 22, 2003, at 11:52 PM, RARA-AVIS Digest
wrote:
But I have to wonder if the cozy really is any more
"artificial" than most hardboiled?
Yes, whatever the genre, writing for it is imitative to some
degree, which could be said to be "artificial.
In some senses, all crime fiction tends to the artificial:
that is, if "artificial" is the opposite of
"realistic".
Corner a British PI and ask him how many murders he's
investigated, and he will probably look at you with both pity
and resignation.
Corner a British policeman in a line at the cash
desk of a supermarket (or "in the queue at Tesco's", if you
want the English translation of that, and I did - I have no
shame) and ask him how many non-domestic murders his area has
dealt with in the past six months, and he will probably
scratch his head and try to remember. All right, so US
statistics will allow you to multiply his "maybe two" by 40
IIRC. But we're talking "cozy" (an American term) or
"traditional".
I don't find Golden-Age traditional writing essentially
class-conscious, I must admit, although it certainly does
seem more so to us when we read it nowadays. And it isn't
particularly class-critical. It tends to deal with what you
could generally define as "domestic" crime. A friend of mine
recently pointed out that cozies are mannered novels that
question the rights to authority of "superior", titled
classes. In their private lives, in their drawing rooms and
on their estates Lord & Lady Whatsis, Colonel Mustard
etc. were as corrupt and capable of murder as the
"criminal" classes.
"Mannered" certainly (and WHY do contemporary non-Brits try
to write these things? - pause for my usual cursing on the
subject of the idiocies of G, G and Z). But don't forget that
(a) the butler did it, or possibly a fiendish Oriental; and
(b) the intelligent, perceptive and successful detective is
also a member of the gentry, unlike the thick policeman who
trudges along behind him or her, making mistakes and managing
to confuse everything. Duh. (You know who I mean.) Yes, yes,
of course there is a frisson at seeing chaos break into the
pampered and orderly lives of the rich, but so there is
anywhere in the world. That's what crime fiction is: the
investigation of a disruption to order.
If anybody would like to find out what happens when a
contemporary working class author writes crime fiction out of
her personal experience, you might have a look at one of
Martina Coles's best sellers.
Frankly, I'm unrepentant in fixing the origins of American hb
in the language of certain writers from Twain to Hemingway,
and the cultural themes of the Western.
And-
> Perhaps it takes it back into matters of class. In
order to have the
> spare time to solve murders, the amateurs must be of
the leisure class.
> However, the pros are not even going to get involved
unless they are
> paid. They are doing a job. This requires more
practicality on the
> part of the detectives. It makes them working
stiffs, easier to
> identify with for most, particularly American,
readers, and gives
> them a
> real (at least real within the confines of the
genre) reason for
> becoming involved with a corpse. Even though it is a
cliche for PIs to
> finish the job, even after being fired, they would
not be on the job in
> thte first place if they had not been hired. In
addition, the
> professionalism makes it more believable that the
detectives would have
> the skills and knowledge needed to solve
crimes.
Good points, Mark
Marianne
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