At 08:07 PM 23/02/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>Kerry,
>
>Re your comments below:
>
> > Funny, but I've never equated "cozy"
with
> > "traditional" (that was you Jim,
> > I think.) Maybe I'm not adequately acquainted
with
> > their contemporaries,
> > but I felt Doyle very different from Christie.
I
> > always thought Holmes
> > appeal lay more with a popular fascination
with
> > science, more like the
> > later procedurals (though Holmes was not a cop,
of
> > course) and the current
> > forensics formulas. Poirot applied his "little
grey
> > cells" too, of course,
> > but more toward the behaviour of the upper
classes
> > than the tracks they
> > left about.
>
>The only time Holmes ever really used
scietific
>detection was in the first story, A STUDY IN
SCARLET,
>when he a Watson are introduced just as Holmes
has
>discovered a formula for detecting whether or not
a
>bloodstain in human or animal. And that
experiment
>never had anything to do with the main
plot.
Yes, but much is made of that magnifying glass and the
deliberate gathering of little bits of evidence that most
readers wouldn't notice. Reason and science were closely
associated in the popular mind, I'm guessing.
>The "Big Three" of the Cozy, Christie, Sayers,
and
>Marsh, perhaps EXAGGERATED the traditions of
Holmes,
>but it seems quite clear to me that they, and
the
>other "traditionalists" of the Golden Age
were
>following that tradition.
I'm sure they did. You've made good points. But I still
suggest that cozies, have their own, separate place in the
mystery tradition. I associate the term with the almost
claustrophobic containment of place: on trans-continental
trains, aboard ships, in mansion drawing rooms etc. and the
cozy little groups of people who inhabited them.
What I'd call the "traditional" Holmes was more likely to
ankle about more, and had other elements that the cozies did
not incorporate quite so readily. As pointed out elsewhere,
Holmes was addicted to drugs, and there was often a
suggestion of behind-the-scenes familiarity with unregulated
street life. Holmes was a professional sleuth too, IIRC,
hired for his skills.
I'm suggesting that both cozy and hardboil were both
developments of an earlier, traditional school, each
addressing specific requirements of their different
cultures.
To digress again, maybe back to earlier and other
discussions, I like your subtle difference between the
fantasy of cozies and the reality of hardboil, one with crime
an aberration in the natural order of things, the other with
human nature so criminal that order must be imposed. But the
second, hardboiled idea suggests it is possible to impose
order. Noir would suggest that is also a fantasy, no?
Best Kerry
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