Catching up on some old emails I set aside during busy
times.
Mat C wrote:
"True, of course, but i think the thrust of the fred was that
some hb writers overuse (and perhaps create) slang to such an
extent that it isn't/wasn't smooth reading even on the day it
was published - I can't know, of course, but I suspect this
is the case with some passages in Harvest, where it seems
very close to parody or perhaps self-parody. Or just a guy
with a deadline."
Kevin pointed out that an author can't worry about whether or
not he will be understood by future generations. True, no one
can predict what slang will become part of the veracular and
what will fall by the wayside. Mat countered, above, that
some of this slang may very well have been obscure even to
contemporary readers. I wonder if that might not have been on
purpose on Hammett's part.
We all know that Hammett used a lot of slang, very
influential slang within the genre (even when misunderstood,
as with "gunsel"). Could this have been a conscious attempt
to play up his bona fides as a real private eye? Did
contemporary readers know of his Pinkerton past? Did Shaw and
others point this out in editorial comments or authors'
intros? If so, couldn't Hammet's extensive use of obscure
criminal argot have been an overt and self-conscious sign of
the supposed authenticity of his stories?
Mark
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # 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 : 20 Aug 2003 EDT