I actually posted my oft-repeated definitions once more
because I rather liked the idea of that being the first-ever
post on Rara-Avis's new home.
I thought it might engender a chuckle or two ("Oh that
Doherty; he's at it, again"), but I didn't really expect it
to generate another discussion, and I've been staying out of
the current one because I want to save my best stuff for
Bouchercon.
However, I don't want anyone to think that I've beome
suddenly acquiescent simply because I've been silent. So I'll
say this once and then wait for Toronto.
"Tough," by itself, isn't an adequate definition of
hard-boiled. Sherlock Holmes, who bends steel pokers in his
bare hands, who's and expert boxer, a reasonably proficient
marksman, and a fair-to-middling fencer, who goes after what
he wants and (usually) gets it, and who regularly goes
head-to-head with the worst criminals in London, is tough.
But he's NOT hard-boiled. The hard-boiled mystery was a
reaction to, not a joining with, the more traditional, more
formal mystery story represented by writers like Conan Doyle.
And a colloquial style was an integral part of what the
hard-boiled story was about.
As Chandler said, the hard-boiled story told about murder and
mayhem in (and I'm quoting from memory here, but I know I got
the gist correct), "in the language customarily used for such
purposes." In other words, in the vivid vernacular of
street-level hoods and dicks. Chandler himself, though
literary in the best sense as Jack Bludis says, WAS
colloquial. In fact, it was precisely the use of colloquial
language that fascinated him. He even compiled a dictionary
of American slang expressions so that he could authentically
incorporate it into his novels and stories.
Ross Macdonald, raised in Canada though US-born, would
express a similar fascination with American colloquial
language in the introduction to his ARCHER IN HOLLYWOOD
omnibus.
Language is an integral part of the hard-boiled ethos, and
the language is not the formal English of Christie, Sayers,
or Van Dine, but the familiar, everyday language of urban
working people.
As for "Noir" being about people who are "screwed" or
"tough losers" or "fated to meet a tragic end," that's not
true either. Certainly many stories that have been classified
as noir have those elements, but many others don't, so they
can't be the defining elements. Nor are "noir" and
"hard-boiled" mutually exclusive.
The term, as has been discussed here before, was coined by
Marcel Duhamel, when he was assigned to develop a mystery
line, which he called SERIE NOIR, for the French publisher
Gallimard. As the guy who coined the term, he's the guy who
set the parameters, and the parameters he set were pretty
wide. Yes he published writers like Cain and his ilk, but he
also published Hammett, Chandler, and all sorts of other
purveyors of stories about "tough guys who win."
What the novels Duhamel published shared, and what the films
made from those novels (or in the tradition of those novels),
shared was an atmosphere that was dark and sinister. If those
are the only common elements of noir fiction, and from the
wide variety of stories in many mediums classified as noir
(not by me, but by Duhamel and others), those are the only
common elements I perceive, then it follows that they must be
the defining elements.
So, if it's tough and colloquial, it's hard-boiled.
If it's dark and sinister, it's noir.
If it's tough and colloquial AND dark and sinister, it's both
hard-boiled and noir.
Simple, really.
JIM DOHERTY
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