The hardboiled detective genre suffered a major collapse in
the 1960s. The field was inundated by shabby series with no
literary merit, with no significant new authors few viable
works. It was an ironic time, then, to see David Madden's
Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties appear in 1968, the best
collection of essays ever produced on the hardboiled genre.
In this modest little hard cover book he managed to bring
together an eclectic group of writers on a variety of
subjects, including specific writers, specific books, and
subgenre. Well-known authors Ernest Hemingway, Raymond
Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and John O'Hara are discussed, as
well as lesser known authors such as Jim Thompson, William
Lindsay Gresham, Horace McCoy, and Richard Hallas. Matthew
Broccolli discusses John O'Hara, Thomas Sturak writes on
Horace McCoy, Philip Durham on the influence of Black Mask
magazine, and Philip Young discusses what he describes as
Hemingway's only hardboiled novel, To Have and Have
Not.
FOCUS ON APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, by Matthew Bruccoli
Matthew Bruccoli has a well-written piece on author John
O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra. He notes that the hardboiled
nature of O'Hara's novel lies more in the unsentimental
delivery than in the personality of the characters, and that
O'Hara's greatest significance lies in his ability to
reproduce life as it was. Appointment in Samarra came out in
1934, the same year as Hammett's last novel, The Thin Man,
and James Cain's landmark noir The Postman Always Rings
twice, and Bruccoli points out the striking similarities, the
"uninvolved viewpoint, economical style, accurate speech,
dirty words, frank sex." Bruccoli identifies the influence of
Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald on O'Hara's style in
the novel. He points to Edmund Wilson's observation in
"Boys in the Back Room" that social snobbery is O'Hara's main
theme. Bruccoli concludes: "there are more elegant stylists,
more profound thinkers, more sensitive spirits. There is no
working writer who matches O'Hara's importance as a social
historian."
HORACE MCCOY'S OBJECTIVE LYRICISM, by Thomas Sturak
Sturak provides a reasonable discussion of Horace McCoy's
oeuvre, although his best novel, They Shoot Horses, Don't
They, is the central focus. He accounts for the various
influences on the novel, the bitterness of the Lost
Generation, the Communist movement, the hardboiled genre, the
Depression, and existentialism. Sturak denies a dominant
proletariat theme in McCoy. He mentions that when McCoy
converted the short story into the novel, he edited out
specific references to the Depression, such as bread lines
and underpaid factory workers. He notes that early in his
career, McCoy was referred to as a hardboiled writer in the
tradition of James Cain, a connection that he despised and
refused any reference to on his book covers. Sturak's
comments on the two main characters in They Shoot Horses,
Gloria and Robert, their relationship, their predicament, and
the justaposition of their personas is good.
THE WAY OUT, Kingley Widmer
The image of the hardboiled tough guy that formed in the
1920s and solidified in the 1930s has been described as an
urban evolution of the rural cowboy. In "The Way Out"
Widmer's suggests the hobo as the true father of the
hardboiled persona. He mentions the characteristic
narrow-brimmed felt hat, the hobo's defiance of society and
rejection of authority, and the air of romantic heroism.
Widmer mentions several important works in the hobo genre,
such as Jack London's THE ROAD (1907), Davies's AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF A SUPERTRAMP (1917), Harry Kemp's TRAMPING ON LIFE
(1922), Jim Tully's BEGGARS OF LIFE (1924), and George
Orwell's DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON.
The hobo has definitely made his mark on the hardboiled
image. Aside from the books that Widmer refers to, Hemingway
set some of the Nick Adams stories in the hobo jungles of the
Depression. Too late to be an influence but nevertheless a
tribute, Charles Willeford's autobiography describes his
young hobo days. So the hobo has indeed had an influence on
the hardboiled genre, and Widmer labors hard and honestly at
the task. The only flaw is that he simply wants too much.
Although the hobo image has a strong place in literature and
the American psyche, there are more direct routes to the
hardboiled character, such as through Pinkerton's detective
books of the late 1800s. And the argument pointing to the
transition from the rural cowboy to the urban hardboiled
detective is a compelling one. A better explanation is that
the tough guy paradigm derived from multiple influences,
borrowing some characteristics from hobos, cowboys, soldiers,
and explorers.
THE BLACK MASK SCHOOL, by Philip Durham
The origin of the hardboiled genre is often traced to Black
Mask magazine in 1923. In "The Black Mask School", Phil
Durham presents an interesting summary of the early years of
the magazine, the editors, and the writers. He discusses the
poor writing and high demand for Carroll John Daly and his
tough and cartoonish detective Race Williams. He then moves
on to a more detailed treatment of the better known writer
Dashiell Hammett. Durham credits Hammett with being the
better author, but he doesn't hesitate to criticize him for
the increasing level of violence and an ominous leaning
towards sadism. He discusses Hammett's first four novels,
identifying a peak in his skills with The Dain Curse. He
finds The Thin Man barely worth commenting on. Durham does
not neglect Joe "Cap" Shaw either, an editor for ten years
and at least as famous as many of the writers. Durham also
mentions other Black Mask authors such as Frederick Nebel,
Raoul Whitfield, Norbert Davis, W.T. Ballard, and Paul
Cain.
FOCUS ON TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, by Philip Young
Hemingway is often connected with the hardboiled genre. In
Philip Young's "Focus on To Have and Have Not," he claims the
subject of the essay to be Hemingway's only hardboiled novel.
Part of his justification for this is that none of
Hemingway's other protagonists are tough; they are merely
hiding their vulnerability and pain. An interesting
conclusion. Some people would identify that sort of stoic
behavior as tough. Young provides some interesting insight
into the history of the novel, noting that much of the
discontinuity that draws frequent criticism is caused by
Hemingway hurriedly excising large sections to appease the
publisher's concern over libel. Gordon was very obviously
modeled after John dos Passos. Young quotes both Hemingway
and Carlos Baker identifying the theme as the decline of the
individual. He is also perceptive in his scepticism of the
oft-perceived Marxist theme in the novel: "To Have and Have
Not comes in the darkest night of the soul, not the dubious
dawn of social pronouncement." Good stuff.
THE TOUGH HEMINGWAY AND HIS HARD-BOILED CHILDREN, Sheldon
Grebstein
The central theme of Grebstein's essay "The Tough Hemingway
and His Hard-Boiled Children" is to lend support to the
commonly heard argument that Hemingway originated the
hardboiled movement. The essay is worth reading for his
intelligent observations, even if his central theme is
dubious. He compares the Hemingway code convincingly with
hardboiled ethics, replacing loyalties to ideals with
loyalties to people, a commitment to their work,
self-discipline, a personal familiarity with violence, and a
strict sense of conduct outside the norm. He notes the
similarities in views and attitudes towards death between
Chandler and Hemingway, and he mentions the influence of
Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Sherwood Anderson, Mark
Twain, and Stephen Crane. He compares Hemingway's TO HAVE AND
HAVE NOT to Hammett's RED HARVEST and Chandler's THE BIG
SLEEP.
Beyond Hemingway, he also notes the influence on the genre of
folk heroes Paul Bunyan and Mike Fink, literary characters
such as Cooper's Natty Bumppo, London's Wolf Larsen,
Melville's Captain Ahab, and real-life characters Jesse
James, Buffalo Bill, Daniel Boone, and Davy Crockett. His
cataloging of their shared traits is worth quoting:
"All are physically hard and emotionally tough. All are
supremely adept at their crafts. All espouse objectives which
frequently do not square with conventional moral norms but
which are admirable nevertheless. All are pragmatists who
employ questionable means towards desirable ends. In the
Darwinian terminology, they are superbly equipped in the
struggle for existence; in the Nietzchean, they practice a
Master rather than a Slave morality.
...They are, in short, the splendid ancestors and prototypes
of the tough guy hero who emerged in the popular fiction of
the Twenties and Thirties and who is still very much with us
in more ways than we can possibly discern."
The standard problem encountered when declaring
Hemingway the founder of the hardboiled genre is the
timeline. It is common nowadays to point to stories by
Hammett and Daly in Black Mask in 1923 as the beginning of
hardboiled writing, and this predates anything by Hemingway
that could be considered hardboiled. Grebstein avoids this
discrepancy by asserting that Hammett's first hardboiled work
was the short story "Fly Paper," written towards the end of
the 1920s, after Hemingway's Men Without Women book of short
stories was published. Grebstein offers no explanation why he
doesn't consider any of Hammett's earlier work as
hardboiled.
THE NOVELS OF DASHIELL HAMMETT, Robert Edenbaum
Robert Edenbaum presents an intelligent and balanced analysis
in his essay "The Novels of Dashiell Hammett." His primary
focus is an examination of the nature of the protagonist in
his five novels, and the implications and conclusions that
can be drawn from it. He finds the relatively unfeeling and
invulnerable Con Op as only barely human in Red Harvest and
only slightly convincing, with a slightly better opinion of
the more touchy-feely Con Op in The Dain Curse. Sceptical to
the end, he even wonders whether the Con Op's feelings
expressed for Gabrielle are sincere or simply another
manipulative ploy. Edenbaum rates The Maltese Falcon as
Hammett's best, for the reason that it concentrates on
character relations more than plot. Although Hammett had a
special fondness for The Glass Key, Edenbaum was unimpressed
with it, an evaluation I share with him. Other than
identifying Nick as the Con Op without a cause, he fails to
find much of significance in The Thin Man.
According to Edenbaum, the three primary characteristics of
Hammett's detectives are freedom from sentiment, courage in
the face of danger, and immunity from the temptations of
money and sex. These features allow the detective to break
free from the doomed fate of the American naturalists. The
edge of victory is blunted, though, because "he hedges
himself so thoroughly against betrayal that he lives in total
isolation and loneliness." Edenbaum compares the detective's
condition to Camus's phrase in The Rebel,
"voluntary mutilation." He notes the difference between the
characters of Hammett and Hemingway. Hemingway's protagonists
open themselves up to the possibility of being hurt, and this
makes them human. Hammett's detectives protect themselves
from being hurt by rejecting sentiment, and this makes them
monsters. For clarification, Edenbaum emphasizes that they
are not incapable of feeling emotion, but instead choose to
deny it because it does not fit the world they live in. For
them, to indulge in sentiment is to indulge in a lie.
LABELS, Benjamin Appel
There are a few weak entries in Madden's collection. It's
hard to grasp the intention of Appel's short essay "Labels."
At first Appel notes the lack of worth in literary labels. He
then proceeds to talk vaguely about the relationship between
two such labels, proletariat and hardboiled. Although the two
can be considered an odd couple, there is no lack of ground
to be covered on the subject. For over two decades, Marxism
was the fashionable ideology of choice for authors, and
running parallel to the rising popularity of the hardboiled
genre, the themes often ran intermingled. It was advertised
in the title of Anderson's bank-robbing saga Thieves Like Us.
Hemingway's contribution was To Have and Have Not, with Harry
Morgan's feverish last words echoing a Marxist slogan. John
Dos Passos wrote a trilogy that mixed the two subjects.
Appel mentions Nelson Algren's Somebody In Boots, John
O'Hara's Butterfield 8, Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy, and
his own Brain Guy. There is some discussion of a couple of
the novels, but his heart isn't in it. His best commentary is
quoted from an article he wrote thirty years earlier. He
wanders off subject, stating that novels are bogus unless the
author lives the life of the characters. Besides being
off-track, the declaration is dubious. If it were true,
Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage would not carry the
weight it does. His motivation for the comment appears to be
a resentment of financially successful authors writing novels
of "alienation." Rather than astute literary commentary,
Appel's writing comes across as a personal expression of
bitterness. Whether the source of this bitterness is his
failure to join the Affluent Society, or the failure of the
Proletariat movement to defeat it, is not clear. What is
clear is that Appel offers little or nothing of significance
on the subject.
CONCLUSION
Like any collection, there are greater and lesser offerings.
Kingley Widmer makes a gallant effort to promote the hobo as
the real-life model for the tough guy hero, but he doesn't
quite pull it off. E.R. Hagemann finds an obscure correlation
between a dozen bets placed on a roulette wheel and the
events in You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up.
Nevertheless, the seventeen essays in this book comprise a
book that was pivotal in the history of hardboiled detective
fiction. At an all-time ebb, and fueled only by a recent
reprinting of Hammett's work, Christopher Metress, editor of
The Critical Response to Dashiell Hammett, credits Madden's
book as the turning point in critical interest in Hammett
and, by extension, the entire genre.
miker
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