Jim,
You're forgetting half of your own definition of hardboiled.
You talk about the toughest characters and writers but you
don't talk about the most colloquial.
Incidentally, here's a link (in French) to a quote by Marcel
Duhamel describing La Serie Noire books. I'm told that he
mentions morality, non-conformity, anguish, corruption,
action, violence and a host of other things we frequently
talk about here. I believe you've said on several occasions
that we shouldn't redefine what Duhamel previously defined.
Well, now we have the words from his lips and they aren't
'dark and sinister'. I'd be most appreciative if one of the
French speakers on list has the time to translate this.
http://www.noircommepolar.com/f/curiosa.php?curiosa_menu=4
Al
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, JIM DOHERTY
<jimdohertyjr@...> wrote:
>
> JB,
>
> Re your question below:
>
> "Hi,gang! Who's the hardest,of the
hard-boiled
> writers,the most hard-boiled? Thanks! See ya,on
the
> mean streets!"
>
> Good question. I think a case could be made
that
> Spillane's Mike Hammer is that hardest-boiled
private
> eye character, but, particularly recently,
Spillane,
> as a writer rather than as the creator of an
iconic
> character, seems a little tame.
>
> The problem with a phrase like "MOST hard-boiled"
is
> that one can be so hard-boiled as to
beover-the-top.
>
> Is Don Pendleton more hard-boiled than
Michael
> Connelly because there's more death and destruction
in
> one Executioner novel than in Connelly's
entire
> corpus? Probably, at one level. But Mack Bolan is
so
> tough that, ultimately, he's unbelievable. So,
on
> another level, a character like Harry Bosch,
more
> rooted in the real world, seems more
believably
> hard-boiled than Bolan, and, consequently, Connelly
a
> more hard-boiled writer than Pendleton.
>
> Using that "believability" yardstick, and sticking
to
> more or less contemporary writers, here are a
few
> nominees. Gerald Petievich, Kent Anderson,
Bill
> James, Donald Hamilton, Adam Hall, John
Wainwright,
> Joe Gores, Loren Estleman, and Richard
Stark.
>
> Interestingly, considering how inestricably
connected
> the adjective "hard-boiled" is with the
subject
> "private eye," it's interesting that only twoof
the
> writers I suggest are PI novelists, and one of
those,
> Gores, is a fairly atypical one at that. That
wasn't
> planned when I typed my sggestions off the top of
my
> head.
>
> Maybe it goes back to that "believability" factor.
I
> love the hard-boiled private eye figure, but he
(and,
> increasingly she) has always seems like a
fantasy
> construct. There are no real PI's like Philip
Marlowe
> or Mike Hammer. There ARE cops like Charlie Carr
and
> Colin Harpur, spies like Matt Helm and Quiller,
and
> professional criminals like Parker, and
those
> characters, and their creators, seem
believably
> hard-boiled in a way that even a well-made private
eye
> can't.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
>
>
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