RARA-AVIS: Re: talking tough

From: Kevin Burton Smith (kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com)
Date: 31 May 2009

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    > Somehow I think if Child ever got his wish things wouldn't go too
    > well for him.

    Maybe he'd be tougher if he posed in a leather jacket or brandished a pool cue.

    I dunno. This whole notion that you have to be "tough" to write hard- boiled fiction is a little hard to take too seriously. Usually it's just harmless posing, a sort of wink-wink, but some people really fall for it. It's silly.

    Not as silly, perhaps, as the book I'm reading now, which goes out of its way to sound totally tough all the time ("red as a used tampon," etc.), but still, ultimately, pretty silly.

    Anyone trying that hard is probably trying to over-compensate.

    Kevin Burton Smith www.thrillingdetective.com

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