[lbo-talk] Hard boiled philosophy

[Jerry Monaco]

On 5/14/06, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Chandler was basically a Romantic, offering this often-cited portrait of
> the
> private eye as knight-errant in a corrupt modern society:  ""Down these
> mean
> streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished
> nor
> afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an
> unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.
> He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively
> sense
> of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness." (From
> "The Simple Art of Murder")
>
> Carl

On 5/14/06, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:Chandler wrote one of the most
romantic stories I've ever read "Red
"Wind." His character, Marlowe, can fall for men (Long Goodbye) as well
as women (Red Wind), which is also a plus. But the older I get, the more
I like Cain and Hammet for being, well, less mannered."

Joanna

I don't disagree anything specific here.  But let us suppose for a moment I
were to puff-up a book called "Law, Death, Capitalism in the Hard-Boiled
Novel."  I think that I would argue that these novels were
dystopian-individualistic romanticism.  The private eye is declasse in a
traditional way but the private eye also positions himself on the margins of
the class system in other ways analogous to criminal lumpens, jazz artists
and other marginal bohemians.  To a large extent the hard-boiled private eye
and similar genres is a response to urbanism and bureaucracy that I find
much more interesting than say Heidegger's response.  (A discussion of
Heidegger is the clue that led here.)  But mostly I think a collection of
essays on "Philosophy and the Hard-Boiled Novel" would be a fun and
interesting diversion.
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