Word: fictions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...next month, a birthday present to the Statue of Liberty as she turns 100. Like most stimulating journalism, it will, the editors expect and indeed hope, spark some spirited disagreements about our choices and our omissions. For example, in Books we talk about that distinctive American contribution to detective fiction, the hard-boiled hero. Some will rightly miss a piece about the remarkable and varied voices of women writers in America. So do we, but another time...
...have to deal with," says Whitney. Yet not even Allen-Bradley plans to automate existing product lines; the cost of redesigning traditional manufacturing processes would be too great. The totally automated, problem-free factory that can turn out complex consumer products like cars and dishwashers remains a science-fiction fantasy. What does exist, for now, is Allen-Bradley's Department 260, a step toward the future, with temperamental machines named Clarabelle that need patting...
Location is as important to detective fiction as it is to the real estate business. The glitz centers of the Sunbelt offer the irresistible drama of drug traffic played against a background of pastel, stucco and palm fronds. Joseph Hansen (Fadeout, A Smile in His Lifetime, Gravedigger) offers an alternative to the macho, down-at-the-heels stereotype. He is David Brandstetter, a Southern California insurance investigator who is affluent, well dressed and homosexual. This subgenre is bicoastal; see George Baxt's novels, beginning with A Queer Kind of Death. The protagonist is a gay New York City police detective...
...peppermint schnapps) and sometimes drops his guard long enough to reveal a flash of erudition (Marlowe has atrocious taste in socks but can quote Browning). Touches of class cater to the tough-guy fantasies of the literati. Albert Camus, whose spare existential novels were influenced by U.S. detective fiction, looked like Humphrey Bogart portraying Sam Spade. Hemingway followed in the footsteps of Mark Twain and Ring Lardner. But it is hard to read such terse narratives as The Killers and To Have and Have Not without imagining gumshoe tracks leading back to Black Mask magazine...
...place of intricate plotting, hidden clues and surprise solutions, American detective fiction relies on character and language. Both are aggressively egalitarian, rejecting fancy airs and flowery talk. Here is Marlowe recalling a visit to a client: "I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars." He and his kin are cynical, terse and masters of an amiably menacing tone that echoes the classic response to insult of Owen Wister's The Virginian: "When you call...