Black Mask (magazine)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- "Hardboiled crime fiction - sometimes also referred to as noir fiction - was a U.S. reaction to the cosy conventionality of British murder mysteries. Writers like Dashiell Hammett (1894 - 1961), Raymond Chandler (1888 - 1959), James M. Cain (1892 - 1977), Jonathan Latimer (1906 - 1983) and Mickey Spillane (1918 - 2006) and decided on an altogether different, innovative approach to crime fiction.
Hardboiled crime fiction refers to a literary style pioneered by Dashiell Hammett in the late 1920s and refined by Raymond Chandler beginning in the late 1930s. Hardboiled fiction, most commonly associated with detective stories, is distinguished by an unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex. From its earliest days, hardboiled fiction was published in and closely associated with so-called pulp magazines, most famously Black Mask; later, many hardboiled novels were published by houses specializing in paperback originals, also colloquially known as "pulps." Consequently, "pulp fiction" is often used as a synonym for hardboiled crime fiction. In the United States, the original hardboiled style has been emulated by innumerable writers.
The name comes from a colloquial phrase of understatement. For an egg, to be hardboiled is to be comparatively tough. The hardboiled detective epitomized by Hammet's Sam Spade and Chandler's Philip Marlowe not only solves mysteries, like his "softer" counterparts, he (and often these days, she) confronts danger and engages in violence on a regular basis. The hardboiled detective also has a characteristically tough attitude—in fact, Spade and Marlowe are two of the primary fictional models for the attitude that has come to be known as "attitude": cool, cocky, flippant.
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