Hard-Boiled Anxiety

There is no doubt that Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and their detectives provide plenty of grist for psychological study. There is also no doubt that the author of Hard-Boiled Anxiety has read the books closely and thought deeply about the stories and their relations to their authors' lives.

I do have some doubt about the appropriateness of a Freudian analysis. It leads to paragraphs like this:

"Macdonald is choosing a welter of sexually tinged metaphors to describe the process of writing fiction: 'dangerously hot materials'; 'feeding [both] the writer [and] other people'; 'problems, memories--whatever else makes up one's own psychic life; wrestling with your own angels.' These all speak to the guilty anxieties of childhood."

I have to strain to see any sexual tinge to those metaphors. I guess "hot" has a sexual sense, and some sexual activities are like "wrestling," but it takes a Freudian to see a "welter" of obvious sexual references. It certainly takes a Freudian to consider "the guilty anxieties of childhood" to be synonymous with "sex". There is a moderate amount of this kind of thing. Another Freudian tendency is to assert parallels that seem either coincidental or purely verbal to ordinary mortals.

If you take that Freudian stuff seriously, or if you're willing to overlook it, there's plenty of detailed information and incisive analysis that does not depend on outmoded mystical theories. The links between these three seminal writers are illuminated, and also the extent to which their art imitated their lives.

The Freudian approach works best with Macdonald, who underwent Freudian analysis and explicitly adopted some Freudian ideas. He is also the most literate of the three, the most concerned with what goes on inside people's heads. Hammett and Chandler are both more down-to-earth, and more concerned with actions than thoughts, but there is still considerable insight to be gained by comparing their psychological assumptions.

When the author is telling stories, either about the novelists or their works, the prose is graceful and stylish. She weaves the material together well. When she veers into more theoretical stuff it gets denser and more work to read, but it's never turgid or pedantic.

I'd certainly recommend this book to serious students of noir detective fiction, and I think more casual fans will enjoy at least the biographic and literary analysis parts.

What did it take to become a genre-setting author of noir detective fiction? Judging by Karen Huston Karydes' book, Hard-Boiled Anxiety, the answer comes down to 'personal demons.'

Karydes clearly has a love of the noir-detective genre and has done a great deal of research into the personal lives of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald and shares with the reader the seamy, dark side of their personal lives. From alcoholism, to Oedipal issues, each man has a personal history that they'd likely prefer to stay personal.

I am not well versed in my detective fiction, but I do enjoy critical studies and biographies, and writers have often been my favorite subjects.

I found the narrative on Dashiell Hammett's life, and its effects on his fiction to be most persuasive. Karydes writes:
Hammett’s plots have a curious trajectory, wherein violence and sex both ramp up as the detective/hero loses control. Over and over in Hammett’s fiction, there turns out to be mortal danger in a man’s letting down his guard, particularly in the presence of his wife. These women don’t enjoy sex. They have it for other, dangerous-to-men reasons. The sole exception is Nora Charles, who is a member of the most demoralizing hard-boiled sorority of all: wives with money.
This paragraph alone has me wanting to hurry to my library and check out every Hammett book possible.

Domineering women seem to be part of the landscape for these men, which, upon reflection, is perhaps not so surprising. Given what Karydes writes about these men, it seems surprising that more people haven't reflected on these issues and made the connections to how women are presented in their fiction.

This is a great book for those of us who enjoy books that are a little more than just a timeline biography, and great for the university student who might be studying the detective genre.

Looking for a good book? Hard-Boiled Anxiety: The Freudian Desires of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Their Detectives by Karen Huston Karydes is a thoughtful exploration of some of the dark demons that helped create some of the most popular detectives in literary history.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

A fantastic close reading of American crime fiction and the writers' lives and the things that influenced them to create a new style of American fiction- the hard boiled crime novel.