Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

in fact seen as a good opportunity for writers just getting started in their careers, as well as
for established authors whose more daring efforts could find no other market. There again,
the authors of The Smart Set, whose motto was “one civilized reader is worth a thousand
boneheads”, showed a strong desire to upset and condemn the American naivety and
Puritanism. To achieve their goal, they would write their texts using sarcasm and derision,
but always aiming at a stern commitment to high culture and the avant-garde. Most
importantly, The Smart Set, which also featured the work of James Joyce and other leading
modernist authors, introduced readers to the writers, literary trends, and critical ideas
which would be relevant for the development of American modernism.
Figure 1. Black Mask (October 1934)
Realising that The Smart Set was not financially viable, Mencken and Nathan
created two other pulps, Parisienne and Saucy Stories, which were both profitable and
would make up for the failure of other ventures. Both titles would contain texts of literary
criticism, humorous articles, and above all a strong sceptical spirit about human progress,
deriving from Mencken’s point of view and expressed in his penetrating style. His political
texts started to be more and more insightful and sharp, which made him an influential
writer and rapidly get fame all over the country.
For the purpose of this work, it is precisely this style that is relevant here, since “for
both the writers and their protagonists, “hard-boiled” was first and foremost a matter of
style. It was a stance, a way of observing and behaving that demanded the suppression of
any openly expressed feeling. Hard-boiled toughness was indicated by the characters’
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