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

tough appearance, by their occupation, by personal habits, and by a manner of speech”
(Hirsch 1981:24), normally using understated vernacular idioms, all linked with graphic
violence. This style began to develop as a popular form in the outcome of the devastation
of the First World War, and all these thrillers are stories that can be seen as very directly
associated with the socioeconomic circumstances of that time. Therefore, the reader would
easily identify in these characteristic narratives the harrowing events of a social life which
permanently accentuated the difficult conditions of American people. The characters of
these stories would then represent both sides of the same coin: on the one hand, the
acknowledgment that life has to follow its natural (social) path and, on the other, a
depiction of a character’s existence which is morally confused and subject to arbitrariness
and complete dislocation.
Hammett became not only the most famous writer at Black Mask but also a
controlling influence on it. Along with other writers, known as “the boys in the back room”
or “the poets of the tabloid murder,” as Edmund Wilson (one of Hammett’s supporters and
pioneers of American literary modernism) would refer to them, Hammett’s hero would use
terse and laconic speech, with a rhythm that would demonstrate Hammett’s ability to create
a distinctive voice. Hirsch sums up the style that was used in the Black Mask:
Colloquial, racy, vivid, Black Mask style (like that later to dominate film noir)
imitated the lingo of the real criminal world. Style and form are so well matched
that it is surprising that crime stories had not always been written in this way, in
the accent of street-wise hoodlums and burly cops and gumshoes; but the fact is
that Black Mask’s gritty realism was something new in the field – a conscious
rebellion against the sissified English murder mysteries. (Hirsch 1981:26)
This type of crime fiction, then, used an instantly identifiable iconic figure as the
hard-boiled investigator. In Hammett’s fiction the figure is either the anonymous “The
Continental Op”, mentioned above, or the self-employed gumshoe Sam Spade. As Hirsch
points out, the private eye moves about in the criminal underworld and the basic narrative
patterns show him as a lone investigator against brutal criminals, often connected with a
wider corrupt power structure. Normally spoken in the first-person, these stories would
portray a solitary, cynical city-dweller whose objective is to restore a never-achievable
order and set all to rights.
Again, Hammett’s style and substance expressed in these revolutionary mystery
stories have to be understood as a reflection of the major cultural and social transformation
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