Dialogue Scaffoldings

Abstract

While this third chapter begins by focusing on the same early pioneers, it veers from inanimate descriptions to constructions of character. That is, Hammett conceived his private investigator as fundamentally figurative, the culmination of a flamboyant style expressed more or less entirely through dialogue, with the flaunting of a cool, flip, smart-assed affect. Subsequent fictional detectives likewise gain our attention by being reduced to stick-figure sketches, little more than quirky gestures and colorful banter. In contrast to other genres, where language tends to realistic transparency while character proves more substantial, detective fiction banks on the impeccable thinness of words deftly turned. Chandler grasped the implications of such seemingly superfluous configurations, with arch similes built on Hammett’s tersely sober expressions. Ever since, genre authors have embellished an ideal of self-conscious “attitude,” celebrating in the process a wry immunity to conventional civic and moral discriminations.