The Noir Thriller -Page--8
The
lonely protagonist of mid-century noir is often left running blindly or
wandering aimlessly, as isolated at the end of his narrative as he was at the
beginning:
He
ran on . . . plunging into the wastes of endless land and sky, stretching forever. . . . Blindly he stumbled on.
Dorothy Hughes, Ride the Pink Horse (1946)
And
later, turning the street corners, he didn’t bother to look at
the street signs. He had no idea where he was going and he didn’t
care.
the street signs. He had no idea where he was going and he didn’t
care.
David Goodis, Black Friday (1954)
...I
left the shelter of the awning and walked up the hill in the rain. Just a tall,
lonely Negro.
Walking in the rain.
Charles Willeford, Pick-up (1967)1
Transients,
drifters, escapees from a past of fear and guilt - these are pro-
tagonists living at the margins, outside of respectable society or unable
to return to a home that is as they left it. The places in which these
characters find refuge are themselves marginal, unstable and threaten-
ing. In the film noir of the period, this pervasive feeling of rootlessness
is often linked to the post-World War Two problems faced by returning
soldiers, who struggled to achieve readjustment and reintegration into
family and society.2 This specifically postwar sense of alienation merges
with a wider sense, strengthened in the McCarthyite fifties, of a society
that punishes failures to conform and suspects those who do not
tagonists living at the margins, outside of respectable society or unable
to return to a home that is as they left it. The places in which these
characters find refuge are themselves marginal, unstable and threaten-
ing. In the film noir of the period, this pervasive feeling of rootlessness
is often linked to the post-World War Two problems faced by returning
soldiers, who struggled to achieve readjustment and reintegration into
family and society.2 This specifically postwar sense of alienation merges
with a wider sense, strengthened in the McCarthyite fifties, of a society
that punishes failures to conform and suspects those who do not
‘belong’. In the novels discussed in this
chapter, most of the protago-
nists are not veterans. Even Hughes’ ‘Sailor’ is a man who, through po-
litical influence, avoided the war. But they are all, for one reason or
another, ‘displaced persons’, fugitives, casualties of a past that has left
them scarred and has cut them off from a stable domestic existence and
from a society they seem unable to rejoin. Like Nelson Algren’s Frankie
Machine in The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), they suffer from the
‘American disease of isolation’.3
nists are not veterans. Even Hughes’ ‘Sailor’ is a man who, through po-
litical influence, avoided the war. But they are all, for one reason or
another, ‘displaced persons’, fugitives, casualties of a past that has left
them scarred and has cut them off from a stable domestic existence and
from a society they seem unable to rejoin. Like Nelson Algren’s Frankie
Machine in The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), they suffer from the
‘American disease of isolation’.3
In contrast to the marginalisation represented
in interwar victim nar-
ratives, their plight is less to do with a desperate search for some way
out of an economic impasse than with an irremediable sense of exclu-
sion. The movement of their narratives is almost always away from
something. If positive goals glimmer, they soon disappear. The ‘wrong
man’ pursued in so many plots of the time is frequently a victim of mis-
perception and prejudice, unable to get along in a society that regards
him with suspicion and hostility. He is a scapegoat figure who functions
to expose corruptions either because he is made to carry communal guilt
or because he is driven by wrongful persecution to investigate the secrets
of the antagonistic community. He is also often driven to explore his
own guilt, given that even the ‘wrong man’ tends to be guilty at some
level. Within a European context, the best-known ‘stranger and outcast’
narratives of this period are those which express the existentialist con-
sciousness of life’s absurdity experienced by the man who stands alone
in an inhospitable world, without any of the props of habit, routine
or social convention. Meursault in Camus’ L’Étranger (1957) moves
through his involvement in the violent death of an Arab to his con-
frontation with the reality of his own death. This ‘fall into conscious-
ness’ is an essential feature of man’s experience of the absurd. Film
critics often see this kind of existential awareness, loneliness and dread
ratives, their plight is less to do with a desperate search for some way
out of an economic impasse than with an irremediable sense of exclu-
sion. The movement of their narratives is almost always away from
something. If positive goals glimmer, they soon disappear. The ‘wrong
man’ pursued in so many plots of the time is frequently a victim of mis-
perception and prejudice, unable to get along in a society that regards
him with suspicion and hostility. He is a scapegoat figure who functions
to expose corruptions either because he is made to carry communal guilt
or because he is driven by wrongful persecution to investigate the secrets
of the antagonistic community. He is also often driven to explore his
own guilt, given that even the ‘wrong man’ tends to be guilty at some
level. Within a European context, the best-known ‘stranger and outcast’
narratives of this period are those which express the existentialist con-
sciousness of life’s absurdity experienced by the man who stands alone
in an inhospitable world, without any of the props of habit, routine
or social convention. Meursault in Camus’ L’Étranger (1957) moves
through his involvement in the violent death of an Arab to his con-
frontation with the reality of his own death. This ‘fall into conscious-
ness’ is an essential feature of man’s experience of the absurd. Film
critics often see this kind of existential awareness, loneliness and dread
- Camus’ assertion that ‘at
any corner the absurd may strike a man in
the face’ - as one of the defining features of film noir.4
In postwar America, amongst the most interesting adaptations of such
motifs are those in which alienation and marginality are associated
with racial exclusion. As Chester Himes said, given the characteristics
of the tough thriller (its depiction of character as a product of social
conditions and its use of the viewpoint of the outsider as a way of ex-
posing the failures of the dominant society) it was surprising that
there were not more black detective stories.5 The second two sections
of this chapter will focus on the coupling of noir themes and con-
ventions with a strong element of protest against racial injustices. It
has been said that race displaced class as ‘the great unsolved problem
the face’ - as one of the defining features of film noir.4
In postwar America, amongst the most interesting adaptations of such
motifs are those in which alienation and marginality are associated
with racial exclusion. As Chester Himes said, given the characteristics
of the tough thriller (its depiction of character as a product of social
conditions and its use of the viewpoint of the outsider as a way of ex-
posing the failures of the dominant society) it was surprising that
there were not more black detective stories.5 The second two sections
of this chapter will focus on the coupling of noir themes and con-
ventions with a strong element of protest against racial injustices. It
has been said that race displaced class as ‘the great unsolved problem
in
American life’ during the forties, when civil rights activism began gathering force,
culminating in the protests and racial conflicts of the fifties and sixties.6
It has been suggested that film noir responded to this upsurge in racial
tension and activism by subsuming ‘untoward aspects of white selves’
in racial imagery, often through the ‘casual exploitation of racial tropes’.
Even though this was a time of left-liberal strength in Hollywood and
‘good racial intentions abounded’ (for example, in Crossfire), the witch-
hunts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in
the late 1940s led to some diminishment of leftist enthusiasm, and
studios retreated from liberal race pictures. The film noir of this period,
it has been argued, uses racial others as equivalents to white corrup-
tion.7 There is something to this, though even within canonical film noir
the emphasis on breaking down moral categories and conventional dis-
tinctions calls into question the whole nature of borders, whether social
or racial. One of the abiding themes of noir is the impossibility of sus-
taining a black/white moral dichotomy, and, although whiteness can
obviously constitute an invisible norm, in the world of noir it stands
equally for the whited sepulchre of a hypocritical society. Our sympa-
thies are with the characters victimised by such a society, rendered
‘placeless’ by their exclusion from it. When the noir theme of dis-
placement, instead of having just familial or geographical implications,
relates to ‘getting out of your place’ in the sense of transgressing against
racial prohibitions, these violations are also viewed sympathetically.8 In
the novels of the fifties and sixties, there is a much more explicit explo-
ration of racial and ethnic otherness than there is in film noir. Just as
they make fewer concessions to conventional images in their handling
of female characters, the writers who focus on a racially derived sense
of alienation are not generally stigmatising the transgressor but are
satirising a society that thinks in terms of racial boundaries.
tension and activism by subsuming ‘untoward aspects of white selves’
in racial imagery, often through the ‘casual exploitation of racial tropes’.
Even though this was a time of left-liberal strength in Hollywood and
‘good racial intentions abounded’ (for example, in Crossfire), the witch-
hunts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in
the late 1940s led to some diminishment of leftist enthusiasm, and
studios retreated from liberal race pictures. The film noir of this period,
it has been argued, uses racial others as equivalents to white corrup-
tion.7 There is something to this, though even within canonical film noir
the emphasis on breaking down moral categories and conventional dis-
tinctions calls into question the whole nature of borders, whether social
or racial. One of the abiding themes of noir is the impossibility of sus-
taining a black/white moral dichotomy, and, although whiteness can
obviously constitute an invisible norm, in the world of noir it stands
equally for the whited sepulchre of a hypocritical society. Our sympa-
thies are with the characters victimised by such a society, rendered
‘placeless’ by their exclusion from it. When the noir theme of dis-
placement, instead of having just familial or geographical implications,
relates to ‘getting out of your place’ in the sense of transgressing against
racial prohibitions, these violations are also viewed sympathetically.8 In
the novels of the fifties and sixties, there is a much more explicit explo-
ration of racial and ethnic otherness than there is in film noir. Just as
they make fewer concessions to conventional images in their handling
of female characters, the writers who focus on a racially derived sense
of alienation are not generally stigmatising the transgressor but are
satirising a society that thinks in terms of racial boundaries.
It is a natural step for noir to use, say, a
black protagonist to exacer-
bate the outcast status of a marginalised man. One of the most impor-
tant developments in the literary noir of this period is a movement in
this direction, both in white-authored ‘civil-rights noir’9 (by William
McGivern, David Goodis, Dorothy Hughes, Charles Willeford and
others) and in the substantial body of African-American writing in
which noir conventions are joined to a racial theme. The record of pub-
lishing houses is far from good, and the outstanding black crime writer
of the period, Chester Himes, faced difficulties with publishing his work
in the United States as well as with trying to work in film: ‘I don’t want
no niggers on this lot’, Jack Warner proclaimed when Himes was in
bate the outcast status of a marginalised man. One of the most impor-
tant developments in the literary noir of this period is a movement in
this direction, both in white-authored ‘civil-rights noir’9 (by William
McGivern, David Goodis, Dorothy Hughes, Charles Willeford and
others) and in the substantial body of African-American writing in
which noir conventions are joined to a racial theme. The record of pub-
lishing houses is far from good, and the outstanding black crime writer
of the period, Chester Himes, faced difficulties with publishing his work
in the United States as well as with trying to work in film: ‘I don’t want
no niggers on this lot’, Jack Warner proclaimed when Himes was in
Hollywood
in the early forties.10 Nevertheless, Himes and other black writers, such as Charles
Perry, Herbert Simmons and Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck), continued to write and publish,
though not always in America,
novels that made powerful use of the noir sense of otherness and marginality as an
equivalent for racial exclusion.
Displaced persons
‘Wronged
man’ plots, which are often also ‘wrong man’ plots, are a
staple of film noir. One of the earliest examples is I Wake Up Screaming
(H. Bruce Humberstone, 1942), adapting the 1941 Steve Fisher novel in
which a psychotic policeman frames and pursues an unnamed narrator
(Frankie Christopher in the film, played by Victor Mature). There are
many other classic films noirs11 in which the protagonist is wrongly
accused, hounded or victimised by a society that misjudges and despises
him. He is unlikely to be entirely innocent. Several of the protagonists
of the literary noir discussed here, for example in Brother Death and
Nightmare Alley, are guilty even though they must also be seen as having
been wronged. Others will have committed a murder by the end of the
narrative (Wary Transgressor, Ride the Pink Horse, Dreadful Summit). An
‘innocent eye’ perspective is less usual in post-World War Two fiction
and film than it is in the literary noir of the thirties and early forties,
and the effect of the narrative is less likely to be a sense of shocked dis-
illusionment than of weary recognition. The narrative tends to be struc-
tured around an opposition between ‘home’ and ‘wandering’. Home
may well be completely inaccessible to ‘the man with no place’12 (Ride
the Pink Horse, Nightmare Alley). In less darkly noir versions of the
pattern, a small possibility may remain of a redemptive repositioning
of the protagonist with respect to home, though probably not a return
to home as it once was (Blue City, Detour to Death). The damaged, dis-
placed protagonist sees society from an unfamiliar angle, without any
of the conventional props for preserving peace of mind, and, in con-
trast to the outsider hero of adventure stories, he is unlikely to accom-
plish a restoration of order.
staple of film noir. One of the earliest examples is I Wake Up Screaming
(H. Bruce Humberstone, 1942), adapting the 1941 Steve Fisher novel in
which a psychotic policeman frames and pursues an unnamed narrator
(Frankie Christopher in the film, played by Victor Mature). There are
many other classic films noirs11 in which the protagonist is wrongly
accused, hounded or victimised by a society that misjudges and despises
him. He is unlikely to be entirely innocent. Several of the protagonists
of the literary noir discussed here, for example in Brother Death and
Nightmare Alley, are guilty even though they must also be seen as having
been wronged. Others will have committed a murder by the end of the
narrative (Wary Transgressor, Ride the Pink Horse, Dreadful Summit). An
‘innocent eye’ perspective is less usual in post-World War Two fiction
and film than it is in the literary noir of the thirties and early forties,
and the effect of the narrative is less likely to be a sense of shocked dis-
illusionment than of weary recognition. The narrative tends to be struc-
tured around an opposition between ‘home’ and ‘wandering’. Home
may well be completely inaccessible to ‘the man with no place’12 (Ride
the Pink Horse, Nightmare Alley). In less darkly noir versions of the
pattern, a small possibility may remain of a redemptive repositioning
of the protagonist with respect to home, though probably not a return
to home as it once was (Blue City, Detour to Death). The damaged, dis-
placed protagonist sees society from an unfamiliar angle, without any
of the conventional props for preserving peace of mind, and, in con-
trast to the outsider hero of adventure stories, he is unlikely to accom-
plish a restoration of order.
The British version of the ‘wronged man’ plot
is in many respects an
extension of the prewar novels of Greene and Ambler. A ‘lost’ British
male or ill-equipped adventurer finds that he is out of his depth in a
world more devious and brutal than his own. In the British gangster
pulps of the 1950s, the figure of the tarnished innocent or doomed loner
often surfaces - for example, ‘Johnny the Kid’ in Darcy Glinto’s Protec-
tion Pay-Off, or the protagonist who gets caught up in a heist gone
extension of the prewar novels of Greene and Ambler. A ‘lost’ British
male or ill-equipped adventurer finds that he is out of his depth in a
world more devious and brutal than his own. In the British gangster
pulps of the 1950s, the figure of the tarnished innocent or doomed loner
often surfaces - for example, ‘Johnny the Kid’ in Darcy Glinto’s Protec-
tion Pay-Off, or the protagonist who gets caught up in a heist gone
wrong
in Hank Janson’s Flight from Fear. Within the confines of these
hurried narratives social context exists only as part of the stylised imi-
tation of the power struggles of American gangland. But alongside the
formulaic gangster pulps there were novelists like Robin Cook (who later
took the name Derek Raymond), John Lodwick and James Hadley Chase
(René Raymond), and these are writers who do locate their narratives
within a distinctively British or European postwar world. Cook (old
Etonian and one-time bagman for the Krays),13 in his first novel, The
Crust on Its Uppers (1962), wrote as British a version of the gangster saga
as one could hope to find. Drawing on enough rhyming slang to require
a glossary (‘Ice-cream = ice-cream freezer = geezer’ [12]), Cook created a
vivid narrative of crime and betrayal, with protagonists desperately
attempting to escape their lot in life by deliberately choosing an outcast
status: ‘This is no blag, then, morrie. It’s a tale of someone who . . . was
sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn’t
believe in, didn’t want, whose values were meaningless . . .’ (15).
hurried narratives social context exists only as part of the stylised imi-
tation of the power struggles of American gangland. But alongside the
formulaic gangster pulps there were novelists like Robin Cook (who later
took the name Derek Raymond), John Lodwick and James Hadley Chase
(René Raymond), and these are writers who do locate their narratives
within a distinctively British or European postwar world. Cook (old
Etonian and one-time bagman for the Krays),13 in his first novel, The
Crust on Its Uppers (1962), wrote as British a version of the gangster saga
as one could hope to find. Drawing on enough rhyming slang to require
a glossary (‘Ice-cream = ice-cream freezer = geezer’ [12]), Cook created a
vivid narrative of crime and betrayal, with protagonists desperately
attempting to escape their lot in life by deliberately choosing an outcast
status: ‘This is no blag, then, morrie. It’s a tale of someone who . . . was
sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn’t
believe in, didn’t want, whose values were meaningless . . .’ (15).
Though René Raymond’s Chase novels were often
imitative (‘speed,
violence, women and America’),14 he did also write novels that were less
conventional and that were set closer to home. Both he and John
Lodwick create characters who are the recognisable descendants of
Greene’s and Ambler’s struggling, unheroic protagonists and bored
‘ordinary citizens’. Just as Cook’s protagonist leaves behind the
exhausted world of the English upper crust for the alluring dangers
available to the criminal classes, the protagonists of Lodwick and René
Raymond dream of freeing themselves from the humdrum routines of
domesticity and dull austerity that depress the spirits of more ordinary
citizens. These postwar drifters, however, find the world of ‘adventure’
to be a trap like any other. Lodwick’s Something in the Heart (1948) and
Brother Death (1948) and Raymond’s More Deadly Than the Male (1946)
and Wary Transgressor (1952) - the first written as Ambrose Grant, the
second as Raymond Marshall - all belong to this ‘home grown’ tradi-
tion. Greene himself, whilst he was working at Eyre and Spottiswoode,
is thought to have contributed (at least by ‘very strong line editing’) to
More Deadly Than the Male.15 In all four of these novels, the prewar fig-
uring of England as innocent and of the continent as corrupt and
violent has been broken down, replaced by a sense of characters in tran-
sition between equally tainted and demoralised scenes. Postwar England
is afflicted by boredom and depression; violence is near at hand; the
continent is rife with intrigues from which it seems impossible to
escape, in spite of the fact that the war has ended. The movement
of the narrative is often between the continent and England, with the
violence, women and America’),14 he did also write novels that were less
conventional and that were set closer to home. Both he and John
Lodwick create characters who are the recognisable descendants of
Greene’s and Ambler’s struggling, unheroic protagonists and bored
‘ordinary citizens’. Just as Cook’s protagonist leaves behind the
exhausted world of the English upper crust for the alluring dangers
available to the criminal classes, the protagonists of Lodwick and René
Raymond dream of freeing themselves from the humdrum routines of
domesticity and dull austerity that depress the spirits of more ordinary
citizens. These postwar drifters, however, find the world of ‘adventure’
to be a trap like any other. Lodwick’s Something in the Heart (1948) and
Brother Death (1948) and Raymond’s More Deadly Than the Male (1946)
and Wary Transgressor (1952) - the first written as Ambrose Grant, the
second as Raymond Marshall - all belong to this ‘home grown’ tradi-
tion. Greene himself, whilst he was working at Eyre and Spottiswoode,
is thought to have contributed (at least by ‘very strong line editing’) to
More Deadly Than the Male.15 In all four of these novels, the prewar fig-
uring of England as innocent and of the continent as corrupt and
violent has been broken down, replaced by a sense of characters in tran-
sition between equally tainted and demoralised scenes. Postwar England
is afflicted by boredom and depression; violence is near at hand; the
continent is rife with intrigues from which it seems impossible to
escape, in spite of the fact that the war has ended. The movement
of the narrative is often between the continent and England, with the
protagonist
unable to extricate himself from all of the machinations that prevent a return to
‘normality’.
More
Deadly Than the Male
has ‘American’ elements, as does Wary
Transgressor, but in contrast to, say, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, it has
a great deal that establishes the essentially British character of the nar-
rative, from scarcity of guns to soothing cups of tea, with a London
setting that provides a kind of low-key, sleazy counterpoint to the
romanticised violence of American big cities. George, the protagonist of
More Deadly Than the Male, a timid, dispirited book salesman, indulges
in Walter Mittyish daydreams that parody the style and straight shoot-
ing of the American gangster novel, a wry parallel, perhaps, to Chase’s
own writing life, spent borrowing so much from an alien genre. It is
fantasy that prompts his decision to exchange his ordinary, ineffectual
self for a life of criminality, an idea of adventure that is ironised
throughout. George’s accidental possession of a pistol (pointedly, a
German pistol and a relic of war) helps to ensnare him in the seedy
affairs of small-time criminality and confers on him the kind of mas-
culine authority he normally lacks, but in the end his life is dominated
by tedium and freedom is as elusive as ever: ‘“ . . . they loaded the gun
without telling me. You see, they were determined to make me a mur-
derer”’ (216). Raymond’s Wary Transgressor also involves a legacy of past
violence and the bemusement of an inadequate drifter who does not
really belong anywhere. He feels himself briefly free to choose but, like
George, finds that the acts he commits are less ‘his own’ than he
thought them to be, leaving him even more trapped than he was to
begin with. The narrator, David Chisholm, is American rather than
British, and a veteran who has seen more than his share of brutality.
But he is essentially a victim of the events of a European war, a fugitive
wanted for a ‘blood bath’ he witnessed (101), unable to return home.
It is, again, weariness of violence and of flight that dominates the con-
clusion of the novel. Too tired to go on the run again, Chisholm, like
George, passively awaits his destined end, ‘feeling more alone than I
had ever felt before in my life’ (158).
Transgressor, but in contrast to, say, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, it has
a great deal that establishes the essentially British character of the nar-
rative, from scarcity of guns to soothing cups of tea, with a London
setting that provides a kind of low-key, sleazy counterpoint to the
romanticised violence of American big cities. George, the protagonist of
More Deadly Than the Male, a timid, dispirited book salesman, indulges
in Walter Mittyish daydreams that parody the style and straight shoot-
ing of the American gangster novel, a wry parallel, perhaps, to Chase’s
own writing life, spent borrowing so much from an alien genre. It is
fantasy that prompts his decision to exchange his ordinary, ineffectual
self for a life of criminality, an idea of adventure that is ironised
throughout. George’s accidental possession of a pistol (pointedly, a
German pistol and a relic of war) helps to ensnare him in the seedy
affairs of small-time criminality and confers on him the kind of mas-
culine authority he normally lacks, but in the end his life is dominated
by tedium and freedom is as elusive as ever: ‘“ . . . they loaded the gun
without telling me. You see, they were determined to make me a mur-
derer”’ (216). Raymond’s Wary Transgressor also involves a legacy of past
violence and the bemusement of an inadequate drifter who does not
really belong anywhere. He feels himself briefly free to choose but, like
George, finds that the acts he commits are less ‘his own’ than he
thought them to be, leaving him even more trapped than he was to
begin with. The narrator, David Chisholm, is American rather than
British, and a veteran who has seen more than his share of brutality.
But he is essentially a victim of the events of a European war, a fugitive
wanted for a ‘blood bath’ he witnessed (101), unable to return home.
It is, again, weariness of violence and of flight that dominates the con-
clusion of the novel. Too tired to go on the run again, Chisholm, like
George, passively awaits his destined end, ‘feeling more alone than I
had ever felt before in my life’ (158).
Another weak, gentle English George vainly
hoping for freedom is the
protagonist of John Lodwick’s Something in the Heart. He is ‘a gentleman
...on the down-run, with speed gathering’ (96) in a world so inured
‘to horror, torture, and the rest’ that people’s sensibilities are no longer
touched by tales of exclusion and persecution (114). George’s escape
from soul-destroying domesticity takes him outside the conventions of
the English class structure into a world where smuggling and other
crimes are concealed under the cover of a circus, which is (like carnival
protagonist of John Lodwick’s Something in the Heart. He is ‘a gentleman
...on the down-run, with speed gathering’ (96) in a world so inured
‘to horror, torture, and the rest’ that people’s sensibilities are no longer
touched by tales of exclusion and persecution (114). George’s escape
from soul-destroying domesticity takes him outside the conventions of
the English class structure into a world where smuggling and other
crimes are concealed under the cover of a circus, which is (like carnival
atmospheres,
for example, in American noir) a form of marginalised per-
formance, a display of ‘safe’ danger enacted outside the bounds of
respectable society as well as an extension of the disreputable money-
making schemes that flourished in wartime. The irony is that this life
at the margins leaves George feeling just as unfree as he felt at the outset.
In due course he takes on the roles of wrestler, bear tamer, smuggler and
murderer, but his life is as routinised and inauthentic as it has ever been.
Also in 1948, Lodwick published Brother Death, which reverses the
movement of his protagonist, bringing him back to Britain after a
‘murky background’ (70) of wartime activities that both brutalised and
compromised him. Rumbold’s involvement in the treacheries of
wartime underground work have helped to make him a man with ‘no
political scruples’, hoping ‘to remain aloof’ and not be ‘driven, cornered,
the victim of chance and circumstance and the whims of others finan-
cially more powerful than myself’ (35, 53-5). He wants to return to
England rather than being caught up in ‘the toils of a previous exis-
tence’, and is under the illusion that once he is demobilised he will be
free (93). Like the other British protagonists of this period, though more
‘naturally’ amoral and violent, Rumbold is shown primarily as a man
who is weak and adrift, ‘Possessing neither point of departure nor lines
of resistance prepared in advance; no bearings . . . no established rule of
conduct . . .’ (76). Returning home, he finds that in the metaphoric
house of England he is united with those he meets only through his
capacity for murder: ‘“We’re all murderers in this household, you know
...”’ (156).
formance, a display of ‘safe’ danger enacted outside the bounds of
respectable society as well as an extension of the disreputable money-
making schemes that flourished in wartime. The irony is that this life
at the margins leaves George feeling just as unfree as he felt at the outset.
In due course he takes on the roles of wrestler, bear tamer, smuggler and
murderer, but his life is as routinised and inauthentic as it has ever been.
Also in 1948, Lodwick published Brother Death, which reverses the
movement of his protagonist, bringing him back to Britain after a
‘murky background’ (70) of wartime activities that both brutalised and
compromised him. Rumbold’s involvement in the treacheries of
wartime underground work have helped to make him a man with ‘no
political scruples’, hoping ‘to remain aloof’ and not be ‘driven, cornered,
the victim of chance and circumstance and the whims of others finan-
cially more powerful than myself’ (35, 53-5). He wants to return to
England rather than being caught up in ‘the toils of a previous exis-
tence’, and is under the illusion that once he is demobilised he will be
free (93). Like the other British protagonists of this period, though more
‘naturally’ amoral and violent, Rumbold is shown primarily as a man
who is weak and adrift, ‘Possessing neither point of departure nor lines
of resistance prepared in advance; no bearings . . . no established rule of
conduct . . .’ (76). Returning home, he finds that in the metaphoric
house of England he is united with those he meets only through his
capacity for murder: ‘“We’re all murderers in this household, you know
...”’ (156).
Lodwick’s Rumbold travels across Europe from
Marseilles to Madrid
and the length of England, from Devon, where he murders, to Scotland,
where he himself dies. Although he briefly visits his parents, he never
reaches a point of rest, even at home feeling ill at ease and out of place:
his only reliable companion is ‘brother Death’. Many American crime
novels of the period - though their protagonists are far from the dis-
ruptions, the lingering distrusts and animosities of postwar Europe -
embark on similarly rootless wanderings within their own country,
experiencing the same radical homelessness and isolation. In the 1947
film of Dorothy Hughes’ Ride the Pink Horse, the central figure, Gagin
(Robert Montgomery, who also directs), says of himself, ‘I’m nobody’s
friend.’ We do not know his first name, and he is described by the vil-
lagers of San Pablo as ‘the man with no place’. In Hughes’ novel (1946),
the nameless, ‘place-less’ condition of the protagonist is even more
extreme. The ‘God-forsaken town’ is more alien. In the midst of Fiesta,
a ‘run-down carnival’ is taking place. The town is reached by travelling
and the length of England, from Devon, where he murders, to Scotland,
where he himself dies. Although he briefly visits his parents, he never
reaches a point of rest, even at home feeling ill at ease and out of place:
his only reliable companion is ‘brother Death’. Many American crime
novels of the period - though their protagonists are far from the dis-
ruptions, the lingering distrusts and animosities of postwar Europe -
embark on similarly rootless wanderings within their own country,
experiencing the same radical homelessness and isolation. In the 1947
film of Dorothy Hughes’ Ride the Pink Horse, the central figure, Gagin
(Robert Montgomery, who also directs), says of himself, ‘I’m nobody’s
friend.’ We do not know his first name, and he is described by the vil-
lagers of San Pablo as ‘the man with no place’. In Hughes’ novel (1946),
the nameless, ‘place-less’ condition of the protagonist is even more
extreme. The ‘God-forsaken town’ is more alien. In the midst of Fiesta,
a ‘run-down carnival’ is taking place. The town is reached by travelling
through
miles of nothingness, ‘across the wasteland’ (8), and the trav-
eller himself is more anonymous, known only as Sailor. The archetypal
Sailor has journeyed away from the familiar city to a town in which he
is ‘alone, separate’: he is ‘the dream figure wandering in this dreadful
nightmare’, feeling ‘trapped by the unknown’ (95, 124). Much of the
blame for his plight rests with Sailor, but he is also a ‘wronged man’,
damaged by a more powerful and devious sometime ally whose power
he has mistakenly dreamt of sharing. The final choice that Sailor makes
severs him completely from his former life on the periphery of power.
Balancing the regularity of being ‘a sucker’ against the freedom ‘beyond
the mountains’, he escapes to ‘open country . . . the wastes of endless
land and sky’, his final choices having placed him beyond even the
human community of the oppressed and outcast (200).
eller himself is more anonymous, known only as Sailor. The archetypal
Sailor has journeyed away from the familiar city to a town in which he
is ‘alone, separate’: he is ‘the dream figure wandering in this dreadful
nightmare’, feeling ‘trapped by the unknown’ (95, 124). Much of the
blame for his plight rests with Sailor, but he is also a ‘wronged man’,
damaged by a more powerful and devious sometime ally whose power
he has mistakenly dreamt of sharing. The final choice that Sailor makes
severs him completely from his former life on the periphery of power.
Balancing the regularity of being ‘a sucker’ against the freedom ‘beyond
the mountains’, he escapes to ‘open country . . . the wastes of endless
land and sky’, his final choices having placed him beyond even the
human community of the oppressed and outcast (200).
Published in the same year as Ride the Pink Horse, William Gresham’s
Nightmare Alley was adapted to become another of the classic films noirs
of the late forties, an intense evocation of fear directed by Edmund
Goulding (1947). Gresham, who was fascinated by carnivals and circuses
and ‘the darker side of the entertainment world’,16 uses the travelling
carnival to create a disorienting, distorted reflection of the larger society.
Like Sailor’s Fiesta town, it is a place ‘out of this world’, and the carni-
valesque atmosphere creates a marginalised reality that comes to stand
for life stripped of all consoling illusions. In Hughes, the most horrify-
ing spectacle of the Fiesta is Zozobra, a ‘giant grotesquery’ embodying
‘a fantastic awfulness of reality’; in Gresham, the ‘awfulness of reality’
is symbolised by the carnival geek. The myth is that the geek is ‘one of
the unexplained mysteries’, neither man nor beast; the reality is that he
is simply a drunk who, worn down by hardship and ill fortune, has been
reduced to a sideshow attraction (like Zozobra, in fact, really ‘man-
made’). The myth is ironically echoed in the closing paragraphs, when
the protagonist himself is reduced to the status of the geek. The motif
of the fall into darkness, as in the geek’s descent into the carnival pit,
is the image that we know from the outset must govern the movement
of the narrative. The ‘nightmare alley’ is an indeterminate, dark, tran-
sitional location from which there seems to be no escape for a man
pursued by fear, with a light of hope that keeps receding. At the most
general level it is an image of existential despair (‘“Man comes into the
world a blind, groping mite. He knows hunger and the fear of noise and
of falling. His life is spent in flight . . .”’ [197]). The protagonist, Stanton
Carlisle, both plays upon and suffers from this fear, manipulating
crowds reminiscent of the London Bridge crowd of The Waste Land (‘The
crowd flowed over and stood waiting . . .’), made up of people who are
Nightmare Alley was adapted to become another of the classic films noirs
of the late forties, an intense evocation of fear directed by Edmund
Goulding (1947). Gresham, who was fascinated by carnivals and circuses
and ‘the darker side of the entertainment world’,16 uses the travelling
carnival to create a disorienting, distorted reflection of the larger society.
Like Sailor’s Fiesta town, it is a place ‘out of this world’, and the carni-
valesque atmosphere creates a marginalised reality that comes to stand
for life stripped of all consoling illusions. In Hughes, the most horrify-
ing spectacle of the Fiesta is Zozobra, a ‘giant grotesquery’ embodying
‘a fantastic awfulness of reality’; in Gresham, the ‘awfulness of reality’
is symbolised by the carnival geek. The myth is that the geek is ‘one of
the unexplained mysteries’, neither man nor beast; the reality is that he
is simply a drunk who, worn down by hardship and ill fortune, has been
reduced to a sideshow attraction (like Zozobra, in fact, really ‘man-
made’). The myth is ironically echoed in the closing paragraphs, when
the protagonist himself is reduced to the status of the geek. The motif
of the fall into darkness, as in the geek’s descent into the carnival pit,
is the image that we know from the outset must govern the movement
of the narrative. The ‘nightmare alley’ is an indeterminate, dark, tran-
sitional location from which there seems to be no escape for a man
pursued by fear, with a light of hope that keeps receding. At the most
general level it is an image of existential despair (‘“Man comes into the
world a blind, groping mite. He knows hunger and the fear of noise and
of falling. His life is spent in flight . . .”’ [197]). The protagonist, Stanton
Carlisle, both plays upon and suffers from this fear, manipulating
crowds reminiscent of the London Bridge crowd of The Waste Land (‘The
crowd flowed over and stood waiting . . .’), made up of people who are
easily
exploited because of the vacancy and impoverishment of ordi-
nary lives. The conman’s secret is that ‘“Fear is the key to human
nature”’ (56). At the root of the fear is the estrangement that haunts
Stan throughout the narrative. The end of the novel charts his decline
into total isolation, drunkenness and squalor. His final effort to work as
a ‘pitchman’ is a surreal caricature of his former activities: distorted faces
laugh at him, footsteps pursue him, until in desperation he kills the
policeman who has run after him: ‘any time he starts after me I can
keep killing him. He’s mine. My own personal corpse’ (208).
nary lives. The conman’s secret is that ‘“Fear is the key to human
nature”’ (56). At the root of the fear is the estrangement that haunts
Stan throughout the narrative. The end of the novel charts his decline
into total isolation, drunkenness and squalor. His final effort to work as
a ‘pitchman’ is a surreal caricature of his former activities: distorted faces
laugh at him, footsteps pursue him, until in desperation he kills the
policeman who has run after him: ‘any time he starts after me I can
keep killing him. He’s mine. My own personal corpse’ (208).
Part of the power of the Hughes and Gresham
novels comes from the
fact that the symbolic sweep of their narratives suggests a society wholly
given over to unconstrained greed, corruption and universal fear.
Though each novel has, within its carnival atmosphere, redemptive
glimpses of a restorative community (Pancho and his carousel in Ride
the Pink Horse, the alternative family of carnival folk in Nightmare Alley),
both are expressions of a more general and unrelieved pessimism than
is to be found in most of the other ‘wandering stranger’ novels of the
period. Particularly in narratives that are closer to the investigative tra-
dition of literary noir, the protagonist’s confrontation with alienation
is mitigated by the fact that flight can be supplanted by some kind of
active agency. Whether encountering a new place (Detour to Death),
observing their own town or city from an unaccustomed perspective
(Blue City, Dreadful Summit) or simply being forced out of a routine (The
Big Clock), protagonists see life’s viciousness more clearly. Also, however,
if their own moral characters are somewhat more robust than those of
Sailor and Stanton Carlisle, they see their way to taking some kind of
action. There is a ‘rites of passage’ element in these novels, centring on
men, generally young, who are in transit from one stage of life to
another, compelled to grow up and let go of accustomed routines and
so to perceive an otherwise familiar place with a stranger’s eye.
fact that the symbolic sweep of their narratives suggests a society wholly
given over to unconstrained greed, corruption and universal fear.
Though each novel has, within its carnival atmosphere, redemptive
glimpses of a restorative community (Pancho and his carousel in Ride
the Pink Horse, the alternative family of carnival folk in Nightmare Alley),
both are expressions of a more general and unrelieved pessimism than
is to be found in most of the other ‘wandering stranger’ novels of the
period. Particularly in narratives that are closer to the investigative tra-
dition of literary noir, the protagonist’s confrontation with alienation
is mitigated by the fact that flight can be supplanted by some kind of
active agency. Whether encountering a new place (Detour to Death),
observing their own town or city from an unaccustomed perspective
(Blue City, Dreadful Summit) or simply being forced out of a routine (The
Big Clock), protagonists see life’s viciousness more clearly. Also, however,
if their own moral characters are somewhat more robust than those of
Sailor and Stanton Carlisle, they see their way to taking some kind of
action. There is a ‘rites of passage’ element in these novels, centring on
men, generally young, who are in transit from one stage of life to
another, compelled to grow up and let go of accustomed routines and
so to perceive an otherwise familiar place with a stranger’s eye.
The ‘stranger in town’ pattern is a tenacious
theme in both film and
literature. It can use a far from innocent stranger as the catalyst, on the
model, say, of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), a narrative in which
a decidedly bad man (in the case of Hitchcock’s Uncle Charlie, a serial
killer) enters an apparently idyllic town and brings to the surface the
repressed knowledge of what you would find if, as Uncle Charlie says,
‘you ripped the fronts off the houses’. In literary noir, something of this
sort happens in, for example, Dead Beat (1960), the novel Robert Bloch
published the year after Psycho. A young man, representing a genera-
tion damaged by Cold War neuroses, is used by Bloch to expose the
underside of seeming reputability in the town as it reacts to his
literature. It can use a far from innocent stranger as the catalyst, on the
model, say, of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), a narrative in which
a decidedly bad man (in the case of Hitchcock’s Uncle Charlie, a serial
killer) enters an apparently idyllic town and brings to the surface the
repressed knowledge of what you would find if, as Uncle Charlie says,
‘you ripped the fronts off the houses’. In literary noir, something of this
sort happens in, for example, Dead Beat (1960), the novel Robert Bloch
published the year after Psycho. A young man, representing a genera-
tion damaged by Cold War neuroses, is used by Bloch to expose the
underside of seeming reputability in the town as it reacts to his
presence.
In another of his recurrent incarnations, the stranger who
intrudes into small-town family life is an innocent man who happens
into a town and, like the misperceived femme fatale, has to cope with
the prejudices of a community that only superficially exemplifies tradi-
tional values and contentments - as in Helen Nielsen’s Detour to Death
(1953).17 Nielsen’s protagonist on the run, Danny, is like ‘all the people
in the world who were strangers on earth’ (5-6, 13, 64). When he arrives
in Coopertown, it seems to be inhabited entirely by dauntingly su-
perior-looking citizens - ‘Did they all have to be so tall?’ (14). Soon sus-
pected of murder, Danny is (see Figure 8) the very type of the isolated
man persecuted by a conformist community. The townsfolk are ‘stone
deaf’ to his protestations of innocence (53), but Danny’s persistence ulti-
mately uncovers the horrors that are ironically concealed in ‘Peace
Canyon’, the real nightmare that resides in the silence at the heart of
the American dream, ‘a world without sound’ hiding its ‘curse of blood’
until Danny finally succeeds in making his narrative heard. Although
he has his own small secret, this is only draft dodging rather than the
‘dark past’ that usually forces the noir protagonist to take flight. He is
thus in essence a good character for whom the status of the outsider is
only a ‘detour’ and not something irrevocable.
intrudes into small-town family life is an innocent man who happens
into a town and, like the misperceived femme fatale, has to cope with
the prejudices of a community that only superficially exemplifies tradi-
tional values and contentments - as in Helen Nielsen’s Detour to Death
(1953).17 Nielsen’s protagonist on the run, Danny, is like ‘all the people
in the world who were strangers on earth’ (5-6, 13, 64). When he arrives
in Coopertown, it seems to be inhabited entirely by dauntingly su-
perior-looking citizens - ‘Did they all have to be so tall?’ (14). Soon sus-
pected of murder, Danny is (see Figure 8) the very type of the isolated
man persecuted by a conformist community. The townsfolk are ‘stone
deaf’ to his protestations of innocence (53), but Danny’s persistence ulti-
mately uncovers the horrors that are ironically concealed in ‘Peace
Canyon’, the real nightmare that resides in the silence at the heart of
the American dream, ‘a world without sound’ hiding its ‘curse of blood’
until Danny finally succeeds in making his narrative heard. Although
he has his own small secret, this is only draft dodging rather than the
‘dark past’ that usually forces the noir protagonist to take flight. He is
thus in essence a good character for whom the status of the outsider is
only a ‘detour’ and not something irrevocable.
The home-wanderer dichotomy also structures a
number of crime
novels in which the protagonist sees his own home from an unfamili-
ar angle, having undergone changes that bring him back to once famili-
ar territory with a permanently altered perspective. Three of the best
late forties examples of this kind of narrative are The Big Clock (1946),
Blue City (1947) and Dreadful Summit (1948). Ross Macdonald’s early
novel, Blue City (written under his actual name, Kenneth Millar), figures
the return home as a transition from childhood to adulthood. A young
war veteran, Johnny Weather, comes back to a home town that seems
to have changed out of recognition, and to a series of shocks concern-
ing the father with whom he has lost contact. Almost every chapter
begins with an image of how things seem to have changed, echoed in
Johnny’s dreams of rooms empty or full of ‘unfriendly faces’ (85-6). The
corruption of the town is akin to that of Hammett’s Poisonville, the
police having brought in strike-breakers who have ‘been here ever
since’, and the town is under the sway of strong anti-labour forces who
uphold their views in the name of ‘the American way’ (94-5). Johnny’s
overwhelming feeling is one of loneliness and of exclusion from normal
domestic life, both craving and resenting the togetherness glimpsed
through lighted windows. It at first seems to him that the strangeness
of the town must be the consequence of a radical change, but his crucial
novels in which the protagonist sees his own home from an unfamili-
ar angle, having undergone changes that bring him back to once famili-
ar territory with a permanently altered perspective. Three of the best
late forties examples of this kind of narrative are The Big Clock (1946),
Blue City (1947) and Dreadful Summit (1948). Ross Macdonald’s early
novel, Blue City (written under his actual name, Kenneth Millar), figures
the return home as a transition from childhood to adulthood. A young
war veteran, Johnny Weather, comes back to a home town that seems
to have changed out of recognition, and to a series of shocks concern-
ing the father with whom he has lost contact. Almost every chapter
begins with an image of how things seem to have changed, echoed in
Johnny’s dreams of rooms empty or full of ‘unfriendly faces’ (85-6). The
corruption of the town is akin to that of Hammett’s Poisonville, the
police having brought in strike-breakers who have ‘been here ever
since’, and the town is under the sway of strong anti-labour forces who
uphold their views in the name of ‘the American way’ (94-5). Johnny’s
overwhelming feeling is one of loneliness and of exclusion from normal
domestic life, both craving and resenting the togetherness glimpsed
through lighted windows. It at first seems to him that the strangeness
of the town must be the consequence of a radical change, but his crucial
realisation
is that what he is seeing is simply a development of the
town as it was when his father held sway. As Johnny himself gets drawn
into the conflicts and cover-ups and as he persists in trying to get to
the bottom of things, he himself becomes a suspect, feeling ‘outlawed’
even to himself (136). Like George in The Big Clock, he experiences a
self-estrangement increased by hearing strangers cast him in the role of
murderer and speculate on his motives. The end holds open the possi-
bility that he will choose to stay in the town and work to better it, but,
having become part of ‘marginal life’ (149), he seems unlikely to rejoin
a normative community.
town as it was when his father held sway. As Johnny himself gets drawn
into the conflicts and cover-ups and as he persists in trying to get to
the bottom of things, he himself becomes a suspect, feeling ‘outlawed’
even to himself (136). Like George in The Big Clock, he experiences a
self-estrangement increased by hearing strangers cast him in the role of
murderer and speculate on his motives. The end holds open the possi-
bility that he will choose to stay in the town and work to better it, but,
having become part of ‘marginal life’ (149), he seems unlikely to rejoin
a normative community.
The same is true of George LaMain, the teenage
narrator of Stanley
Ellin’s first novel, Dreadful Summit. Filmed by Joseph Losey in 1951 as
The Big Night, the book, like the film, is a symbolic coming of age nar-
rative, with a protagonist who has just celebrated his sixteenth birth-
day undertaking a nightmarish odyssey through a strange and hostile
society. He views its sins with the semi-innocent eye of someone who
himself has a capacity for violence and whose familial past is (like that
of Macdonald’s Johnny) more implicated in wrongdoing than he
realises. During the course of the narrative what he discovers is his con-
nection to other individuals, particularly to the guilts of his father and
mother. He never deviates from his goal (‘I think I liked Al Judge a lot
before I knew I had to kill him’ [8]), though the phallic gun he carries
is an embarrassing token of manhood (it keeps threatening to tumble
out in public), and though the adults who seem potentially helpful turn
out to be incapacitated by bourgeois anxieties (‘“If I didn’t have my
lousy job to think about, George, I’d be in there with you all the
way”’ [63]). George takes on an increasingly grown-up appearance (‘I
made a face like a tough guy’ [40]), and his initiation into adult society
has something of the old-fashioned tough-guy ethos about it, bringing
painful knowledge but also an acceptance of guilt and responsibility,
when the boy decides to take the blame for the crime he has commit-
ted. This redemptive choice diminishes the pessimism of Dreadful
Summit. It remains dark, however, in comparison to Losey’s film, which
removes a significant element of George’s family guilt (the truth that
his mother is a murderess) and also of George’s own guilt, since in the
film he does not actually kill Al Judge.
Ellin’s first novel, Dreadful Summit. Filmed by Joseph Losey in 1951 as
The Big Night, the book, like the film, is a symbolic coming of age nar-
rative, with a protagonist who has just celebrated his sixteenth birth-
day undertaking a nightmarish odyssey through a strange and hostile
society. He views its sins with the semi-innocent eye of someone who
himself has a capacity for violence and whose familial past is (like that
of Macdonald’s Johnny) more implicated in wrongdoing than he
realises. During the course of the narrative what he discovers is his con-
nection to other individuals, particularly to the guilts of his father and
mother. He never deviates from his goal (‘I think I liked Al Judge a lot
before I knew I had to kill him’ [8]), though the phallic gun he carries
is an embarrassing token of manhood (it keeps threatening to tumble
out in public), and though the adults who seem potentially helpful turn
out to be incapacitated by bourgeois anxieties (‘“If I didn’t have my
lousy job to think about, George, I’d be in there with you all the
way”’ [63]). George takes on an increasingly grown-up appearance (‘I
made a face like a tough guy’ [40]), and his initiation into adult society
has something of the old-fashioned tough-guy ethos about it, bringing
painful knowledge but also an acceptance of guilt and responsibility,
when the boy decides to take the blame for the crime he has commit-
ted. This redemptive choice diminishes the pessimism of Dreadful
Summit. It remains dark, however, in comparison to Losey’s film, which
removes a significant element of George’s family guilt (the truth that
his mother is a murderess) and also of George’s own guilt, since in the
film he does not actually kill Al Judge.
Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock (the basis for one of the best-known
wrong man films noirs, directed by John Farrow in 1948) is an urban
rather than small-town novel, but by using the restrictive community
of a highly structured organisation it brings to the fore similar tensions
between conformity and estrangement. Fearing’s poetry and novels had
wrong man films noirs, directed by John Farrow in 1948) is an urban
rather than small-town novel, but by using the restrictive community
of a highly structured organisation it brings to the fore similar tensions
between conformity and estrangement. Fearing’s poetry and novels had
from
the thirties on spoken for people who felt themselves to be con-
trolled by forces they could not comprehend. He was, as Julian Symons
says, ‘a poet whose rolling lines of despair, protest and Whitmanesque
optimism remain underrated’.18 The Big Clock begins with the protago-
nist as part of what appears to be an exceptionally unified family, all of
whom are named George (George, Georgette and Georgia), living what
looks to be the ideally harmonious American family life. In the course
of the novel, however, it becomes plain that this appearance is con-
structed over actual betrayal (George habitually womanises), and even
George’s stories for the six-year-old Georgia have by the end become
fables of split identity and self-estrangement. George is a notable
example of the overlapping roles of the noir protagonist, assigned the
task of chief investigator of ‘the stranger’ (75 - George himself) who is
suspected of being the murderer, and also the intended victim of the
actual murderer. In this self-divided state, he has to confront a system
symbolised by the big clock, ‘a fatal machine’ that is a trope for the
whole modern industrial organisation: ‘I told myself it was just a tool.
...But I had not fully realised its crushing weight and power’ (114-15,
145). In the film, after George outwits Janoth, who falls to his death,
the mood of the end is established by George’s reunion with his wife.
In the novel, on the other hand, the tone of the end is dominated by
George’s conviction that he has only delayed his fate. What George has
learned by the destabilisation of his role in life is how easy it is to
become the outsider who has to be excluded and destroyed if prosper-
ous, conventional society is to survive. In the cover-story concocted to
explain the search for George-as-stranger, he is transformed into an
emblem of the dangerous alien threatening to undermine a whole way
of life. As he hunts himself, he becomes aware as never before of the
gap between his internal sense of self and his self as constructed by
others. The experience transforms him from ‘a smug, self-satisfied,
smart-alecky bastard just like ten million other rubber-stamp executives’
(121-2) into someone who recognises the destructiveness of the system
and the precariousness of the individual life.
trolled by forces they could not comprehend. He was, as Julian Symons
says, ‘a poet whose rolling lines of despair, protest and Whitmanesque
optimism remain underrated’.18 The Big Clock begins with the protago-
nist as part of what appears to be an exceptionally unified family, all of
whom are named George (George, Georgette and Georgia), living what
looks to be the ideally harmonious American family life. In the course
of the novel, however, it becomes plain that this appearance is con-
structed over actual betrayal (George habitually womanises), and even
George’s stories for the six-year-old Georgia have by the end become
fables of split identity and self-estrangement. George is a notable
example of the overlapping roles of the noir protagonist, assigned the
task of chief investigator of ‘the stranger’ (75 - George himself) who is
suspected of being the murderer, and also the intended victim of the
actual murderer. In this self-divided state, he has to confront a system
symbolised by the big clock, ‘a fatal machine’ that is a trope for the
whole modern industrial organisation: ‘I told myself it was just a tool.
...But I had not fully realised its crushing weight and power’ (114-15,
145). In the film, after George outwits Janoth, who falls to his death,
the mood of the end is established by George’s reunion with his wife.
In the novel, on the other hand, the tone of the end is dominated by
George’s conviction that he has only delayed his fate. What George has
learned by the destabilisation of his role in life is how easy it is to
become the outsider who has to be excluded and destroyed if prosper-
ous, conventional society is to survive. In the cover-story concocted to
explain the search for George-as-stranger, he is transformed into an
emblem of the dangerous alien threatening to undermine a whole way
of life. As he hunts himself, he becomes aware as never before of the
gap between his internal sense of self and his self as constructed by
others. The experience transforms him from ‘a smug, self-satisfied,
smart-alecky bastard just like ten million other rubber-stamp executives’
(121-2) into someone who recognises the destructiveness of the system
and the precariousness of the individual life.
No crime writer of the period created more
hopelessly marginalised
men than David Goodis. He represented with obsessive intensity iso-
lated, displaced protagonists, in hiding from others or from themselves,
travellers unable to go home. For French readers and critics, Goodis
seemed to share something of the ‘existential melancholy’ of McCoy
and James M. Cain.19 Amongst his most characteristic protagonists is
the frightened, friendless man who has felt compelled to abandon a
secure, often successful life and who finds himself spiralling downwards.
men than David Goodis. He represented with obsessive intensity iso-
lated, displaced protagonists, in hiding from others or from themselves,
travellers unable to go home. For French readers and critics, Goodis
seemed to share something of the ‘existential melancholy’ of McCoy
and James M. Cain.19 Amongst his most characteristic protagonists is
the frightened, friendless man who has felt compelled to abandon a
secure, often successful life and who finds himself spiralling downwards.
As
we have seen, in some of the novels discussed in this section (Detour
to Death, Blue City), the lonely man who manages to master certain
investigative skills can move the plot towards more positive closure; in
others (most notably Dreadful Summit, but also The Big Clock) the pro-
tagonist who discovers within himself a kind of toughness and integrity
can add a redemptive element to an otherwise bleak story. Goodis
readers, however, learn not to expect such respite. He is one of the most
reliably pessimistic of noir writers. At the end of The Moon in the Gutter
(1953), for example, Kerrigan gives up his search for the man respon-
sible for his sister’s death and returns to live with the woman who paid
for his murder: ‘He moved along with a deliberate stride that told each
stone it was there to be stepped on, and he damn well knew how to
walk this street, how to handle every bump and rut and hole in the
gutter’ (513). Kerrigan and other Goodis protagonists endlessly walk
the streets, but this repetitive motion is combined with inherent immo-
bility or paralysis. There are sometimes visions of a place ‘elsewhere’
(South Africa, South America, Florida), holding open the romanticised
possibility of escape for the hunted man. At the end of Dark Passage
(1946), for example, there is the dream of a reunion in Peru, though
hedged about with ‘all these ifs’ (399) and a much more remote fantasy
in the novel than in the film. For the man engaged in a quest, there
are occasional opportunities for retribution (for example, in Nightfall
[1947] and Cassidy’s Girl [1951]). But the closing of a trap is more likely
than the qualified optimism of the ‘general idea’ of Peru (Moon in the
Gutter, 399).
to Death, Blue City), the lonely man who manages to master certain
investigative skills can move the plot towards more positive closure; in
others (most notably Dreadful Summit, but also The Big Clock) the pro-
tagonist who discovers within himself a kind of toughness and integrity
can add a redemptive element to an otherwise bleak story. Goodis
readers, however, learn not to expect such respite. He is one of the most
reliably pessimistic of noir writers. At the end of The Moon in the Gutter
(1953), for example, Kerrigan gives up his search for the man respon-
sible for his sister’s death and returns to live with the woman who paid
for his murder: ‘He moved along with a deliberate stride that told each
stone it was there to be stepped on, and he damn well knew how to
walk this street, how to handle every bump and rut and hole in the
gutter’ (513). Kerrigan and other Goodis protagonists endlessly walk
the streets, but this repetitive motion is combined with inherent immo-
bility or paralysis. There are sometimes visions of a place ‘elsewhere’
(South Africa, South America, Florida), holding open the romanticised
possibility of escape for the hunted man. At the end of Dark Passage
(1946), for example, there is the dream of a reunion in Peru, though
hedged about with ‘all these ifs’ (399) and a much more remote fantasy
in the novel than in the film. For the man engaged in a quest, there
are occasional opportunities for retribution (for example, in Nightfall
[1947] and Cassidy’s Girl [1951]). But the closing of a trap is more likely
than the qualified optimism of the ‘general idea’ of Peru (Moon in the
Gutter, 399).
In spite of an ending in which doubt is
supplanted by ‘the knowl-
edge’ that promises to dispel Vanning’s fears (137), Nightfall, filmed by
Jacques Tourneur in 1957, is a novel dominated (as is the film) by the
terror and paranoia of a man on the run. This is a specifically postwar
narrative, with Vanning’s difficulties explained as a common effect of
the war. Men have returned with ‘the wrong outlook’ and get them-
selves in trouble, which, given Vanning’s actual innocence, becomes an
edged comment on the readiness of American society to read ‘the past’
of the war into every veteran’s life. The surreal atmosphere of Nightfall
is established on the first page, with Vanning ‘afraid to go out’, haunted
by a premonition which is itself a phantom created by the past, both
paranoid and pursued. He is suffering from ‘regressive amnesia’ (136-7)
and it is only by struggling to recover the past that he can defy what
strikes him as an ill fate so arbitrary and accidental that it is ‘almost
comical’ (69).
edge’ that promises to dispel Vanning’s fears (137), Nightfall, filmed by
Jacques Tourneur in 1957, is a novel dominated (as is the film) by the
terror and paranoia of a man on the run. This is a specifically postwar
narrative, with Vanning’s difficulties explained as a common effect of
the war. Men have returned with ‘the wrong outlook’ and get them-
selves in trouble, which, given Vanning’s actual innocence, becomes an
edged comment on the readiness of American society to read ‘the past’
of the war into every veteran’s life. The surreal atmosphere of Nightfall
is established on the first page, with Vanning ‘afraid to go out’, haunted
by a premonition which is itself a phantom created by the past, both
paranoid and pursued. He is suffering from ‘regressive amnesia’ (136-7)
and it is only by struggling to recover the past that he can defy what
strikes him as an ill fate so arbitrary and accidental that it is ‘almost
comical’ (69).
Vanning is
a man tortured
by his homelessness,
his ‘hollow’,
‘grotesque’
feeling juxtaposed with his longing for family life and chil-
dren. In Cassidy’s Girl (1951), the first of his Gold Medal ‘skid row’
novels, Goodis emphasises even more strongly this despairing exclusion
from normal domestic life. Like many other Goodis characters, Cassidy
has been a solidly successful middle-class type who is now on the skids
because of accidents of fate that seem not to be his fault but which actu-
ally raise the question of whether he simply lacks the ability to take
charge of his own life - a weakness perhaps ‘corrected’ when he leaps
through the window at the end to defend Mildred. The issue of whether
a character who fails to assert himself deserves ‘getting kicked around’
(161) is one of Goodis’ most persistent preoccupations. He almost
invariably establishes a powerfully realised sense of economic depriva-
tion, dispiriting city streets and characters whose daily round is con-
fined to ‘a narrow, dust-covered twisting path bordered with the
leaning, decayed walls of tenements’ (Cassidy’s Girl, 56). In comparison
to the proletarian tough-guy novelists of the thirties, however, his stress
falls more heavily on the possibility of choice, allowing (like Ellin) some
degree of dignity to be reclaimed by the recognition of one’s own
burden of individual responsibility.
dren. In Cassidy’s Girl (1951), the first of his Gold Medal ‘skid row’
novels, Goodis emphasises even more strongly this despairing exclusion
from normal domestic life. Like many other Goodis characters, Cassidy
has been a solidly successful middle-class type who is now on the skids
because of accidents of fate that seem not to be his fault but which actu-
ally raise the question of whether he simply lacks the ability to take
charge of his own life - a weakness perhaps ‘corrected’ when he leaps
through the window at the end to defend Mildred. The issue of whether
a character who fails to assert himself deserves ‘getting kicked around’
(161) is one of Goodis’ most persistent preoccupations. He almost
invariably establishes a powerfully realised sense of economic depriva-
tion, dispiriting city streets and characters whose daily round is con-
fined to ‘a narrow, dust-covered twisting path bordered with the
leaning, decayed walls of tenements’ (Cassidy’s Girl, 56). In comparison
to the proletarian tough-guy novelists of the thirties, however, his stress
falls more heavily on the possibility of choice, allowing (like Ellin) some
degree of dignity to be reclaimed by the recognition of one’s own
burden of individual responsibility.
The novel in which the pressure of economic
circumstance weighs
most heavily, and in which characters’ capacity for choosing a different
life seems most circumscribed, is The Blonde on the Street Corner. Though
written in the fifties (1954), it is a powerful representation of Depres-
sion America, adapting the conventions of the noir thriller to capture
a mood of crippling despair. In Cassidy’s Girl, violent action achieves at
least some kind of partial resolution (the defeat of Haney Kenrick), even
though Cassidy still feels a great ‘heaviness’ of spirit (173). The Blonde
on the Street Corner, by its violation of convention, juxtaposes the pos-
sibility of sudden, violent, transgressive events (the stuff of the thriller)
with the hopelessly mundane, intolerably drab ordinary lives of men
and women during the Depression. These are lives of such quiet des-
peration and such passivity that even sex and violence exist in only
routine and diminished forms. The novel is a lament for wasted years
most heavily, and in which characters’ capacity for choosing a different
life seems most circumscribed, is The Blonde on the Street Corner. Though
written in the fifties (1954), it is a powerful representation of Depres-
sion America, adapting the conventions of the noir thriller to capture
a mood of crippling despair. In Cassidy’s Girl, violent action achieves at
least some kind of partial resolution (the defeat of Haney Kenrick), even
though Cassidy still feels a great ‘heaviness’ of spirit (173). The Blonde
on the Street Corner, by its violation of convention, juxtaposes the pos-
sibility of sudden, violent, transgressive events (the stuff of the thriller)
with the hopelessly mundane, intolerably drab ordinary lives of men
and women during the Depression. These are lives of such quiet des-
peration and such passivity that even sex and violence exist in only
routine and diminished forms. The novel is a lament for wasted years
-
‘just standing on the corner and waiting, waiting’ (5) - extended to a
generalised image of the Depression, which has left ‘Millions of guys on
the corners in the big cities. Standing around . . .’ (36-7). The jobs
intermittently available are ‘slow death’ (31), and the effect of Goodis’
novel is to persuade its readers that this process of attrition is in its way
worse than the eruption of random violence. There are only two violent
episodes in the novel, both characterised by the pointlessness of the
whole Depression world. In the first, the protagonist comes to the aid
generalised image of the Depression, which has left ‘Millions of guys on
the corners in the big cities. Standing around . . .’ (36-7). The jobs
intermittently available are ‘slow death’ (31), and the effect of Goodis’
novel is to persuade its readers that this process of attrition is in its way
worse than the eruption of random violence. There are only two violent
episodes in the novel, both characterised by the pointlessness of the
whole Depression world. In the first, the protagonist comes to the aid
of
a man goaded by one of the ‘bastards from upstairs’ (115-23); in the
second, he is cornered by the blonde, who realises with satisfaction that
she has finally found ‘someone who gave it like a beast’ (139-40).
Neither incident changes in any way the conditions of life for those
who spend their days having to ‘walk up and down’ in the cold, grey
streets of Philadelphia, which is impossibly far from the idyll of Florida,
where ‘everybody’s happy. . . . It’s warm, it’s nice’ (75-6, 15).
second, he is cornered by the blonde, who realises with satisfaction that
she has finally found ‘someone who gave it like a beast’ (139-40).
Neither incident changes in any way the conditions of life for those
who spend their days having to ‘walk up and down’ in the cold, grey
streets of Philadelphia, which is impossibly far from the idyll of Florida,
where ‘everybody’s happy. . . . It’s warm, it’s nice’ (75-6, 15).
Goodis recurrently uses the freezing city
streets of his home town as
a setting that contributes to the immobilisation of his protagonists,
whose narratives tell of their failed attempts to escape from the past by
withdrawing from society. Black Friday, published in the same year as
Blonde on the Street Corner (1954), begins with the desperately cold Hart
walking alone in Philadelphia, cheering himself up by contemplating
suicide. The winter weather of a northern American city not only
emphasises Hart’s sense of being locked in wretchedness but images his
essential isolation (when you’re alone, as Charley muses, ‘“it’s a cold
world”’ [60]). Goodis’ most widely known novel, Down There (1956),
filmed by Truffaut as Shoot the Piano Player (1962), is similarly domi-
nated by cold and snow and wind - which, in the opening paragraph,
‘stabbed at the eyes of the fallen man in the street’ (3). The hostility of
the elements is only one of the destructive forces assailing a protago-
nist, Eddie, whose aim is to stay safely in hiding and to remain detached,
to look ‘as if he can’t feel anything’ (48). Pursued, however, he is forced
to repeat the process of loss that made him withdraw in the first place,
forcing on him the traditionally noir recognition that the past will not
stay in ‘another city, another world’ (104) and that ‘the sum of every-
thing was a circle, and the circle was labelled Zero’ (82).
a setting that contributes to the immobilisation of his protagonists,
whose narratives tell of their failed attempts to escape from the past by
withdrawing from society. Black Friday, published in the same year as
Blonde on the Street Corner (1954), begins with the desperately cold Hart
walking alone in Philadelphia, cheering himself up by contemplating
suicide. The winter weather of a northern American city not only
emphasises Hart’s sense of being locked in wretchedness but images his
essential isolation (when you’re alone, as Charley muses, ‘“it’s a cold
world”’ [60]). Goodis’ most widely known novel, Down There (1956),
filmed by Truffaut as Shoot the Piano Player (1962), is similarly domi-
nated by cold and snow and wind - which, in the opening paragraph,
‘stabbed at the eyes of the fallen man in the street’ (3). The hostility of
the elements is only one of the destructive forces assailing a protago-
nist, Eddie, whose aim is to stay safely in hiding and to remain detached,
to look ‘as if he can’t feel anything’ (48). Pursued, however, he is forced
to repeat the process of loss that made him withdraw in the first place,
forcing on him the traditionally noir recognition that the past will not
stay in ‘another city, another world’ (104) and that ‘the sum of every-
thing was a circle, and the circle was labelled Zero’ (82).
Civil wrongs
An
old black man, a strongly positive character in Goodis’ Street of No
Return (1954), urges the protagonist, Whitey, to avoid the despair to
which Goodis characters are always tempted to succumb. The answer,
he says, ‘is never zero . . . while you’re able to breathe’ (51). Goodis con-
fronts his marginalised protagonist with the black and Puerto Rican
characters he encounters when he crosses the border that separates Skid
Row from ‘the Hellhole’. It is a symbolic journey that makes explicit the
racial basis of marginalisation and that contrasts the standard Goodis
character (who is where he is because of inner weaknesses) with char-
acters whose fate is determined not by inner weaknesses but by skin
colour. The naming of ‘Whitey’ in itself suggests a stereotype that is
Return (1954), urges the protagonist, Whitey, to avoid the despair to
which Goodis characters are always tempted to succumb. The answer,
he says, ‘is never zero . . . while you’re able to breathe’ (51). Goodis con-
fronts his marginalised protagonist with the black and Puerto Rican
characters he encounters when he crosses the border that separates Skid
Row from ‘the Hellhole’. It is a symbolic journey that makes explicit the
racial basis of marginalisation and that contrasts the standard Goodis
character (who is where he is because of inner weaknesses) with char-
acters whose fate is determined not by inner weaknesses but by skin
colour. The naming of ‘Whitey’ in itself suggests a stereotype that is
broken
down in various ways. Suspected by both blacks and Puerto
Ricans of being a potentially hostile and dangerous white man, his mild-
ness and lack of prejudice mean that he is accepted and befriended. He
learns from characters who have been marginalised on the grounds of
race but who have not allowed their experiences to deprive them com-
pletely of backbone. The gentle and timid Whitey, having settled into
Skid Row, simply does nothing, ‘lost in the emptiness of a drained
bottle’ (2). The present-time part of the narrative is set in motion when
Whitey crosses ‘the boundary line’, moving from the security of Skid
Row and entering a territory that, like Chester Himes’ Harlem, is surreal
in its chaos and violence, ‘a madhouse’ with maze-like alleys and cir-
cular stairways (52-3, 149). Wrongfully arrested on suspicion of murder
when he tries to help a dying policeman, Whitey is thrown into the
world of injustice and fear that most inhabitants of the Hellhole ex-
perience. He is rescued and sheltered by Jones Jarvis, an old black man
who has a stronger belief in his own proud identity than the protago-
nist. Whitey has not used his real name for seven years, in contrast to
Jones Jarvis, who insists on people recognising that Jones is actually his
first name. Like Whitey, Jones has a past that a man might want to
escape (wrongfully charged with raping a white girl), but unlike Whitey
he has retained his defiant sense of who he is (‘and I said, “How’d you
like to kiss my black ass?”’ [45]).
Ricans of being a potentially hostile and dangerous white man, his mild-
ness and lack of prejudice mean that he is accepted and befriended. He
learns from characters who have been marginalised on the grounds of
race but who have not allowed their experiences to deprive them com-
pletely of backbone. The gentle and timid Whitey, having settled into
Skid Row, simply does nothing, ‘lost in the emptiness of a drained
bottle’ (2). The present-time part of the narrative is set in motion when
Whitey crosses ‘the boundary line’, moving from the security of Skid
Row and entering a territory that, like Chester Himes’ Harlem, is surreal
in its chaos and violence, ‘a madhouse’ with maze-like alleys and cir-
cular stairways (52-3, 149). Wrongfully arrested on suspicion of murder
when he tries to help a dying policeman, Whitey is thrown into the
world of injustice and fear that most inhabitants of the Hellhole ex-
perience. He is rescued and sheltered by Jones Jarvis, an old black man
who has a stronger belief in his own proud identity than the protago-
nist. Whitey has not used his real name for seven years, in contrast to
Jones Jarvis, who insists on people recognising that Jones is actually his
first name. Like Whitey, Jones has a past that a man might want to
escape (wrongfully charged with raping a white girl), but unlike Whitey
he has retained his defiant sense of who he is (‘and I said, “How’d you
like to kiss my black ass?”’ [45]).
Goodis was only one of a number of white
writers of this period to
use the generic focus on marginality to address seriously the issue of
race from a white liberal perspective at the time of the civil rights move-
ment. In earlier popular fiction, members of racial minorities had often
been depicted as villains. Post-World War Two, however, this began to
change. Pronzini and Adrian, in Hard-Boiled, cite Hal Ellson’s stories of
Harlem teenagers, Duke (1949) and The Golden Spike (1952), and Evan
Hunter’s Runaway Black (1954, written as Richard Marsten). They also
reprint Gil Brewer’s 1956 ‘Home’, a brief and harrowing story in which
a black protagonist has come home to a Southern town where he is
wrongly accused of molesting a white woman: ‘how could he have been
so dumb as to forget? . . . He was home!’20 In other crime fiction of the
period as well, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans are given
key roles. Sometimes, as in Goodis, characters whose marginality is
racially determined act as a comment on the plight of the protagonist.
Other novels, such as McGivern’s Odds Against Tomorrow, Hughes’
Expendable Man, Willeford’s Pick-up and, rather later, Jim Thompson’s
Child of Rage (1972) use racially marginalised characters as protagonists.
In either case, these are novels that represent some of the ways in which
use the generic focus on marginality to address seriously the issue of
race from a white liberal perspective at the time of the civil rights move-
ment. In earlier popular fiction, members of racial minorities had often
been depicted as villains. Post-World War Two, however, this began to
change. Pronzini and Adrian, in Hard-Boiled, cite Hal Ellson’s stories of
Harlem teenagers, Duke (1949) and The Golden Spike (1952), and Evan
Hunter’s Runaway Black (1954, written as Richard Marsten). They also
reprint Gil Brewer’s 1956 ‘Home’, a brief and harrowing story in which
a black protagonist has come home to a Southern town where he is
wrongly accused of molesting a white woman: ‘how could he have been
so dumb as to forget? . . . He was home!’20 In other crime fiction of the
period as well, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans are given
key roles. Sometimes, as in Goodis, characters whose marginality is
racially determined act as a comment on the plight of the protagonist.
Other novels, such as McGivern’s Odds Against Tomorrow, Hughes’
Expendable Man, Willeford’s Pick-up and, rather later, Jim Thompson’s
Child of Rage (1972) use racially marginalised characters as protagonists.
In either case, these are novels that represent some of the ways in which
the
otherness of a different skin colour is akin to noir fatality, determining a character’s
destiny.
So, for example, both Gresham, in Nightmare Alley, and Hughes, in
Ride the Pink Horse, use racial otherness as a key element in their narra-
tives. In Nightmare Alley, as Stan flees, he has an encounter with a black
fugitive that adds an additional dimension to Gresham’s representation
of the society in which Stan has tried to rise. Named after one of the
most eminent nineteenth-century human rights leaders, Frederick Dou-
glass Scott, the grandson of a slave and the son of a Baptist minister, is
a man who is both racially and politically in opposition to the domi-
nant society (‘a goddamned nigger Red’, the real ‘specter’ haunting
Grindle, that of an organised labour opposition). A tenuous connection
is established as Stan and Scott talk their way towards an agreement
about the state of the world, but Scott puts Stan’s own self-serving posi-
tion into perspective by arguing that someday ‘people going to get smart
and mad’, and change things (200).21 In Ride the Pink Horse, Sailor’s chief
friend and ally is the half-Indian, half-Spanish ‘brigand’ who runs the
merry-go-round. The whole setting is built around a Fiesta which is
explicitly symbolic of the meeting and merging of different races, a brief
period when bloody repression and exclusion are put aside in an illu-
sion of unity: ‘. . . But under the celebration was evil . . . a memory of
death and destruction . . . Indian, Spaniard, Gringo; the outsider, the
paler face’ (18). Centuries of conflict in which the once powerful can
easily become the outcast and downtrodden have generated the need
for the Fiesta, and Sailor, who is himself dispossessed, forms a natural
bond with the Indians, both with their temporary illusions of dreams
fulfilled and with their outcast status, as he himself is forced to abandon
his hopes of making good in the world of the Gringos who achieve con-
quest by ‘the buying and selling of money’ (51-2).
Ride the Pink Horse, use racial otherness as a key element in their narra-
tives. In Nightmare Alley, as Stan flees, he has an encounter with a black
fugitive that adds an additional dimension to Gresham’s representation
of the society in which Stan has tried to rise. Named after one of the
most eminent nineteenth-century human rights leaders, Frederick Dou-
glass Scott, the grandson of a slave and the son of a Baptist minister, is
a man who is both racially and politically in opposition to the domi-
nant society (‘a goddamned nigger Red’, the real ‘specter’ haunting
Grindle, that of an organised labour opposition). A tenuous connection
is established as Stan and Scott talk their way towards an agreement
about the state of the world, but Scott puts Stan’s own self-serving posi-
tion into perspective by arguing that someday ‘people going to get smart
and mad’, and change things (200).21 In Ride the Pink Horse, Sailor’s chief
friend and ally is the half-Indian, half-Spanish ‘brigand’ who runs the
merry-go-round. The whole setting is built around a Fiesta which is
explicitly symbolic of the meeting and merging of different races, a brief
period when bloody repression and exclusion are put aside in an illu-
sion of unity: ‘. . . But under the celebration was evil . . . a memory of
death and destruction . . . Indian, Spaniard, Gringo; the outsider, the
paler face’ (18). Centuries of conflict in which the once powerful can
easily become the outcast and downtrodden have generated the need
for the Fiesta, and Sailor, who is himself dispossessed, forms a natural
bond with the Indians, both with their temporary illusions of dreams
fulfilled and with their outcast status, as he himself is forced to abandon
his hopes of making good in the world of the Gringos who achieve con-
quest by ‘the buying and selling of money’ (51-2).
Several other novelists of the fifties and
sixties - for example, John D.
MacDonald, Fredric Brown, Margaret Millar - make strong thematic use
of racially marginalised characters. MacDonald, in The Damned (1952),
makes his Mexican characters part of a mythic structure in which a fer-
ryman carries people across a river that confronts travellers with what
has been there from ancient times - mortality disrupting life’s journey.
The novel opens and closes with the Mexican ferryman, slyly referred
to a god (170), who provides a detached judgement of the hurrying
people of modern civilisation - seeming to him ‘like those bright toys
for children. . . . The expensive ones with the painted faces and the key
MacDonald, Fredric Brown, Margaret Millar - make strong thematic use
of racially marginalised characters. MacDonald, in The Damned (1952),
makes his Mexican characters part of a mythic structure in which a fer-
ryman carries people across a river that confronts travellers with what
has been there from ancient times - mortality disrupting life’s journey.
The novel opens and closes with the Mexican ferryman, slyly referred
to a god (170), who provides a detached judgement of the hurrying
people of modern civilisation - seeming to him ‘like those bright toys
for children. . . . The expensive ones with the painted faces and the key
in
the back’ (167). More usually, black and Mexican characters are
judged by a prejudiced white society, and readers in turn judge the
judged by a prejudiced white society, and readers in turn judge the
faulty
values of that society. From the fifties on, the white male hold
on the investigative role in crime novels begins to loosen. The shift is
evident, for example, in the film adaptations of John D. Ball’s Virgil
Tibbs novels, most notably In the Heat of the Night (published in 1965,
filmed by Norman Jewison in 1967). In some novels, an investigative
figure who is himself a victim of discrimination functions to establish
a sympathetic connection with the victim/perpetrator. This kind of dou-
bling, or kinship of men living at the margins, can be seen in Fredric
Brown’s Lenient Beast (1957), in which Ramos, Mexican in origin, is an
outsider on the police force; he is not representative of ‘solid citizen’-
type society (105-6), but instead is a victim capable of making a con-
nection with a murderer who is himself a victim. In other novels,
investigators belonging to ethnic minorities function to dissect the ways
in which the dominant society fears and represses ‘the other’. One of
the most interesting of such novels is Margaret Millar’s Stranger in My
Grave (1960), in which Pinata, a bail bondsman and investigator, looks
Spanish or Mexican but, as an orphan, does not actually know his ances-
try: ‘“I know who I am . . . I just don’t know who [my parents] were”’
on the investigative role in crime novels begins to loosen. The shift is
evident, for example, in the film adaptations of John D. Ball’s Virgil
Tibbs novels, most notably In the Heat of the Night (published in 1965,
filmed by Norman Jewison in 1967). In some novels, an investigative
figure who is himself a victim of discrimination functions to establish
a sympathetic connection with the victim/perpetrator. This kind of dou-
bling, or kinship of men living at the margins, can be seen in Fredric
Brown’s Lenient Beast (1957), in which Ramos, Mexican in origin, is an
outsider on the police force; he is not representative of ‘solid citizen’-
type society (105-6), but instead is a victim capable of making a con-
nection with a murderer who is himself a victim. In other novels,
investigators belonging to ethnic minorities function to dissect the ways
in which the dominant society fears and represses ‘the other’. One of
the most interesting of such novels is Margaret Millar’s Stranger in My
Grave (1960), in which Pinata, a bail bondsman and investigator, looks
Spanish or Mexican but, as an orphan, does not actually know his ances-
try: ‘“I know who I am . . . I just don’t know who [my parents] were”’
(40).
His own sense of exclusion is so strong that he identifies himself
with ‘the stranger’ in the grave, a Mexican father whose identity has
been concealed and whose ‘blood’, it has been feared, will taint the off-
spring of the heroine: ‘“In this blood of hers are certain genes which
will be transmitted to her children and make monsters of them. Like
her father. Right?”’ (247).
with ‘the stranger’ in the grave, a Mexican father whose identity has
been concealed and whose ‘blood’, it has been feared, will taint the off-
spring of the heroine: ‘“In this blood of hers are certain genes which
will be transmitted to her children and make monsters of them. Like
her father. Right?”’ (247).
In Millar’s noir melodrama, suspense is
generated by unanswered
questions about the identity of the ‘stranger in my grave’, his much
earlier death being the result of his isolation and of the suppression of
his narrative. Only at the end does he speak through a letter that his
daughter is finally able to read. The noir preoccupation with the under-
mining of identity and with the communication of a marginalised char-
acter’s narrative is central to some of the most striking thrillers of the
fifties and sixties. These are novels in which the ‘marginal man’ theme
is turned into an even more explicit examination of prejudice and ex-
clusion. In Dorothy Hughes’ The Expendable Man (1963), William P.
McGivern’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1957) and Charles Willeford’s Pick-
up (1967) white writers, by casting black characters as noir protagonists,
make very effective use of genre fiction as a means of addressing one of
the most pressing social issues of the time.
questions about the identity of the ‘stranger in my grave’, his much
earlier death being the result of his isolation and of the suppression of
his narrative. Only at the end does he speak through a letter that his
daughter is finally able to read. The noir preoccupation with the under-
mining of identity and with the communication of a marginalised char-
acter’s narrative is central to some of the most striking thrillers of the
fifties and sixties. These are novels in which the ‘marginal man’ theme
is turned into an even more explicit examination of prejudice and ex-
clusion. In Dorothy Hughes’ The Expendable Man (1963), William P.
McGivern’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1957) and Charles Willeford’s Pick-
up (1967) white writers, by casting black characters as noir protagonists,
make very effective use of genre fiction as a means of addressing one of
the most pressing social issues of the time.
McGivern’s liberal message is spelled out
clearly. His tactic is to use
shifting close third-person narration to bring us into contact with the
consciousness of both his white and his black protagonist as they play
shifting close third-person narration to bring us into contact with the
consciousness of both his white and his black protagonist as they play
out
a heist-gone-wrong plot. The novel opens with chapters written
from the perspective of Earl ‘Tex’ Slater, not overly bright (in fact, ‘dumb
as hell’) and a very small-time crook: ‘“A hillbilly full of temperament.
To give the job a little tone”’ (11). McGivern organises the narrative so
that before readers see Earl’s prejudice they see his inadequacy, fears
and uncertainties. The focus is on his own poor white trash background,
growing up in a shack where ‘we lived like niggers’, beaten and shamed
by his father for playing with black children (30), and we are drawn into
sympathetic awareness of his ‘half-understood need to be something’
in other people’s eyes (65). Ironically, in the course of the narrative, Earl
recovers his dignity by forming a bond with John Ingram, an intelli-
gent, articulate black gambler. It is not an ‘Uncle Tomish’ accommoda-
tion,22 but rather, for both of them, the desperate reaching-out of the
noir protagonist for contact with someone who might be an ally and
assuage his feeling of dread and alienation. Racial tensions constantly
surface in their exchanges, but as they talk about how they became
involved in the robbery Earl actually ‘sees’ Ingram and recognises how
both of them alike are victims of a power structure that treats them with
contempt: ‘“Well, Novak fixed you up fine, didn’t he? . . . He fixed us
both up fine”’ (153). In their conversations about their poor back-
grounds and the way the rich treat them, Earl’s life begins to acquire
the narrative shape it had always lacked - a narrative reaching its
inevitable conclusion in the fatal decision to help Ingram that allows
him to reclaim his own integrity.
from the perspective of Earl ‘Tex’ Slater, not overly bright (in fact, ‘dumb
as hell’) and a very small-time crook: ‘“A hillbilly full of temperament.
To give the job a little tone”’ (11). McGivern organises the narrative so
that before readers see Earl’s prejudice they see his inadequacy, fears
and uncertainties. The focus is on his own poor white trash background,
growing up in a shack where ‘we lived like niggers’, beaten and shamed
by his father for playing with black children (30), and we are drawn into
sympathetic awareness of his ‘half-understood need to be something’
in other people’s eyes (65). Ironically, in the course of the narrative, Earl
recovers his dignity by forming a bond with John Ingram, an intelli-
gent, articulate black gambler. It is not an ‘Uncle Tomish’ accommoda-
tion,22 but rather, for both of them, the desperate reaching-out of the
noir protagonist for contact with someone who might be an ally and
assuage his feeling of dread and alienation. Racial tensions constantly
surface in their exchanges, but as they talk about how they became
involved in the robbery Earl actually ‘sees’ Ingram and recognises how
both of them alike are victims of a power structure that treats them with
contempt: ‘“Well, Novak fixed you up fine, didn’t he? . . . He fixed us
both up fine”’ (153). In their conversations about their poor back-
grounds and the way the rich treat them, Earl’s life begins to acquire
the narrative shape it had always lacked - a narrative reaching its
inevitable conclusion in the fatal decision to help Ingram that allows
him to reclaim his own integrity.
Dorothy B. Hughes’ The Expendable Man (1963) places her black
protagonist at the centre of a wrong man plot, using colour as part of
the noir protagonist’s alienation. It is the main factor determining his
status as a persecuted outsider. The impact of the protagonist’s black-
ness is all the greater in The Expendable Man because in other respects
Hugh Densmore is part of a life that is the antithesis of noir marginal-
ity and isolation. He is a successful doctor, part of a warm, loving and
affluent family, possessing none of the psychological flaws which
usually undermine the identity and security of noir protagonists.
Ironically, he is chosen as ‘the expendable man’ because he is a doctor
(and hence could carry out an abortion), and it is a combination of
compassion and caution that leads him to make some unfortunate
decisions. Densmore’s colour is concealed from the reader in the early
part of the narrative. It is only at the point at which the law steps in
to begin persecuting him that his colour is mentioned: ‘“This guy says
a nigger doc driving a big white Cadillac brought Bonnie Lee to
protagonist at the centre of a wrong man plot, using colour as part of
the noir protagonist’s alienation. It is the main factor determining his
status as a persecuted outsider. The impact of the protagonist’s black-
ness is all the greater in The Expendable Man because in other respects
Hugh Densmore is part of a life that is the antithesis of noir marginal-
ity and isolation. He is a successful doctor, part of a warm, loving and
affluent family, possessing none of the psychological flaws which
usually undermine the identity and security of noir protagonists.
Ironically, he is chosen as ‘the expendable man’ because he is a doctor
(and hence could carry out an abortion), and it is a combination of
compassion and caution that leads him to make some unfortunate
decisions. Densmore’s colour is concealed from the reader in the early
part of the narrative. It is only at the point at which the law steps in
to begin persecuting him that his colour is mentioned: ‘“This guy says
a nigger doc driving a big white Cadillac brought Bonnie Lee to
Phoenix”’
(58). The effect is to enable readers to identify with him
before they know he is black, and also, as in Willeford’s Pick-up, the
deferral of information about his colour makes us more aware of the
determining force of his blackness: the eyes of the police officers, ‘as if
they were iron bars, moved to contain Hugh’ (90). The resolution, in
which Hugh’s ‘detective work’ uncovers the truth and justice looks like
it will in some measure be done, is in essential respects non-noir, but
the ‘wrong man’ plot and the changes wrought in him do have strong
affinities with noir. As he leaves Phoenix Hugh reflects ‘He had been
light-hearted then; he wondered if he would ever again know the same
careless happiness. He wondered if he would ever be cleansed of his
innocent guilt’ (236).
before they know he is black, and also, as in Willeford’s Pick-up, the
deferral of information about his colour makes us more aware of the
determining force of his blackness: the eyes of the police officers, ‘as if
they were iron bars, moved to contain Hugh’ (90). The resolution, in
which Hugh’s ‘detective work’ uncovers the truth and justice looks like
it will in some measure be done, is in essential respects non-noir, but
the ‘wrong man’ plot and the changes wrought in him do have strong
affinities with noir. As he leaves Phoenix Hugh reflects ‘He had been
light-hearted then; he wondered if he would ever again know the same
careless happiness. He wondered if he would ever be cleansed of his
innocent guilt’ (236).
In Charles Willeford’s Pick-up (1967) our knowledge that the pro-
tagonist is black is deferred until the last lines of the novel. Willeford
is a writer who often provides an end that forces you to reread the rest
of the novel in a different light, and in Pick-up the twist introduced in
the last few lines (‘Just a tall, lonely Negro . . .’) radically alters our
understanding of the whole novel. Like Goodis’ Blonde on the Street
Corner, Pick-up both plays on and undercuts the generic characteristics
of the noir thriller. It opens with a meeting between the protagonist and
a femme fatale. Helen lures Harry Jordan even further into a precarious
and marginal existence, and their suicidally depressed relationship
appears to culminate in murder. Harry’s arrest seems to be another
means of fulfilling his death wish, since he is sure that ‘Blind justice’
(118) will ultimately get him. Ironically, the fact that he is denied the
end he foresees for himself only strengthens our sense of his pathos and
isolation, as do the novel’s closing lines. Once we have read them, we
are compelled to look again at the ways in which other characters have
judged Harry and helped him along his downwards path: the working
men’s comments on Helen and Harry, his ferocity in response, his fight
with the marines over Helen, the doctor’s questions about Helen’s race,
the reaction of people in the prison to him and the views of Helen’s
mother (who rages against his ‘depravity’) are all more comprehensible
in the context of prejudice. By delaying until the end our recognition
of what lies behind such scenes, Willeford has also avoided the overly
explicit message to be found in some of the other white-authored crime
novels representing black experience. It is we as readers who must, by
reconsidering the text, answer for ourselves the question of how far the
fate of the noir protagonist has been forced upon him by the fact that
he is black.
tagonist is black is deferred until the last lines of the novel. Willeford
is a writer who often provides an end that forces you to reread the rest
of the novel in a different light, and in Pick-up the twist introduced in
the last few lines (‘Just a tall, lonely Negro . . .’) radically alters our
understanding of the whole novel. Like Goodis’ Blonde on the Street
Corner, Pick-up both plays on and undercuts the generic characteristics
of the noir thriller. It opens with a meeting between the protagonist and
a femme fatale. Helen lures Harry Jordan even further into a precarious
and marginal existence, and their suicidally depressed relationship
appears to culminate in murder. Harry’s arrest seems to be another
means of fulfilling his death wish, since he is sure that ‘Blind justice’
(118) will ultimately get him. Ironically, the fact that he is denied the
end he foresees for himself only strengthens our sense of his pathos and
isolation, as do the novel’s closing lines. Once we have read them, we
are compelled to look again at the ways in which other characters have
judged Harry and helped him along his downwards path: the working
men’s comments on Helen and Harry, his ferocity in response, his fight
with the marines over Helen, the doctor’s questions about Helen’s race,
the reaction of people in the prison to him and the views of Helen’s
mother (who rages against his ‘depravity’) are all more comprehensible
in the context of prejudice. By delaying until the end our recognition
of what lies behind such scenes, Willeford has also avoided the overly
explicit message to be found in some of the other white-authored crime
novels representing black experience. It is we as readers who must, by
reconsidering the text, answer for ourselves the question of how far the
fate of the noir protagonist has been forced upon him by the fact that
he is black.
Rage in Harlem
Anger
and fear are a part of white-authored representations of black
experience, but there is, as we have seen, a tendency to soften the
impact of these emotions by sentimentally optimistic resolutions
(Stranger in My Grave, Expendable Man) or by representing the emergence
of character traits that seem to offer some hope of healing reconcilia-
tion (most obviously in Odds Against Tomorrow). In the African-
American fiction of this period, on the other hand, rage and fear are
less contained. The pain of the outcast is much closer to the surface.
The narratives, more darkly noir, move towards a form of closure that
is bitter, angry or grimly comic rather than potentially affirmative and
reassuring. The contributions of black writers to crime fiction have been
much more fully analysed in recent years, and in Britain the Payback
Press in particular has made available a wide range of African-American
crime-writing, including novels, for example, by Charles Perry, Robert
Deane Pharr, Clarence Cooper, Iceberg Slim and the complete ‘Harlem
Cycle’ of Chester Himes, who was the most prolific and important
African-American crime writer of the fifties and sixties.
experience, but there is, as we have seen, a tendency to soften the
impact of these emotions by sentimentally optimistic resolutions
(Stranger in My Grave, Expendable Man) or by representing the emergence
of character traits that seem to offer some hope of healing reconcilia-
tion (most obviously in Odds Against Tomorrow). In the African-
American fiction of this period, on the other hand, rage and fear are
less contained. The pain of the outcast is much closer to the surface.
The narratives, more darkly noir, move towards a form of closure that
is bitter, angry or grimly comic rather than potentially affirmative and
reassuring. The contributions of black writers to crime fiction have been
much more fully analysed in recent years, and in Britain the Payback
Press in particular has made available a wide range of African-American
crime-writing, including novels, for example, by Charles Perry, Robert
Deane Pharr, Clarence Cooper, Iceberg Slim and the complete ‘Harlem
Cycle’ of Chester Himes, who was the most prolific and important
African-American crime writer of the fifties and sixties.
Some of the notable early examples of black
crime-writing are most
strongly linked to classic detective fiction. There were, for example, the
novels and stories published in the thirties by the Harlem Renaissance
writer George S. Schuyler, such as The Ethiopian Murder Mystery,23 and
much recent critical attention has been given to Rudolph Fisher’s The
Conjure-Man Dies (1932), a novel that for the first time creates a black
detective duo and centres the narrative on black characters and
themes.24 But while Conjure-Man remains what is essentially a locked-
room mystery, from the mid-thirties on black writers also began to
produce novels and stories much more closely allied to the noir thriller.
That is, they wrote narratives in which the focus is often on the crimi-
nals rather than the detectives and in which there is a much more direct
treatment of prejudice and racism. Even in the Harlem Cycle of Chester
Himes, which features the famous detective partnership of Coffin Ed
Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, the novels are equally concerned with
the creation of a wide assortment of criminals and other outcasts, and
with the elaboration of the teeming life of Harlem, an ‘outcast location’
so intensely realised that the setting itself can be seen to have the same
kind of grotesque reality as Himes’ characters. It is an enclosed,
carnival-like milieu from which no one can escape, a cause of maiming
and deformity that, like blackness itself, serves to mark and isolate those
who are fated to live there.
strongly linked to classic detective fiction. There were, for example, the
novels and stories published in the thirties by the Harlem Renaissance
writer George S. Schuyler, such as The Ethiopian Murder Mystery,23 and
much recent critical attention has been given to Rudolph Fisher’s The
Conjure-Man Dies (1932), a novel that for the first time creates a black
detective duo and centres the narrative on black characters and
themes.24 But while Conjure-Man remains what is essentially a locked-
room mystery, from the mid-thirties on black writers also began to
produce novels and stories much more closely allied to the noir thriller.
That is, they wrote narratives in which the focus is often on the crimi-
nals rather than the detectives and in which there is a much more direct
treatment of prejudice and racism. Even in the Harlem Cycle of Chester
Himes, which features the famous detective partnership of Coffin Ed
Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, the novels are equally concerned with
the creation of a wide assortment of criminals and other outcasts, and
with the elaboration of the teeming life of Harlem, an ‘outcast location’
so intensely realised that the setting itself can be seen to have the same
kind of grotesque reality as Himes’ characters. It is an enclosed,
carnival-like milieu from which no one can escape, a cause of maiming
and deformity that, like blackness itself, serves to mark and isolate those
who are fated to live there.
One of the striking things during this period
is how many African-
American non-genre writers (for example, Ann Petry, Richard Wright,25
Herbert Simmons, John A. Williams) wrote fiction which, like the
noir thriller, used characters’ involvement in violent crime to create
bleak, often savage representations of ghettoised black life. So, for
example, Ann Petry’s short story, ‘On Saturday the Siren Sounds at
Noon’ (1943), is a moving, compressed version of the noir narrative of
the victim who becomes an aggressor - of a good and loving man driven
to kill his wife by knowledge that is unbearably horrifying. John A.
Williams, in ‘The Man Who Killed a Shadow’ (1946), uses the same
victim-turned-perpetrator pattern to make a more direct assault on the
mutual incomprehension that is inescapably part of a segregated
society: ‘Saul, looking timidly out from his black world, saw the
shadowy outlines of a white world that was unreal to him and not his
own.’26 The adaptation by mainstream black writers of the situations,
plot constructions and character types of the noir thriller provides a dis-
turbing means of representing the effects of a harsh environment and
of giving dramatic form to the kinds of injustice that arise from the mis-
perception of ‘the other’.
American non-genre writers (for example, Ann Petry, Richard Wright,25
Herbert Simmons, John A. Williams) wrote fiction which, like the
noir thriller, used characters’ involvement in violent crime to create
bleak, often savage representations of ghettoised black life. So, for
example, Ann Petry’s short story, ‘On Saturday the Siren Sounds at
Noon’ (1943), is a moving, compressed version of the noir narrative of
the victim who becomes an aggressor - of a good and loving man driven
to kill his wife by knowledge that is unbearably horrifying. John A.
Williams, in ‘The Man Who Killed a Shadow’ (1946), uses the same
victim-turned-perpetrator pattern to make a more direct assault on the
mutual incomprehension that is inescapably part of a segregated
society: ‘Saul, looking timidly out from his black world, saw the
shadowy outlines of a white world that was unreal to him and not his
own.’26 The adaptation by mainstream black writers of the situations,
plot constructions and character types of the noir thriller provides a dis-
turbing means of representing the effects of a harsh environment and
of giving dramatic form to the kinds of injustice that arise from the mis-
perception of ‘the other’.
Herbert Simmons’ first novel, Corner Boy (1957), for example, very
effectively employs the elements of genre fiction to represent a funda-
mentally unjust society. He makes the doomed career of a young
hoodlum into a study in racial marginalisation and isolation. The ironi-
cally named haunts of the black teenagers, throwing dice at Club Para-
dise, suggest aspirations never to be fulfilled. The novel centres on the
fates of characters who long for something above ghetto poverty. For
Jake, the ‘bad boy’ protagonist, the way out is drug dealing, and he
briefly feels he has attained the American dream at the wheel of his
Cadillac, confident that ‘It was a good world as long as you had money
to buy it . . .’ (162-3). But a white girl’s accidental death, and the com-
plete misconstruction of their relationship by the white community,
leads to Jake’s ultimate isolation in prison and a belated recognition of
how fully his race has excluded him from the real power structure of
society.
effectively employs the elements of genre fiction to represent a funda-
mentally unjust society. He makes the doomed career of a young
hoodlum into a study in racial marginalisation and isolation. The ironi-
cally named haunts of the black teenagers, throwing dice at Club Para-
dise, suggest aspirations never to be fulfilled. The novel centres on the
fates of characters who long for something above ghetto poverty. For
Jake, the ‘bad boy’ protagonist, the way out is drug dealing, and he
briefly feels he has attained the American dream at the wheel of his
Cadillac, confident that ‘It was a good world as long as you had money
to buy it . . .’ (162-3). But a white girl’s accidental death, and the com-
plete misconstruction of their relationship by the white community,
leads to Jake’s ultimate isolation in prison and a belated recognition of
how fully his race has excluded him from the real power structure of
society.
In the same year that Simmons’ Corner Boy was published, Chester
Himes brought out For the Love of Imabelle (Rage in Harlem), published
by Gold Medal in 1957. It was initially written for the French paper-
back publisher Gallimard after Marcel Duhamel suggested to Himes that
he write a detective story in the American style for his Série Noire. Himes
had begun writing crime fiction in the 1930s, by his own account under
the influence of Hammett’s Black Mask stories, when he was serving
Himes brought out For the Love of Imabelle (Rage in Harlem), published
by Gold Medal in 1957. It was initially written for the French paper-
back publisher Gallimard after Marcel Duhamel suggested to Himes that
he write a detective story in the American style for his Série Noire. Himes
had begun writing crime fiction in the 1930s, by his own account under
the influence of Hammett’s Black Mask stories, when he was serving
seven
and a half years for armed robbery in the Ohio State Peniten-
tiary.27 He developed from the start a savagely comic style that was to
become his hallmark in the ten novels of the Harlem Cycle (1957-69).
There has in recent years been a substantial reappraisal of Himes’ work,
which was at the time most highly valued in Europe, particularly in
France, to which he had moved in 1953, where the absurdity and dark
laughter of his books met with a more sophisticated critical response.
Some American critics of the time responded favourably to Himes’ work,
but the market for work by black writers was relatively small at this time.
Himes’ books did not sell especially well, and he was under attack from
various quarters - not only from white critics who objected to his anger
and ferocity, but also from black and Communist critics. As Melvin Van
Peebles says, ‘Chester saw America unflinchingly . . . hilarious, violent,
absurd and unequal, especially unequal.’28 But the expression of these
views through the surreal extremity of Himes’ crime novels was a strat-
egy that was little understood. Having already accepted hard-boiled
crime fiction as literature worthy of serious attention, European audi-
ences, on the other hand, much more readily recognised Himes’
attempts ‘to communicate sociological protest within the confines of a
literary genre’.29
tiary.27 He developed from the start a savagely comic style that was to
become his hallmark in the ten novels of the Harlem Cycle (1957-69).
There has in recent years been a substantial reappraisal of Himes’ work,
which was at the time most highly valued in Europe, particularly in
France, to which he had moved in 1953, where the absurdity and dark
laughter of his books met with a more sophisticated critical response.
Some American critics of the time responded favourably to Himes’ work,
but the market for work by black writers was relatively small at this time.
Himes’ books did not sell especially well, and he was under attack from
various quarters - not only from white critics who objected to his anger
and ferocity, but also from black and Communist critics. As Melvin Van
Peebles says, ‘Chester saw America unflinchingly . . . hilarious, violent,
absurd and unequal, especially unequal.’28 But the expression of these
views through the surreal extremity of Himes’ crime novels was a strat-
egy that was little understood. Having already accepted hard-boiled
crime fiction as literature worthy of serious attention, European audi-
ences, on the other hand, much more readily recognised Himes’
attempts ‘to communicate sociological protest within the confines of a
literary genre’.29
A decade before he began the Harlem Cycle,
Himes published his first
novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), which drew on his own experi-
ence as a wartime worker in the segregated Los Angeles defence plants.30
The fundamentally serious themes of Himes’ thrillers are abundantly
apparent in this mainstream novel, in which black estrangement, fear
and disillusionment are powerfully represented. The narrator, Bob
Jones, who says that race had ‘never really gotten me down’, encoun-
ters prejudice in California of the early forties that makes him see the
entire society around him from a different perspective - ‘All that tight,
crazy feeling of race as thick in the streets as gas fumes’ (7). The atmos-
phere of violence and the sense of absurdity that dominate Himes’ crime
novels are intensely present in If He Hollers, as the ordinary life of Bob
Jones spirals out of control: ‘I was looking for my white boy again. . .
I was going to walk up and beat out his brains. . . . After that I could go
novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), which drew on his own experi-
ence as a wartime worker in the segregated Los Angeles defence plants.30
The fundamentally serious themes of Himes’ thrillers are abundantly
apparent in this mainstream novel, in which black estrangement, fear
and disillusionment are powerfully represented. The narrator, Bob
Jones, who says that race had ‘never really gotten me down’, encoun-
ters prejudice in California of the early forties that makes him see the
entire society around him from a different perspective - ‘All that tight,
crazy feeling of race as thick in the streets as gas fumes’ (7). The atmos-
phere of violence and the sense of absurdity that dominate Himes’ crime
novels are intensely present in If He Hollers, as the ordinary life of Bob
Jones spirals out of control: ‘I was looking for my white boy again. . .
I was going to walk up and beat out his brains. . . . After that I could go
up
and sit in the gas chamber at San Quentin and laugh. Because it was
the funniest goddamned thing that had ever happened . . .’ (119). Jones
increasingly feels that ‘“I don’t have anything at all to say about what’s
happening to me”’ (156). His fear is ultimately not just of persecution
and mob violence but of America itself. He has tried to conform, but
after the events of the novel, he is ‘cornered . . . small and weak and
helpless . . . without soul, without mind . . .’ (182 - see Figure 9). Like
the funniest goddamned thing that had ever happened . . .’ (119). Jones
increasingly feels that ‘“I don’t have anything at all to say about what’s
happening to me”’ (156). His fear is ultimately not just of persecution
and mob violence but of America itself. He has tried to conform, but
after the events of the novel, he is ‘cornered . . . small and weak and
helpless . . . without soul, without mind . . .’ (182 - see Figure 9). Like
Goodis’
Blonde on the Street Corner, Himes’ novel moves
towards a con-
clusion in which the protagonist cannot commit any act decisive
enough to alter his circumstances. Finally unable to shoot the white boy
or to make a break from the police, Jones in the end acquiesces in a
system which only allows him to go on living on the most debasing of
terms.
clusion in which the protagonist cannot commit any act decisive
enough to alter his circumstances. Finally unable to shoot the white boy
or to make a break from the police, Jones in the end acquiesces in a
system which only allows him to go on living on the most debasing of
terms.
Himes wrote a handful of other non-genre
novels, including Lonely
Crusade (1947) and Pinktoes (1965). The last complete novel of his
Harlem Cycle, Blind Man with a Pistol (1969), was also in a sense placed
in a different category when it was elevated from the Série Noire and
published instead in the more prestigious ‘Du monde entier’ series. This
reflects a process of moving beyond generic boundaries that begins with
Blind Man and goes considerably further in the unfinished Plan B, in
which the trajectory of the plot is towards civil war with apocalyptic
slaughter, towards violence escalating on such a scale that it is some-
times suggested that Himes left the novel unfinished because he could
see no ‘logical answer’ to the problems he was writing about.31 Within
the main body of the Harlem Cycle, Himes uses a range of the devices
of the noir thriller that function to fragment any secure perspective,
to destabilise identity and to challenge conventional judgements. He
uses, for example, investigative figures who are themselves excessively
violent, unstable and ambiguous in the roles they occupy. Multiple
points of view and departures from a linear time frame undermine all
sense of orderly progress. Several analyses of Himes’ work have repre-
sented him as breaking decisively with the existing forms of American
hard-boiled writing, but this kind of contrast is grounded in much too
narrow a definition of the tradition of which Himes is a part.32
Hammett’s Op is perhaps the nearest to the ‘black badman’33 figures of
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, but the macabre humour and surreal vio-
lence of Himes’ novels also have much in common with the noir
thrillers of his own period, particularly with the fiction of Jim Thomp-
son.34 His ironising of the American dream, the creation of protagonists
excluded and haunted by unattainable desires, is a central part of the
noir tradition, from James M. Cain and Horace McCoy to Thompson,
Goodis and beyond.
Crusade (1947) and Pinktoes (1965). The last complete novel of his
Harlem Cycle, Blind Man with a Pistol (1969), was also in a sense placed
in a different category when it was elevated from the Série Noire and
published instead in the more prestigious ‘Du monde entier’ series. This
reflects a process of moving beyond generic boundaries that begins with
Blind Man and goes considerably further in the unfinished Plan B, in
which the trajectory of the plot is towards civil war with apocalyptic
slaughter, towards violence escalating on such a scale that it is some-
times suggested that Himes left the novel unfinished because he could
see no ‘logical answer’ to the problems he was writing about.31 Within
the main body of the Harlem Cycle, Himes uses a range of the devices
of the noir thriller that function to fragment any secure perspective,
to destabilise identity and to challenge conventional judgements. He
uses, for example, investigative figures who are themselves excessively
violent, unstable and ambiguous in the roles they occupy. Multiple
points of view and departures from a linear time frame undermine all
sense of orderly progress. Several analyses of Himes’ work have repre-
sented him as breaking decisively with the existing forms of American
hard-boiled writing, but this kind of contrast is grounded in much too
narrow a definition of the tradition of which Himes is a part.32
Hammett’s Op is perhaps the nearest to the ‘black badman’33 figures of
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, but the macabre humour and surreal vio-
lence of Himes’ novels also have much in common with the noir
thrillers of his own period, particularly with the fiction of Jim Thomp-
son.34 His ironising of the American dream, the creation of protagonists
excluded and haunted by unattainable desires, is a central part of the
noir tradition, from James M. Cain and Horace McCoy to Thompson,
Goodis and beyond.
Another argument sometimes advanced is that
Himes is not really a
‘protest’ writer ‘because his work lacks a sense of redemptive change’,
offering instead only a ‘vast pall of futility’,35 but here again, it is the
resistance to optimistic resolutions that allies Himes most obviously
with the long-standing noir tendency towards pessimistic satiric expres-
sions of rage and disgust. As in Gresham’s Nightmare Alley, the delusive
‘protest’ writer ‘because his work lacks a sense of redemptive change’,
offering instead only a ‘vast pall of futility’,35 but here again, it is the
resistance to optimistic resolutions that allies Himes most obviously
with the long-standing noir tendency towards pessimistic satiric expres-
sions of rage and disgust. As in Gresham’s Nightmare Alley, the delusive
fantasy
of escape is either nostalgic or an amalgam of bogus economic
and religious hopes for salvation. The naive characters, the ‘squares’,
Himes creates (Jackson in Rage in Harlem, Roman in All Shot Up [1960],
Sonny in The Real Cool Killers [1959]) are preyed upon by trickster figures
(Casper Holmes in All Shot Up and the Reverend Deke O’Malley in Cotton
Comes to Harlem are two of the most memorable). Recurrently in the
Harlem Cycle, gambling and religion seem to offer characters a way out
of this entrapment. ‘Hitting the number’, in particular, becomes a
symbol of economic salvation, paralleled by the more conventional
salvation that appears to be offered by religious prophets and sometimes
helped along by looking ‘straight up into heaven [to] find the
and religious hopes for salvation. The naive characters, the ‘squares’,
Himes creates (Jackson in Rage in Harlem, Roman in All Shot Up [1960],
Sonny in The Real Cool Killers [1959]) are preyed upon by trickster figures
(Casper Holmes in All Shot Up and the Reverend Deke O’Malley in Cotton
Comes to Harlem are two of the most memorable). Recurrently in the
Harlem Cycle, gambling and religion seem to offer characters a way out
of this entrapment. ‘Hitting the number’, in particular, becomes a
symbol of economic salvation, paralleled by the more conventional
salvation that appears to be offered by religious prophets and sometimes
helped along by looking ‘straight up into heaven [to] find the
number’
(Rage in Harlem, 86). Religion, as a self-serving financial
enterprise,
knows its place in the hierarchy of human hopes: ‘“Nothing takes the place of God,” Doctor
Mubuta said in his singsong voice . . . then added as an afterthought, as though he might
have gone too far, “but money”’
(Blind Man, 228-9).
The sense of inescapable entrapment is
reinforced in the world of
Himes’ novels by the imprisoning boundaries of race, symbolised by the
hellishness of the Harlem ghetto. This is a world in which purposeful
action is impeded by extreme heat or (in All Shot Up) extreme cold and
in which many of the inhabitants look ‘like people from another world’
(213). In Blind Man with a Pistol, when asked what is inciting people to
‘senseless anarchy’, Digger replies, ‘“Skin”’. The culprit can be identi-
fied as lack of respect for law, lack of opportunity, irreligion, poverty,
ignorance or rebellion, but the real ‘mother-raper at the bottom of it’ is
the fatality of racial injustice (Blind Man, 323, 342). The people’s hopes
for riches (Rage in Harlem, All Shot Up) or salvation in the form of escape
to Africa (Cotton Comes to Harlem [1965]; The Heat’s On [1966]) are rou-
tinely betrayed. The inhabitants of Harlem are imaged by Himes as
physically and psychologically damaged, ‘forced to live there, in all the
filth and degradation, until their lives had been warped to fit’ (375).
What Himes retains of his early naturalism is a strong element of deter-
minism, which stands behind his fantasies of deformation.36 He em-
bodies the absurdity of the black man’s life (he called one of his
autobiographical volumes My Life of Absurdity [1976]) in an extraordi-
nary variety of freakish characters trapped within a carnival-like milieu
that is cut off from the rest of society.
Himes’ novels by the imprisoning boundaries of race, symbolised by the
hellishness of the Harlem ghetto. This is a world in which purposeful
action is impeded by extreme heat or (in All Shot Up) extreme cold and
in which many of the inhabitants look ‘like people from another world’
(213). In Blind Man with a Pistol, when asked what is inciting people to
‘senseless anarchy’, Digger replies, ‘“Skin”’. The culprit can be identi-
fied as lack of respect for law, lack of opportunity, irreligion, poverty,
ignorance or rebellion, but the real ‘mother-raper at the bottom of it’ is
the fatality of racial injustice (Blind Man, 323, 342). The people’s hopes
for riches (Rage in Harlem, All Shot Up) or salvation in the form of escape
to Africa (Cotton Comes to Harlem [1965]; The Heat’s On [1966]) are rou-
tinely betrayed. The inhabitants of Harlem are imaged by Himes as
physically and psychologically damaged, ‘forced to live there, in all the
filth and degradation, until their lives had been warped to fit’ (375).
What Himes retains of his early naturalism is a strong element of deter-
minism, which stands behind his fantasies of deformation.36 He em-
bodies the absurdity of the black man’s life (he called one of his
autobiographical volumes My Life of Absurdity [1976]) in an extraordi-
nary variety of freakish characters trapped within a carnival-like milieu
that is cut off from the rest of society.
As in the novels of Goodis, for example, the
disabling of characters
by the dominant society isolates them and propels them towards trans-
gressive acts. Coffin Ed, with his acid-scarred face, is so severely trau-
matised that, though he continues to function positively as a detective,
by the dominant society isolates them and propels them towards trans-
gressive acts. Coffin Ed, with his acid-scarred face, is so severely trau-
matised that, though he continues to function positively as a detective,
he
is no longer entirely sane. In The Heat’s On (1966), when Ed knocks
out Red Johnny’s teeth, he looks like a ‘homicidal maniac’, ‘dazed as
though he had just emerged from a shock treatment for insanity’ (434).
On his ‘junkie’s tour’ of Harlem, he moves with Madame Cushy ‘like a
monstrous Siamese twin’ and tortures Ginny, knowing that he has ‘gone
outside of human restraint’ (465-7). Coffin Ed’s brutality is simply one
manifestation of the bizarre and random violence that characterises
Harlem as a whole, the inevitable consequence of its exclusion from the
dominant society. In The Heat’s On, the albino giant, Pinky, is an abused
and bemused innocent, too freakish to be accepted by his own race,
effectively homeless and fatherless, and too simple-minded to under-
stand the realities of the society that exploits him. As, for example, in
Iceberg Slim’s Trick Baby (1967) the ‘otherness’ of a different colour is
driven home by placing an incongruously white character in a black
context. Pinky’s desperation leads him into increasingly surreal dis-
guises, as he tries to find an appearance that will be less outlandish than
his own. He is still absurdly covered by a disintegrating disguise at
the end of the novel, having gone on a journey that is pointless and
circular, that takes him not to the ‘heaven’ of Africa but only to Sister
Heavenly, to death and destruction.
out Red Johnny’s teeth, he looks like a ‘homicidal maniac’, ‘dazed as
though he had just emerged from a shock treatment for insanity’ (434).
On his ‘junkie’s tour’ of Harlem, he moves with Madame Cushy ‘like a
monstrous Siamese twin’ and tortures Ginny, knowing that he has ‘gone
outside of human restraint’ (465-7). Coffin Ed’s brutality is simply one
manifestation of the bizarre and random violence that characterises
Harlem as a whole, the inevitable consequence of its exclusion from the
dominant society. In The Heat’s On, the albino giant, Pinky, is an abused
and bemused innocent, too freakish to be accepted by his own race,
effectively homeless and fatherless, and too simple-minded to under-
stand the realities of the society that exploits him. As, for example, in
Iceberg Slim’s Trick Baby (1967) the ‘otherness’ of a different colour is
driven home by placing an incongruously white character in a black
context. Pinky’s desperation leads him into increasingly surreal dis-
guises, as he tries to find an appearance that will be less outlandish than
his own. He is still absurdly covered by a disintegrating disguise at
the end of the novel, having gone on a journey that is pointless and
circular, that takes him not to the ‘heaven’ of Africa but only to Sister
Heavenly, to death and destruction.
The violence of Himes’ novels is, like his
characterisation, surreal in
its extremity. All Shot Up opens with an old lady ‘flying through the air,
arms and legs spread out, black garments spread out in the wind . . .’
(165). It includes the decapitating of a motorcyclist, his ‘taut headless
body’ spurting blood until the motorcycle crashes into a jewellery store,
‘knocking down a sign that read: We Will Give Credit to the Dead’ (244).
‘Big Six’ shuffles along with the knife stuck through his head (‘“It’s a
joke,” the man said knowingly. . . . The woman shuddered. “It ain’t
its extremity. All Shot Up opens with an old lady ‘flying through the air,
arms and legs spread out, black garments spread out in the wind . . .’
(165). It includes the decapitating of a motorcyclist, his ‘taut headless
body’ spurting blood until the motorcycle crashes into a jewellery store,
‘knocking down a sign that read: We Will Give Credit to the Dead’ (244).
‘Big Six’ shuffles along with the knife stuck through his head (‘“It’s a
joke,” the man said knowingly. . . . The woman shuddered. “It ain’t
funny,”
she said’ [287]). Blackly comic violence is a constant feature of
Himes’ Harlem novels, but from the mid-sixties on the elements of
social protest and the whole issue of violence as a means of bringing
about change came more to the fore. Himes himself considered Blind
Man with a Pistol to be ‘his most important work’, containing ‘much of
his feeling about what is happening here in America’.37 The most violent
of Himes’ completed novels, Blind Man represents various visions of a
possible solution to the racial conflicts of the sixties, ranging from
brotherhood and the Black Jesus movement to the radicalism of the
Black Muslims. There has been considerable critical controversy over
Himes’ own attitude towards violence. In his Preface to Blind Man, he
writes, ‘I thought of some of our loudmouthed leaders urging our vul-
nerable soul brothers on to getting themselves killed, and thought
Himes’ Harlem novels, but from the mid-sixties on the elements of
social protest and the whole issue of violence as a means of bringing
about change came more to the fore. Himes himself considered Blind
Man with a Pistol to be ‘his most important work’, containing ‘much of
his feeling about what is happening here in America’.37 The most violent
of Himes’ completed novels, Blind Man represents various visions of a
possible solution to the racial conflicts of the sixties, ranging from
brotherhood and the Black Jesus movement to the radicalism of the
Black Muslims. There has been considerable critical controversy over
Himes’ own attitude towards violence. In his Preface to Blind Man, he
writes, ‘I thought of some of our loudmouthed leaders urging our vul-
nerable soul brothers on to getting themselves killed, and thought
further
that all unorganised violence is like a blind man with a pistol.’38
This clearly implies a contrast between unorganised and organised vio-
lence, and at least some critics39 have argued that he had by this stage
in his life become an advocate of organised, bloody revolutionary acts,
though at the same time implying that he had reached an ‘ideological
impasse’ that prevented him finishing Plan B. In the inset story of the
blind man, he is a figure who is different (not only black but blind) but
who tries to proceed as though he is normal. In consequence he and
the world radically misjudge one another. A chaos of misunderstand-
ings on a subway journey leads him to shoot at a belligerent ‘big white
man’ but instead to hit a ‘fat yellow preacher’. During the ensuing pan-
demonium, in which ‘Some thought the world was coming to an end’,
the black man shoots again at the white man, this time killing a police-
man and being shot down himself. It is a miniature of senseless vio-
lence, based on misperception and correspondingly random in its
effects, achieving nothing by way of improvement of conditions or
resolution of problems.
This clearly implies a contrast between unorganised and organised vio-
lence, and at least some critics39 have argued that he had by this stage
in his life become an advocate of organised, bloody revolutionary acts,
though at the same time implying that he had reached an ‘ideological
impasse’ that prevented him finishing Plan B. In the inset story of the
blind man, he is a figure who is different (not only black but blind) but
who tries to proceed as though he is normal. In consequence he and
the world radically misjudge one another. A chaos of misunderstand-
ings on a subway journey leads him to shoot at a belligerent ‘big white
man’ but instead to hit a ‘fat yellow preacher’. During the ensuing pan-
demonium, in which ‘Some thought the world was coming to an end’,
the black man shoots again at the white man, this time killing a police-
man and being shot down himself. It is a miniature of senseless vio-
lence, based on misperception and correspondingly random in its
effects, achieving nothing by way of improvement of conditions or
resolution of problems.
In his earlier novels, Himes’ tone of edgy
comedy enables him to
round off in a positive way without sentimentalism. Even at the end of
Cotton Comes to Harlem, although the violence has claimed so many
lives that the undertaker ‘was kept busy all week burying the dead’, the
compensation is such profitable business that Jackson finally is able to
marry Imabelle, and Cotton Headed Bud gets back to Africa after all,
with the money from the bale of cotton buying 100 wives. But the
energy of Himes’ grotesquely farcical plots is readily channelled into
something altogether darker, as is apparent, for example, in the comic
cat fight in Cotton Comes to Harlem, when the tussle between Iris and
Mabel suddenly changes from an anarchic brawl to a shooting. Iris
snatches the pistol from Deke’s hand and empties it into Mabel’s body,
‘so fast it didn’t register on Deke’s brain’ (92). Harlem is ‘a carnival
harem’ (All Shot Up, 165-6), characterised by its ‘grotesque realism’: that
is, it is not an essentially positive carnivalesque vision, but one based
on degradation and debasement, in which ‘all suddenly becomes mean-
ingless, dubious and hostile’, a vision of an ‘alien world’ of ‘terror,
hostility, and the loss of meaning’.40 Himes’ street scenes have a night-
marish intensity. The vitality of the people can have a positive celebra-
tory element: ‘Half-naked people cursed, muttered, shouted, laughed,
drank strong whiskey, ate greasy food, breathed rotten air, sweated,
stank and celebrated’ (Blind Man, 261). But his human grotesques are
living in a place that is dilapidated and dangerous, cut off from the
outside world and ill-suited to human life.
round off in a positive way without sentimentalism. Even at the end of
Cotton Comes to Harlem, although the violence has claimed so many
lives that the undertaker ‘was kept busy all week burying the dead’, the
compensation is such profitable business that Jackson finally is able to
marry Imabelle, and Cotton Headed Bud gets back to Africa after all,
with the money from the bale of cotton buying 100 wives. But the
energy of Himes’ grotesquely farcical plots is readily channelled into
something altogether darker, as is apparent, for example, in the comic
cat fight in Cotton Comes to Harlem, when the tussle between Iris and
Mabel suddenly changes from an anarchic brawl to a shooting. Iris
snatches the pistol from Deke’s hand and empties it into Mabel’s body,
‘so fast it didn’t register on Deke’s brain’ (92). Harlem is ‘a carnival
harem’ (All Shot Up, 165-6), characterised by its ‘grotesque realism’: that
is, it is not an essentially positive carnivalesque vision, but one based
on degradation and debasement, in which ‘all suddenly becomes mean-
ingless, dubious and hostile’, a vision of an ‘alien world’ of ‘terror,
hostility, and the loss of meaning’.40 Himes’ street scenes have a night-
marish intensity. The vitality of the people can have a positive celebra-
tory element: ‘Half-naked people cursed, muttered, shouted, laughed,
drank strong whiskey, ate greasy food, breathed rotten air, sweated,
stank and celebrated’ (Blind Man, 261). But his human grotesques are
living in a place that is dilapidated and dangerous, cut off from the
outside world and ill-suited to human life.
In Blind
Man,
the conditions of a Harlem ripe for apocalyptic violence
are embodied in Reverend Sam’s house: ‘No one knew what it looked
like inside, and no one cared’ (195). A ‘horde of naked black children’
swill ‘like pigs’ out of troughs, and the bogus Reverend Sam points out
to the bemused policemen that it is simply an expedient way to live for
a family separated completely from economic sufficiency (197). Himes’
savagely lyrical, almost Swiftian lists of the ‘contents’ of the ghetto re-
inforce his view of Harlem as a dwelling that has become unfit for
human habitation. The eyes of Grave Digger and Coffin Ed sweep over
the scars and graffiti on the walls of an apartment block, all testifying
to the violence and sordidness of the place: ‘“And people live here,”
Grave Digger said, his eyes sad. “That’s what it was made for”’ (251). In
such an atmosphere, it is perhaps not surprising that in Plan B, pushing
the pessimism of his underlying vision to its conclusion, Himes added
the deaths of his two detectives to the toll of escalating violence and
civil war. As one of the novel’s French reviewers wrote when the unfin-
ished Plan B was published, it was Himes’ ‘bloody farewell to literature
and his legacy of despair’.41
are embodied in Reverend Sam’s house: ‘No one knew what it looked
like inside, and no one cared’ (195). A ‘horde of naked black children’
swill ‘like pigs’ out of troughs, and the bogus Reverend Sam points out
to the bemused policemen that it is simply an expedient way to live for
a family separated completely from economic sufficiency (197). Himes’
savagely lyrical, almost Swiftian lists of the ‘contents’ of the ghetto re-
inforce his view of Harlem as a dwelling that has become unfit for
human habitation. The eyes of Grave Digger and Coffin Ed sweep over
the scars and graffiti on the walls of an apartment block, all testifying
to the violence and sordidness of the place: ‘“And people live here,”
Grave Digger said, his eyes sad. “That’s what it was made for”’ (251). In
such an atmosphere, it is perhaps not surprising that in Plan B, pushing
the pessimism of his underlying vision to its conclusion, Himes added
the deaths of his two detectives to the toll of escalating violence and
civil war. As one of the novel’s French reviewers wrote when the unfin-
ished Plan B was published, it was Himes’ ‘bloody farewell to literature
and his legacy of despair’.41
A
voyeuristic private eye who faithfully follows a mass murderess, sur-
reptitiously guarding her; a transsexual Mancunian hit woman; a
Chicago psychopath who takes on the identity of the woman he kills;
a pornographic film-maker who gets caught up in the Profumo affair; a
commodity fetishist and modern cannibal; a detective searching for the
man whose identity he has usurped and whose heart he has eaten; an
addict in a hi-tech scramble suit that turns him into a blur who is given
the job of hunting himself; a 12-year-old girl learning to survive and
kill on the savage streets of a near-future New York:1 in the period
1970-2000, noir protagonists appeared in many different guises, and
their very diversity testifies to the vitality and contemporaneity of this
form of crime fiction. But however aberrant, bizarre or grotesque his (or,
increasingly, her) incarnations may be, these are still recognisably near
relations of the hard-boiled investigators, victim-protagonists and killer-
protagonists of earlier noir thrillers. In this section, my objective is to
explore both the links between post-1970s and traditional literary noir
and to illustrate something of the energy and variety of noir in the late
twentieth century, a time during which mainstream fiction increasingly
assimilated characteristic themes and techniques of the noir thriller.
reptitiously guarding her; a transsexual Mancunian hit woman; a
Chicago psychopath who takes on the identity of the woman he kills;
a pornographic film-maker who gets caught up in the Profumo affair; a
commodity fetishist and modern cannibal; a detective searching for the
man whose identity he has usurped and whose heart he has eaten; an
addict in a hi-tech scramble suit that turns him into a blur who is given
the job of hunting himself; a 12-year-old girl learning to survive and
kill on the savage streets of a near-future New York:1 in the period
1970-2000, noir protagonists appeared in many different guises, and
their very diversity testifies to the vitality and contemporaneity of this
form of crime fiction. But however aberrant, bizarre or grotesque his (or,
increasingly, her) incarnations may be, these are still recognisably near
relations of the hard-boiled investigators, victim-protagonists and killer-
protagonists of earlier noir thrillers. In this section, my objective is to
explore both the links between post-1970s and traditional literary noir
and to illustrate something of the energy and variety of noir in the late
twentieth century, a time during which mainstream fiction increasingly
assimilated characteristic themes and techniques of the noir thriller.
Although literary noir has never altogether
disappeared from the
bookstands nor film noir from the screen,2 there was arguably a period
in the early sixties when the appeal of noir fiction and films was
somewhat diminished. The ‘spirit of the times’ tended towards opti-
mism. In America, as we have seen, there was the continued growth of
white suburban affluence and the mood of expectancy associated with
the ‘brave new rhetoric’ of Kennedy’s presidency.3 In Britain there was
a sense of moving towards the advanced economic and technological
society that America already had, and the upbeat, ‘joyful irreverence’4
of the Swinging Sixties - a time more in tune with James Bond5 than
with the noir anti-hero. In both countries, however, there were at the
same time many tensions, doubts, failures and signs of dissent that gath-
ered force as the events of the sixties, from the assassination of Kennedy
on, undermined confidence and strengthened the spirit of protest. As
Mailer implies in An American Dream, after the trauma of the assassina-
tion the ‘dream’ turns to a vision of violence and murder.6 At the end
of the sixties and in the early seventies, American society was being
shaken by riots in the black ghettos, the assassinations of Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the growing opposition to the
Vietnam War, higher crime and unemployment rates, Watergate and
increasingly vociferous demonstrations of counter-culture discontent.
Though the changes in British society were less dramatic, there was
bookstands nor film noir from the screen,2 there was arguably a period
in the early sixties when the appeal of noir fiction and films was
somewhat diminished. The ‘spirit of the times’ tended towards opti-
mism. In America, as we have seen, there was the continued growth of
white suburban affluence and the mood of expectancy associated with
the ‘brave new rhetoric’ of Kennedy’s presidency.3 In Britain there was
a sense of moving towards the advanced economic and technological
society that America already had, and the upbeat, ‘joyful irreverence’4
of the Swinging Sixties - a time more in tune with James Bond5 than
with the noir anti-hero. In both countries, however, there were at the
same time many tensions, doubts, failures and signs of dissent that gath-
ered force as the events of the sixties, from the assassination of Kennedy
on, undermined confidence and strengthened the spirit of protest. As
Mailer implies in An American Dream, after the trauma of the assassina-
tion the ‘dream’ turns to a vision of violence and murder.6 At the end
of the sixties and in the early seventies, American society was being
shaken by riots in the black ghettos, the assassinations of Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the growing opposition to the
Vietnam War, higher crime and unemployment rates, Watergate and
increasingly vociferous demonstrations of counter-culture discontent.
Though the changes in British society were less dramatic, there was
nevertheless
a comparable movement away from the mood of the
sixties. The early seventies saw bitter confrontations between govern-
ment and unions, the collapse of the boom in the stock market and the
property market, rising unemployment and inflation and worsening
conflict with the IRA. ‘Outbursts of militancy, violence, and terrorism,
the revelations of corruption in high places, and the break-up of the
optimistic consensus’ led many to see the British seventies as a return
to the gloom of the ‘devil’s decade’ of the 1930s.7
sixties. The early seventies saw bitter confrontations between govern-
ment and unions, the collapse of the boom in the stock market and the
property market, rising unemployment and inflation and worsening
conflict with the IRA. ‘Outbursts of militancy, violence, and terrorism,
the revelations of corruption in high places, and the break-up of the
optimistic consensus’ led many to see the British seventies as a return
to the gloom of the ‘devil’s decade’ of the 1930s.7
Both America and Britain, then, were
experiencing the kind of politi-
cal and social malaise that made the cynicism and satiric edge of noir
seem all too appropriate. Even during the sixties there were a number
of films - some of which Silver and Ward group with canonical film noir,
some with neo-noir8 - that drew on the films and novels of earlier
decades, and by the early seventies the phenomenon was attracting con-
siderable critical attention. As Naremore writes, ‘Whether classic noir
ever existed, by 1974 a great many people believed in it.’9 There was
increased use of the ‘noir’ label by film critics and more ‘consciously
neo-noir’ films began to appear (Walter Hill’s 1978 film, The Driver, is
singled out by Silver and Ward as one of the ‘earliest and most stylised’
examples).10 Adaptations of literary noir were becoming more numer-
ous: J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 film of John D. MacDonald’s The Execu-
tioners (Cape Fear); three adaptations of Chandler novels - Paul Bogart’s
1969 Marlowe (an adaptation of Little Sister), Robert Altman’s 1973 film
of The Long Goodbye and the Dick Richards’ remake of Farewell, My Lovely
(1975); Altman’s 1974 film of Anderson’s Thieves Like Us; the adapta-
tions of Ross Macdonald’s early Lew Archer novels, Harper (Jack Smight,
1966) and Drowning Pool (Stuart Rosenberg, 1975 - ‘the last vestiges of
the classic gumshoe’);11 Burt Kennedy’s 1976 adaptation of Thompson’s
The Killer Inside Me; and three separate American adaptations of the
more nearly contemporary but equally noir Parker novels of Richard
Stark (Donald Westlake): Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), The Split
(Gordon Flemyng, 1968) and The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973).
cal and social malaise that made the cynicism and satiric edge of noir
seem all too appropriate. Even during the sixties there were a number
of films - some of which Silver and Ward group with canonical film noir,
some with neo-noir8 - that drew on the films and novels of earlier
decades, and by the early seventies the phenomenon was attracting con-
siderable critical attention. As Naremore writes, ‘Whether classic noir
ever existed, by 1974 a great many people believed in it.’9 There was
increased use of the ‘noir’ label by film critics and more ‘consciously
neo-noir’ films began to appear (Walter Hill’s 1978 film, The Driver, is
singled out by Silver and Ward as one of the ‘earliest and most stylised’
examples).10 Adaptations of literary noir were becoming more numer-
ous: J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 film of John D. MacDonald’s The Execu-
tioners (Cape Fear); three adaptations of Chandler novels - Paul Bogart’s
1969 Marlowe (an adaptation of Little Sister), Robert Altman’s 1973 film
of The Long Goodbye and the Dick Richards’ remake of Farewell, My Lovely
(1975); Altman’s 1974 film of Anderson’s Thieves Like Us; the adapta-
tions of Ross Macdonald’s early Lew Archer novels, Harper (Jack Smight,
1966) and Drowning Pool (Stuart Rosenberg, 1975 - ‘the last vestiges of
the classic gumshoe’);11 Burt Kennedy’s 1976 adaptation of Thompson’s
The Killer Inside Me; and three separate American adaptations of the
more nearly contemporary but equally noir Parker novels of Richard
Stark (Donald Westlake): Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), The Split
(Gordon Flemyng, 1968) and The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973).
There were bound to be some changes in
literary noir as the ‘lurid
era’ of the 25-cent paperback originals drew to a close in the sixties.
There was, however, no real watershed, and one’s sense of continuity
is strengthened by the fact that some of the most notable noir crime
novelists of the fifties and sixties were still publishing in the seventies:
amongst others, Stanley Ellin, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald,
Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Willeford, Donald Westlake
(under his own name and as Richard Stark) and James Hadley Chase.
The influence of such mid-century novelists as Thompson, Goodis and
era’ of the 25-cent paperback originals drew to a close in the sixties.
There was, however, no real watershed, and one’s sense of continuity
is strengthened by the fact that some of the most notable noir crime
novelists of the fifties and sixties were still publishing in the seventies:
amongst others, Stanley Ellin, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald,
Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Willeford, Donald Westlake
(under his own name and as Richard Stark) and James Hadley Chase.
The influence of such mid-century novelists as Thompson, Goodis and
Himes
on contemporary writing was made possible by the reissue of
their work from the 1980s on in Black Lizard and Vintage Crime edi-
tions in the United States, and, in late-eighties Britain, in Maxim
Jakubowski’s Black Box Thrillers and Blue Murder editions. Many of the
new voices of the period offer striking revivifications of the traditional
patterns of literary noir. Edward Bunker, for example, drawing on his
own experiences, writes from the criminal’s point of view about the
effects of imprisonment, deprivation and exclusion in novels like No
Beast So Fierce (1973) and Little Boy Blue (1981). The staple fare of gang-
land revenge and betrayal is given freshness and immediacy by the dia-
logue of George V. Higgins’ first novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970),
the film adaptation of which (directed by Peter Yates, 1973) is judged
by Silver and Ward to be ‘closer to the true noir cycle than the homage
offered by such films as Chinatown and Farewell, My Lovely’.12 A tough
British version of these themes is developed in Ted Lewis’ Carter novels
of the seventies. Long-established noir themes have continued to exert
their hold in more recent fiction. Craig Holden, in his first novel,
The River Sorrow (1995), provides a distinctly modern (or postmodern)
reworking of sexual obsession and wrong man plots. James Ellroy,
writing in the eighties and nineties, uses the more extreme possibilities
of the crime novel to recreate the violence and corruption of post-World
War Two Los Angeles, imaging the beginnings of ‘half a century of
tumult and change in America’.13
their work from the 1980s on in Black Lizard and Vintage Crime edi-
tions in the United States, and, in late-eighties Britain, in Maxim
Jakubowski’s Black Box Thrillers and Blue Murder editions. Many of the
new voices of the period offer striking revivifications of the traditional
patterns of literary noir. Edward Bunker, for example, drawing on his
own experiences, writes from the criminal’s point of view about the
effects of imprisonment, deprivation and exclusion in novels like No
Beast So Fierce (1973) and Little Boy Blue (1981). The staple fare of gang-
land revenge and betrayal is given freshness and immediacy by the dia-
logue of George V. Higgins’ first novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970),
the film adaptation of which (directed by Peter Yates, 1973) is judged
by Silver and Ward to be ‘closer to the true noir cycle than the homage
offered by such films as Chinatown and Farewell, My Lovely’.12 A tough
British version of these themes is developed in Ted Lewis’ Carter novels
of the seventies. Long-established noir themes have continued to exert
their hold in more recent fiction. Craig Holden, in his first novel,
The River Sorrow (1995), provides a distinctly modern (or postmodern)
reworking of sexual obsession and wrong man plots. James Ellroy,
writing in the eighties and nineties, uses the more extreme possibilities
of the crime novel to recreate the violence and corruption of post-World
War Two Los Angeles, imaging the beginnings of ‘half a century of
tumult and change in America’.13
Other writers of the 1980s-90s, especially in
Britain, have used basic
noir plots for even more explicitly political purposes than those of Ellroy.
As at the time of Greene and Ambler, British writers in particular have
effectively assimilated thriller conventions with the serious treatment of
wider historical conflicts. Philip Kerr, in his Berlin Noir Trilogy, locates the
investigations of Bernie Gunther in a very fully realised European
context, March Violets (1989) and The Pale Criminal (1990) being set in
Berlin in the years immediately preceding World War Two and A German
Requiem (1991) moving from Berlin to Vienna and the beginnings of the
Cold War. Also set in Germany, Ian McEwan’s The Innocent (1990) uses
the murder committed as a result of an obsessive love triangle as a
metaphor for the divisions and conflicts in Berlin during the 1950s.
Colin Bateman, in Cycle of Violence (1995), makes similarly metaphoric
use of a traditionally noir ‘inescapable burden of the past’ theme,
weaving it together with the public tragedy of an Ireland in which it is
equally true that ‘“What goes around comes around, eh?”’ (241). As
these examples might suggest, British literary noir emerged during this
period as a much more distinctive phenomenon, with successive ‘new
noir plots for even more explicitly political purposes than those of Ellroy.
As at the time of Greene and Ambler, British writers in particular have
effectively assimilated thriller conventions with the serious treatment of
wider historical conflicts. Philip Kerr, in his Berlin Noir Trilogy, locates the
investigations of Bernie Gunther in a very fully realised European
context, March Violets (1989) and The Pale Criminal (1990) being set in
Berlin in the years immediately preceding World War Two and A German
Requiem (1991) moving from Berlin to Vienna and the beginnings of the
Cold War. Also set in Germany, Ian McEwan’s The Innocent (1990) uses
the murder committed as a result of an obsessive love triangle as a
metaphor for the divisions and conflicts in Berlin during the 1950s.
Colin Bateman, in Cycle of Violence (1995), makes similarly metaphoric
use of a traditionally noir ‘inescapable burden of the past’ theme,
weaving it together with the public tragedy of an Ireland in which it is
equally true that ‘“What goes around comes around, eh?”’ (241). As
these examples might suggest, British literary noir emerged during this
period as a much more distinctive phenomenon, with successive ‘new
waves’ of writers creating
novels that address contemporary issues and
that are capable of appealing to a much wider audience.14
The end of the twentieth century also saw the creation of a large
number of new investigative series, some more noir than others. The
hard-boiled style was developed in an identifiably British way during
the eighties by writers like Julian Barnes (writing as Dan Kavanagh, in a
four-novel series relating the seedy but generally humorous and upbeat
adventures of a bisexual private eye called Duffy), Mark Timlin (in his
long-running Nick Sharman series) and Robin Cook (Derek Raymond,
whose Factory novels are amongst the darker investigative series). In the
United States the formula has been given a variety of strong regional
identities.15 Several series protagonists have contended with the crimes
of northern cities: Lawrence Block, for example (who started in the
sixties by writing paperback originals for Gold Medal), began, in the sev-
enties, a series of novels featuring an ex-cop, Matt Scudder, a guilt-
ridden, gloomy alcoholic (eventually ex-alcoholic) investigator of a New
York in which it seems that ‘people could adjust to one reality after
another if they put their minds to it’ (A Stab in the Dark, 137). In the
eighties, Loren Estleman started to write his rather less noir series of
Detroit-based Amos Walker novels, which tend to move towards detec-
tive-story resolutions, complete with penetrations of disguise and reve-
lations of identity (for example, in The Midnight Man and Downriver). In
the nineties, Sam Reaves introduced his cab-driving Vietnam veteran
Cooper MacLeish, who first appears in A Long Cold Fall (1991), in which
sentiment, human warmth and hearts of gold effectively counteract the
noir potential of the pitiless Chicago cold and the ‘blind universe’ that
grants Cooper ‘the grace of survival’ (14). Louisiana has been another
location well served by tough investigators. At the more noir end of the
scale, there is James Sallis’ New Orleans detective, Lew Griffin, who, like
many another investigator, is guilt-ridden and ex-alcoholic, but also a
university teacher and a writer, postmodern and self-reflexive - and black
(Sallis, who is white, says he was ‘20 or 30 pages in before I realised he
was black’).16 Working nearby is James Lee Burke’s Cajun detective, Dave
Robicheaux, the protagonist of narratives in which the defeat of villainy
is set against reminders not to accept ‘the age-old presumption that
the origins of social evil can be traced to villainous individuals’ who
can simply be locked away (A Stained White Radiance, 302) - a dark
awareness that is in turn moderated by life-affirming contacts with a
loved child (A Stained White Radiance) or an earthy dance (Dixie City
Jam). Strongly positive elements, particularly the affirmative presence
of family, also counterbalance the sense of a ‘whole nother side of
that are capable of appealing to a much wider audience.14
The end of the twentieth century also saw the creation of a large
number of new investigative series, some more noir than others. The
hard-boiled style was developed in an identifiably British way during
the eighties by writers like Julian Barnes (writing as Dan Kavanagh, in a
four-novel series relating the seedy but generally humorous and upbeat
adventures of a bisexual private eye called Duffy), Mark Timlin (in his
long-running Nick Sharman series) and Robin Cook (Derek Raymond,
whose Factory novels are amongst the darker investigative series). In the
United States the formula has been given a variety of strong regional
identities.15 Several series protagonists have contended with the crimes
of northern cities: Lawrence Block, for example (who started in the
sixties by writing paperback originals for Gold Medal), began, in the sev-
enties, a series of novels featuring an ex-cop, Matt Scudder, a guilt-
ridden, gloomy alcoholic (eventually ex-alcoholic) investigator of a New
York in which it seems that ‘people could adjust to one reality after
another if they put their minds to it’ (A Stab in the Dark, 137). In the
eighties, Loren Estleman started to write his rather less noir series of
Detroit-based Amos Walker novels, which tend to move towards detec-
tive-story resolutions, complete with penetrations of disguise and reve-
lations of identity (for example, in The Midnight Man and Downriver). In
the nineties, Sam Reaves introduced his cab-driving Vietnam veteran
Cooper MacLeish, who first appears in A Long Cold Fall (1991), in which
sentiment, human warmth and hearts of gold effectively counteract the
noir potential of the pitiless Chicago cold and the ‘blind universe’ that
grants Cooper ‘the grace of survival’ (14). Louisiana has been another
location well served by tough investigators. At the more noir end of the
scale, there is James Sallis’ New Orleans detective, Lew Griffin, who, like
many another investigator, is guilt-ridden and ex-alcoholic, but also a
university teacher and a writer, postmodern and self-reflexive - and black
(Sallis, who is white, says he was ‘20 or 30 pages in before I realised he
was black’).16 Working nearby is James Lee Burke’s Cajun detective, Dave
Robicheaux, the protagonist of narratives in which the defeat of villainy
is set against reminders not to accept ‘the age-old presumption that
the origins of social evil can be traced to villainous individuals’ who
can simply be locked away (A Stained White Radiance, 302) - a dark
awareness that is in turn moderated by life-affirming contacts with a
loved child (A Stained White Radiance) or an earthy dance (Dixie City
Jam). Strongly positive elements, particularly the affirmative presence
of family, also counterbalance the sense of a ‘whole nother side of
[American]
life, a darker, semilawless, hillbilly side’ (Give
Us a Kiss,
6), in
the ‘country noir’ novels of Daniel Woodrell, some of which (like Under
the Bright Lights) feature another Cajun investigator, Rene Shade.
the ‘country noir’ novels of Daniel Woodrell, some of which (like Under
the Bright Lights) feature another Cajun investigator, Rene Shade.
In series such as these the honourable ghost
of Marlowe is often near
at hand, encouraging the nobler possibilities within the hard-boiled tra-
dition, bringing to the fore the moral integrity, the compassion and the
tough-sentimental view of life that infuse the investigative narrative
with a redemptive potential and make it less darkly noir. Writers of this
period both acknowledge Chandler’s influence and try to differentiate
themselves from him, as Ross Macdonald did in the late fifties, when
he modified his ‘heir to Chandler’ role, declaring that The Doomsters
(1958) marked ‘a fairly clean break with the Chandler tradition’.17 One
way in which more recent crime writers have made the break has been
to distance their protagonists from the identity and ethos of the lone
white male, the crusader-knight of the mean streets. They have done
this either by creating an investigator who is himself black, as in Sallis
and Mosley, or by making the protagonist homosexual (as in Joseph
Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter novels) or part of a close-knit group of
mixed race and gender. James Crumley, who introduced two hard-
drinking, tough-talking protagonists - Milodragovitch and Sughrue - in
the 1970s, is a self-declared heir to the Chandler tradition (describing
himself as ‘a bastard child of Raymond Chandler’),18 but emphasises that
his is a much less traditional morality. He defines his own sensibility as
conditioned by the disillusionments of the Vietnam War and his ‘vision
of justice’ as in consequence less clear-cut. His protagonists are ‘rever-
ent towards the earth and its creatures’19 and sustained by eccentric
alliances with criminals and other misfits. In addition to male bonding,
there are the beginnings of surrogate families - Sughrue, for example,
holding ‘Baby Lester laughing in my arms’ at the end of Mexican Tree
Duck (1993).
at hand, encouraging the nobler possibilities within the hard-boiled tra-
dition, bringing to the fore the moral integrity, the compassion and the
tough-sentimental view of life that infuse the investigative narrative
with a redemptive potential and make it less darkly noir. Writers of this
period both acknowledge Chandler’s influence and try to differentiate
themselves from him, as Ross Macdonald did in the late fifties, when
he modified his ‘heir to Chandler’ role, declaring that The Doomsters
(1958) marked ‘a fairly clean break with the Chandler tradition’.17 One
way in which more recent crime writers have made the break has been
to distance their protagonists from the identity and ethos of the lone
white male, the crusader-knight of the mean streets. They have done
this either by creating an investigator who is himself black, as in Sallis
and Mosley, or by making the protagonist homosexual (as in Joseph
Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter novels) or part of a close-knit group of
mixed race and gender. James Crumley, who introduced two hard-
drinking, tough-talking protagonists - Milodragovitch and Sughrue - in
the 1970s, is a self-declared heir to the Chandler tradition (describing
himself as ‘a bastard child of Raymond Chandler’),18 but emphasises that
his is a much less traditional morality. He defines his own sensibility as
conditioned by the disillusionments of the Vietnam War and his ‘vision
of justice’ as in consequence less clear-cut. His protagonists are ‘rever-
ent towards the earth and its creatures’19 and sustained by eccentric
alliances with criminals and other misfits. In addition to male bonding,
there are the beginnings of surrogate families - Sughrue, for example,
holding ‘Baby Lester laughing in my arms’ at the end of Mexican Tree
Duck (1993).
Like many other recent investigators,
Crumley’s protagonists, though
retaining some of the romanticised qualities of the lone male, are
no longer solitary defenders of macho values. What we see in novels of
this kind is a ‘softening’ of the protagonist by allying him with others,
often with a larger surrogate family that represents those marginalised
by the dominant society (non-white characters, strong women, outcasts
of all kinds). This is a widespread tendency, evident in the little
family collected together by Easy Rawlins, in the bond between the
white, straight Hap Collins and the black, gay Leonard Pine (in the
comic noir novels of Joe Lansdale, such as Savage Season and Two-Bear
Mambo) and in the representative sampling of minorities and misfits
retaining some of the romanticised qualities of the lone male, are
no longer solitary defenders of macho values. What we see in novels of
this kind is a ‘softening’ of the protagonist by allying him with others,
often with a larger surrogate family that represents those marginalised
by the dominant society (non-white characters, strong women, outcasts
of all kinds). This is a widespread tendency, evident in the little
family collected together by Easy Rawlins, in the bond between the
white, straight Hap Collins and the black, gay Leonard Pine (in the
comic noir novels of Joe Lansdale, such as Savage Season and Two-Bear
Mambo) and in the representative sampling of minorities and misfits
allied
with Andrew Vachss’ ‘outlaw’ private detective, Burke.20 Even
in the decidedly Chandleresque novels of Robert B. Parker (who wrote
his Ph.D. thesis on Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald), the
protagonist, Spenser, develops strong ties both with an impressive
black sidekick, Hawk, and with his Jewish psychiatrist-girlfriend, Susan
Silverman.
in the decidedly Chandleresque novels of Robert B. Parker (who wrote
his Ph.D. thesis on Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald), the
protagonist, Spenser, develops strong ties both with an impressive
black sidekick, Hawk, and with his Jewish psychiatrist-girlfriend, Susan
Silverman.
With a few exceptions, most obviously Chandler
himself, this study
does not include detailed examinations of crime novels that develop
series investigators. As the above discussion perhaps suggests, this is pri-
marily because, whether traditional or contemporary, series characters
tend to have ‘non-noir’ traits like integrity, loyalty and compassion -
qualities that make them more positive and resilient figures than other
types of noir protagonist, often sentimentalising them and allowing
them to attain more reassuring narrative resolutions and redemptive
human attachments. The changing nature of private eyes and other
investigative series characters is, however, closely related to develop-
ments that can also be seen in the more obviously noir narratives of
recent decades. The alternative family offers the investigative protago-
nist a real human connection, a hedge against what Ballard, in High-
Rise (1975), calls ‘a new kind of late twentieth-century life’ that thrives
on ‘the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with
others’ (36). It provides a way of belonging that does not involve acqui-
escence in a wider society which, whatever its underlying disorders, has
an almost irresistible surface allure. As will be seen in Chapter 7, it has
been increasingly the case in the noir thriller that various kinds of
‘belonging’ - assimilation, complicity, dependency - have become
does not include detailed examinations of crime novels that develop
series investigators. As the above discussion perhaps suggests, this is pri-
marily because, whether traditional or contemporary, series characters
tend to have ‘non-noir’ traits like integrity, loyalty and compassion -
qualities that make them more positive and resilient figures than other
types of noir protagonist, often sentimentalising them and allowing
them to attain more reassuring narrative resolutions and redemptive
human attachments. The changing nature of private eyes and other
investigative series characters is, however, closely related to develop-
ments that can also be seen in the more obviously noir narratives of
recent decades. The alternative family offers the investigative protago-
nist a real human connection, a hedge against what Ballard, in High-
Rise (1975), calls ‘a new kind of late twentieth-century life’ that thrives
on ‘the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with
others’ (36). It provides a way of belonging that does not involve acqui-
escence in a wider society which, whatever its underlying disorders, has
an almost irresistible surface allure. As will be seen in Chapter 7, it has
been increasingly the case in the noir thriller that various kinds of
‘belonging’ - assimilation, complicity, dependency - have become
nightmares
as disturbing as deprivation and exclusion. In post-eighties
noir, as America and Britain moved into the Thatcher-Reagan years,
there is a marked emphasis on tedious homogeneity and on the threat
posed by the erasure of difference consequent on an addiction to the
pleasures and games of a consumer society. In novels in which this kind
of dependency is a source of anxiety, what often distinguishes the more
positive characters is an ability to form individual bonds in a society
that seems to be losing its capacity for genuine social relationships. Par-
ticularly in American noir, there are fewer of the isolated figures who
withstood the conformist pressures of a small community in the liter-
ary noir of the fifties and sixties; instead of existential loners, there are
protagonists who demonstrate that communal ties need not mean loss
of individual identity.
noir, as America and Britain moved into the Thatcher-Reagan years,
there is a marked emphasis on tedious homogeneity and on the threat
posed by the erasure of difference consequent on an addiction to the
pleasures and games of a consumer society. In novels in which this kind
of dependency is a source of anxiety, what often distinguishes the more
positive characters is an ability to form individual bonds in a society
that seems to be losing its capacity for genuine social relationships. Par-
ticularly in American noir, there are fewer of the isolated figures who
withstood the conformist pressures of a small community in the liter-
ary noir of the fifties and sixties; instead of existential loners, there are
protagonists who demonstrate that communal ties need not mean loss
of individual identity.
In recent critical debate, one question
frequently raised is whether the
fashionable trappings of neo-noir are themselves symptomatic of an
fashionable trappings of neo-noir are themselves symptomatic of an
acquiescence
in slickly commercial postmodern nostalgia. The sense
that ‘noir’ created in the seventies and eighties was a ‘retro’ and nos-
talgic avoidance of contemporary experience has been encouraged by
the often cited essay, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, in which
Jameson gives film noir ‘a central role in the vocabulary of ludic com-
mercialized postmodernism’.21 Referring to Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan,
1981), Jameson notes the film’s ‘faintly archaic feel’ and its small-town
setting, which ‘has a crucial strategic function: it allows the film to do
without most of the signals and references which we might associate
with the contemporary world, with consumer society - the appliances
and artefacts, the high rises, the object world of late capitalism’.22
Leaving aside for the moment the matter of nostalgic pastiche, the most
important question is whether self-consciously ‘noir’ contemporary nar-
ratives are to be seen as escaping from or as engaging with contempo-
rary issues. One of my central arguments in Part III of this study is that
late twentieth-century noir, even when its settings are retro, is as con-
cerned with exposing the nature of contemporary consumer society as
earlier noir was with satirising, for example, the conformist ethos of
small-town America in the fifties.
that ‘noir’ created in the seventies and eighties was a ‘retro’ and nos-
talgic avoidance of contemporary experience has been encouraged by
the often cited essay, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, in which
Jameson gives film noir ‘a central role in the vocabulary of ludic com-
mercialized postmodernism’.21 Referring to Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan,
1981), Jameson notes the film’s ‘faintly archaic feel’ and its small-town
setting, which ‘has a crucial strategic function: it allows the film to do
without most of the signals and references which we might associate
with the contemporary world, with consumer society - the appliances
and artefacts, the high rises, the object world of late capitalism’.22
Leaving aside for the moment the matter of nostalgic pastiche, the most
important question is whether self-consciously ‘noir’ contemporary nar-
ratives are to be seen as escaping from or as engaging with contempo-
rary issues. One of my central arguments in Part III of this study is that
late twentieth-century noir, even when its settings are retro, is as con-
cerned with exposing the nature of contemporary consumer society as
earlier noir was with satirising, for example, the conformist ethos of
small-town America in the fifties.
Whether it is ‘reality’ or just our perception
of it that has changed,
contemporary debate has been dominated by the writings of ‘cultural
specialists’ (academic critics, for example) who produce models and
interpretations of consumer culture,23 thereby modifying the rhetoric
and themes of social-political analysis. The view of contemporary
society as a culture of consumption, consuming not just commodities
but performances and spectacles - and consuming the consumer - come
to the fore, increasingly in the eighties and nineties, as one of the dom-
inant themes of literary noir, shaping the representation of protagonists
as well as the content and structure of narratives. In America, con-
sumerism was clearly well established in the years following World War
Two. As John Updike recalls the fifties in ‘When Everyone Was Preg-
nant’, ‘Romance of consumption at its height. . . . Purchasing power:
contemporary debate has been dominated by the writings of ‘cultural
specialists’ (academic critics, for example) who produce models and
interpretations of consumer culture,23 thereby modifying the rhetoric
and themes of social-political analysis. The view of contemporary
society as a culture of consumption, consuming not just commodities
but performances and spectacles - and consuming the consumer - come
to the fore, increasingly in the eighties and nineties, as one of the dom-
inant themes of literary noir, shaping the representation of protagonists
as well as the content and structure of narratives. In America, con-
sumerism was clearly well established in the years following World War
Two. As John Updike recalls the fifties in ‘When Everyone Was Preg-
nant’, ‘Romance of consumption at its height. . . . Purchasing power:
young, newly
powerful, born to
consume.’24 Reagan’s presidency,
however,
was even more closely associated with encouragement of a
commodity culture and the entrepreneurial spirit, with the promotion
of selfishness, greed, a get-rich-quick mentality and the rise of the
yuppie.25 In Britain, the Thatcherite eighties, during which personal
wealth rose ‘by 80 per cent in real terms’,26 were similarly a time of
rapidly expanding personal consumption. Although ‘all the totems of
an advanced consumerist society’ had been present in the seventies, it
commodity culture and the entrepreneurial spirit, with the promotion
of selfishness, greed, a get-rich-quick mentality and the rise of the
yuppie.25 In Britain, the Thatcherite eighties, during which personal
wealth rose ‘by 80 per cent in real terms’,26 were similarly a time of
rapidly expanding personal consumption. Although ‘all the totems of
an advanced consumerist society’ had been present in the seventies, it
was
really only in the eighties that the consumer paradise arrived. As Peter York says,
...the
eighties effect took quite a lot of things coming together; the
right time, right place, right people, right feelings, right fistfuls of
cash. This wasn’t just a consumer boom. Yes, we did go out and buy
more - more TVs, more VCRs, state-of-the-art hi-fis, etc. - but it was
really a new generation of consumerism with changes in advertising,
retailing, financing, attitudes and expectations. And it’s still with us:
it set the pattern for the next ten or fifteen years.27
right time, right place, right people, right feelings, right fistfuls of
cash. This wasn’t just a consumer boom. Yes, we did go out and buy
more - more TVs, more VCRs, state-of-the-art hi-fis, etc. - but it was
really a new generation of consumerism with changes in advertising,
retailing, financing, attitudes and expectations. And it’s still with us:
it set the pattern for the next ten or fifteen years.27
Britain,
then, was ‘all getting a bit . . . yes, American, really’28, and this
applied not only to the consumer boom but to all the attendant empha-
sis on presentation, performance, the celebrity culture and ‘personal
projection’. There was a huge expansion in the amount of electronic
space available for the projection of images: ‘We were starting to sell
ourselves, now, in a way we’d never even dreamt of before.’29
applied not only to the consumer boom but to all the attendant empha-
sis on presentation, performance, the celebrity culture and ‘personal
projection’. There was a huge expansion in the amount of electronic
space available for the projection of images: ‘We were starting to sell
ourselves, now, in a way we’d never even dreamt of before.’29
Just as thirties thrillers took deprivation as
their theme, the noir films
and novels of the eighties and nineties turned their attention to the
excesses and dependencies of the society of the media, the spectacle,
the consumer. Consumerism is obviously not an element new to noir.
The thirties gangsters, characterised by stylish consumption, ‘swell
and novels of the eighties and nineties turned their attention to the
excesses and dependencies of the society of the media, the spectacle,
the consumer. Consumerism is obviously not an element new to noir.
The thirties gangsters, characterised by stylish consumption, ‘swell
clothes’,
penthouses, high-powered cars, expensive restaurants, were
used as a means of exploring the growth of American consumerism,
often with an anti-consumerist subtext that equated vulgar display with
moral disorder.30 Close attention to fetishistic detail (hats, guns, shoes
and other accessories) and a general fascination with fashion (for
used as a means of exploring the growth of American consumerism,
often with an anti-consumerist subtext that equated vulgar display with
moral disorder.30 Close attention to fetishistic detail (hats, guns, shoes
and other accessories) and a general fascination with fashion (for
example,
the ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ signified by the clothing of fash-
ionably dressed women) were part and parcel of classic noir.31 In neo-
noir films with a retro look, the incorporation of such things can be
seen as a consumer society indulgence, ‘a kind of window-shopping
through the past’.32 And there are unquestionably neo-noir films of
which this is a fair enough criticism - Mulholland Falls (Lee Tamahori,
1996), for example, in which ‘the chief function of these four tough
guys is to light cigarettes with Zippos and model a peacock collection
of suits and accessories’.33
ionably dressed women) were part and parcel of classic noir.31 In neo-
noir films with a retro look, the incorporation of such things can be
seen as a consumer society indulgence, ‘a kind of window-shopping
through the past’.32 And there are unquestionably neo-noir films of
which this is a fair enough criticism - Mulholland Falls (Lee Tamahori,
1996), for example, in which ‘the chief function of these four tough
guys is to light cigarettes with Zippos and model a peacock collection
of suits and accessories’.33
Even retro noir, however, often engages
seriously not only with the
historical period it represents but with issues that are of contemporary
relevance, and the detailed observation of consumption, style and decor
can be part of the critical thrust of the film. In Ulu Grosbard’s 1981
historical period it represents but with issues that are of contemporary
relevance, and the detailed observation of consumption, style and decor
can be part of the critical thrust of the film. In Ulu Grosbard’s 1981
film,
True Confessions, for example, a thoroughly noir tale of two
broth-
ers set in mid-forties LA,34 the whole style of life of the priest (Robert
De Niro) - his surroundings, his dining out, his golf clothes and clubs
ers set in mid-forties LA,34 the whole style of life of the priest (Robert
De Niro) - his surroundings, his dining out, his golf clothes and clubs
-
is used to establish him in opposition to his brother, a detective
(Robert Duvall). The detective’s single brown suit and modest apartment
help to confirm his status as a figure who will pursue the corrupt re-
gardless of the consequences. They are also, however, no guarantee of
his own incorruptibility, and his conspicuous non-consumption is in
part an ironic reference back to the integrity of the shabby private eye.
This is a detective who has been a bagman and who does not ‘give a
shit’ that Jack Amsterdam did not kill the ‘virgin tramp’. He will go after
him anyway. True Confessions is not, then, an exercise in nostalgic re-
incarnation, but instead uses retro evocation of the forties private eye
films both to demythologise the traditional genre and to raise complex
questions about moral responsibility and complicity in a corrupt
society.35
(Robert Duvall). The detective’s single brown suit and modest apartment
help to confirm his status as a figure who will pursue the corrupt re-
gardless of the consequences. They are also, however, no guarantee of
his own incorruptibility, and his conspicuous non-consumption is in
part an ironic reference back to the integrity of the shabby private eye.
This is a detective who has been a bagman and who does not ‘give a
shit’ that Jack Amsterdam did not kill the ‘virgin tramp’. He will go after
him anyway. True Confessions is not, then, an exercise in nostalgic re-
incarnation, but instead uses retro evocation of the forties private eye
films both to demythologise the traditional genre and to raise complex
questions about moral responsibility and complicity in a corrupt
society.35
In films and novels not aiming to evoke the
styles of the forties and
fifties, fashions and commodities even more obviously constitute part
of what is being satirised. In literary noir, this is apparent in the work
of writers like James Hall, James Ellroy and Bret Easton Ellis in the
United States and the left-wing nineties noir of, for example, Chris-
topher Brookmyre and Iain Banks in the United Kingdom - amongst
several others who have contributed to the development of genuinely
British forms of noir. In the noir narratives of this period, the repre-
sentation of consumerism does much more than simply establish the
‘texture of life’ that constitutes the background to the narrative. Char-
acters are (as in True Confessions) defined in relation to consumerism.
The attack on those who ‘consume’ the natural world emerges strongly,
for example, in Ross Macdonald’s 1971 novel, The Underground Man, in
which the greed of the destructive rich, careless of the land on which
they build their extravagant houses, is juxtaposed with the simple
integrity of Lew Archer, identified from the opening scene with the
natural simplicity implied by feeding peanuts to his ‘scrub jays’ (1-2).
In a nineties novel like Hall’s Buzz Cut (1996), there is a similar oppo-
sition between simplicity and rampant consumerism, epitomised in the
contrast between Thorn, with his ‘trial and error’ handmade fishing
canoe on the one hand and, on the other, Morton Sampson, with a
cruise ship that is the ultimate in consumerist luxury. In the comic ‘noir
grotesque’36 of Carl Hiaasen, which takes the commercial exploitation
of South Florida as a recurrent theme, the good guys are the reclusive
drop-outs from the consumer society, like ‘the guy at the lake’ who lives
fifties, fashions and commodities even more obviously constitute part
of what is being satirised. In literary noir, this is apparent in the work
of writers like James Hall, James Ellroy and Bret Easton Ellis in the
United States and the left-wing nineties noir of, for example, Chris-
topher Brookmyre and Iain Banks in the United Kingdom - amongst
several others who have contributed to the development of genuinely
British forms of noir. In the noir narratives of this period, the repre-
sentation of consumerism does much more than simply establish the
‘texture of life’ that constitutes the background to the narrative. Char-
acters are (as in True Confessions) defined in relation to consumerism.
The attack on those who ‘consume’ the natural world emerges strongly,
for example, in Ross Macdonald’s 1971 novel, The Underground Man, in
which the greed of the destructive rich, careless of the land on which
they build their extravagant houses, is juxtaposed with the simple
integrity of Lew Archer, identified from the opening scene with the
natural simplicity implied by feeding peanuts to his ‘scrub jays’ (1-2).
In a nineties novel like Hall’s Buzz Cut (1996), there is a similar oppo-
sition between simplicity and rampant consumerism, epitomised in the
contrast between Thorn, with his ‘trial and error’ handmade fishing
canoe on the one hand and, on the other, Morton Sampson, with a
cruise ship that is the ultimate in consumerist luxury. In the comic ‘noir
grotesque’36 of Carl Hiaasen, which takes the commercial exploitation
of South Florida as a recurrent theme, the good guys are the reclusive
drop-outs from the consumer society, like ‘the guy at the lake’ who lives
in
a cabin that ‘looks like a glorified outhouse’ (Skink, in Double
Whammy [1988]) or Stranahan, in Skin Tight (1989), who lives in soli-
tude in a ‘dirt cheap’ stilt house, ‘delighted to be the only soul living
in Stiltsville’ (713-14). Plots follow the rise and fall of Thatcherite
yuppies in pursuit of the ‘fistfuls of cash’ that will buy them state-of-
the-art commodities (Huggins, Brookmyre), consumer greed acts as a
metaphor for moral bankruptcy (Leonard, Willeford), cannibalism acts
as a metaphor for ungovernable and dehumanising consumer urges
(Ellis). In addition to elaborating the image of the consumer, many of
these noir thrillers have explored the closely related images of the player
and the voyeur, adding new dimensions to character types (victim
turned gambler, gangster, investigator) familiar from more traditional
narratives.
tude in a ‘dirt cheap’ stilt house, ‘delighted to be the only soul living
in Stiltsville’ (713-14). Plots follow the rise and fall of Thatcherite
yuppies in pursuit of the ‘fistfuls of cash’ that will buy them state-of-
the-art commodities (Huggins, Brookmyre), consumer greed acts as a
metaphor for moral bankruptcy (Leonard, Willeford), cannibalism acts
as a metaphor for ungovernable and dehumanising consumer urges
(Ellis). In addition to elaborating the image of the consumer, many of
these noir thrillers have explored the closely related images of the player
and the voyeur, adding new dimensions to character types (victim
turned gambler, gangster, investigator) familiar from more traditional
narratives.
The concept of the player has become prominent
in discourse ranging
from street argot (the player as, for example, pimp and pusher) to sober
academic theorising (the player as any participant in the many conflicts
of interest that can be modelled as games).37 In all of these uses of the
term, the underlying assumption is that players can influence events
and that, whatever their environment, people must be players in order
to be part of the games that determine pleasure and profit. Acting as a
player has become a prime metaphor for moving from the status of
victim to that of an active agent of domination and change. As in much
earlier noir,38 one of the prominent themes is the hidden connection
between criminality and supposed respectability, and the lies and false
narratives that contrive to conceal the fact that politicians are just gang-
sters in positions of power. But whereas this connection was, in earlier
decades, linked to a quite specific nexus of crime, business and politics,
to an interrelated control structure with crooks running the show, the
metaphor of the player and the game is generally used to suggest that
everyone is playing their own game and that, in contrast to the gam-
blers of earlier narratives, they stand at least some chance of influenc-
ing their fates.
from street argot (the player as, for example, pimp and pusher) to sober
academic theorising (the player as any participant in the many conflicts
of interest that can be modelled as games).37 In all of these uses of the
term, the underlying assumption is that players can influence events
and that, whatever their environment, people must be players in order
to be part of the games that determine pleasure and profit. Acting as a
player has become a prime metaphor for moving from the status of
victim to that of an active agent of domination and change. As in much
earlier noir,38 one of the prominent themes is the hidden connection
between criminality and supposed respectability, and the lies and false
narratives that contrive to conceal the fact that politicians are just gang-
sters in positions of power. But whereas this connection was, in earlier
decades, linked to a quite specific nexus of crime, business and politics,
to an interrelated control structure with crooks running the show, the
metaphor of the player and the game is generally used to suggest that
everyone is playing their own game and that, in contrast to the gam-
blers of earlier narratives, they stand at least some chance of influenc-
ing their fates.
The figure of the voyeur has similarly been
given an increasingly
pivotal role in both film and fiction. In film noir, as has often been
observed, ‘the male prerogative of the look’ is much in evidence, though
there are examples of films in which a woman appropriates this pre-
rogative, as Carol does, say, in Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (1944) when she
unnerves a barman by staring at him until he finally cracks.39 In more
recent films and novels, ‘looking’ is complicated in ways that act to
disrupt the traditionally male activity of voyeurism40 by representing
the female appropriation of the power of the look, by questioning the
pivotal role in both film and fiction. In film noir, as has often been
observed, ‘the male prerogative of the look’ is much in evidence, though
there are examples of films in which a woman appropriates this pre-
rogative, as Carol does, say, in Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (1944) when she
unnerves a barman by staring at him until he finally cracks.39 In more
recent films and novels, ‘looking’ is complicated in ways that act to
disrupt the traditionally male activity of voyeurism40 by representing
the female appropriation of the power of the look, by questioning the
extent
to which the role of the voyeur can be equated with masculine
dominance and by exploring the ways in which a woman in the role
of ‘passive actor’ (the one seen) can simultaneously be an active agent.
Late twentieth-century noir also, of course, paid increasing attention
to the implications of a highly developed technology of voyeurism, with
its wider network of seeing, controlling and commodifying. What we
find here, then, is the breakdown of dichotomies between user/used,
active/passive, actor/acted upon, watcher/watched, both because of role
reversals and because of the network of relationships in which, for
example, the watcher is watched by others who are observing and
perhaps manipulating his (or her) reactions.
dominance and by exploring the ways in which a woman in the role
of ‘passive actor’ (the one seen) can simultaneously be an active agent.
Late twentieth-century noir also, of course, paid increasing attention
to the implications of a highly developed technology of voyeurism, with
its wider network of seeing, controlling and commodifying. What we
find here, then, is the breakdown of dichotomies between user/used,
active/passive, actor/acted upon, watcher/watched, both because of role
reversals and because of the network of relationships in which, for
example, the watcher is watched by others who are observing and
perhaps manipulating his (or her) reactions.
In the cinema this has become, naturally
enough, a recurrent theme.
As a male activity it is epitomised in a film like The Osterman Weekend
(Sam Peckinpah, 1983), in which the devious surveillance associated
with political scheming and paranoia becomes indistinguishable from
sexual voyeurism. The watcher is watched, and each watcher observes
the sexual activities of the other, including the snuff-movie-like scene
of the wife of one being killed whilst naked in bed. The whole activity
is so pervasive a part of the television-centred life being led that it passes
unnoticed even when one ‘watcher’ is accidentally stranded on the
kitchen television screen. The cinema of the eighties and nineties also
provides many examples of the appropriation and reversal of male
voyeurism: for example, there is the placing of a man as a sexual object,
as when Dorothy makes Jeffrey undress in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet
(1986), or the casting of Gina Gershon in the sort of role that would
once have gone, say, to Robert Mitchum, admiring the physical charms
of Jennifer Tilly in Bound (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1997). In crime
novels, this kind of appropriation is frequently found in the (non-noir)
lesbian-feminist crime novels that began appearing in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, for example, M. F. Beal’s Angel Dance (1977) and Vicki
As a male activity it is epitomised in a film like The Osterman Weekend
(Sam Peckinpah, 1983), in which the devious surveillance associated
with political scheming and paranoia becomes indistinguishable from
sexual voyeurism. The watcher is watched, and each watcher observes
the sexual activities of the other, including the snuff-movie-like scene
of the wife of one being killed whilst naked in bed. The whole activity
is so pervasive a part of the television-centred life being led that it passes
unnoticed even when one ‘watcher’ is accidentally stranded on the
kitchen television screen. The cinema of the eighties and nineties also
provides many examples of the appropriation and reversal of male
voyeurism: for example, there is the placing of a man as a sexual object,
as when Dorothy makes Jeffrey undress in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet
(1986), or the casting of Gina Gershon in the sort of role that would
once have gone, say, to Robert Mitchum, admiring the physical charms
of Jennifer Tilly in Bound (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1997). In crime
novels, this kind of appropriation is frequently found in the (non-noir)
lesbian-feminist crime novels that began appearing in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, for example, M. F. Beal’s Angel Dance (1977) and Vicki
P.
McConnell’s Mrs Porter’s Letter (1982),41 and subsequently in decidedly noir novels by writers
like Stella Duffy, Susanna Moore, Helen Zahavi and Vicki Hendricks.
Game-playing, voyeurism and consumption did
not supplant more
traditional themes, but they did become increasingly predominant in a
range of noir narratives, including the Gothic and future noir variants
discussed in Chapter 8. This late twentieth-century refashioning of noir
themes is a manifestation of the flexibility and responsiveness to social
change that have characterised noir from its inception and of the
continued vitality of the form. There has been considerable cross-
fertilisation between the noir thriller and related genres. Crime writers
traditional themes, but they did become increasingly predominant in a
range of noir narratives, including the Gothic and future noir variants
discussed in Chapter 8. This late twentieth-century refashioning of noir
themes is a manifestation of the flexibility and responsiveness to social
change that have characterised noir from its inception and of the
continued vitality of the form. There has been considerable cross-
fertilisation between the noir thriller and related genres. Crime writers
have
written for a more broadly based audience and mainstream writers
have adapted noir characters, plots and motifs. There have also been
changes in the way books are promoted and marketed. In Britain, for
example, there has been a ‘deliberate and commendable move by many
publishers to promote good fiction with a criminal element outside the
straightjacket of a fixed crime “list” or imprint. . . .’42 Arguably the
have adapted noir characters, plots and motifs. There have also been
changes in the way books are promoted and marketed. In Britain, for
example, there has been a ‘deliberate and commendable move by many
publishers to promote good fiction with a criminal element outside the
straightjacket of a fixed crime “list” or imprint. . . .’42 Arguably the
various
remodellings indicate that the idea of noir has spread so widely
that it has become difficult to pin down. At the same time, however,
transformations help to clarify some of the constant, recognisable ele-
ments of ‘the noir vision’: the unsettling subjectivity of the point of
view, the unstable role and moral ambivalence of the protagonist, and
the ill-fated relationship between the protagonist and a wider society
that itself is guilty of corruption and criminality. In the mid-fifties,
Borde and Chaumeton drew the conclusion that the ‘moral ambiguity,
the criminal violence, and the contradictory complexity of events and
motives’ worked together in film noir ‘to give the spectator the same
feeling of anxiety and insecurity’, and that this was ‘the distinguishing
feature of film noir in our time’.43 Their summary captures some of the
identifying traits of noir, but the persistence of this ‘network of ideas’44
from the 1920s through to the end of the 1990s suggests the necessity
of revising the Borde and Chaumeton argument regarding the histori-
cal specificity of noir: ‘The noir of dark film is dark for us,’ they wrote,
‘that is, for European and American viewers in the 1950s.’45 What is true
of film noir (as studies such as Naremore’s have demonstrated) is true to
an even greater extent of literary noir. If noir is ‘the reflex of a particu-
lar kind of sensibility . . . unique in time as in space’,46 then the his-
torical limits set must correspond to the greater part of the twentieth
century - and extend, perhaps, to ‘the near future’.
that it has become difficult to pin down. At the same time, however,
transformations help to clarify some of the constant, recognisable ele-
ments of ‘the noir vision’: the unsettling subjectivity of the point of
view, the unstable role and moral ambivalence of the protagonist, and
the ill-fated relationship between the protagonist and a wider society
that itself is guilty of corruption and criminality. In the mid-fifties,
Borde and Chaumeton drew the conclusion that the ‘moral ambiguity,
the criminal violence, and the contradictory complexity of events and
motives’ worked together in film noir ‘to give the spectator the same
feeling of anxiety and insecurity’, and that this was ‘the distinguishing
feature of film noir in our time’.43 Their summary captures some of the
identifying traits of noir, but the persistence of this ‘network of ideas’44
from the 1920s through to the end of the 1990s suggests the necessity
of revising the Borde and Chaumeton argument regarding the histori-
cal specificity of noir: ‘The noir of dark film is dark for us,’ they wrote,
‘that is, for European and American viewers in the 1950s.’45 What is true
of film noir (as studies such as Naremore’s have demonstrated) is true to
an even greater extent of literary noir. If noir is ‘the reflex of a particu-
lar kind of sensibility . . . unique in time as in space’,46 then the his-
torical limits set must correspond to the greater part of the twentieth
century - and extend, perhaps, to ‘the near future’.
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