Strange Birds: Rewriting The Maltese Falcon

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-718
Author(s):  
CYNTHIA S. HAMILTON
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Early Recognition ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Chester Himes ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
Protest Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Detective Novels ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Sara Paretsky

Hammett's formative role in establishing the conventions of the hard-boiled detective formula is widely acknowledged, but the formative influence of his masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon, on specific texts by subsequent innovators has remained largely unexplored territory. Both Sara Paretsky and Chester Himes have paid tribute to Hammett's influence, with particular reference to The Maltese Falcon. An examination of Indemnity Only and For the Love of Imabelle in relation to The Maltese Falcon offers a unique perspective on Paretsky's and Himes's stylistic choices and the social perspectives these articulated. It also helps to explain the critical reception of their work. Paretsky, writing within the grain of a type of social realism associated with both protest literature and hard-boiled detective fiction, achieved early recognition. Himes, writing against the grain, did not. Those of his detective novels most closely allied to his protest writing have received the most critical attention, but in For the Love of Imabelle, Himes used techniques allied to surrealism. These effectively disrupted and destabilized important, socially privileged discourses – and discomforted audiences and wrong-footed critics.

Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, and the Persistence of Urban Forms

PMLA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (3) ◽  
pp. 530-545
Author(s):  
Sarah Wasserman
Keyword(s):  
Ralph Ellison ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Genre Fiction ◽  
Chester Himes ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Psychological Realism ◽  
The Social

This essay investigates the treatment of what I call infrastructural racism in fiction by Ralph Ellison and Chester Himes. Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) and Himes's Harlem Cycle novels (1957–69) chronicle vanishing urban objects and changing infrastructure to show that even as Harlem modernizes, the racist structures that undergird society do not. Ellison and Himes use ephemeral objects like signs, newspapers, and blueprints to encapsulate Harlem's transience and to suggest to readers that the neighborhood itself is a dynamic archive, continually changing yet resistant to overarching narratives of cultural loss or social progress. Himes and Ellison write about permanence and loss in mid-century Harlem in terms that disrupt the social realism associated with the novel of detection and the psychological realism associated with the novel of consciousness. Such a reading prompts a reconsideration of the critical categories–genre fiction and literary fiction–that have, until now, kept these two writers apart.

Cinematic Search for Identity in the Shade of Turkey’s 1960 Coup: The Social Realism Debate and The Hope

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-168
Author(s):  
Celal Hayir ◽  
Ayman Kole
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
New Era ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Turkish Cinema ◽  
To Come ◽  
First Time ◽  
Democratic Constitution ◽  
Realism Debate

When the Turkish army seized power on May 27th, 1960, a new democratic constitution was carried into effect. The positive atmosphere created by the 1961 constitution quickly showed its effects on political balances in the parliament and it became difficult for one single party to come into power, which strengthened the multi-party-system. The freedom initiative created by 1961’s constitution had a direct effect on the rise of public opposition. Filmmakers, who generally steered clear from the discussion of social problems and conflicts until 1960, started to produce movies questioning conflicts in political, social and cultural life for the first time and discussions about the “Social Realism” movement in the ensuing films arose in cinematic circles in Turkey. At the same time, the “regional managers” emerged, and movies in line with demands of this system started to be produced. The Hope (Umut), produced by Yılmaz Güney in 1970, rang in a new era in Turkish cinema, because it differed from other movies previously made in its cinematic language, expression, and use of actors and settings. The aim of this study is to mention the reality discussions in Turkish cinema and outline the political facts which initiated this expression leading up to the film Umut (The Hope, directed by Yılmaz Güney), which has been accepted as the most distinctive social realist movie in Turkey. 

The Many Pasts of Detective Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Thomas Leitch
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Public History ◽  
Detective Novel ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Detective Story ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Detective Novels ◽  
The Many

Building on Tzvetan Todorov's observation that the detective novel ‘contains not one but two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the investigation’, this essay argues that detective novels display a remarkably wide range of attitudes toward the several pasts they represent: the pasts of the crime, the community, the criminal, the detective, and public history. It traces a series of defining shifts in these attitudes through the evolution of five distinct subgenres of detective fiction: exploits of a Great Detective like Sherlock Holmes, Golden Age whodunits that pose as intellectual puzzles to be solved, hardboiled stories that invoke a distant past that the present both breaks with and echoes, police procedurals that unfold in an indefinitely extended present, and historical mysteries that nostalgically fetishize the past. It concludes with a brief consideration of genre readers’ own ambivalent phenomenological investment in the past, present, and future each detective story projects.

scholarly journals Literatura policial y policía: reflexiones a partir de dos intervenciones críticas (José Pablo Feinmann y Carlos Gamerro)

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (17) ◽  
pp. 197-225
Author(s):  
Hernán Maltz
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Specific Interest ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Novela Negra ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

I propose a close reading on two critical interventions about crime fiction in Argentina: “Estado policial y novela negra argentina” (1991) by José Pablo Feinmann and “Para una reformulación del género policial argentino” (2006) by Carlos Gamerro. Beyond the time difference between the two, I observe aspects in common. Both texts elaborate a corpus of writers and fictions; propose an interpretative guide between the literary and the political-social series; maintain a specific interest in the relationship between crime fiction and police; and elaborate figures of enunciators who serve both as theorists of the genre and as writers of fiction. Among these four dimensions, the one that particularly interests me here is the third, since it allows me to investigate the link that is assumed between “detective fiction” and “police institution”. My conclusion is twofold: on the one hand, in both essays predominates a reductionist vision of the genre, since a kind of necessity is emphasized in the representation of the social order; on the other, its main objective seems to lie in intervening directly on the definitions of the detective fiction in Argentina (and, on this point, both texts acquire an undoubtedly prescriptive nuance).

Welty’s Moonlighting Detective

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-213
Author(s):  
Jacob Agner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Chester Himes ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Dashiell Hammett ◽  
Noir Fiction

This essay argues that Eudora Welty’s 1966 civil rights story, “The Demonstrators,” casts a spotlight on the “crime” of systemic racism in the U.S. South through the popular crime genre of American noir fiction and film. Although a mid-twentieth-century category mainly recognized for its depictions of dark cities and shadowy “mean streets,” noir’s stylized world collides with the Closed Society in Welty’s late story and throws into stark relief the subtler effects of white supremacy. Turning noir’s key traits on their head (e.g., black-and-white chiaroscuro lighting, the femme fatale, and the tropes of hard-boiled detective fiction), Welty throughout “The Demonstrators” brilliantly illuminates the subtle tactics of, and clues left behind by, criminalized acts of whiteness. In so doing, Welty’s masterful crime story pays homage to classic noir artists such as Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Using the Social Web for Collaborations in Software Engineering Education

2010 ◽  
pp. 1012-1029
Author(s):  
Pankaj Kamthan
Keyword(s):  
Software Engineering ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Social Web ◽  
Web Technologies ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
Teacher Student ◽  
Software Engineering Education ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
The Impact

The discipline of software engineering has been gaining significance in computer science and engineering education. The technological environment in which software engineering education (SEE) resides and thrives has also been changing over the past few years. A technological revitalization of SEE requires a considerate examination from human and social perspectives. This chapter studies the impact of integrating Social Web technologies and applications based on these technologies in collaborative activities pertaining to SEE. In particular, teacher–student and student–student collaborations, both inside and outside the classroom, are highlighted. In doing so, the feasibility issues in selection and adoption of technologies/applications are emphasized and the use of pedagogically-inclined patterns is made. The potential prospects of such an integration and related concerns are illustrated by practical examples

A Methodology for Integrating the Social Web Environment in Software Engineering Education

2010 ◽  
pp. 457-471
Author(s):  
Pankaj Kamthan
Keyword(s):  
Software Engineering ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Social Web ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
Web Environment ◽  
Software Engineering Education ◽  
The Social

The aim of this article is a technological revitalization of software engineering education from human and social perspectives. It adopts a systematic approach towards integrating the Social Web environment (including technologies and applications based on those technologies) in software engineering education, both inside and outside the classroom. To that regard, a feasibilitysensitive methodology for incorporating the Social Web environment in software engineering education that supports a heterogeneous combination of objectivism and constructivism is proposed and explored. The potential prospects of such integration and related concerns are illustrated by practical examples.

Autofiction: Stained Radiance and The Thirteenth Disciple

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-48
Author(s):  
William K. Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Imaginative Literature ◽  
Political Responses

Mitchell’s first two novels are examined as works deploying the medium of imaginative literature for introspection and analysis of his own past. In reverse chronological order they recreate the narrative of his childhood and early adulthood, in the course of which they present a state of the nation critique of early twentieth century Britain. The forthright verisimilitude of the social realism is in keeping with the philosophical nihilism prevailing in the inter-war years, with the political responses of mainstream parties and of radical splinter groups such as the Anarchocommunist Party appearing unable to change society for the better. Mitchell’s technical experimentation with metafiction and intertextuality indicates the scale of his literary ambition, while his proto-feminist sympathies are marked by his reliance on female protagonists.

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