Hard-Boiled Intimations

The opening chapter explains the sudden advent of hard-boiled writing in the 1920s, to clarify why this curious genre emerged when it did, and what continues to beguile readers as much formally as narratively. If that hardly frames a new critical perspective, the questions are still worth reviewing to show why sociological, historical, even formalist interpretations so often misunderstand the appeal. A more productive approach that focuses on strategies of early hard-boiled writing discloses how it anticipated later, genuinely accomplished detective fiction, which diverts readers’ eyes seductively away from plot and psychology. The most celebrated of early writers—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James Cain—indelibly stamped the genre by deflecting attention from plot to the interest objects hold in themselves. As well, they created fictional heroes notable for garish self-expression rather than credible character, and who thus finally (if paradoxically) remain winningly two-dimensional.

Five Murders in a Fictional City

<p>Dashiell Hammett is best remembered for a series of attributes that are at best chimerical and at worst outright misleading. This thesis will briefly look at each of these red herrings and how they originated before offering an alternate theory for interpreting his work. The superseded reading strategies are: that he invented the hard-boiled detective – as exemplified by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon; that he translated his real-life experience as a detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency into his fiction, thereby giving it a realistic, quasi-factual quality; and his unique combination of the excess and hedonism of the "roaring 20s" with a brand of nascent communism are deeply coded in his fiction. The foundation for all of these misconceptions is the dialogue between Howard Haycraft's description of him in Murder for Pleasure and Raymond Chandler’s response, in the famous essay, “The Simple Art of Murder”. The one truth that they agree on, and which survives in the critical discourse is that Hammett was an innovative and effective prose stylist. This thesis looks past these conceptions of Hammett, and offers an alternate quality for which Hammett should be remembered: his reconfiguration of the detective formula not as a means in and of itself, but as a building block for stories that have a traditional novelistic value. This thesis uses five of the murders amongst the numerous killings in Red Harvest to illustrate this reading strategy in detail. Hammett's reconfiguration of this central genre feature lives on in numerous modern works of fiction and film that are broadly in the action or adventure genres.</p>

Five Murders in a Fictional City

<p>Dashiell Hammett is best remembered for a series of attributes that are at best chimerical and at worst outright misleading. This thesis will briefly look at each of these red herrings and how they originated before offering an alternate theory for interpreting his work. The superseded reading strategies are: that he invented the hard-boiled detective – as exemplified by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon; that he translated his real-life experience as a detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency into his fiction, thereby giving it a realistic, quasi-factual quality; and his unique combination of the excess and hedonism of the "roaring 20s" with a brand of nascent communism are deeply coded in his fiction. The foundation for all of these misconceptions is the dialogue between Howard Haycraft's description of him in Murder for Pleasure and Raymond Chandler’s response, in the famous essay, “The Simple Art of Murder”. The one truth that they agree on, and which survives in the critical discourse is that Hammett was an innovative and effective prose stylist. This thesis looks past these conceptions of Hammett, and offers an alternate quality for which Hammett should be remembered: his reconfiguration of the detective formula not as a means in and of itself, but as a building block for stories that have a traditional novelistic value. This thesis uses five of the murders amongst the numerous killings in Red Harvest to illustrate this reading strategy in detail. Hammett's reconfiguration of this central genre feature lives on in numerous modern works of fiction and film that are broadly in the action or adventure genres.</p>

Sześć odcieni czerni. Szkice o klasykach powieści noir

Książka Sześć odcieni czerni. Szkice o klasykach powieści noir jest, w zamierzeniu autora, uzupełnieniem istotnej luki w polskim literaturoznawstwie, jaką jest brak naukowej refleksji nad zjawiskiem znanym jako powieść noir. Stosowane w Polsce od kilkudziesięciu lat określenie „czarny kryminał” jest z jednej strony mylące, z drugiej niemające swego odpowiednika w żadnym innym języku, z trzeciej zacierające związek tej literatury z filmem noir, z czwartej wreszcie nieoddające istoty samego zjawiska. Proponowane tu szkice dotyczą sześciu najważniejszych przedstawicieli prozy określanej mianem noir w literaturze amerykańskiej, którzy swoje utwory napisali i wydali między 1929 i 1960 rokiem. Są to Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis i Jim Thompson. Każdy w nich w indywidualny sposób przedstawiał wizję świata i kreował swoich bohaterów, współtworząc tym samym zjawisko, które określamy dziś jako prozę noir. Zawartym w niniejszej książce szkicom poświęconym autorom uznanym od lat za klasyków literatury kryminalnej, Hammettowi, Cainowi i Chandlerowi, towarzyszą analizy dotyczące mniej znanych twórców, Woolricha, Goodisa, Thompsona, mających – szczególnie na gruncie polskim – status pisarzy zapomnianych, nieczytanych i nietłumaczonych, a których wkład w zjawisko literatury noir trudno jednak przecenić.

Three Layers of Metaphors in Ross Macdonald’s "Black Money"

In his early career, Kenneth Millar, better known as Ross Macdonald, emulated the style of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. By the 1960s he had established himself as a distinct voice in the hardboiled genre. In his Lew Archer series, he conveys the complexity of his characters and settings primarily by the use of metaphors. In his 1966 novel Black Money the device performs three functions. In the case of minor characters, the author uses metaphors to comment on Californian society. Concurrently, metaphors describing major characters allow him to develop their dramatic arcs, whereas the recurring elements of the leitmotif serve to demonstrate the narrating detective’s growing concerns with the ongoing investigation. Arguably, it was Macdonald’s use of metaphors that helped define his unique voice.