The Hardboiled Outsider Hardboiled American Fiction As an Existential Idterature
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The Hardboiled Outsider Hardboiled American Fiction as an Existential Idterature A Thesis Submitted to the Conmittee of Graduate Studies in Partial Pulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Trent University Peterborough, Ontario, Canada @1995 by Catherine Anne May Jenkins Methodologies M.A. Program May 1996 The auîhor has granted a non- L'autet~ a accordé une licence non exclusive licence altowing the excIusiVc permettant à la National Li'brary of Canada to Bibliothèque nationaie du Canada de reprodyce, loan, distribute or sell reprodpire,pteter, dissniuerou copies ofhismer thesis by any means venQedescopies&sathèsede and m any fomi or format, making queIcpe d&met sous quelque this thesis available to interested perse*. exemplaires de cette thèse à la dispositi011despersomesintéressées. The author re2ams ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propEiéî6 du copyright m Mer thesis. Neither Qoit d'auteur qui ptége sa theSe. Ni the thesis nor substantial exûacts la thése ni des extraits substantiels de fiom it may be prhted or otherwise celleci ne doivent êûe imprim6s ou reproduced with the author's aufrementrrproduitssansson permissi011. autaiisation. The Haràbofleâ Outsider fs a study of American hardboiled writing as an eristentialist literature. Authors examhed include Carroll John Daly, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James W. Cain, Corne11 Wmlrich, Jim Thompson and David Goodie. Work produced by theee authors is examined in the light of French existential thought as expounded primarily by Jean-Paul Sartre. The pre-eminent popularity of hardboiled fiction was contemporary with the height of existentialism during an historical period from the late 1920s to the 1950s. Changes in the genre and in philosophical thought from the 1960s to the present are discussed in the final chapter. Although it would be incorrect to assume that American hardboiled writers of the historical period in question had any knowledge of the philosophical trends in France, this study is able to show that an existential perspective was integral to the development of the hardboiled school. The emergence of hardboiled writing and the populatization of French existentialism at this time can be attributed to sociological factors present in both the United States and in France. The establishment of a clearly delineated formula within the hardboiled genre ha8 caueed the abandonment of the existential and has led the genre to mass comercialization or, in same cases, to the exploration of new territory . Thanks to Professors John Fekete, Veronica Hollinger, Costas Boudas, Robert Chambars and Gale Fisher. Thanks to iy Mum and Dad who had more faith in me, and in my ability to complete this project, than 1 ayself had. Thanks to Don Cameron and the staff of Sm's Peterborough for the* generous support and understanding during the easly stages of this project. Thanks also to James Spyker for editorial advice and technical support and to Douglas Ord for many thought- provoking conversations. And, of course, thanks to my felïne companions for providing the necessary level of distraction. In meiory of Professor Aïan Orenstein who died of AIDS in 1989. Table of Contents Chapter One: Death by bdufâez Murdes .mo~~~~.~.~~~o~~~ee~~e~e~e~m.13 Ratiocinative Foundations .........J4 The Challenge of the Eardboiled ....16 From Ontology to Epistemology ......20 Existentialisan ...................O.21 The Hardboiled Outsider ............25 Death .............................. 28 Other Genre Conventions ............30 Chapter !Fwo: Morality Morality ...........................34 Sex and the Single Detective .......35 Asermal Machisrno ...................38 The Lead Ejaculation ...............44 A Dark and Steamy Passion ..........46 Uneasy Associations ................49 The Office Bottle .....O............49 The Good Versus the Law ............52 The Satisfaction of Vigilantism ....54 The Inadequcies of the Legal System ..................59 Ciiapter Three: 'Phe Absurd The Evolution of the Absurd ......mm 63 The Contrast of the Postanodern ...mm 65 Hanunett's Absurd Taies ....o........70 The Margins of Modemism ...........78 The Leap into a Surreal Void .......82 An Anguished Hyper-Reality ......... 90 Chapter Fous: Hew Agendas The Structuralist Challenge ........94 A Competing Paradigm ...............97 The Effect of Shifting Patadigms on Hatdboiled Fiction ..........99 The Feminist Detectives ............102 tesbian Detectives .................107 The Gay Detectives ................. 109 The Racial Agenda ..................112 The Continuance of a Tradition .....115 Foreseeable Future Trends ..........116 Conclusions... .........................121 Glossary and mnze Tree .............124 Appendix 1 : Antecedents of the Hardboiled Mystery .................125 Appendix 2 : Hiitorical Table ..........144 Bibliography ......................O...170 Introduction: The Hardboiled Outsider Tbe hard-&il& detective is the exceptional outsider wlio reveals the corntption of the vorld be faliabits. Though be knows the city well he never quite belongs. St is tiiis alienation which allows bfm to see what otiiers hide from themsef ves. Jeffrey 8. Maan An-existential mood has pervaded many of the cultural artifacts of this century. Proninent literary figures like Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus have popularly ken classified as existential writets. In the post World War II era, when American films found the* way into the French market, they were dubbed film noir, due in part to the* existential darkness. Many factors contributed to this dark mood that swept through the arts from the 1920s until the 1950s. Society was reeling from two world wass. A severe economic depression hit many countries in the 1930s. Belief in religion and God had been ahaken by the onslaught of science and by a perceived breakdown of human motality. Belief in an intrinsic gaodnese in humanity seemed almost naive in light of the bleaknese of war and poverty. In the United States, prohibition caused an increase in gang violence as well as rampant goverment and police corruption. In the preeence of this overwhelmingly bleak social mood, a new sub-genre of mystery fiction evolved: hardboiled. Hardboiled mystery fiction was the mass market end of the litetatatate of the Lost Generation of writers. Stylistically, and at its best, hardboiled writing had the saine staccato brevity and statknees aeen in the work of more highly respecttd literary figures like Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and Rathanael West. Similarly to most historical periods or styles, it is nearly impossible ta make a clear dellneation between certain hardboiled and Lost Generation writere. Hemingway's "The Killersw has on occasion been cited as the fkst hardboiled story, although its publication in 1927 pst-dates Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op and Carroll John Daly's Race Williams, both of which saw first publication in 1923. William Faulkner was one of the screen writers responsible for bringing Raymond Chandler's The Ria Sleep (1939) to the big screen in 1946. A cross-fertilization is apparent between hardboiled writers and more respected literary figures of this period. Much of the literature written during the first half of this century adopted an existential slant, but literature would still bave existed in some fornt even without a specifically existential undercurrent. Hardboiled fiction, however, evolved from the need for a generally accessible American existential voice, a way of expressing the experience of angst. Without an intrinsic existential element , hardboiled vriting becanes a formulaic parody . 3 British mystery, with its foundations set in logical positivism, acts as a foi1 to the Amerhm hardboiled. In British, or traditional ratiocinative style lysteries, crime is seen as an aberration in a well ordexed society. Through the use of detection and ded~ction, the cririnal is brought to justice and the order of rociety i8 reatored. In the hardboiled school, the world ia eeen as a place bereft of innocence, a place of corruption and chaos. The detective does hie best to create a localized pocket of order, aware that he is fighting against entropy. The thriller mysteries that evolved from the original detective mysteries marked the next developmental phase of the hardboiled genre. In thriller mysteries, the detective is removed, taking with him any attempt to create order even in his immediate environment. Characters are pulled into situations which seem to occur at random. The reader can no longer assume that anything will be resolved or that anyone will survive. Notions of goad versue evil are obliterated by a pervasive sense of chaotic absurdity. The hardboiled and the traditional nystery, representing two contrasting methodologiee for coping with existence, arose in an era of social turmoil. One group of writers and thinkers insisted on tsying to create an ordered structure to overpawer, or at leaet mute, the chaos it saw: the logical poeitiviets and traditional mystery writers. The other group acknawledged the disarray and chose instead to 4 explore the human reaction to the violent chaos into which society had fallen. Traditional mysteries are most concerned with epistemological queetionsr mwhodunnit?w By assembling facts through deductive logic, we can attain knowledge. A nystery is an arachair puzzle to be solved with the same gaming skille as a crossword or mathematical problem. There is no greater mystery which cannot be similarly solved. The inception