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The 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' 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, , , James W. Cain, Corne11 Wmlrich, 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 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 of the historical period in question had any knowledge of the philosophical trends in , 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 ...... 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 ...... 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 , 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 as well as rampant goverment and corruption. In the preeence of this overwhelmingly bleak social mood, a new sub-genre of 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, 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 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 of the hardboiled genre marks a turning point within mystery fiction.The hardboiled school rejects the traditional, structared way of viewing the world and instead addresses itself ta more metaphysical, epistemological questions. In the vernacular of the genre these are sometimes labelled "whydunnits. Concern is primarily focussed on the etate of mind of the detective, , or the victim of circumstance. The psychological, emotional and moral characterietics of the individual, observed from either a first or third person perspective, attain greater prominence in the writing. Although a detective may be on the scene, there is no guarantee that the crime which ha has been hired to solve is the one he will solve. He will stiimble, make errors of judgenent and be tempted by money and blondes. This detective is not a thinking machine; he is much more human than his ratiocinative cousin. Although a mystery may be afoot, the reader cannot assume that it will be completely, 5 satisfactorily teaolved or that the crininal will be brought to justice. The term whardboiledm has often ken casually used and il1 defined. Dictionaies most often define mhardboiledu as an informa1 tern meaning callous or tough. The etymology of the word is never given nor is there a tecord of the first literary usage. Consequently, any definition must be constmcted from a series of definitions of the writing style and the of the hardboiled or anti-hero. T.J. Binyon assembled a list of traits which differentiated the British private detective (eg. traditional characters like or ) from the American private eye (eg. hardboiled characters like or ).

1 Ptivate detective 1 private are Rural or urban setting Urban setting ------Closed society , with Open society, with limited numF-r of suspects, indefinite number of who are introduced at the 8uspect8, who are beginning of the narrative introduced throughout the narrative

--- Detective is usually hired Detective is usually hired I to solve a crime Tinvestigate asituation Detective often ha8 an Detective may have assistant with whom he ha8 colleagues or a devoted a Holmes-Watson secret- relationship Detective baoically static: Detective baeically mobile; remains in one place to moves froa place to place interview suspects to interview characters Detective and police co- Deteetive and police I operate I usually antagonistic 1 Police usually honest 1 Police often compt Little vgolent action, and Much vfolent action confined to the conclusion thtoughout namative if it occurs I rare Organized crime common No sex; love interest only Sex; love interest between between -or characters detective and client or detective and secret- 1 Intake of alcohol normal 1 fntake of alcohs excessive Third-person narration or Usually first-person first-person narration by narrative by detective Watson-type figure

There are some exceptions to this table. Nevertheless defining the differences between the two sub-genre detectives by broad strokes is a usetul introductory step. klready it becomes apparent that the hardboiled detective functions very differently from his -traditional cousin. To this can be added the list of characteristics of the hardboiled detective conceived of by David Geherin: Brave, courageous, resourceful, decisive, incorruptible, fiercely independent, he is a solitary individual, poor but honest, who follaws the rigorous demande of his own personal code in fighting for truth, justice, and what is right. (APE198)

Geherin concludes that the haràboiled detective represents an urbanization of the hero of the 1800s. The urban environment is an important element in the shaping of the hardboiled detective, As David Madden observes: The characteristics of the tough vision are determined, of course, bp the world it perceives, but it reflects that siosld in a way that is at once an objective description and an ïmplicit judgement of it. Reacting in kind to the indifferent, violent, deceptive world that iade him, the tough guy describes and responda objectively to a world that treats hin like an object. (mxvii)

Albert Canus similarly described Amerfcan atoughw as: ...reducing man either to his elementals or to his external reactions and to his behaviour. It does not chooee feelings or passions to give a detailed description of... (a265)

The sense of distance and objectivity implied in the descriptions by both Madden and Camus is most apparent in hardboiled writing undertaken from a third person perspective but less apparent when the first person is used. Kardboiled niting does employ both of these voices. With the use of a third-person narrative, the reader is party to the actions of the detective but his thoaghts are hidden. Consequently the reader is presented only with hard, impenetrable surfaces. There is hwever, another important element to the hardboiled hero. In the* introduction to The Great American Detective William Kittredge and Steven Krauzer state: At heart, the bard-boiled dick is a raniantic: he nust be, because his grandly optimistic delusion that he, working alone, can maintain societyts order, ia continually king kicked in the teeth. (GAD xvii) True, the hardboiled detective is a romantic hero, but his optimism is iad rathet than delueional; he realizes he cannot constrpct an ordered society. His romanticilrm lies in his morality, his ability to act correctly. When the fkst person voice is used, allawing the penetration of the interior world of the hardboiled detective, he is often revealed to be softer inside than one might expect from his externalized actions. The most complete and accurate definition of the hardboiled style is provided by Francis Nevins Jr. He prefers to refer to this genre as noir awing to its relation to film noir. Many fiction wsiters moved to during the 1930s to mite for the screen and many hardboiled novels were produced as fia noir. Noir also acknawledges the relation to the French Série Noire. This line of books was founded in 1945 by the French press Gallimard and initially consisted of translations of American hardboiled fiction. Nevins defines noir as follows: The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt, and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endinga and a preference fot resolution heavy with doom but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid ptry of word (if the work was a or story) or image (if the work was a movie). (RJ vii) 9 ~otal1 of these elements are necessarily present in every novel but Nevins's definition covers the full spectrum of hardboiled writing fron detective to thriller.

Some historias and theoreticians, including John G. Cawelti, limit the hardboiled gense to the private eye

stories. Certainly Carroll John Daly, a Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandlers and many others fa11 hto this category. By the 1950s hwever, perhaps with the fitet efforts of (1947), the hardboiled detective had lost his angst and integrity and had became a formulaic parody of his former self. Utilizing Nevinsrs definition allaws for the exploration of a more diverse territory than detective novels. By the 1950s the hardboiled element seemed to abandon the detective story in favour of the mystery thriller. The strongest writers in this field were Corne11

Very little critical work is available on Daly and, until recently, most of the Race Williams stories wete out of print. Ctitical works by William F. Nolan and G.A. Finch appear in The Annchair Detective, numbers 13 :2 :112 and 4 :1 t 1 respectively . A great nunber of articles and books have ken written on Hammett. Of those available, Diane Johnson's Dashiell Hammett: A Liie is perhaps the moat comprehensive.

A great deal of materialis also available on Chandler, including novelty items like maps and photos of Raymond Chandler's . Comprehensive publication of his notebooks, letters and unpublished manuscripts has also ben undertaken. A etudy of Chandler, based on hie own notee, was written by Philip Durham, and ie entitled Down These Mean Streets a Man ~ustGO. W~olrich,~James M. Cain,' Jim Thompson,' and David Goodis.' In much of the work by these authors, the detective is replaced by an absurdiet anti-hero, a man on the street or an amateur c~iminal,who finds himself in circumstances beyond his control. In "The Hardboiled Outsider,- the field of exploration will be limited primarily to hatdboiled novels, novellas and serials. Passing references may be made to short stories or film versions of sane texts. Although these delineations are arbitrary, they are necessary owing to the vastnees of the territory. The existential philosophy used will be drawn from the French writers producing work concurrent with the historical period under exploration. Research has revealed that bath Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus explored and were inspired by American hardboiled fiction and so it seems fitting to

See Francis Nevins Jrm8swork on Woolrich, available in the introductions to the Ballantine (Randai HouSe) editions of Woolrich8s stories. Nevin88 work on Woolrich also appeared in 3he Annchair Deteetive 2~1829,2:2:103, 2:3r180 and a later article entitled "The Years Before Suspenseu in 12:2:106. Nevins has al80 completed a book entitled Co- w001rich: First YOU Dregg, Then You Die, ' See John Carr' s interview with Cain in 16: 1 :4 and Roy Hoopes biography of James Ma Cain. ' With the recent revival of intetest in Thompson's writing, articles and a biography have emerged. See WaR. Runey8s Vim Thampson and the Instant Loss of Innocencew in 18:1:5 and Michael McCauleyrs a Thonmeon: Slee~Wj.th the Devil ( 1991). ' Very little information ie available on Goodis. To date the only biography available is in French; Philippe Garnier's Goodis: la vie en noir et blgec (1984). 11 draw iost heavily on both the philosophical and literaty work of these two niters. Theoretical perspectives will be &am from a number of authors specializing in hardboiled and mysteq criticism, as well as the larger field of . Theotetical work

considered will include tees by John O. Cawelti, Francis Nevins Jr., David Madden, David Gehesin, Carolyn See, Stefano Tani, Brian HcHale, Robert Scholes and Linda Hutcheon. Chapter One: Death by Mu~derwill delineate the conventions of the nystery-the formula of the genre. It will also discues the existential foundations of the hardboiled school . Chapter 'ltiro: Morality deals with issues of sex, romen, alcohol, and the good versus the law. Ail of these issues are observed from the position of the moral dilemma they pose for the hardboiled detective and hm his strong persona1 morality can be seen as foundational to an existential perspective. Chapter Three: The Absiud embraces hardboiled detective novele and, to a greater degree, the hardboiled thriller mysteriee of the pst-World War II era. Through a number of examples, these works are found to reveal elements of the existential absurd as well as etylistic techniques which anticipate the postmodern. 12 New Agendas are discueeed in Chapter Four. Since the 1960s, many writers have been dubbed mhardboiledw although, in coaparison with the authentic hardboiled writers of an earlier era, w>st pale. This chapter explores the leading edge agendas which have replaced the existential exploration of earlier hardbolled writing both in tenus of mystery fiction and new philosophical and theoretical paradigis. To conclude, existentialism was an element intrinsic to the nature of the hardboiled. Once this element was displaced and diluted, the hardboiled became a parody of its former self. Hardboiled writing was a sub-genre that existed during a specific period of the due to a unique set of sociological factors. Also included is a glossary of tenus found within the genrer two historical appendices and a selective bibliography. Chapter One: Death by âturder

C3ezue Conventions of the Hardboiled Detective

If philosophy has anything to do witiz wisdonz therets certainly not a grain of that in Kind, and quite often a grain in the detective stories. Wittgenstein Sartre once noted that in a way he was leadïng a double life: he was still far more wfllfag to read Serie Noire novels than Wittgenstein. Benvenuti & Rizzoni

The most conmonly committed crime in fictional detective novels is murder. who are initially hired for some trivial misdemeanour usually find murder in the path of their investigation. For example, Philip Marlowe is hired by General Stemwood to persuade a blackmailer to desist. Hwever, by the end of The ~iaSlee~

(1939), the body count is up to five. As American detective novelist S.S. Van Dine (a.k.a. Willard Huntington Wright)

Crime has always exerted a psofound fascination ovet humanity, and the more serious the crime, the greater has been that appeal. Murder, thetefore, has always been an absorbing public topic. (pûQ 210) 1s there any way to account for oar morbid curiosity about murder? In hie analytical essay of the genre, "The Guilty Vicaragen 1948) W. Auden makes the observation that : Murder is unique in that it abolishes the parrp it injures, so that society ha8 to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand restitution or grant forpiveness; it is the one crime in which societp has a direct interest. (m 149) The truth of this statement is imnediately apparent, The commission of any other crime, no natter haw contemptible, does not eradicate its victime As Auden pointed out, society necessarily becomes involved only when the crime is murder. One might add that, while the culprit is at large, there is a perceived threat to the rest of society which we are anxious to alleviate. Murder is the only crime in which the injured party cannot corne forward to provide direct of the offense. As such, it provides an ideal vehicle for a detective to investigate the circumstances of the victimrs demise. With advances in , the deceased can provide a great deal of information; however, there is still need of an investigator.

While Auden's observations may apply to murder in the real world, we are still faced with the question of the interest in fictional murder. He concludes this essay by suggesting that the murder mystery, when resolved, allows us "the fantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence. .. " (m 158). British detective P.D. James used more pointed teroinology for Auden's return

The mystery's vety much the modern morality play. You have an alrost ritual killinq and a victin, you have a murderer who in aore sense zepresents the forces of evil, you have your detective coming in--very likely to avenge the death-Who represents justice, retribution. And in the end you testore osder out of disorder. (BOQ 120) Both Auden and James express the commonly held British view of the place of crime and its sesolution in society. Society represents a natural state of order; crime is a momentary anomaly, a corruption. Once the detective solves the crime and the criminal is brought to justice, the natural order of society is restored and with it that sense of innocence is regained. This corollary is the foundation of the traditional ratiocinative school of founded by and advanced by Sir (see Appendix 1: The First Fictional Detective and Sherlock Holmes). The philosophical basis of this school is logical positivism. The clues are collected and then subjected to logical deduction to reveal the correct answer with scientific accuracy. Britain wae one of the centres of this school of thought (aee Appendix 2). It would be a mistake to assume that British crime writers are sole heirs to the traditional ratiocinative model. The traditional detective mystery novel has 16 propnents in many coantries, including the United States and Canada. The traditional style is the foundation for many sub- within the field of detective -teriest police procedurals , locked-roan iysteies , cozies and, in fact, the majority of novels in the detective nystery genre.

The Challenge of the ~atdboiled The one sub-genre which rejects the ratiocinative corollary is the hardboiled school. The cardinal difference between the traditional and the hardboiled schools lies in the- radically different perspectives on society. Bardboiled writing developed in the urban centres of the United States in the social turbulence between two world wars (see Appendix 2). The enactment of Prohibition in 1919 caused widespread gang violence and political and police corruption. Acts of violence ceased to be perceived as aberrant behaviour in a well-ordered society; instead, chaos established itself as a perverted, but apparent, nom. Hardboiled writing reflected the violent instability its authors encountered in the society atound them. The witing tended to blur the lines between the good and the bad, the law and its violation (see Chapter 2: The Good Versus the Law). The reader is no longer in a safe world in which are clearly defined but instead is faced with a wide range of greys. 17 The asswption that the police and other authorities are on the right sfde of the law ha8 been violated. The film seriala of the 19308 are perhaps the most consistently revealing vehicle in this regard. Here, the mastermind criminal io always revealed to be a police or government official. Contrarily, a criminal may act in a way which reveals an unexpected inner worth. Harry Jones, a minor hoodlum in Raymond Chandler's The Bia Slee~(1939), lies to protect the woman he loves. He then drinka the poison offered to him by the hit-man Canino. Jones dies a chivalrous death without revealing the secret of Agnes's whereabouts. The only character the reader can trust is the detective who reveals himself to be fallible. Two of the stereotypical character traits of the hardboiled detective are his fascination with women and his tendency to drink excessive amounts of alcohol (see Chapter 2: Sex and the Single Detective and The Office Bottle). His character does not maintain the formal social acceptability and upper-cmst sensibilities of a Sherlock Holmes or a . In "" (1950), hie essay contrasting hardboiled with traditional detective mysteries, Raymond Chandler observed: "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse..." (SM 16). In this single observation 18 Chandler tanderlines another fundamental difference in these two branches of detective fiction. In traditional detective etories a body is a cequisite evil. It provides the first clue that order ha8 ben transgressed and mus+ be reconetituted. The body itself, the character, ie often of little or no signifieance other than as a catalyst, a necessary part of the equation, a piece of the puzzle. mile the primary motivations for crime may be the same in both traditional and hardboiled detective fiction-love, power or money-the rationality of the logical positivist method often informs the culprit as well as the detective. In traditional detective stories, criminals are written as plotters who wait and plan their with timing, precision and deceit. 's murderers often use poisons or more exotic means for committing the& crimes. Occasionally, as in both Murder on the Orient Rmress (1934) and Ten Little Niauera (a.k.a. Ten Little Xndians or Then There Were None) (1939), the require camplex logical planning and CO-operation. Hardboiled criminala are melikely to act on the moment, in a heat of passionate irxationality. The weapon of choice is most often a gun. Death is violent, bloody, painfully unpleasant and retains none of the civility of the well-mannered, deviously clever, traditional crime. 19 The metbad of discovery employed by the hardboiled detective is more intuitive than that of his British cousin. The tough Aierican private eye is more likely to encounter nisleading information, deceitfal clients, characters warning him to stop his investigations and violence at the hands of organized crininal gangs and the police. Hardboiled detectives are more likely to car- weapons than their traditional counterparts. The less sophisticated the hardboiled detective, the more prone he is to violence. Carroll John Dalyrs Race Williams even brags about his quick shooting abilities: Trll shoot it out with any gun in the city--any them(SOB 2). Race Williams, the first and mostly forgotten of the hardboiled detectives, often sounds more like a wild west hero than an urban agent of the law (see Appendix 1: The Wild West Connection). Mickey Spillane's Mike Hanmer was modelled after Daly's character and shows equal enthusiasm for violence: "Someday Pdtrigger the bastard that shot . In my time I've done it plenty of times. No sentimentm (JTJ 12). Haamer is perhaps a little more discriaiinating about the trajectory of his bullets than Race is, but it is this violent image of the hardboiled detective which prompted Auden to comment that *they ate motivated by avarice or ambition and xnight just as well be murderers" (m 154). Unlike the traditional detective, the hardboiled version rarely stays in his roan solving puzzle-like crimes. 20 The convoluted, lees rational methodolog]! of hardboiled criminale precludes solution by cerebral means alone. Race Williams, the Continental Op, Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are al1 activelx involved, out on those mean streets, tracking down criainale. Frequently their activities involve either the commission or reception of violence.

From ûntology to mistemology

The traditional detective was satisfied with the question mwhodunit?wThe anawer to this was arrived at by the calculation of clues. The problem of "" might be considered an ontological question, in that it entails knowledge which can be discovered by a scientific, rational approach-one which allows no grey areas in the enquiry. Contrarily, the hardboiled detective, while concerned with finding answers, does not have an order to refer ta. The question he more often finda himself asking is "why?" For instance, in The Ria Sleep (1939), Philip Marlowe asks himself why his client has dismissed him from the case and why no one wante him to look for Rusty Regan. The question Iwhyn opens a nuch more complex and difficult area of inquiry. This revieed area of investigation might be considered epistemological, in that it considers the grey area of how we know and how our knawledge may be limited. It is this strategic change of question that compels hardboiled writing to delve into the psychology of the detective as well as that of the crininal. It is this sana question whfch later causes the shift in hardboiled wrifing away fram detective fiction and into the arena of mystery thrillers (see Chapter 3: The Abeurd). The notion of a -11 osdered, understandable, stable society has ken obliterated from the hardboiled fictional world. The traditional reading of roles, *good guye versus bad goya," is no longer obvious. Order bas been overthrown by a less predictable chaos. The traditional rules of detective fiction, those which follow the philosophical school of the logical positivists, no longer apply. As Stefano Tani States: The detective is no longer a logical mind in a positivistic world as he was in Poe's tales. Bis attempte to unravel the mystery often clash against his own impulses and against a "realityw which is no longer explained and constricted within the optimism and rationality of nineteenth- century positivism but rather bas ken reinterpreted in a questionhg fashion by the then recent theorries about relativism and the unconscioas. This new notion of reality of course defies the neat solutions and the simple truths of the too logical and too artificial British detective novel. (pp 23) Ontological questions have been traded for the les8 clearly delineated territory of epistemological inquiry. A new modus operandi must be generated to formulate new answers.

Exis tentialism

The philosophical school of thought that came into cornpetition with the logical positivists was existentialism. This school traced its roots from Kierkegaard who produced

his work in German in the 1840s. Other German philosophers, most notably Heidegger, continued to add to the body of

existentialist writing in the perfod follcwing World War 1. The centre of existentialwriting shifted to France by the

beginning of World War II (see Appendix 2). Evidence explored in this thesis supports the theory that the MDsrican hardboiled school of writing was informed by an existential philosophy. No data has ken located to substantiate an hypothesis that this approach was knowingly undertaken by these writers. There is, however, evidence that French existential authors like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus read American hardboiled novels and found in them something more than passing entertainment. Sartre wrote: Vhat we looked for above al1 else in the American novel was something quite different from its crudities and its violencew (TüT 162). Camus wrote several pages on the American "tough* novel in The Rebel (1951) and it has been noted that his novel ~'Étranaer (1942) was inspired by James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rinas Twica (1934).' What are the foundations of an existential mode of being in the world? In the essay, mExistentialism is a Humanismm (1946) Sartre gives a succinct outline of the

l David Madden makes this statement in the introduction to Touah GUY Writers of the Thirties (1968). It is also noted on the cover of the 1978 Vintage- edition of Cain's novel. Further research, including a review of Camus's notebooks, has failed to reveal anything to substantiate this statement. traits of existentialist philosophy. Eùstentialism was founded on the Cartesian principal of subjectivity: "I thinken While there is a branch of existentialism which follows a Christian -ail and allaws for the existence of Goà, as àid Descartes, Sartre's version is atheistic.

From the cogito the existentialiste were able to extrapolate that "existence cames before essence-or, if you will, that we mast begb from the subjectivem (EDS 348). "Man simply isw(gps 349). Having granted existence itself, the existentialists grant nothing else a priori. This disallows the concept of a human nature. This is a point on which Sartre and Camus did not agree and which Sartre himself questioned in his later years. From simple existence Sartre conceives of a method whereby humans can constitute themselves. . .. he is what he wills, and as he conceives hiinself after already existing- as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes himself. That is the first principle of existentialism." (m349)

It is in this creation of the self that hiinan energy and direction are tested. Because this model precludes the existence of a God or human nature, there are no predetermined limite to personal freedom. The creation of one's essence requires a weighty sense of responsibility; one's choices reflect directly on one's being. Sartre also ineists that our choices inform not only our personal being but affect al1 of society: For in effect, of al1 the actions a iaan may take in order to create himnelf as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same the, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be.(= 350) Our actions axe an attempt to form an idealized self and our idealization embodies al1 of huianity. Sartre is able to extrapolate fram this that we will always choose the good in an effort to create bettement, not only for ourselves, but for society. The creation of an essence necessitates action: Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore, nothing else but the sua of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.(EDS 358)

The essence of the self, king, is constructed by action and by the artifacts that action leaves in its wake. Actions are freely chosen by the individual who must be fully coqnisant of the burden of responsibility hie movement carries. The burden of responsibility also raises the question of morality. Lacking a God or any principle from which we can divine rules of conduct, haw can our actions be justified? In response to the question of morality, Sartre states: "...we have to do with creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that should be donew (m 364). In the exietential model, there are no preset limitations to determine what actions are morally desirable. The individual must determine at any given moment what burdens on his personal sense of morality he can endure. In discovering oiir own cogito, the existence of others is al80 revealed. Intersubjectivity, the relation of the to the mother,w creates an unsettling effect. He cannot be anything,.. unless othess recognize him as euch. 1 cannot obtain any -th whatsoever about myself, except through the madiation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and ecpaa1ly ao to any knwledge 1 can have of myself. (a361) The actions which define our essence mus+ necessarily be recognized by those around us. The position of the other makes us conscioui of ourselves and validates our place in the world.

The Hardboiled Outsider How can these foundational articles of existential philosophy be seen to inform hardboiled writing? Issues central to existential philosophy, such as persona1 responsibility and freedom of action, are evident in the peripheral position of the hardboiled detective to eociety. He is the who acts according to his own rules. As Chandler writes: "... down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tamished nor afraidw (m20). This position of independence was made apparent by the first successful hardboiled detective, Race Williams. when the the comas for some quick-drawing gunman to jump me oves the hurdles 1.11 ride to the gates on my awn ticket. It won't be a pass wsitten on the back of another man's thoughts. (SOB 2) Race makes hieself responsible for the safety of al1 of society by taking a vfolently active stand against the criminal element. He does this without regard to the forma1 rules of the game, the due process of the law. As he himself acknoatledges , this position puts him at odds with authority . Be is somewhat reminiscent of Camus's rebel, acting independently in the best interest of society but simultaneously an outsider alienated from that society. Race Williams is not the only detective whose sense of moral responsibility spills into a violent correction of society's ills. In Hammett's Red Harvest (1929), the Continental Op is called to Personville (a.k.a. Poisonville) to cleanse the town of its well-entrenched criminal element.

He insists: Trdbave to have a free hand- no favours to anybody- run the job as 1 pleasedw (RB 30). The Op succeeds in ridding the town of hoodlums but achieves this goal by accumulating a high body count. ALthough a less sophisticated character like Race Williams would have no qualms about proceeding in this manner, the bloodshed gives the Op pause. He wonders if he can justify his methods to himself and to society at large. He expresses concern that he is "going bload-simplew (RH lOI), that he may be losing his critical moral judgement. The justifiability of the actions of hardboiled detectives requires an exploration of their morality (see Chapter 2: The Good Versue the Law). Hardboiled writing also explores the existential problem of the relation between the 1 and the other. Hammett's novel The Dain Curee (1929) employa the first- petson "1" as its namator. Uthough the story tends to shift location and charaeters haphazardly, one consistent character is the Op's friend ôwen Fitzstephan. Pitzstephan is a writer with an interest in the Op's investigative work and they have been friends for some years; unfortunately Fitzstephan is also the martermind of a series of violent murders . As much as we would like to believe we can know the other, we are not capable of intimate comprehension. The thoughts of the other are unknwable to us except through their actions, the externalization of their thoughts. The actions the other allaws us to perceive, coupled with our interpretation of those actions, are the only tools at our disposa1 for gaining insight into the other's personality. These limited tools provide us with a iurky understanding of the other. Perhaps taking a cue from this idea of the separation of self from other, Hammett's next book, The Maltese Falcon

( 1930 ) , was written as a third-person narrative. The reader is no longer privy to the interior world of the detective. Immediately follwing the police phone cal1 infotmùig Sam Spade that his partner niles Archer has been murdered, Hammett composed this often-quoted paragraph. Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measiired quantity of tan flakes dawn into ciirved paper, spreading the flakes so that they lay eqaal at the ends with a slight depression in the ntiddle, thuabs rolling the paperra inner edge daam and up under the outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thunbs and fingers sliding to the papes cylinderrs ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap, left forefinger and th- pinching their end aile right forefinger and thumb smwthed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their end and lifting the other to Spadets mouth. (E301) The reader cannot know what Spade is thinking, just as one can never know the thought of the other. Hammett gives Spade a hard and impenetrable exterior. Interior information, the thoughts, moral judgements and emotions of the character, are rendered inaccessible to the reader. Spade can only be perceived through his actions.

Death The existential model, that existence precedes essence, puts a unique perspective on the interpretation of death. Death is an essential element of detective mysteries including, of couse, the hardboiled variety. Spade's reaction to hie partner's demise in The Maltese Falcon (1930) may seem callous; he has no interest in viewing the body, and the day after the murder he orders that Archer's desk be moved out and his name removed from the door. Spade can never be accused of excessive sentimentality. His actions make the most sense from an existential perspective. Archer will not be coming back- he is no longer an active agent. Spaders unwillingness to participate in the formalized rituals of death, as prescribed bp society, bears a marked resemblance to FIersaultrs thoughts in Canmsrs existential novel tfÉ= (1942). -1 caught myself thinking what an agreeable walk 1 might have had, if it hadnrt been for Motherm (m 21). While Mersault goes through the motions of acknowledging his motherrs death, Spade refuses such actions of bad faith. Instead he takes the active stance of finding Miles Archer's killerr. The hardboiled attitude toward death is best summed up in Marlowe's soliloquy at the conclusion of The Bia Slee~ (1939). What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping , you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness or how you died or where you fell. (s216) The body, once death has occurred, is a hollow and meaningless object requiring no emotion, no sentiment, and no ceremony. This objectification of the boây is also reflected in existential novels like Camus's The Pla- (1947). When the plague is at its peak, bodies are piled into tram-cars and whisked to the crematorium and burned en masse without ceremony or (TE 146). Other Genre Conventiong mile the above evfdence supports a linkage between hardboiled and existential writing, thee are other genre conventions which inform the style of the hardboiled detective iystery. In &dven$ufel Hvsteay. and RoIUknCe (1976)

John G. Cawelti discusses some of the formulaic conventions by which we recognize this sub-genre. Some of the formulaic elements Cawelti reveals as essential to the hardboiled detective formula are also evident in classic detective stories: the story "moves from the introduction of the detective and the presentation of the crime, through the investigation, to a solution and apprehension of the criminal" (m142). There are, hawever, two major structural peculiarities in the hardboiled

detective tale which Cawelti notes: , ... the subordination of the drama of solution to the detective's quest for the discovery and accomplishment of justice; and the substitution of a pattern of and temptation of the hero for the elaborate development in the classical story of what Nosthrop Frye calls 'the wavering finger of suspicionw passing across a series of potential suspects. (m 142) These complex formulaic elements are enmeshed in the existential foundation of the hardboiled detective. The detective, the "In, ie the most important component of the drama. The readergs interest is drawn to the character of the detective, hie actions, hi8 eense of morality and justice, his temptations, hi8 toughness, his attempts to 31 make sense out of the world around hiai and the motivations of others. The iystezy is subosainated to the detectivere personal expIorations . In classic detective stories. the hem's role ends with the exposure of the crininal. The legal system is allowed to take its long and slaw course. ~y contrast, Cawelti States, "the hard-boiled detective enbodies the threat of judgement and execution as well as exposurew (m143). The consequence of this raising of the stakes is that the novel is more violent and fastet-moving than its traditional counterpart. Certainly, detectives like Race Williams and Mike Hanmer routinely dispatch criiinals withoat hesitation. The more sophisticated hardboiled detectives are more inclined to cal1 the police at the successful conclusion of their investigations. For example, Spade turns Brigid OvShaughnessy over to the police at the conclusion of The Maltese Falcon (1930). Cawelti al80 observes that the hardboiled detective is usually marginalized. He has no pretensions about his place in society. Bis office, hie hame and his person are clean but inexpensive and uninpressive. Because of his marginalization, he is capable of functioning coifortably at al1 levels of society. The fact that the crime the detective is hired to investigate is not always the crime he resolves, is another convention Cawelti reveals. Spade is hiEed to find a missing 32

woman in The Maltese Falcon (1930 ) when in fact the prize is the falcon: Marlowe is hired to suppresri a blacknailer in e Btu Sleep (1939) but concludes the case by discovering the location of a dead man. Cawelti al80 makes us aware that hardboiled criiainals are usually career crimiaals with connections to an organized underrorld. Tneir genteel traditional cousins are more commonly individuals acting out the- crime for specific personal gain. Despite Cawelti8s study of the genre conventions and fonnulas of the hardboiled detective novel, many elements stray outside the boundaries he demarcates. For example, each one of Hammett's novels is constructed radically differently; the narrative shifts from first to third person, the identity and personality of the detective changes with almost every book, underworld connections may or may not be apparent and the detective may even be a part of the underworld. Contrarily, the novels of Carroll John Daly and Mickey Spillane follow very rigid foriulaic structures. These are also novels which seem to express fewer exiatential elements than the hardboiled detective fiction of Chandler or Hammett. Because Race Williams and Mike Hanmer are much more

For detailed studies of Hammett's shifting styles see "The Dashiell Hammett Tradition and the Modern Noveln by William Patrick Kenny, PhD thesis, University of nichigan, 1964 and "The Earvest of the Private Eyen by Paul Gamache, Master's Thesis, Queens University, 1988. 33 formulaic detectives, they have fewer moral and ethical decisions to make and their choices of action are thereby limited. It can be concluded that the more heavily formulaic the writing style is, the less it is inforned by an existential foundation. Chapter Two:

Se% anâ the Single Detective, !l!he Office Bottle and The Good versus the Law

Since he becoaes eniotionally and wrally coniaitted to solre of the persoas inwlved, or because the crime poses some basic crisfs in his image ofhiaself, the nard-boiled detective remafns unfilfilied until ne bas taken a personal moral stance toward the crimiaal. .. .ne is an instinctive protector of the weak, a defender of the innocent, an aveager of the wronged, the one loyal, honest, tmly mord nian in a corrupt and ambigzzous mrld. John G. Cawelti

In traditional detective fiction, moral questions are limited by the assumption of a social order. The role of the detective is purely one of maintenance. He is not faced with moral dilenaas; the need to maintain a pre-established order limits the detective's freedam and consequently informs his actions . The question of the morality of the hardboiled detective has already been alluded to, both in terms of an existential reading and also as to its place in the formula of the hardboiled genre. The hardboiled detective's placement in a society bereft of ordet necessitates the development of a strong persona1 aorality. Caweiti observes: The intensely moral stand that lies behind the facade of to~ghm388and ~icieiaccoonts for -y of the characteristic diffecencee in method between the bard-boiled and classic detectives* For the hard-boiled detective, a case is not merely a problem; it can bec- a cmsade to mot out and destroy the evils that have cotriipted the urban world. (- 151)

This statement underlines the difference between the ordered, traditional detective story with its puzzle-like problems and the chaotic, devastated world the hardboiled detective inhabits. There are no predetermined moral codes in the hardboiled urban world and so the detective is forced to take full responsibility for his actions in an effort to adhere to his personal sense of morality.

Sex and the Single Detective

The hardboiled detective, typically a single heterosexual male, is frequently faced with moral dilemnas with regard to women. Hm should he react to a woman, married or unmarried, making ovest sema1 advances? How should he respond when his investigation leads hia to conclude that the woian he is enamoured of is the instigator of a heinous crime? Ail the famous bardboiled detectives are single; Race Williams, the Continental Op, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Mike Héunmer. Part of the image of the hardboiled detective is his singular detachment. He is a lone man, an outsider, pitted against an unfriendly world. To mintain bis critical existential detachment, it is essential that be remain single, ttusting no one, acknaw1edging that he caa never know the innermost thoughte of the other. Bis singular state does not preclude a love interest or the occasional intimate encounter. Nevertheless, in the earlier hardboiled novels of Daïy, Hammett and Chandler, sex is rare. It is not until makes his way onto the ecene in 1947 that the complex amalgam of sex and violence cornes to the fore of the hardboiled detective novel. The role women play in hardboiled mystery fiction differs from the role they play in traditional works. Hardboiled women are not victims or imprisoned maidens awaiting rescue by the errant knight detective. Instead they are often cornpetitive, aggressive, threatening and deceitfully dangerous. Cawelti sums up the social pressures and the logic which feed this difference: le more econdcally and socially independent of isculine domination women become, the more male 3teeai and statua are threatened. The only ~ssibleresolution to the insecurity caueed by ae conflict between the need for women as sexual iid social fulfiïment and the threat of feminine >dependence and domination is the sinultaneous wseesion and destruction of the female, a goal iiat can hardly be achieved except in fantasy. 4RD 159)

The development of hardboiled fiction is coincident with achievements in women's suffrage (see Appendix 2). As the authors and target audience for hardboiled writing were primarily male, this sub-genre offered an ideal forum in which to vent insecurities about social changes regardhg gender statua. In the herdboiled formitla it is typical that the more seductive and sexaally appealing a wonan is, the more likely it ie that she vil1 be criminally motivated. Wainen who are plain or efficiently sPbPissive are not perceived as a threat, but instead assume the role of platonic cornpanion, most often perforning the role of secretary. Neither of these contrasting roles, of seductress or secretary, leaves room for semial desire. Considering the relationship of the hardboiled detective to women, Chandler mites: 1 do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; 1 think he might seduce a duchess and 1 am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin... (SAM 20)

On first reading, this statement seems to reflect the ideals of the noble knight that detectives like Marlowe are often compared with. In her easay, "The Hollywood Novel," Carolyn

See views Chandler's reeponse to sex as aberrant and indicative of a "failure of serw in the Hollywood of the 1930's. In this the and place sex had become too easy and "the effect of this on a sensitive man is a virulent hatred of the flesh as suchn (m209). The overtly aexual image of a woman on the silver screen causes arousal in a safe but fnistrating marner; a live woman who is overtly sexual causes repulsion and impotence. As See statesr One of Harlowees so-called *knightlyu qualitiee is that he is traditionally celibate, that he cannot be hero and lover at the same time. (m209) Hammett and Chandler preeent the sema1 power of woPen as problematic and threatening. The* images of women initially seem to indicate a consemative morality; on closer examination, their portraya1 se- more indicative of an impotence in dealing with the growing social strength of women. In order not to appear weak in the face of what was perceived as a growing social threat to the* , they instead demonized the female seductress, changing her character hto that of a deceitful criminal.

The shift in the feminine role was initiated by Carroll John Daly. "There is no sex in crime," Race Williams proclaimed in Dead Bands Reachinq (QBEI 142). Race's machisrno is based entirely on violence; Race Williams is cmpletely sexless. The majority of female characters who inhabit his fictional world are equally sexless. There is, houever, one exception: Florence Dntmmond, the Girl with the Criminal Mind, amkWa.The Plame. Ber name had cow from the many "maths* she had destroyed. For it was written in the book of the night that to love the Flame was to die. (MW 132) Even Race is not immune to her charms, bat he can never adiit his love for the Flame. ftwould be an iipropriety for an enforcer of the law to have a criminaï lover, The Plane is feat~edin many of the Race Williams stories. Usually, she is the crininal meterrind who manipulates lesser criminala, always maïe, to do her bidding. In =der Fra the East (1935) , hwever, her sympathies fa11 on the side of the goad at last; she risks her life for America rather than growing rich from the devious plots of the comsnunist hordes front the east. Daly's work is almost devoid of any sexual referent. Race may receive an occasional kiss from the Flame or dance with her but that is the extent of their intimacy. Similarly, Dashiell Hamnett8s Continental Op seems virtually sexless. Bis physical image is not particularly appealing: a middle aged, overweight man, who has seen some rough . In the early short séory, "The Gutting of Couffignalw (1925), the Op etates his views on the seductiveness of women. When the Russian princess attempts to chann her way to freedom, the Op replies: Tou think 18m a man and you8re a woman. That8s wrong. 18m a man-hunter and you8re samething that's been running in front of me. There8s nothing human about it . (m66 ) As Kittredge and Krauzer comment on this passage: .the detective8s moral vision must be unwavering. When he begins a case, he mus+ finish it, and he cannot allow money, sex, friendship, or persona1 bias to deflect hhfroa the correct path. ((JAP xvii) The Op has seen the case to its end and despite the princesers gender and attempts at scduction he is obliged taward morallp correct closure by having her amested. Although the Op La unwilling to allaw the princess her freedam, he offers freedan to her male partner. When Plippo refuses, the Op knocks hir unconscious. In the final confrontation between the Op and the princess, he shoots her in the leg to prevent her escape. Hot only is the princess arrested, she also receives more violent treatment at the hands of the Op than doee her male countetpart. Although both the princes8 and Flippo are criminals, the Op seems to respond less violently to the criminal of his own gender. In Red Harvest (1929) the Op spends an evening with Dinah Brand in a laudanum-induced dream-world. Upon waking, he discovers his hand is clenching an ice pick, the other end of which is embedded in the now dead woman. He has no nemory of the incident, but later discovers that her murder was actually perpetrated by one of the crininala of Poisonville. This twisted Freudian scene of coafused wpossession and destructionw is the cloeest the Continental Op cornes to a sema1 encounter.

The role the Op play8 in The (1929) is similarly non-sexual. He clearly carea for the welfare of Gabrielle Leggett, but his actions tward her bear the stamp of a sense of moral obligation rather than love. He is, however, willing to let her think that he has an emotional attachment to her. Utes he aids her through morphine withdtawal, the follawing exchange takes place :

" 1 'P twice Pour: age, sister; an old man. f 'i damned if 1.11 make a chump of myself by telling you why 1 did it, why it was neither revolting nor disgusting, why Ird do it again and be glad of the chance. She jiiaped out of her chair, her eyes round and dark, her mouth trembling. "Yeu mean-?" "1 donPt mean anything 1'11 admit..."(- 282)

The young Miss Leggett has had a hard life and the Op becomes her guatdian. There is nothing sexual, however, in the- relationship . As more permissive attitudes toward sex continued to enlighten fictional work, HamnettPs characters began to acknowledge the* sexual nature. Sam Spade is physically more appealing than the Op. He is tall, thin and is described as looking "rather pleasantly like a blond satanw 296). In The Maltese Falcon (1930), it is revealed that Spade has been having an affair with Iva Archer, his late partnerrs wife. Mo details of this liaison are given and, now that Iva is a widow, Spade distances himself. The more obvious love interest in The Maltese Falcon is the mysterious Brigid O'Shaughnessy. Spade finds her both desirable and repellent; he is attracted to her and yet he distrusts her. In a sather daring and risque move, Hannnett has Miss OrShaughnessy spend the night with Spade. Any hint of romance is iminediately deflated when Spade leaves her sleeping and sneaks out to search her apartment. 42 Ultimately Spade discovers that Miss O'Shaughnessy is Archer's killer. She feigns innocence and weakness but is capable of cold-blooded iurder. Similarly to the princees in "The Gutting of Couffignal," she attempts to use her feeinine ch- to convince Spade to grant ber freedom. True to his style, Spade does the morally correct thing and turns her in, reasoning: when a man's partner is killed he8s supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it.(m 438)

When she refuses to accept his argument and continues her attempted seduction, he retotts: "1 won't play the sap for you" (ME 439). Despite the machinations of the wicked temptress, Spade is still able to do the morally correct thing, but his cold behaviour is seen as reprehensible by his secretary and perhaps the reader. Hammett reformed the hardboiled detective into the domesticated Nick Charles in (1934). The one sexually blatant reference in this book was censored in the first edition. After a scene in which Nick Charles has to wrestle with a female character, his wife NOSa asks: "...when you were wrestling with Mimi, did you have an erection?" "Oh, a littleu is Nickrs reply (m 691). Despite the fact that Nick and Nora are married, even a minliaal sexual reference was too spicy for print in the 1930s. 43 Raymond Chandler's motality is more gentle, perhaps more sentimental, than that of Hammett. Nevertheless, Marlowe still has a puritanical streak. In The Bia Sleeg

( 1939 ) , Marlowe ie disgusted at findinq the naked Cannen Stemwood in bis bed. He forces her to leave and then, almost violently, strips the bed. Despite his repugnance of her, after Carmen attacks him and he concludes that she murdered Rusty Regan, Marlowe does not have her arrested. Instead he persuades Vivian Regan, Carmen's sister, to have her institutionalized. Reganrs body is not retrieved and Carmen is not arrested for the murder she has c-tted. Marlowe's motivation for this leniency is his emotional attachent to Vivian and his respect for Genetal Stemwood. Marlowe's emotions are clearly reflected in hie moral judgement; consequently hi8 actions differ from what we would have expected if the case had ken assigned to the seemingly unemotional Sam Spade. An enigmatic female character comas to light in Chandler's Farewell My Lovelx (1940). Anne Riordan can be read as the archetypal hardboiled female detective (see Chapter 4: The Feminist Detective). She may be a generation ahead of her tirne, but like many later female sleuths she is the daughter of a policeman. She assists Marlowe in the case, nevet exhibiting any squeamishness and never leaving any doubts regarding her honesty or which side of the law she is on. She is capable, confident and able to take control of a situation. As is typical of the majority of hardboiled detectives, male or female, Anne Riordan is single. Although Marluwe seems attracted to her, he maintaias his distance. The only suggestion of a sexual act is toward the end of the novel when Riordan insists, "I'd like to be kissed, dam youlw (E'ML 312). This overt statement of desire, coning from the mouth of a good woman, is indicative of a growing acceptance of sexually aggressive female behaviour-at least in the entertainment industry. One is reminded of the young Lauren Bacail delivering tough, steamy one-liners to HumphKey Bogart. As was stated earlier, the sexually aggressive female was seen by the male audience as simultaneously attractive and intimidating. Chandler's rendition of the hardboiled female chasacter in Anne Riordan enables her to maintain her aggressiveness and her goodness simultaneously. Perhaps Chandler was attempting to mitigate the demonization which had plagued strong hardboiled female characters.

The Lead Ej aculat ion

Unfortunately, ~ickeySpillane reinetated the tole of the female as sexual betrayer and criminal. In 1, The Jurv (1947), Charlotte Manning is portrayed as both desirable and intelligent, thereby posing a double threat. Mike Hammer is titillated by hee throughout the book. At the conclusion of the novel it is revealed that Manning had killed Hanmer's friend. Like nuierous fema1e before her, she attempts to seduce Hamuer into relenting and granting her freedom. In typically nithlees Bammet fashion, he kills her. Spillane was master of the use of the sexual tease which

finally terminates in the violent destruction of the sexual ref erent . As Cawelti states :

Spillane has his females endlessly ripple their muscles while letting their dresses hang open provocatively. One might aliaost Say that his novels are sttuctured as elaborate stripteases in which nike is increasingly tempted by a series of sexy damsels; in the end, the tease almost reaches the point of passionate sexuality, but the final teaser always tums out to be the murderess and consequently must be destroyed. In one of the central emotional rhythms in Spillaners work, sexual provocation leads to fulfilment in violence. (ARM 185)

For Hanmer the ultimate sexual is achieved through the violent death of the object of desire. This destruction is accomplished with a gun, underlining the obvious Freudian implication of the gun as phallus. As would be expected of a macho individual like Baimet, he poseesses a big gun--a forty-f ive calibre pistol. As was stated at the end of Chapter One, "the more heavily formulait the writing style is, the less it is informed by an existential fo~ndation.~Kike Hammer8s world is predictable; the formula is so apparent the reader can almost see the pencil liaes. When Hainiaerrs friend Jack Williams is murdered at the beginning of 1. The a=, Hammer states that he will lacate and execute the murderer. With this statement, Banmer has detemined a priori what action he will take. The revelation that the muzderef is the woman who has ken hie lover throughout the book in &relevant. Hammer is never faced with a moral dilenana or the need to "do with invention and creation," as were his more existentially informed counterparts .

A Dark and Steamy Passion

With the sise of the thriller mystery in the years following Wotld War II, the role of sexuality gained greater importance. The retained her role as seductress but had greater success in swaying the thrillers' anti-hero to her demands. This was accomplished in an overtly sexual manner; thriller myeteries often featured acenes of steamy passion. Typically, the thriller mystery was told from a first person perspective. That person was no longer the detective hero, hawever, straining to preserve his chaste morality against temptation and temptress. The new anti-haro had lost faith in the idea of the morally good and any eense of order even on a localized level. The narrator of the thriller mystery is clearly an anti-hero; the reader is often placed 47 inside the aFad of a criminal, forced to view his violence and privy to his thoughts.

The thriller mystery's focus on the criainal is rare in the United States but more conmon in France (aee Appendix 1: Early Triie Crime Stories). This may help to explain why some American thriller writers, notably Jim Thompson and David Goodis, attained greater popular success in France than they did at home.

It is through thriller mysteries that the stracturalist breakdowa and de-centring of the existential "1" becasne apparent in the genre. The "1" narrating the thriller mystery is corroded, ambivalent and directionless, allowing his will to be subjected to the whins of the seductress and fate. The criminal plot becomes a more central issue than it has been in earlier hardboiled detective fiction (see Chapter 4: The Structuralist Challenge).

James Mo Cain writes deliciously steamy scenes in both The Postman ALwavs Rinas Twice (1934) and Double Indemnitv (1936). Cain's female characters are manipulative and dangerous; hie male characters, however complicit, are merely pawns. Evil becomes synonymous with sexual temptation. The murder in Cain's pouble Indemnitv results from a combination of lust and greed, bot it woald be incorrect to suppose that this is a spontaneous crime of passion. The murder is carefully planned, with much sou1 searching on the part of Walter Huf f . 1 lit a fire and sat there, wing to figure out where 1 was at. I knew wbere 1 was at, of course. 1 was standing right on the deep end, looking over the edge, and 1 kept talling myself to get out of there, and get quick, and neves ca~eback. But that was what 1 kept telling myself. What 1 was doing was peeping over that edge, and al1 the the 1 was trying to pull back froi it, there was something in me that kept edging a little closer, trying to get a better look. (pI 14) Huff executes the crime with full cognisance of the moral implications of his actions. The criminal plot itself evokes a seductive power; once conceived, it seems inpossible to retreat from it, and the murder occurs as orchestrated. Unfortunately for them, the CO-conspirators, Hoff and Mrs. Nirdlinger, underestimate the moral impact of their actions--a factor both intangible and incalculable before the fact. Their psychological and emotional separation occurs in the wake of the euccess of their plot. Neither of them succumbs to a sense of guilt; however, each becomes aware that the other could inplicate him or her in the scheme. In true existential fashion, the threat becomes the other . Toward the end of Double In-it~ it becames apparent that Mrs. Nirdlinger is the epitome of the dangerous woman- a black wida*. Huff, realizing that she will continue to corrupt men if she survives, regains control of his actions and sacrifices himself to rid the world of this female threat . measy Associations

The preceding examples show that the premhe of a breakdm of order, which was initiated by the movement of the hardboiled mystery away fran the traditional style developed toward greater chaos as the hardboiled sub-genre ptogressed. Waien were perceived as a threat on account of their new and grming social power; the* suffrage itself marked a shift in the old order of society. The move of male writers to denanize wamen was reflective of the perceived threat of this social shift. The violence this demonization created caused their fictionalworlds to slip into even greater chaos. The hardboiled detectivers sometimes violent rejection of the other was teflective of his existential bearing. His critical freedom needed to be maintained even at the cost of his desire for a female companion. Once the female other was admitted, the anti-hero of the thriller Piystery lost the strength of his existential convictions. He became entangled in plots beyond hie control, which teduced hi8 freedom to act and mocked his morality. The actions of the thriller mystery's anti-hero were infomed by his desire, which was manipulated by the demonized seductress.

The Office Bottle

The presence of alcohol raised another question of morality in hardboiled stories. It should be remembered that 50 hardboiled detective fiction was developing during a period of prohibition. The movement toward prohibition was initiated by women's chtirch organizations in the late 1800's that established the Uti-Saloon League. Through the& exertions, alcohol came to be perceived as a threat to family life and eventually the menufacture and sale of any beverage with an alcoholic content over point five per cent was ptohibited. Exceptions were made of alcohol for medicinal and sacramental use as well as wine for home consumption. In this prohibitive climate, the consumption of alcohol certainly was considered a moral issue. Philip Marlowe often makes reference to the "office bottleeWHe imbibes only when he has sustained a beating or a shock; Marlowe's use of alcohol can be considered medicinal. In spite of Marlowe's limited ckinking, the "office bottleu becomes a fixture of the hardboiled formula. The most outrageous drinker among hardboiled detectives is Jonathan Latimer's Bill Crane. Crane is so abused from alcohol, beatings and lack of sleep that he can only be read as a parody of the hardboiled school, a rare nscrewballw hardboiled character . In The Ladv in the Moraue (1936), Crane becomes desperate for a ârink and searches the undertaker's office for something to quench his thirst. Mter finding a Dewar's whiskey bottle, Crane takes a drink, only to discover that 51 the ambez liquid within is embaiaiing fluid. Few detectives have revealed such a desperation for alcohol. Soie pst-prohibition hardboiled detectives have embraced the art of drinking whole-heartedly. James Cnamïeyfs hardboiled detective, Wilo, always has a drink in his band or nearby. His friends and informant8 al1 share the common bond of alcoholisn. Milo oams a bar and routinely gets ckinks in "to gon cups. Unlike the comic dnink Crane. Ulors drinking is serious and is consciously expressed as part of a nihilistic self-destructive urge. ALthough his moral integrity remains intact in other areas, Milo's rampant use of alcohol, as well as speed and other illegal drugs, is far in excess of what Marlowe. Spade or the majority of hardboiled detectives would have considered medicinal. The conservatism of old-school hardboiled detectives makes it seem more likely that they would bave Milo arrested rather than assist him in his investigations. The fictional world Cnimley creates is an extension of the utban noir of earlier hardboiled detectives. Meriwether seems like a town the forgot; it is as if the depression never ended and Society has continued to deteriorate. Other recent detectives have rekindled the social conscience regarding alcohol. nichael Nava's lawyer cm detective, Henry Rios, is a reformed alcoholic. The solution of the crime in gcw Town ( 1993) is made possible because of 52 Rios 'e associations with aIcoholics Anonymous (see chapter 4: The Gay Detectives).

The Good Vetsus the Law Another deeply pressing moral problea the hardboiled detective faced was the issue of the good: justice versus the law. Sartre holds that we must choose the good, but the hardboiled detective is clearly faced with a moral dilenma when the gaod and the law do not coincide. Again, reflecting Sartre's ideals, the detective must "do with creation and inventionn; he must circumvent the letter of the law in order to serve a higher good. Be does not always CO-operate with the police; he may hide evidence or omit vital information, and consequently he is sometimes suspected of wrong-doing by agents of the law. The law and the morality of law enforcers are often questioned in hardboiled detective stories. Historically, prohibition caused this to be an era of nim running and rampant gangsterism (see Appendix 2). Gangsters covertly paid officials in order to maintain lucrative businesses in the illegal alcohol trade. Growing suspicions of police and government corruption caused the general public to lose faith and trust in the officials of the state. With the public's growing awareness of a corruption of social order, heroes who upheld the moral good were welcomed. Popular entertainment gave audiences , the Shadw, the Spider and the Green Hornet. Ail of these heroes had antbiguous relations with the police but their audiences knew they were on the side of the good. The morally correct but legally ambiguous crime fighter is a part of American fictional history. The stereotypical western hero of the 1800s rode into tani, shot the "bad gaysw and then rode off into the eunset (see Appendix 1: The Wild West Connection) . Whose law is served by this sort of vigilante justice? Ultimately, that of society at large; society wants criminals removed- The hardboiled detective acts to remove the criminal but often disregards the due process of the law. Charles Boyt sums up the activities of the hardboiled detective as follows: Of course the basic charn of the private eye is that he is aggressively outside the law. That is, like al1 tough guys, he despises convention, proper conduct, due process, search warrants, habeas corpus--in short, decent behaviour as it is codified. On the other hand, he is presumed to subscribe to a rigid code of hie awn, which, though elastic enough at its periphery, is at its centre as fixed as society8s awn-protect the weak, honour property, oppose tyranny, treat women as they wish to be treated (there is plenty of elasticity there). (m225) Despite the rebellious outward appearance of his actions, the hardboiled detective embodies the higher ideals of society. He acts on those ideals and is not afraid of shedding a little blood in aid of the betterment of all. Bis rejection of due process is a rejection of a codified order. Reflective of Sartre's ideal, 'that any moral decision must be made at the moment with the facts of each individual case, the hardboiled detective cannot believe in a law that is set in Stone, that tries to codify behaviour for al1 circumstancee. The hardboiled detective insists on acting freely to attain justice. As Jin Collins writee : The investigation serves only to validate that private, transcendent sense of justice and ie seldom prcnnoted... aa one for adoption by the State as its new code--largely because the very possibility of a State justice appears oxymoronic. (ac 31) This insistence on an individual's moral right to take responsibility for a higher justice outside the law does not imply a need to re-mite existing laws. The validity of an over-riding, codified law that can accurately reflect the needs of society is what is challenged.

The Satisfaction of Vigilantiam

The above may be the primary challenge of the hardboiled detective with regard to formalized law. But other problems make themselves apparent: ...he had hie own sense of right and wrong by which he lived, meting out his individual concept of justice that more often than not was contrary to the accepted mores or to the law, which was restrictive and too slow. With supreme confidence in his own judgement, this individualist did not think it necessary to play by the book-- one who did was often thought naive. (3UT 55)

Due process metes out a slower justice than a well placed bullet. Hardboiled justice is often more reflective of the ancient "eye for an eyem maxfi than of a civilized judicial system. Certainly Race WF1Liais and llike Hanmer have a marked preference for violent and inmediate justice. Spade and Marlowe, while not satisfied with the judicial process, are more inclined to submit to it, hawevef cynically. This cynicism regarding the legal system arfees from a perception of corruption in the offices of the law. As Herbert Ruhm states: In bis search for the truth that solves the crime, Marlowe has to fight corrupt law as well as the corrupt society it ref lects. (TWT 177 )

The notion that the law and its enforcers are corrupt emphasizes the ideal that the hardboiled detective is the lone upholder of the moral good. In his attempts to serve a higher justice, he is attacked from al1 sides. This solitary and threatened position tends to affirm his existential resolve. Race Williams is certainly aware of the unconifortable position he occupies. Already in his first appearance in the , "Knights of the Open Palmu (1923), he states: As for my business, I'm what you might cal1 the middleman--jost a halfway house between the dicks and the crooks. Oh, there ainwt no doubt that bth the cops and the crooks take me for a gun, but 1 ain8t--not rightly speaking. 1 do a little honest shooting once in a while-just in the way of business. But my conscience is clear; 1 never bunped off a guy what didnwt need it. (w18)

He occupies this shaky middle ground precisely because he serves a higher moral good. A criminal approached by Race will be dispatched rather thm alloaied to sneak though a corrupted legal system. By proceeding in this ianner, Race questions the authority of the legal syetem and simultaneously acte as judge and executioner. Zn The -1 of the Beasg (1927), Race clearly states his stance with regard to official lawt There may be laws of the state or of the govemment that arenrt so good, but the laws of God and man canrt be improved upon. Them that live by the gun should die by the gun, is good sound twentieth century gospel. (SOI3 60)

Race clearly believes in vigilantisn. He finds codified laws as bereft of meaning and usefulness in the twentieth century as did his quick-drawing antecedents of the wild west in the nineteenth century (see Appendix Ir The Wild West Connection). Race clarifies his outlook: "1% not a murderer." 1 laid a finqer out toward his chest. "1 shoot to protect my iife or the life of another. But 1 donrt go out to kill." (Spa 151)

This creed differs from that of the cwboy hero who routinely hunted criminals. According to Race's statement, he will only shoot when cornered. Bis actions, hcmever, do not bear thia out; Race will provoke or knowingly walk into violent situations. He seems to enjoy practicing his aim on live, moving targets. In The Sn-1 of the Beast, he is asked by the police to hunt down and kill "the Beastm who has eluded police capture. Race, having accomplished this task, actually laughs as his prey dies. 57 The Continental Opr$ actions in Red HmeSt (1929) are clearly inforasd bp a sense of vigilantien and a caplete lack of faith in the legal system. Aïthough the Op only kills one criminal, he constructa a chah of events which causes the crininala in Personville to tum againcit one another, Bis actions prompt a fellm operative to leave the case and Personville after questionhg the Op's morality. The responsibility for the blood bath that consumes the town lies with the Op. Aithough he fully acknowledges his responsibility, he is uncornfortable with his actions after the fact. The Op's perception of the Personville police force is that it is slovenly and corrupt. By creating the situation in which the criminal elements of Personville annihilate each other, the Op is assured a justice he feels could not be gained through a corrupted legal system. In The Guss Key (1931) Hammett takes a different perspective on crime. This is Hammett% only book in which the "detectiveW is a criminal. Ned Beaumont is the enforcer for politician Paul Madvig. From this perspective, Hammett is able to reveal the back-rooa machinations of politics and the rampant corruption of American society. Senator Henry's muràer of his own son merely infonns Madvig that he has backed the wrong candidate in the upcdng election. Beaumont, disgusted at this depth of inunorality, takes his leave . The nmst awid proponent of violent vigilantism is undoribtedîy nickep Spillaners nike Hammer. Although Hanmer draws heavily on Dalyrs Race Williams, Spillane8s writing is superior to Daly's. Hammer appeals to his audience with his acknowledgement of sexuality and his stalker attitude. Where Race has a tendency to fire almoit randdy at "bad guys," Hammer's choice of target is al- carefully selected. In a passage from I. (1947) already alluded to in this chapter, Hanmer kills hie lover to avenge the death of his friend. He justifies his actions by stating: "We wonrt have to worry about a smart lawyer cracking ou chains of circumstance and making them look foolish to a jury... Irm the jury naw, and the judge, and 1 have a promise to keep. Beautiful as you are, as much as 1 aïmost loved you, 1 sentence you to death." (u 135) Vigilantism is seen as superior to a codified legal system which can fail justice through technical manipulation. Jim Thompson is a recently tediscovered thriller mystery miter. His most controversial book, The Killer Inside Me (1952), features the first-person narrative by Lou Ford, Texas Deputy sheriff and killer. Spillane's controversial idea of expediting harsh justice, gender not with standing, is taken a twisted step further by Thompson. Here, the victime are not criminals but eimply the women whom Ford loves. The most graphie and repellent scene in the book is his murder of Amy Stanton, bis fiancee. 1 hit her in the guts as hard as 1 could. My fist went back against her spine, and the fleeh closed around it to the wrist. (FIN 184) 59

As Amy Stanton lies on Ford's kitchen floor, slowly bleeding to death, he tries to read the newspaper. Thampson gives us his view of a psychologically and morally corrupted offices of the law by asing a combination of graphic description and first person narration. Ford is presented as an extrenely ironie interpretation of the hero; he has disguised himself as the intrepid and well-liked officer of the law while simultaneously violently underminhg basic tenets of moral human conduct.

The Inadequacies of the Legal System Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe once worked for the District Attorney's office. He did not leave of his own accord or for reasons of interna1 corruption. As he explains in The Bio Slee~(1939), "1 was fired. Pot insubordination. 1 test very high on insubordination..."(BÇ 7). Insubordination, simply stated, is an exhibition of rebelliousness toward the rules of conduct prescribed by a system. Marlowe's rebelliousness is typical of the attitude of the hardboiled detective. Finding that the mles simply do not apply to real situations, he begins to &end them and is subsequently fired. Challenging the niles is perceived as a greater threat to the system than is its intemal corruption. Marlawe ha8 a problem with corzupt police in Farewell Lovelv (1940). Marlowe is escorted fram the Stillwood Heights mansion of fsaudulent mystic Amthor by two off-duty policemen acting as private aecurity enforcers. They take Marlowe for a long drive and then knock hia unconscious. Although? like the Op, Marlowe has sow disagreements with Los Angeles police, he finds rialler-town police much more prone to corruption and bnitality. The police in question in

Farewell Mv Lovelv are from Bay City, a corriipt tawn whose police often give Marlowe grief, even outside their jurisdiction . In The Lona Goodbve (1953), Marlowe finds himself a guest of the Tijuana police after assieting his friend Terry Lennox to cross the border into Mexico. Like the Bay City police, those of Tijuana are violent, even if they are not corrupt. Chandler tackles further inadequacies of the legal system in this book; at one point ha considered calling it

s Where vou- Buv It. The speech by Marlowe's appointed lawyer, Endicott, reveals Chand1er.s view of the rift between the law and justice: The law isn't justice. 1t.s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. (u45) According to the lawyer, one should not anticipate justice from the legal system. It is an inadequate mechanism too easily swayed by mer, corruption and money. After MarIuwe successfully uncovers the convoluted crininal plot in me Zona Goodbve, he realizes that, having no proof, he muet walk away froa the case Ieaving it unresolved. He voices hi8 disgust at the absurdity of the legal system: "Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawycrs to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can Say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Cour+ tan Say the second lot were wrong. Sure therers such a thing as law. We're up to ounecks in it. About al1 it does is make business for lawyers. HOW long do you think the big-shot mobsters would last if the lawgers dicinet show them how to operate?" (&Ç 259) Given a cynical perception of the law, like Marlowe's, it is no wonder that some hardboiled detectives exercise a vigilante justice. It is clear from the above examples that hardboiled detectives have little patience with the judicial system or even the idea of a standardized set of laws. Their need to exercise full moral freedom and responsibility, in an effort to serve a greater god, is informed by an existential perspective. The need for a strong personal morality is entrenched in both hardboiled fiction and in existentialism. The issues discussed in this chapter reveal the stringent moral codes of behaviour hardboiled detectives adhere to in a number of areas: thair relationships with women, their use of alcohol and the* perspectives on the law and justice. In al1 cases, a strong sense of personal morality dictates the actions of 62 the private detective. Uith the shift toward the strong anti-hero of the thriller mpterierr, moral questions are still raised; hawever, the antbherors sense of desire tends to override his actions, The thrillerts anti-hero often acts imnorally, yet he is fully coqnisant of the immorality of his actions. lllthough the need for norally informed action is an essential element of existential philosophy, hardboiled fiction placed an even greater emphasis on personal morality. This can be attributed to two factors, the first of which is the hardboiled character's placement as an outsider. Unlike existentialism, hardboiled writing nevei embraced the concept of group action, of revolution, but preferred to maintain the isolation of the individual. As an outsider to society in general and also to the law, the hardboiled detective necessarily acquires a deep sense of personal morality. Secondly, one of the characteristics of hardboiled writing is its fast-paced action. The hardboiled detective's need to act, especially in light of his cynicism with regard to the law, must be informed by his sense of persona1 moral integrity. Chagter Three : The Absurd

The Lbtistential Absutd and its Postmodernist implications in the Hardbof lad lchool

We have found out to our edification in this cent- that literature bas beconie the "bons lockerm of phflosophy, perhaps because with al1 our other troubles, straight philosophy is just too hard to read. Carolyn See Maybe only cheap fiction qives us the true measure of reality. uriiberto Eco

The Evolution of the Absurd

What is the existential absurd? Albert Camusfs essay The Mvth of S~SYD~US(1942). his novel ~'Ltranaer (1942) and Jean-Paul Sartre's &a NausQe (1938) are al1 explorations of this question. Camus described the feeling of the absurd as the "divorce between man and his life, the actor and his settingw (w 13). The absurd is a disorientation caused by the sudden realization of the absutdity of existence; the realization that non-existence is just as possible. Given the equal likelihood of non-existence, the fact of our existence becomes absurd and meaningless. This is the ground zero ftom which existential philosophy grows; it is the 64 experience of the cogito without the benefit of the preeence of a God. Can any relation be &am between the existential absurd and the postmodern? 1s the postmodernist trend a stylistic extension of the existential absurdl Althoagh ~'Étranaer and &a Nausée were nitten as explorations of the absurd, stylistically they follow the structure of the modernist novel. A central narrator makes the reader privy to his innermost thoughts through the use of an interior monologue. In this self-reflexive state he reveals hFs scepticism and voices epistemological questions about the world and people he perceives. The questions the narrator struggles with may cause a resonance with the reader, may cause the reader to question hixnaelf or herself, but the reader has no cause to question the identity or existence of the narrator. Despite the feeling of unreality caused by the exploration of the absurd, there is still a recognizable linearity and closure. A logic is apparent in these novels through theh structure and composition. The modernist detective novel, even in its hardboiled form, retains this same inner logic. A crime is cammitted and the detective is hired to resolve itr leaving the reader with a sense of closure. Although we may samethes question the actions of Spade or Marlowe, we rarely question their identity or confuse their identity with that of their authors. For the most part, the hardboiled detective novel 65 also retains the structure and composition of the modernist style. Both Hammett and Chandler dtepassages which expriment with notions of the absurd. Although it could not be said that Hammett or Chandler are postmodemist writers, it is clear that they undertake experiments within the modernist framework which allude to later developments in the postmodern .

The Contrast of the Postmodern In Postmoderniit Fiction (1987), Brian McHale pieces together the primary tenets of postmodernist fiction. These include 1) the author as God who, at times, collapses into the text, thus becoming visible; 2) the exploration of possible worlds; 3) the excluded middle or the exploration of a potentiality between truth and falsehood; 4) the partial erasure of a potential direction for the work which leaves a trace of that potential visible; and 5) a lack of closure, or a lack of conplete closure at the conclusion of the work. Some of the above tenets may have ken anticipated in the work of Camus and Sartre, despite the- use of the modernist style. The fact that both of these writers created works of philosophy and fiction shows the tension they felt working solely within the modernist fictional framework. They needed to infiltrate the text in a way that had not 66 been explotad styListically in fiction and so they turned to philosophical writing where they could be more visible in the text. The exploration of the absurd can be read as an exploration of a possible world; rather than a fictional possibility, it is a philosophical possibility. Existentialiam does not allcw for black and white norality and, as such, it is the exploration of the excluded middle, the grey area in which teal decisions must be undertaken. Neither erasure nor lack of closure are readily apparent in their writing. As previously stated, Camus and Sartre mite in a modemist style and these last two factors are indicative of later postmodem developments. Consideration of such comparisons shows a trend in the absurd to expand the madern toward what would later be termed the postmodern. The sense of disorientation created in novels like &a Nausee and ~'Btranaermoves toward that created by later postmodernist novels. Uthough examples of existentialist absurd writing still fa11 into the category of the modern, Camus and Sartre both struggle to break free of modernist conventions and try to expand the boundaries of modernist territory through the exploration of the absurd . Writerli postdating Camus and Sartre have investigated the logical extension of the absurd by wuring the modernist style to create the postmodern. Postmodernist fiction is created when the abaurd is pushed beyond the limits of its modemist frawwork. This expansion of the absurd into pos~emismin fiction can be seen as coincidentwith the breakdown of existentialism in philosophy (see Chapter 4s The Stmcturalist Challenge). Writers whose work illustrates the postmodem trend include , Jorge Luis Borges, William S. Burroughs, Italo Calvino, Thomas Pynchon and main Robbe-Grillet. Hm is this trend, fram the modernist existential absurd to the postmodexnist, relevant to the development of hardboiled fiction? In addition to the previously noted trends in postmodernist fiction, the following structural elenents can be extrapolated from McHale#s work, and may be seen to inform postmodernist mystery fiction: 1) a distorted or sometimes circular relation to time and place; 2) an arriva1 at the correct solution through incorrect reasoning and an exploration of logical impassibilities; 3) a greater reliance on luck, chance, and intuition; 4) attention shifted away fron the crime toward an exploration of a chaotic, irrational reality; and 5) a lack of complete or satisfactory closure. There are vesy few examples of postmodernist mystery fictionx eimply because these tenets

Examples. .that came to mhd include Douglas Adams's urk Gentlves- Bol~sticDetective Awncy (1987) and others in that series, Alain Robbe-Grillet% The Vo~ew(1955). Paul Auster8s The New York_TEiLoav (1985-86) and works by Sebaetian Japrisot and Jorge Luis Borges. Umberto EcoPs The Naaie of the Rose (1980) and Foucau1t88 Pendu (1988) offer a more seriously theoretical perspective on the structure of language and its effect on reality and dismiss the parodic elements presented by same pos tmodernis t writers. 68 undernine several key elements of the traditional formula of mystery writing . Paul Auuster's Citv of Glass (1985) provides an excellent example of postaodern mystery fiction and makes use of many of the techniques McHale suggests. The identities of the and the author shift constantly; the same protagonist is named Daniel Qu- (a

mystery writer ) , william Wilson (his ) , Max Wotk (his fictional detective), Paul Auster (initially a mistaken identity which he decides to assume, the name of another character in the book and the book's author), Henry Dark (author of a pamphlet on the city of Babel) and Peter Stilïman (the man he is hired to protect). The narrator is revealed as an anonymous friend of the fictional Paul Auster. The identities of the author and his characters al1 collapse into the text and into each other. Auster also distorts the time sense of his protagonist. When Qui= first visits Stillman, he feels as if only a few minutes have passed and yet night bas fallen. Just prior to his own disappearance, Quinn feels that the days are becoming ahorter, that daylight has alaost ceased to exist. Citv of Glass is not completed with the typical closure of a mystery novel; no criainal is revealed and in fact, no crime is committed. lnstead closure occurs as al1 the players in the drama disappear, seemingly into the ether. As is typicalof postmodernist novels, Citv of G~~Rsis reminiscent of walking into a carnival fun-house' the distortions are simultaneously playful and unsettling. Some may view the postmodern as trivial, but to do so is to disregard its port-stmcturalist theoretical foundations (see Chapter 4: The Strrictaralist Challenge) and the importance of irony in the poetiodern. The postmodernist debt to the modern is acknuwledged through its critical re- visiting of the past to undemine the validity and authority of modernism through the use of irony. The postmodern leads a double existence by its coincident rupturing and dependence on the modern for its own assertion. Echoing Alan Wilde, Linda Hutcheon states: ...p ostmodern irony is the structural recognition that discourse today cannot avoid acknawledging its situation in the world it represents: irony's critique, in other words, will always be at least somewhat cornplicitous with the dominants it contests but within which it cannot help existing.(G!E 36) The postmodernist novel, while creating a fiction, also acknowledges the creation of that fiction in a way unfamiliar to the modern text. Wlike modern irony, the duplicity of postmodernist hony is not resolved and thus closure ie disallowed. As Hutcheon asserts , postmodernism.. ,

... questions the very act--and authority-of attacking a position, any position, even an oppositional one that assumes a discursive situation exterior to that which is king opposed. (Gzs 37) 70 While the modemiet text supposes a subjective foundation from which to narrate its discourse, the politmodern refuses any euch foundation either for discourse or criticisn. Although both existential and hardboiled writing are modern forms, their mutual dissatisfaction with the limitations of modernism cauaed the exploration of the absurd. The constant testing of the boundaries of widernism by these and other genres eventually led to the breakdown of the modernist framework and the assertion of the postmodern. The peripheral or sometimes obvious exploration of the absurd in both genres is an indication of the* common curiosities and tendency to investigate similar territory . Earlier examples of haràboiled writing, by authors like Hammett and Chandler, retain the use of a detective and a primarily modernist approach, although there is the occasional glimpse of the absurd. As hardboiled witing evolves, the role of the detective is dismissed in favour of an anti-hero, and with thie change cames a more obvious exploration of the absurd that on occasion, borders on the postmodernist style.

Hammett '8 Absurd Tales The disorienting notions of the absurd were explored in some of Dashiell Hammett's earlieet non-fiction writing. In 1923, he contributed an article to Siaert Set magazine entitled "From the Memoirs of a Private DetectivemWIn this article Haimett lists a series of absurd experiences. For

A man 1 was shadawing went out into the country for a walk one Sunday afternoon and lost his bearinge completely. 1 had to direct hin back to the city. 1 was once faleely accused of perjury and had to perjure myself to escape arrest. 1 knw a detective who once attempted to disguise hiniself thoiroughly. The first policeman he met took him into custody. The chief of police of a Southern city once gave me a description of a man, complete even to a mole on his neck, but neglected to mention that he only had one am. 1 know a man who once stole a Ferris-wheel. 44) Hammett clearly appreciated the absard in his daily working life. His acceptance and acknarledgement of the absurd in his non-fiction work would inform his later fictional niting. Perhaps it is his use of the absurd which makes Hammett of primary importance in any discussion regarding existentialism in hardboiied writing. As Cawelti

States : More than any other hard-boiled writer, Hammett's work reflects the vision of a godless natualistic cosmos ruled by chance, violence, and death that dominates such major twentieth-cent- writers as Conrad, Crane, and Hemingway. Though his work is shaped by the formulait imperatives of iystery, , and the victorious protagonist, Hammett's stories have a philosophical power and seriousness beyond most other writers of hard- boiled detective stories. Like the greater works of Conrad, Crane, and Hemingway, his stories are essentially about the discovery that the comforting pieties of the Pest-- belief in a benevolent universe, in progress, in romantic love-- are illusions and that man is alone in a meaningless univetee. (m173) 72 Hammett certainly holds no illusions about his place in the universe or the abrrurdity of that place. In much of his fictional work the protagonist actively undermines the superficiel and shalty structures on which other characters build the- hopes of reality. It should be no surprise that Hammett's fictional writing also subtly addresses issues of the abeurd or that at tintes he uses techniques which may be seen to anticipate later postmodernist devices. For instance, in The Maltese Falcon (1930), the mystery of primazy importance is the location and retrieval of the valuable falcon statuette. The readerrs attention is shifted away from the murder of Spade8s partner, Miles Axchet. Although Archer's demise is connected with the search for the bird, the discovery of his killer seems almost incidental. Spade investigates his partner's mutder indirectly while focussing his attention on the falcon. The readet8s attention is directed away from the primary murder mystery taward a lees pressing issue. Although Hammett shifts the reader'e attention away from the crime, as later postmodernist iystery writers might do, it is to redirect the readerrs attention to a different mystery rather than to explore the absurd chaos around him. The Maltese Falcon al80 features Hammett's fanous existential tale of a man named Flitcraft. Spade tells Brigid 08Shaughnessy this tale of a businesaman who leads a safe and rather bu11 life until the day he escapes death 73

when a falling beam narrowly'PisseshiP. In that aiornent he feels that "somebody had taken the lid off life and let him

look at the works (a335 ) , This moment of nausea or acknowledgement of the abeurd causes Flitcraft to abandon his wife, family and job and wander aialessly for eaa years. Spade finally locates the man and discovers he ha8 married an identical woman, raised another family and returned to wotk. As Spade puts it, "Be adjusted himself to beams falling and, then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not fallinga(E 336). Flitcraft is offered a glimpse into the raw absurdity of existence and is forced to acknowledge that "men die at haphazard like that, and only lived while blind chance spared them" (E336). Flitcraft is allowed only a glhpse of the absurd through his experience. Once the nausea passes, he reverts to hie safe, du11 life, again embracing the illusions that everyday lifestyle carries with it. Moments of existential realization are fleeting for moet of us. We adjust ourselvee to living in a world in which beams do not fall; to live othewise would be too exhausting. Spade and his ilk do inhabit this dangerous world in which beams are expected to fall, in which the haphazard nature of the absurd must be acknowledged in order to survive. David Geherin supports this reading: The parable enbodies Hammett's view that life is not ruled by logic but randomness, caprice, chance, what the existentialists cal1 "the absurd ." Geherin adds: ft was this perception of the world that led Hammett and many of his contempotaries to reject the neatly defined univeme of the classical mystery story in favour of the new realistic . mystery tale. (m24) The notion of the absurd and the chaos it denotes are not compatible with the ordered universe supposed in traditional detective fiction ( see Chapter 1 : Ratiocinative Foundations). The philosophical issue this taises is whether a notion of the universe which embraces the absurd is necessarily more wtealisticm than a mode1 which embraces logic. The debate between the existentialists and the logical positivists may in the end be more a matter of subjective preference of perspective than one of tealism. Cawelti questions the validity of the commonly supported existential interpretation of Spaders Flitcraft tale . Though some critics have suggested that the Flitcraft story is an existentialist parable, it implies something more ambiguous to me. The existentialist believes that recognizing the irrationality and abeurdity of the universe can be the prelude to a new spiritual depth. Through such a realization man can pass beyond despair to a freely chosen moral responsibility that gives meaning to an otherwise ridiculous and empty existence. The Flitcraft parable eeems to corne out at the other end. Only a rejection of al1 emotional and moral tiee can help man survive in a treacherous world. (m 167) Cawelti8s anbiguity regarding the existential reading of the Flitcraft passage may have to do with his interpretation of existentialist philosophy. Although existentialism does 75 express the need to acknwledge the absurd, atheistic existentialists like Sartre would reject the notion that this allm the transcendence to a "new spiritual depth." Caweltips spiritual interpretation is pehape closes to that of Taoism or Zen Buddhism. In Oriental philosophies the acknawledgement of nothingnees is a prerequisite to satori or enlightenment. Due to its allegiance to the underlying logic of a Western philosophical systen, existentialism disallaws such a leap of faith. This seeeingly hopeless end- point probably contributed to the view of exietentialism as a philosophical cul-de-sac (see Chapter 4: The Structuralist Challenge). Caweltips interpretation of existentialism, that "moral responsibility gives meaning to an otherwise ridiculous and empty existence," may also be faulty. In Sartre's view, the only meaning our existence has is in action, in creation. Although our actions must be informed by morality, the moral responsibility itself is not a creative force. Moral

responsibility does not give meaning to our existence; only action can do that. Rirthermore, the notion of a "meaningn at al1 may be illusory and subjective. In Thethetale of Flitcraft seems enigmatic; the fact that Hammett included it at al1 verges on the absurd. The tale may be an allegorical map of the universe, but it is also an attempt to warn Brigid o#Shaughnessy that things, including Spadeos esotions, may not be what they seent. As Robert tdenbaum puts it: If Brigid wcre acute enough-or lees traaielled by conventional sentiment-she wuld see in the long, apparently pointles8 story that her appeals to Spade.8 senee of honour, hi8 nobility, his integrity, and finally, hi8 love, will not and cannot work. That essentially is what Spade is telling her tkough his parable. Brigid-totally unscrupulous, a mrirderess--8hould underatand rather-better than Mrs. Flitcraft, the bourgeois housewife. But she doesnrt. She falls back on a set of conventions that she has diecarded in her own life, but which she naively assumes still hold for others'. (TWT 83) Brigid OrShaughnessy also resides in a world in which beams fall; she walks a dangerous tightrope between despesate criminals and the law. Ber feminine charn has always saved her from harm and perhaps has allawed her to maintain her illusion of safety. Ber apparent lack of awareness regarding her position makes it impossible for her to understand Spade's cautionary tale; she is not equipped to read Spaders patable as a warning. Cawelti supports this reading: In the context of the novel, the Flitcraft story is a kind of warning to Brigid that Sam has adjusted himself to a world that is likely to betray him at any the. As it turne out Sam needs al1 his cynical equanimity, for Brigid conceals a devastating treachery behind a facade of beauty and romance. In the end it is only Sam's total disillusionment that saves him fram destruction. ~~ 167) Cawelti is quite correct to state that it is Spadeos wdisillusionmentu which saves him. Spade is dis-illusioned; he has no illusions. Bis telling of the Flitcraft tale reveals that he is aware of Brigid O'Shaughnessyrs attempts to bribe him, to sway bis moral stand with her feminine wiles. Spadeps lack of illusions, and his constant effort to see things without illusion, infonn his moral stand and consequently his actions, Cawelti raises a further problem with the Flitcraft tale: the ambiguity of the moral. It is tnie that Flitcraft and Spade manage to survive the falling beam, but what for? Flitcraft goes back to the same respectable iiddle-class life that he so suddenly awakened from; Spade returns to his shabby office, having sent the woman he loves off to prison. The price of survival would seem to be a terrible emptiness, a restriction of human possibilities, a cynical rejection of deeper motion and commitment. (hW 167)

Flitcraft's return to his previous life might be viewed as a choice taken in good faith, in full awareness of the absurd. While Spade returns to his life as a private eye, he does so knawing that he has made the morally correct decision and sent a murderer to prison. Sartre would argue that the responsibility for moral decisions actually opens a wider range of human potential rather than restricting it; unfortunately, with the realization of the infinite possibilities enabled us by unlirited choice cornes an almost crushing weight of responsibility. For Sartre, part of the weight of responsibility we carry is that of the responsibility for our emotions. Enotional States are chosen rather than mystically or chemically imposed. Whether or not the weight of our responsibility causes us to feel a 78 "terrible eiptiness* is again a matter of personal perspective and, as Sartre would have it, pereonal choice.

The llargins of Hoderniam

In hi8 laet novel, me Thin Man (1934), Hammett tetains full closure, as would be expected in the modernist tradition. He has, bawever, become uncomfortable with the banality of fornulaic gente conventions. Nick Charles announces he needs to catch up on his drinking and States: "Murder doesnrt round out anybodyrs life except the murderedrs and sometimes the murdererrs."Nora Charles replies That may be, but itts al1 pretty unsatisfactory"(~ 726). This last line of the novel, and of Hammett's fictional writing career, effectively undermines the sense of satisfaction that full closure conventionally generates. The validity of full closure se- to be in question. Hammett's dissatisfaction and questioning may be seen to open the possibility of a more postmodernist handling of closure. Raymond Chandler also undertook experinienta which questioned the boundaries of modemism. For instance in The Bia Slee~(1939) attention is shifted away froin the crime. Marlowe is hired to intimidate a blackmailer but the real mystery is the whereabouts of Rusty Regan. Marlowe is repeatedly wamed to refrain from his investigation of Regan ' s disappearance . Hie investigation is f urther clouded by mutders, gambling, pornography, and a variety of other shady dealings. This cloading and distortion of issues, in conjunction with Harlawe's more intuitive inwestigative approach, anticipates the postaodem aile maintainhg an essentially modernist structure.

a- Slee~also features incomplete closure. Who killed the Sternwood8s chauffeur, Owen Taylor? Was it Eddie Mars, Joe Brody or Canino? Chandler never clarifies the identity of the murdererz. Chandler also never accounts for the $15,000 cash that Regan supposedly cartied with him at al1 times. Did Mars take it as a first payment for hie service in disposing of the body? Was the wney removed from the body at all? Chandler was a careful miter and consequently incomplete closure of this nature cannot be viewed as accidental. Clearly Chandler was playing with the boundaries of the genre in an effort to see how far they could be stretched.

In parewell. Mv Lovelv (1940) Chandler continued to explore the peripheries of the genre with a closes look at the absurd. Marlowe is literally bodiodily pulled into this investigation, the search for Velma.

A hand 1 could have sat in came out of the dimness and took hold of my shoulder and squashed

The 1946 film version of me Ria Slee~is even more confused. The popular story is that when asked who had committed one of the murders, director Howard Hawks admitted he wasn8t sure and turned ta screenwriter, William Faulkner. Faulkner was equally unable to answer the question and so phoned Chandler who jokingly replied, "The butler did it." it to a palp. Then the hand moved me through the doors and casually lifted aie op a step. (m 144)

This sort of random involvement is more comsllon in thriller mystery writing, the priiary dif ference being that, in thriller mysteries, the unexpected, uncamon, absurdist, chance involvement in a crime usually befalls an every-man, a man on the street, rather than a professional private eye. Marlowe's feelings of the absurd are further explored in his association and empathy with a small black and pink bug he finds in the eighteenth floor office of police headquarters. The bug reached the end of Randall's desk and marched off into the air. It fell on its back on the f loor, waved a few thin worn legs in the air feebly and then played dead. Nobody cared, so it began wavfng the legs again and finally struggled over on its face. It trundled slowly off into a corner tuwards nothing going no where. (JWi179)

Upon leaving Randall's office Marlowe rescues the bug and places it behind a bush outside. Although Marlowe recognizes there is no God in this absurd universe, that his own life or death is meaningless, he can play God for the hapless bug and perhaps wishes someone could rescue hin similarly. In The Ladv in the Lm(1943) Chandler placed Marlowe on the edge of the postmodern. Chandler uses a first-person narrative in this book that obviously contributes to its self-reflexive nature'. Chandler also begins playing games

The 1947 film version of The Lady the Lake, directed by (continued. .. ) with the genre itself by acknowledging the formula and conscfously unfolding it into the text. The consequence of this is a foreshadowing of the postmodernist notion of the visibility of the author in the texte. The most noticeable use of this technique in The Ladv in the Lake is a scene in which a murderess confronts Marlawe with a gun. T've never liked this scene," 1 said. "Deteetive confronts murderer. Murde- produces gun, points same at detective. Murderer tells detective the whole sad story, with the idea of shooting him at the end of it. Thus wasting a lot of valuable the, even if in the end murderer did shoot detective. Only murderer never does. Something always happens to prevent itou(u 592) Chandler uses Marlowe's speech to acknowledge a genre convention. Any suspension of disbelief the reader may have had is immediately deflated by the knowledge that this scene is imperative to the construction of the formula of the genre. Marlawe is revealed as a fictional character and, suddenly , Chandler is addressing his audience dîrectly, jesting at the conventions of the genre in which he is writing. Later postmodernist texts will blur these lines of delineation between the author and his characters to an even

( .. . continued) and starring Robert Montgomery, takes this self-reflexive experiment to even greater extremes. The entire fila is composed of point-of-view shote front Marlowe's perspective. The viewing audience only sees Marlowe if he is looking into a mirror; we follow his appreciative gaze as a secretary leaves the roan and when he is knocked unconscious the acreen slowly fades to black.

The filin version plays with this notion to an even greater degree; Marlowe is introduced as a private eye who is trying to get a detective story published. greater degree, sometimes making the author completely visible in his tea. Chandler furthes explores the conjtmction of author to text and characters in his late short story "The Pencilw (published poathumously in 1961). In this story, people are mpencilledw if they are to be murdered. The act of wpencillingu consists of writing the intended victim's name on a piece of papes and then crossing it out. Killing a character effectively removes him from the text. The terminology and methodology Chandler uses to remove characters almost seems to allude to the postmadernist notion of erasure. Marlowe seems quite awase that his own existence is dependent on paper and pencil and that he too can be erased. In fact, this is the last story in which Marlowe appears.

The Leap into a Surreal Void

Thriller mysteries came to the fore of hardboiled writing in the pst World War II period. The prima- distinction between hardboiled detective mysteries and thriller mysteries was the removal of the detective in the latter. The action and mystery revolve around an anti-hero; a man on the Street or a criminal. In thriller mysteries no attempt is made to create order; this universe is one which fully acknawledges entropy. As Carolyn See States: ...same of the best examples of the Hollywood hard-boiled novel do not have detectives for ...Theis attitude is typically a bewilderment which leavas th- weak to the point of iental incampetence. Once one ccmes over- the mountains to California, it doesnrt mattet what one is--or logick2ly-+ha+ one does. No one cares; the present world is without meaning. (m215)

The exploration of the absrud in thriller mysteries is much more advanced and apparent than it had been in the hardboiled detective sub-genre. Leaèing writers of thriller mysteries include James M. Cain, Corne11 Woolrich, David Goodis and Jim Thompson. Cain's The Postman Alwavs Rinu8 Twice (1934) is probably his most finely honed example of thriller fiction. The protagonist, Frank Chambers, is a drifter who has a passionate affair with Coi-a; between them, they murder Coraos husband, Nick Papadakis, and escape prosecution. Thus far, the plot is similar to Cain's pouble Indegnitv (1936); however, in The Postman Alwavs Rioas Twice, Frank and Corars love for each other successfully conquers their mutual fear of exposure, albeit rather tentatively. As Frank says: Vt'a you and me. Therets nobody else. 1 love you Cora. But love, when you get fear in it, itrs not love anymore. Itrs hate* (m111).

Similarly to Huff and Mrs. Nirdlinger in poule ~-, Frank and Cora must consider the threat poeed by the other. Cora invites Frank to kill her but he declines and for a brief passage it seems Cain may allaw the lover8 a happy ending. Cain saves his most absurd twist for the resolution of The Postman Alwavs Riaus mice. mank and Cora, having resolved their differences, arc looking forward to a happy life together. Unfortunately, Frank loses control of their car and Cora ie killed in the ensuing accident. Frank, who has escaped prosecution for the murder he coiritted, 2s

convicted of Cora * 8 accidental death . Corne11 Wooirich introduces a thicker darkaess to the hardboiled. He mites what Francis M. Nevins Sr . dubbed "the poetry of terrorw(gggvii), sometimes straying into the horror genre5. For Woolrich8s characters, life is clearly an absurd nightmare, and attempts at escape are always futile.

Al1 we can do about this nightmare we live in is to create, if we are very lucky, a few islands of love and trust to sustain us and help us forget. But love dies while the lovers go on living, and Woolrich excels at making us watch relationships corrode. (mxi) Attempts to grasp romantic love as a foundation for survival not only fail in Woolrich8s work-they becme twisted and corrupted as the realization of their illusory nature makes itself apparent. Eventually the cbaracters must acknawledge the full and painful absurdity of the- existence without illusion.

A prime example of Woolrichrs work is pendezvous in Black (1948). In this novel he explores the bent logic of a manmade universe through one man's attempts to retain an

Woolrich is probably best knuwn for the story that became the basis for Alfred Hitchcock8s film Bear WinriaJ (1954 ) . 85 obviously illusory romantic love- Johnnyrs girlfriend is killed by a chance accident- a bottle thnwn from the windaw of a passing aeroplane strikes her. The abrupt los8 of the object of hi8 love causes Johmy to those he feels are responsible for her death. Rather than seeking retribution directly, he seeks to cause the same pain he was forced to endure. Aftet locating the five men who had been in the aeroplane, he praceeds to murder the person most loved by each man. Johnny's patience and logic in Rendezvous in Black are reminiscent of the criminal in traditional detective mysteries ; hawever , the perspective, and the acknawledgement of the twisted, absard logic inforeing his actions, are pure thriller mystery. In this fictional universe, death is a welcomed relief from the fear and pain of the absurd. The scene in which the final victim is murdered is described as

Yet somehaw she wasn't frightened anymore, didn't recoil nor cringe nor stiffen. Al1 that was behind her already, far behind her, back in life. To know fear you have to etill be fully alive. (ga 193) Death is the same gradua1 process as described by Ibbieta in Sartre's "The Wall* (1939). The grasped-for illusions of existence are released and the absurd is finally embraced and accepted. Death is approached in good faith; it is the only way out of this trap that is life. The final irony of pendezvous in Black is the police capture and killing of Johnny. The only way they can succeed 86 in stopping Johnny is bp acknoPrledqing his Mated universe and playing within its boundaries. The police have a female officer impersonate the dead girlfriend and lead Johnny into a trap. Johnny is defeated by his awn logic, which makes sense of her return once her murderers have ken punished. ais urgent need for love, for an illusion to grasp, causes him to rree her alive, although al1 carnaon logic would deny this possibility.

As well as the exploration of the absurd, as noted above, early inklings of some postmodernist devices can be found in Rendezvous in Black. Johnnyrs mind and logic are explored as a different universe with their own private logic; Johnny is God in this universe. Woolrich collapses this universe by maintaining a modernist use of closure. Johnnyfs perception of time and the% reaction to Johnny are also unique. Tiae stops its passage when his girlfriend is killed and, although the world changes, Johnny does not age. This sense of time distortion can be seen to allude to another postmodernist device. The elusive David Goodis further extends the bleakness of thriller fiction. His books have been much more successful in France6 ttban in the United States, where his

To date the only biography available is Philippe Garnierfs Goodis: le vie en noir et bl~(1984) which has not been translated into English. work is mostly forgotten and out of prfnt7. Goodis's vision of humanity is cloaked in an unforgiving darkness; the Hollywood glitz has tarnished revealing abandonment, violence, and alcohol. Geoffrey O'Brien calls it Goodis 's

"voluntary and secretive descent into oblivion* (Spp v). His characters seem to acknowledge and accept the absurdity of their existence without question, with a sense of quiet and dignified defeat. O'Brien continues: Anyone who spends some the with hi8 [Goodisgs] books learns to identify their peculiarly intense atmosphere, their outbursts of eloqpence, their sense of the world as an abyss made for falling into. That such testaments of deprivation and anxiety could have sustained a career as a novelist is today cause for wonderment. Nothing so downbeat, eo wedded to reiterations of social be likely to personal- and failure, would f ind a mass market publisher at present. (SPP xiii )

The idea of "personal and social failare" is explored through one of Goodisgs recurring characters: the failed artist pulled into collusion with career criminals. This theme is explored in both Black Friday (1954) and shoot the (1956). Black Ftidav opens with the protagonist, Hart, shoplifting an ovetcoat while trying to survive the Philadelphia winter. After running from the store:

' In the late 1980s, Books reprinted a large number of his books and in 1990-91 Vintage crime (Random Bouse) follawed suit; hawever, after this brief reourgence, most of these reprints have slid ont0 remainder piles and once again are out of print. He turned and looked back and air1 he could see was the street and houses on both sides of the street and the empty pavements. That was all. That was what had been chasing him. The emptiness. (E7) The emptiness Hart feels eeems to be reflective of his acknowledgement of the absud, the aeaninglessness of his existence. Uthough he rans from the erptiness initially, at the conclusion of the books

He was walking very slowly, not feeling the bite of the cold wind, not feeling anything. And later, turning the street corners, he didnrt bother to look at the street signs. He had no idea where he was going and he didnrt care. (BE 129)

Goodis might have added "it didnrt matter* to this concluding line. Hart's acceptance of the absurd is offered as part of the closure of the novel. Hart is a man withont emotions whose ability to feel pain has been exhausted. He made a fist and walked up to a tree. He slaiiieed his fist against the tree and pain shot through his knuckles. Not enough pain (x7).

Initially Hast wants to feel pain--to feel something. Once he has been kidnapped by the criminal gang, hawever, his desensitization becomes a tool for bis survival. Hart convinces the gang that he too is a hazdened ctiminal, rather than an artist turnad penny-ante crook. In an effort to sustain this charade, he aeeists Charley in the dismemberment and disposal of the body of one of the gang members. ALthough Hart wonders about his ability to aid in this gruesonte operation, he is able to do so without befng haunted by images of the scene or by any senae of guilt or remorse. He has accepted the meaninglessnees of the absurd even at its most horrifying moments. Similarly to Hart in Black Fsidqp, Eddie in shoot the piano Plavez is pulled into criminal action through chance. ~ddie's two brothers are career criminals and Eddie is dragged into theu wrld when one of thein stumbles injured into Harriet'e But, the bar in which Eddie is the piano player. Although Eddie is a successful musician, he is a failed artist in the social sense. He had been working to become a concert pianist when World War II broke out and interest and funding for culture were te-routed to the war effort. He has spent his career playing jazz and popalar music in a sleazy bar. Unlike Hart, Eddie is given a chance at salvation through his music. He has the money he needs, friends in the bar and the music itself, which takes on a mystical quality in this novel. This hope for salvation through art is reflected in the closing lines of the novel: Then he heard the sound. It was warm and sweet and came from a piano. That's fine piano, he thought . Who. e playing that? He opened his eyes. He oaw his fingers careseing the keyboard. (SPP 156)

The elation Eddie feels when he plays music may be indicative of the illusory nature of any fonn of escape from the absurd; it might also be an acknavledgement of the possibility of a leap of faïth to something divine, intangible and undefinable.

Jim Thampson uses me Killer Inside Me ( (1952 ) to explore the absurd in society. Loti Ford is a , but also a respected membes of society, who holds the prominent position of sheriff in a small town. The communityrs trust and Amy Stantonrs love are clearly misplaced. Ford's megalomania and violent nsicknessw make him seem mentally unbalanced and yet Ford seems to have a clearer, more direct interpretation of reality than anyone else in the connnunity. He holds the fewest illusions about the machinations of the universe. He is stripped of any moral sense and adopts a primitivistic attitude by simply taking what he needs. Ford can aîmost be seen as an embodiment of the absurd, laughing as he kills one last the. The absuxd is also explored in Thompson's The Griftets (1963). Roy Dillon is a twenty-five-year-old grifter or con artist. He has no illusions and no expectations of his existence. explores Roy's life and his relationships with three women: hie lover Moira, the nurse Carol, and his mother Lilly. Through Roy's relationship with Moka, Thompson is able to explore the issue of romantic attachment. Their relationship is based on sex and illusion. 91 There is no sense of caring in this relationship; when Roy is seriouely injtued, Moira does not notice. Roy's con dictates that he be single; Moira is revealed to be a "long con artista who needs a pattner. Bssentially, they are conning each other for their awn needa. Carol bas a brief role in me Griftea. Her character is complex. She is a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp who has been emotionally and physically damaged from that experience. Ber outward manner is shy, giving and naive. When sitting with Carol, Lilly thinks: "Hete was something, someone, absolutely real and the reality was al1 to the goodw(E51). The damage sustained by Carol bas made her accept the absurd without question or demand. Although she can recite to Roy what experiments were performed on her, she cannot answer mwhy.wAl1 of the characters in Grifters are damaged emotionally, but Thompson may be implying that an even greater damage must be done for one to be able to accept the absurd with equanimity. By far the most intriguing and complex relationship in The Grifter8 is between Roy and Lilly. Although ehe is his mother, because of her youth at the the of his birth, they interacted as siblings. An incestuous relationship is implied and Roy has to admit that his chosen lover, Moira, bears an uncanny resemblance to hie mother. Their relationship is built on resentment and competition. It is Lilly who realizes how i11Roy is and sllfildnons the reqaired aiedical attention. She saves hie life and for that moment takes on the role of caring mother. The ultimate absurdity is that it is also Lilly who takes that life--by accident, by chance. Perhaps Thoaipsonrs most poignant ctiticism of existence cornes in the form of a memory that Moira has of something Cole, ber deserted and crazed husband, bad told her. No, no child should be allawed to live. Yes, al1 children should be killed at birth or as soon afterward as possible. It was the kindest thing to do. It was the only way to spare them the futile tonnent, the fruetrating and senseless torture, the paradoxically evil mess which represented life on the planet earth. (E 82)

Thompson's full grasp of the absurd is written into the realizations and denials of his characters. The above examples suggest a clear understanding and use of the existential absurd in some hardboiled writing. The incorporation of the absurd into the hardboiled becomes more blatant and darker as the hardboiled evolves from detective stories into thriller mysteries. This is in part a result of the thriller mystery's greater emphasis on the macabre: its flirtation with horror, its graphic reprerrentations of death, and its interest in traumatized psychology. Although these examples remain within the stylistic territory of the modern, aome also expriment with techniques that indicate a questioning of modernist boundaries and an urge to extend them. These experimental exertions help push the wderaist absurd into the postmode~. Four : New Agendas

aWat~hingthe genre invent itself a Shifting Pasadigma and the

Feminist, Gay and Racial Agendas

Readers who are followfng a genre are creatiag maps of tbat genre which they are continually redrrawing as the genre changes. Thomas J. Roberts

The Structuralist Challenge

The 1960s marked the beginning of a paradigmatic shift away from existentialism. The initial fracture in existential thought was created by the questionhg of the validity of a centralized subject. The consequent de- centring of the -1" became a foundational element of structuralism. The priniary deficiency of existentialism was the bankrupting of the subject/object dichotomy. As the sum total of reality was becoming more readily quantifiable- through advances in mathematics and the sciences--the gap between the subject and the object was eroding. The lines of delineation which had formerly separated divergent areas of inquiry, such as the subject and object, began to blur. Structuralists replaced the differentiated subject/object with a system of eigns whose fonu and relation to each other was of paramount importance. To function within this syetem it was necessary to attempt to create an "1" calculable as a quantifiable entity. The "IWr the conscious existential ego, lost its centrality in favour of a aystem which concentrated on the relation, mediation and intertwining of signs. Another significant short-coming of existentialism was the failure of its Maxist political agenda. Although not embraced by al1 branches of existentialism, notable exceptions being the Heideggerians and Catholic existentialists, it was popular with the French contingent. During and after World War II Sartre strongly advocated Marxist revolution as the form of action necessary to create

freedom and equality. As Robert Scholes observes: In existential politics, the revolution cannot be enacted, it can only be re-enacted. To have a good revolution one must first return to the conditions that prevailed in the nineteenth century- or possibly the eighteenth century. One must, in fact, reverse history. Hence the despair of curent existentialist thought.(SfL 194)

The ideals of Marxist revolt, developed concurrently with the Industrial Revolution of the mid- and late-1800s, were relevant to the the and with regard to the social structures in which they had been conceived but that time had passed and the social structures had changed. Certainly, with the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s, Marxism

seemed, to many, to be bankrupted. a

Marxist sympathies can be noted in Dashiell Hammett's work. These run contrary to the fascistic anti-comunist fears of Carroll John Daly and Mickey Spillane. Political agendas seem to (continued .. . ) With the structatalist concentration on signe the subjective '1" was perceived ae a single elcment in a system which was not designeci for him and therefore was not necessarily progressive by his definition; the system would function as swothly, although perhaps differently, in the absence of his existence. Bistory was discerned as a multiplicity of layers of npth, each dependent on variations in the elements chosen for incorporation into its system. This view ran counter to that of existentialism in which the "1" was perceived as the central figure in a progressive history which offered a refuge from myth.

A further difference can be found in st~cturalism~s acceptance of a scientific method, especially with regard to relativism-how the ftame of teference affects the object of enquiry. Bxistentialism had chosen a more myopic view featuring the "thing-in-itselfw without consideration of the affect of a context. Are these philosophical shifts apparent in literature? Robert Scholes notes that "The literary imagination has moved through existentialism and into structuralism in our the (fi 199)2 Perhaps both philosophy and literature offer ways of communicating paradigmatic shifts in society itself. Structuralism, in its tun, was confronted by pst-

'(...continued) have faded in detective novels although the* presence is still apparent in the spy thriller sub-genre. 97 structutalisn. The essential challenge of the pst- structuralists was to question the centrality and rigidity of the sign. By 80 doing the pet-stmcturalists were able to unbind the eign and open it thus dispelling the closed fixity the sign had maintained onder structuralist interpretation. Although pst-structuralism operates as a specifically philosophical diacourae, the results of this opening of the sign, and consequent linguistic usage, can be f ound in postmodernist literature (see Chapter 3 : The Contrast of the Postmodern).

A Competing Paradigm

The Institute for Social Research was founded in Frankfurt in 1923. Critical theory was formed by this school and so its development ntns roughly parallel to that of existentialism in historical terms. While existentialism has been largely abandoned, it is only recently that critical theory has corne to the fore, offering a viable alternative to the rapid fragmentation of philoeophy, cultural theory and other fields of thought. Like the ~t~cturalists,proponents of critical theory objected to the subject/object dichotomy expounded in existentialiem. As Herbert Marcuse was to point out: "The modern transformation from natural to technical reality undermines the very foundation of this dualismu (CTS 121). The de-centring of the "1" or, as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer designated it, the "end of the indi~idual,~was accelerated by the grwth of mas8 campercial production. Adorno's later theoretical work concentrated on the "culture indastrywand its complex association with the market,"... the complete entwinement of the social and the aesthetica (w2 13 ) as Peter fh*e Hohendahl states it . Adorno created an aesthetic theory in which social and cultural elements do not bave a causal relation but a complex connection based on interdependence. He viewed the culture industry with scom:

The total effect of the culture industry is one of anti-enlightenment ...the progressive technical domination of nature-becomes MSS deception and is turned into a means for fettering consciousness. It impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuale who judge and decide consciously for themselves . (CTS 135 )

The individual becomes a slave manipulated by the market. The machinery of the culture industry contrives a desire in society for the products it manufactures. Adorno also explains that ...p soducts which are tailored for consumption by the masses, and which to a great extent determine that consumption, are manufactared more or less according to plan. (CTS 128 ) The notion of a plan or standardization of a cultural astifact is similar to Cawelti's interpretation of a formulait genre structure. This view is further supported by Robert Scholes, who writes of : rn ...the deciine of fictional individuation of character and a resiugence of typification. And another aspect has been the increase in novels where structure daninates ~haracter...~ (SJL 193) The predictability of the mainstxeanis of culture encourages a loaa of free spirit and geneine creative thought among consumers and creators. The fomula has came to dominate many formerly innovative fields, one of them king the hardboiled aub-genre of myotery fiction. The formulait overtaking of hardboiled fiction erodes its existential

The lffect of Shifting Paxadigms on Hasdboiled Fiction

With the overwhelming presence of a formula, what becomes of the philosophical content that had been present in earliet hardboiled writing? As Scholes States: It is as if once a decision is taken to use the mer of fiction as a vehicle for ideas, a certain evolutionary law begins to operate which finally leads to the loss of the very ideas... In examinhg the history of narrative, we eee that specific fictional gentes, as they become emptied of contextual value, seek to conpensate for thie by formal elaboration until they die either of their own weight or through parody... (a94)

The mas8 commercialization of the hardboiled has created a formula in which most novels are hollow facsimiles of the originals, bereft of their intensity, angst and creative experiientation. Authore have attempted to grasp the noir element through repetition, frequently not realizing its connection to a given historical period or the elusivenees of the dark absurd. Since the 1960s the hardboiled sub-genre has become a comercially accepted style, more formulait and less existential in practice. Peshapcr this is a result, in part, of Spillane's overwheiming commercial success. According to Cawelti, Such superb hard-boiled stories as Chandler's Farewell, MY Lovelv and Hammett's The Maltese Falcon have sold just over a million copies, while SpillanePs books average four to five million. (ARM 183 )

And as says, "If nature dislikes a vacuum, publishers abhor the loss of a profitable marketw(= 313). There was an attempt, perhaps market drivent perhaps driven by nostalgia, to re-create the success of the hardboiled detectives of the era. Authors like Robert Bo Parker and Bill Pronzini attempt to create characters to don the fedora and trench coat of Spade and Marlowe; but just as there could never be another Bogart, the mythical aura around these figures cannot be re-created. The era of these heroes has passed. As Symons States: ...the wotk of Hammett and Chandler had its roots in a social life and attitudes that were no longer relevant in the America of the seventies and eighties. But the jackpot was there, and with the encouragement of publishers PIS proliferated, most of them carbon copies of the great originals so faint as to be hardly legible. (M313) The tern mhardbuiledm became usefol as a marketing device for books, films and television cop shaws but the genre had forsaken its existential agenda, its roots, and had become nothing more than a styliirh facade.

Thomas 3. Roberts obserwes:

A genre, howeves, is not a formula... genres themselves are (or rather include) traditions of formulas that are mutating, formalas that are evolving. (&JE' 225 ) The most apparent formula mutation of hardboiled writing was toward its absorption into an unthinking, unoriginal, commercially excessive mass market. Myetery fiction in general has undergone a renaissance in popularity in the last decade and novels in the genre have proliferated. As Symons has stated, most of these "newW detectives are merely "carbon copiesm rather than innovative or creative enterprises. Perhaps it would be appropriate to deem this a new era of pulp in which a discerning reader is forced to separate the wheat from the chaff. Simultaneous to this deluge of "new pulprW a number of less coismercially apparent directions have also risen from the ashes of the hardboiled school. What new agendas have subscribed to the hardboiled approach? Are remnants of hardboiledrs existential past still noticeable? The most obvious feature of the commercial hardboiled style has been its writerst attempts to create detective heroes based on the historical mdels provided by Hammett or Chandler. Writers undertaking the genre with new agendas in mind have uaed it to explore a sense of otherness instead; theh detective charaeters may still awe a debt to these earlier modals, but in sooe ways they ate radically different. As Geherin States:

AUtost from the moment men Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hanmett created the private-eye genre with the- tales about Race Williams and the Continental Op, writers began searching about for waya to differentiate the- private detectives from those of other writers. As the years passed and the number of private eyes increased, the problem of finding a credible individualizing feature became increasingly difficult. (m176)

The writers and audiences of hasdboiled detective fiction had traditionally been white heterosexual males and consequently so were the majority of detective heroes. Recently detectives have begun to surface who are not male, not heterosexual or not white.

The Feminist Detectives

The role of women in hardboiled stories has traditionally been that of the victim or the intelligent but evil criminal. One only has to look at cover art to see innumerable examples of women as victims. The garish colours routinely reveal a manacled, terrified young woman with her clothes recklesely torn. She can only hope to survive her evil captor and be ready to cheer as her male hero makes hie grand entrante--usually by breaking dom the doorz. For an exploration of wirren cast in the role of devious criminal see Chapter 'Pwot Sex and the Single Detective. There is however, a mal1 group of femle detectivea who appeared ia the pulp magazines alongside thek male counterparts in the 1930s. Unfortunately, many of these early female detectives did not do justice to women either. Bertha CoolJ is a tough woman in her sixties with a sharp mind and a sharp tongue. Ber male sidekick, Donald Lam, constantly makes derogatory remarks about her substantial size. Violet McDade is also a large, older woman. She is tough, strong and capable. She shamelessly used the feminine charms of her younger female sidekick, Nevada4, to help her through a male-dominated world. Both Bertha Cool and Violet McDade were created by men, Cool by Earle Stanley Gardnerhndee the pseudonym A.A. Fair and McDade by Cleve B. Adams, a lesser-known hardboiled miter. According to this stereotype, women who are tough and

See The Art of Mvsterv & Detective Stories by Peter Haining . ' Bertha Cool appeared in twenty-nine mysteries from 1939 ta 1970. None of these stories is currently in print. There is eome implication that this relationship goes beyond the profeasional reali. Like Holmes and Watson before them, McDade and Nevada share accommiodations. McDadefs tough talk and masculine mannerisms contrast with Nevadaf s feminine charm. They seem to form a stereotypical lesbian couple. Gardner is best known as the creator of Perry Mason. 104 intelligent are necessarily pst-ienopausal and lacking in faine cham and iocially confirmed physical attraction. Other female deteees of thia early eatend to be plain and unobtnisive, like the popalar Carrie Cashin of the Caah and Carry Detective Agency. In the short story "Riddle in Silkm (1938), she is deacribed as "a demure, btown-eyed stenographer in a tailored jacket and a tweed skirta (m 4). She deduces solutions more readily than her male counteipart and she does car- a gun: "Reaching swiftly beneath her short tweed skirt, Carrie grabbed her business- like little garter gun, which the cocksure Despard had overlooked in his hasty flight. .. a (WBP. 15 ) . 1t is dif ficult to assess whether the Freudian overtones in this passage are intentional or accidental. This suggestive narration or Cashin's admiration for Dora Vallon's physical beauty are less indicative of lesbian tendencies in the heroine than they are of the overzealous imagination of the male miter, Theodore Tinseley. Although Carrie Cashin was a professional detective, most early women detectives were newspaper reporters or daughters of policemen. Amateur female detectives often played the role of sidekick or tacantic interest to the* male counterparts. Changes in the rtatus of wumen in society have affected the character of hardboiled female detectives. One factor informing these changes ie the number of women writing in the genre; this allws -le characters to be based to a greater degree on the writer's experience rather than on male fantasy. May wmen writing iystesies have a preference for more genteel heroines and tend to write traditional myeteries. In recent years a few successful female detectives have adopted the hardboiled style. with the shift in authorship of female sleuths from male to female, some of the earlier character traits have been dismissed . Contemporary hardboiled female detective characters are of similar age to their hardboiled male antecedents, late thirties to mid-forties. Siailarly to male hardboiled detectives, these female sleuths are usually single. They are capable of physical violence and often carry weapons. Female detectives no longer tend to obesity; instead they tend to be more obsessive about physical fitness than the- male counterparts.' The two most popular contemporary female detectives who demonstrate hardboiled traits are Sue Graftonrs7Kinsey

Millhone and 's V. 1. Warshawski. Both are tough, intelligent and capable; both are single, in their

thirties and have an older fatherly advisor. They are also

V.I. Warshawski is not described by her creator, Sara Paretsky, as overweight; yet Kathleen Turner, the actress who portrayed Warshawski in the film version, had to bulk up several pounds to play the role. Same stereotypes are hard to kill.

Sue Grafton is the daughter of C.W. Grafton, a pulp writer in the 1940s who was neither particularly prolific nor s~~~essful. both professional detectives who have corne to thait profession through training in related fields. The ciifferences between Warshawski and nillhone aise primarily from how they exhibit their feminine nature. nillhone is completely inept at anything steteotypically, socially feminine; she only awns one dxese, cannot apply basic makeup and cuts her ha- with cuticle scissors . She is an adult tom-boy--a masculinized female. Warshawski, while maintainhg a toughness and physical ability equal to Millhone, is capable of taking a feminine

role when it is advantageous to do 80. She will not hesitate to tackle a dangerous situation but afterward she may bemoan the ruin of an expensive pair of shoes. Warshawski often uses her feminine charm to obtain information from unsuspecting men. She performs this manoeuvre in a wily manner, often leaving the encounter in a state of disbelief at the stupidity of her male foe. One critic describes Warshawski as a detective who is ... a crack shot, a karate expert, and has an annoury of bruising one-liners. She is also devastatingly beautiful, and combines contempt for masculine bravado with a tendency to go weak at the kneee whenevet a gorgeous hunk swims into view. (GRy 118) Warshawski seems to reverse the roles of the male-dominated genre. She has a masculinized toughness but simultaneously maintains her femininity. Male characters are not as intelligent as she is and are sometimes objects of sexual attraction; thus men tend to acquire some of the traits of 107 wamen in earlier male-donfnated hardboiled wtiting. Rathet than masculinizing hereelf, as Millhone does, Warshawski finds a way of retaining her femininity and using it to defeat her male foes. The invasion of strong and successful female detectives into hardboiled territory marks a new direction for this sub-genre. While the mystery is still the central focus in the books of Grafton and Paretsky, it is clear that feminist issues are also being addressed. The variance in approach between these two characters underlines debates in feminist agendas in general: do women need to masculinize thenselves or can they retain their femininity and still succeed in male-dominated territory?

Lesbian Detectives

Lesbian hardboiled detective characters began to appear in the late 1980s and voiced a slightly different agenda from their straight female counterparte. Sandra Scoppettoners Lauren Laurano is one of the few lesbian hardboiled detective characters whose books are coimiercially available; this may be accounted for by their lack of overt lesbian sexual content. Scoppettoners sociopolitical intentions are blatant in spite of thie. In Everythina You Bave is Mine (1991), the mystery is little more than a vehicle for an extreme lesbian feminist agenda. Throughout the book al1 heterosexual women are 108 abused, raped ot murdered and with few exceptions al1 men are abusive, rapiats or murderers; conversely, al1 lesbians are happy, -11-adjusted people in loving and 8uccessful relationships. Scoppettone8s aonochromatic painting of reality tends to alienate a potentially wider audience with the consequence that the rajority of her readers will be lesbian feaiinists. This would seem to negate the possibility of educating a wider audience to her socioplitical agenda. This alienation is not necessary and a nnarhar of writers who are gaining popularity with unconventional detectives are doing so by creating characters who semain accessible to a wider audience while being siiutltaneouely challenging. The lesbian feniinist agenda overshadavs the mpstery and although Laurano is stylistically hardboiled, she exhibits none of the existential leanings of earlier hardboiled characters.

Katherine V. Forrestps series features closeted lesbian detective Kate Delafield. Arguably these books could be defined as police procedurale, as Delafield is a menber of the Los Angeles Police Department; however, as a lesbian, she is an outsider. Ber peripheral position makes it appropriate to classify her as a hardboiled detective. Although a lesbian feminist agenda is apparent, the focus is much less myopic than Scoppettoneps. Forsest is concerned with the tensions of being gay in a hoaaophobic society. . . In Wder bv Traw( lggl), Delaf ield forces the investigation of the brutal murder of a gay man. The murder 109 scene is awash with blood and, once Delafield's male partner discovers the victim's sexual orientation, he removes himself fra the case, anxious about the possibility of contracting HIV. The prosecution of the violently h0~1~)phobic murderer is undertaken by a vouin with no experience in homicide prosecution because none of the more experienced male lawyers will take the case. The complexity of the issues FOZZ~S~deals with in purder bv madition have far-reaching sociopolitical ramifications. Unlike Scoppettone's gvenrt~aYou Have is e,the mystery is not simply a vehicle for a leebian feminist agenda; instead the issues and the mystery become complexly intectwined. Gay politics, AIDS and the homophobic reaction of society and its acting authorities become integral to the investigation of the mystery. Forrest creates an impressive hybrid of pressing sociopolitical issues and hardboiled mystery, but again, the existential agenda is essentially invisible.

The Gay Detectives

Both Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett created gay characters. Joel Cairo in Hammett's me WteSe Falcon, Carrol Lundgren and Arthur Geiger in Chandler's The Riq slee~,are al1 implied to be gay. These early gay characters, however, were al80 criminals. 110

Gay characters have eupporting roles in a nunber of I current straight detective setieo: Ted in Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series or Mark Bradley in Stan Cutler's Goodman-Bradley myeteries. Since George Baxt introduced Phatoah Love in A Queer Kind of Death (l966), it has become more acceptable to have a gay detective character. As T.J.Binyon States, it is *a boid stroke on the part of the author, given the aggressive heterosewuality of much American detective fictionn (MWû 31). Gay detectives are rarely hardboiled or professional detectives; for example, Grant Michaels's detective, Stan Kraychik, is a hairdresser. The two most popular gay detectives are Joseph Hansen's Dave Brandstetter and Michael Navars Henry Rios. Brandstetter is an insurance investigator with some hardboiled overtones. The mystery is in the foreground and his sexual orientation is aïmost incidental. As Geherin observes : Here is a man who haa a well-earned reptation as one of the beet men in his profession ... He also happens ta be homosexual, comfortable and well- adjusted in his private life. (APE 179) By foregrounding the mystery, Hansen succeeds in creating a gay sensibility that was acceptable to a wider market even in the late 1970s when the series originated. Hansen has also taken a aubtle glee in making Brandstetter successful as an insurance investigator. Especially in the wake of the AIDS crisis, the insurance field bas bec- known for its homophobic attitudes. Hansen's novels are populated with straight and gay characters but, as Geherin States, the gay characters are "neither effeminate nor sariahyu (m179). Unlike maet hardboiled detectives, Brandstetter has an intimate partner although that partner changes through the twenty-five years the series has run. Contrary to Hansen, Nava tends to foreground gay issues. Rios is a lawyer and, although he is not hardboiled stylistically, he retains an existential edge unconunon in most contemporary hardboiled writing. Sinilarly to Forrest, the plot of the mystery becomes intertwined with a sociopolitical agenda. For instance, in The Hidden Law (1992), Nava deals with a number of issues: the stress of having a lover with AIDS, father and son relationships, child abuse, alcoholism and substance addiction. The resolution of the mystery depends in part on Rios's ability to develop an understanding of theee issues on a deeply persona1 level. The issue of AIDS, a disease which is more prevalent in the gay cmunity, has created an existential edge in some gay detective writing. The urgent need for action in the face of the perceived finality of AIDS creates a similar environment to the threat in 3he Pl- (1947) by Camus. One feels the neceseity to make every action meaningful when one 112 is fotced to acknowledge the limits of one's mortality, the boundaries of existence. Although the presence of the AIDS vinis in gay mystery writing creates an existential mood, in general the hardboiled style is lacking in this aub-genre. Gay detectives are more inclined to the traditional intellectual approach of reeolution.

The Racial Agenda A sub-genre which has succeeded in retaining the hardboiled style in its existential mood is detective fiction that addresses a racial agenda. In 1965, John Ball's In the Heat of the Niaht and 's Cotton Cornes to Harlem were both published in the United States. Both books considered issues of racial tensiomand justice. The most significant difference in the mannec in which these two authors addressed these issues was the- race; Bal1 was a white American while Bines was a black expatriate American living in FranceB. Bal1 suggeets that ia only an issue in the southern United States; that the rest of America really is the promised land where al1 men are equal. Although Virgil

For a detailed look at the differences between white and black porttayals of black characters see Aya de Lents paper "The Black Detective in the White Mhd: John Balles Virgil Tibbs and Ernest Tiddyman's John Shaft, 1965-1972" presented at the Detective Fiction and Film Conference at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, October 24-26, 1991. 113 Tibbs , the black detective, successfully solves the case, he is forced to do eo by an inept white bureaucracy. In spite of hi8 ove~statedintelligence and education, he still acts subservient to hie white .asters. fn the Heat of the N&g& presenta a sanitized view of racial tension and inequality in the United States in the 19608, largely because of its author*s lack of personal expesience. The iaystery is in the traditional style, with few hardboiled overtones. Himes's Cotton Cornes to Harlem addilesses the issues of racism in American society from the perspective of a black American with first-hand experience of the police and prison systems. Himes creates the characters Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones-two virtually out-of-control black cops. 'Phese characters becante the prototype for television and film's larger-than-life "supercops in the 1970s. Ed and Digger do not make themselves subservient to their white commander as does Ball's Virgil Tibbs. The white police bureauctacy begrudgingly admits the need for black officers to dealwith areas of the city such as Harlem. Himes's portrayal of Harlem has been likened to a painting by Hieronymus Bosch; it holds a similas sense of surreal violence. Ed and Digger earn the respect of the black population of Harlem eimply through their unapologetically violent handling of criminals. Their ttigger-happy machisrno is more rembiscent of Spillane's Mike Hamuer than Ball's well-mannered Virgil Tibbs. Hie [Himesrs]real subjects are black identity in a white saciety, and the way evil seethes like lava just belau the eurface of aloi life, just neeaing the aialleet vent-hole to enapt .(m 77 ) In Co+tons to Ha,Himes directly confronte racial issues. He creates two oppositional factions, two possible directions for escaper Reverend Deke OrHalley'e back to Africa movement and Colonel Calhoun's Back to the Southland Movement. Ultimately both movements, both directions, prove to be fraudulent. There is no escape front Harlem, no escape from the poverty and violence of black urban America. In joining the police force, Ed and Digges are forced to walk a tightrope between a white bureaucracy and the violence of the black neighbourhoods. Through their actions, thete is a hope of change. The idea of a need for immediate action and the possibility of coiing to a violent death at any moment seem to bring the racial agenda in hardboiled writing back to an existential sensibility. More recently, has created the character Easy Rawlins, an amateur detective who coneiders hïmself in the business of doing nfavours.w Interestingly, Mosley has written these myeteries a8 period piecee. pevrl. rn . a Blue Press (1990) is set just after World Wat II in 1948 and the most recent, Black Bettv (1994), is set by Rawlins thinking about "out new young Irish president and Martin Luther Kingn@ (88 11). By travelling through a period of the with the same core gsoup of characters, Mosley is able to track the 115 changea in black rights and the reactions of white society to the black population. Similarly to his hardboiled predecessors, Rawlins has his own mal code which does not alwaye coincide with the letter of the law. Because he is black, Rawlins can infiltrate levels of society inaccessible to white officers of the law and act in ways they cannot to reeolve situations. These factors seem to give Rawlins some of the existential edge.

The Continuance of a Tradition

Many contemporary writers have continued in the tradition of Chandler and Hammett and 8till feature white male heterosexual detectives. Vezy few of these writers are innovative or push the boudaries of the hardboiled formula. For instance, Robert B. Parker has added a love-interest and a black side-kick, but 's character is quite flat and the structure of the novels is entirely fo~malaic.As in most contemporary hardboiled writing, there is no sense of existential darkness, the noir seneibility that pervaded earlier examples of the sub-genre. Attempts to shock the reader through violence are no longer informed by a deep psychological bent but are wre sensationalism. James Ellroy ha8 perhaps succeeded in capturing the darkness of the thriller mystery while maintainhg a psychological edge. He achieves this by cseating complex 116 characters and plots and locating them in the period known for hardboiled wrfting-the late 1940s and early 1950s. By witing period pieces, lllroy is able to recreate the existential mood of the the without any sense of contrivance. The lesser known James Cnimley has succeeded in moving the hardboiled detective into the present without losing the existential overtones. Although Kilo lives in a contemporary the setting, Meriwethet is a depressed community inhabited by dm-and-outers and drunks. The prevalent motif of Street life, of life at the margins of existence, gives the stories a sense of existential angst.

Foreseeable Future Trends

The trend to open hardboiled territory to characters who do not fit the stereotype of the white, heterosexual male, begins in the mid-1960s with books like George Baxt' s

A Oueer Kind of Death (1966) and Chester Himes's Cotton Cornes to Harlem (1965). The influx of black, gay and female detectives coincides with the histotical period during which these groups were gaining attention in the United States.' The most noticeable infiltration into the genre in the late 1970's and the 1980's was by women detectives. In the 1990's

Through protests and marches -men were given improved job equity in 1964 and black voting rights were enforced by the Civil Rights Act in 1965. The Stonewall riots of 1969 brought greater attention to the gay connnunity. there has been a proliferation of leebian and gay detectives, although most of these are still not-widely available. Very little critical matesial is available on alternative hardboiled detectives. Some critics may not think there is a place for women, gay or black detectives in the hardboiled genre; howewer, as Roberts states: ...the absurdities of the junk genres are literary conventions that writers have invented to enable the genres to explore new areas of form and thought. (m 9) By challenging the stereotype of the hardboiled detective, writers offering alternatives have pushed the limite of the hardboiled sub-genre, thas enabling the exploration of new areas. The resurgence in popularity of hardboiled detectives in the last five to ten years can be attributed in part to this newly enlarged territory. What social factors have contributed to the resurgence in popularity of the hardboiled detective? How and why is the existential agenda still being expounded in this sub- genre? Same of the social factors which contributed to the founding of both the hardboiled school and existentialism, have recently resurfaced. Uthough we have not experienced world war for fifty years, numerous other conflicts and the constant presence of an atoaic threat, keep war in the

l0 For more detailed discussion of feminist, gay and black positions in genre fiction see Linda Hutcheon's The Poetics of ~ostmodernism(1988) or her The Polltiçs. . of Pos~Onernism(1989). foref ront of the and our ninds . New factors like AIDS and advances in technology create feu and al80 tend to divide societies along econdc or prejudicial lines. Concern regarding the possible economic bankruptcy of the capitalist system, înunediately following the failure of the communist system, hae al80 caused alarm in developed natione. The recent recession ha8 created high unemployment and also a sense of 108s of direction, most notably among

young adults. "Generation Xu is grappling with similar stresses emotionally and psychologically as the Lost Generation of the 1920s, or the young idealists who fought the Spanish Civil War and survived World War II. This repetition of social factors and the stress they cause has tended to create literature that reflects the angst of the times. Once again an existential mood is being expressed in some literature and genre fiction? Although the new agendas tackled by alternative detectives somet des displace the existential agenda in hardboiled writing, they may alsa reveal new ways of approaching it. The nearness of death created by the presence of AIDS in much gay detactive fiction causes an existential pull. The threat of sudden death, violence and poverty of the black neighbourhoods, especially when expressed in contrast to the mer of a dominant white

" Douglas Coupland's Generation X ( 1991 ) was the first notable book to explore the angst of this generation. 119 society, causes a similar mood in black detective fiction. The dfscovery of new directions for hardbofled writing has eaabled the continuance of the existential moad of earlier hardboiled fiction, an essential factor which has been lost in most cwnnercial hardboiled writing. The early hardboiled writing of Hanmett and Chandler gave a privileged position to the detective and thereby acknwledged the centrality of the TWin an existential universe. The de-centring of the detective in the move toward thriller fiction roughly coincided with the structuralist attack on existentialism. This vas followed by excessive formula treatment of the genre motivated by commetcial forces. Reflecting the trends of structuralism, concentration was shifted toward forme How does the emergence of new agendas affect and challenge the formula and the market? Scholes sees the marriage of existentialism and structuralism as foraing a hybrid liteiature (m 198). The investigation of new agendas through a fornulaic genre may be seen to embody this hybridization. The subjective othetness of a new agenda is expressed through a standardized structural fornala. The exploration of otherness, the need for personal identity and decisive action delineating an existential agenda, ia narried to a standardized formula or structure, The effect of this marriage is the reintroduction of an existential element 12 0 into the formala of the genre and a simu1taneous expansion of the border8 of the genre. Conclus ions

Proia an..crime to its ruthor there is a trail. It may be... obscure; but, since natter cmot mve vithout disturbiag otner matter along its patn,there alvays is-there mst be-- a trail of soie sort. And finding and folloving such trails is what a detective is paid to do. Dashiell Hammett

An exploration of hardboiled fictional works from the 1920s into the 19508, by innovative writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Corne11 Woolrich, Jim Thompson and David Gaodis, reveals an integral association with ideas also present in French existentialism, most notably represented by Jean-Paul Sartre. Striking similarities occur in a several areas: the centrality of the subject, the problematic nature of the relation between the 1 and the other, the importance of a strong personal morality, the urgent need for action, and an exploration of a dark absurd. There is little direct linkage between these two schools of writing, and so it can be supposed that these similarities in thought =ose from external sociological factors, an angst present in bath French and American societies in the wake of a series of catastrophic historical events. mile interpretation of this angst toak the forai of in the United States, in France it was expressed in more literary and philosophical 122 Bxperiments undertaken to attempt the expansion of the boundaries of the hardboiled sub-genre lad to an exploration of the absurd. Although atill in a ntodernist style, these expriment8 muid eventually ctash through the limits of the modern and into the postmoâem. The shift fram hardboiled detective fiction to thriller mysteries roughly coincided with the philosophical ehift away from existentialism taward structuralism. The centrality of the heroic detective was shifted through the use of a criminal anti-hero and the growing importance of the formula or structure of the story. The strengthening of the formula has, in recent years, led to a deadening of innovation in the hardboiled and to the loss of any expression of its existential raots. Most %ewW commercial hardboiled characters are simply reproductions of faded hetoes. As tties have changed, there is a need for new heroes cast from a different mould. New hardboiled characters have taken the- form from the expanding social agendas present in society. Alternative hardboiled characters representing feminist, gay or black agendas have been grawing in number and popularity over the last thirty years. The exploration of an alternative subject through the use of a standardized formula has created a hybrid bridging the gap between existentialist and structuralist thought. It is in this hybridization that hope 123 for a revival of the old combines with the needs of the new and a hop for a continuation of a hardboiled literatute. 124

Ctloeeary and -6 Tree

COSI POLZCB TaRxLLBR AKA Country PmcmuRnL A hybrid between American HouSe os Detective hardboiled and psychological White Glove. story in horror writing developed in A genteel which crime the pst World War II period. mystery is The detective is diepensed occurring in investigated with giving way to a criminal an isolated by police or man-on-the-street venue and protagonist . solved by an amateur detective. r

II

TRADLTIOïRAL OR RATIOCI10ATIVU BAROBOZLUD Sub-genre of detective fiction Sub-genre of detective fiction popularized in Britain during of urban American origin also the late 1800s. Largest of the identified as Noir. Prevalent sub-genres of detective during period pst-dating fiction and still the most World Wax 1 until the 1950's. popular. Relies on logic, the Stylistically identif ied by collection of clues and its tetse prose style and deductive reasoning to solve graphic violence. For detailed crimes. definitions see Introduction.

HORROR A genre classification in Genre which which either an amateur or a evokes fear professional detective through the character undertakes the use of human solution of a crime. or imaginary monters.

H?STBRY A genre classification in which characters attempt to discovet something hidden or inexplicable. Antecedente of the Hatdboiled Wstery

Humanityrs aorbid curiosity with evil deeda ia as ancient aa hum;inity iteelf. History, both oral and written, abounds with tales of poisoners, murdesers, rapiats and thieves. Figures like Oedipus, Macbeth or Hamiet spring to mind . Although it would be incorrect to suppose that detective mysteries were developed by the ancient Greeks or Shakespeare, it is clear that the genre is rooted in trends and taboos inherent in human nature and the society of man. The plots of these eatliest semi-fictional antecedents usually focus on politics or passion. Although a crime may be pivotal to the plot, it is in some way incidental. Furthemore, there is no heroic detective, amateur or professional, at work.

The Modem Police Force and Prof essional

The detective is a modern phenomenon. Although historical records indicate the existence of a police force in Ancient Rome, professional detective police did not exiet until the early eighteen hundreds. Only when the population expanded to the numbers denotative of a city waa it deeaned 126 neceasary to employ people as professional law enforcers.

The SQrret6 was created in 1809 in Paris. Scotland Yard was established in in 1829 and the New York Police Department was fotmded in 1845, The Bnalish Diction= finde the earlieat use of the word *detectiveW in print to be in 1843, althoagh the word se- to have been established in popular parlance by the 1820s.

It is generally agreed that the tirst publications to follow the exploits of the police were the 1827 chronicles of the Bow Street Runners, the organization which preceded Scotland Yard,

Early True Czime Stories

The earliest popular crime stories were factual rather than fictional and tended ta follow the exploits of criminals rather than those enforcing the law. Crhinals awaiting execution often sold embellished versions of their criminal activities and last statements to be exploited in commercial broadsheets, In 1776, Reverend John Villette, the Chaplain of London's Newgate prison, decided that the tales of woe and tragedy within the prison walls would provide enough raw material for a book. He produced a four volume set complete with engravings. Villetteps work was later redistributed in the more commercially viable broadsheet format. Throughout 127 the early eighteen hunàreds, numerous authors penned stories basecl on the lives of criaainais at Hewgate. Kugene Vidocq's were published in four volumes in France and England in 1828 and 1829 respectively. The factual authenticity of his sensational ndiaryuha8 been questioned since its first edition. The consequence of this is that eome historians view Vidocq as the first writer in this field. Vidocq began his career in the milita- before turning to crime and being imprisoned. While in prison, he offered hie services to Napoleon as a law enforcer and was given the post as the first conmiander of the Sareté. As a result of political pressure, he was relieved of this position and went on to establish the firet private detective agency in 1832.

IIis Nemoi= are largely self-aggrandizing flights of the imagination in which Vidocq, as the chief of police, reveals how he accomplished his many crimes when he was Vidocq the criminal. It eeems likely that he was responsible for starting the trend of French crime fiction, which, in the tradition of the British crime broadsheets, celebrates the master criminal rather than the detective. This tradition continued into the early part of this century with Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestrers infamaus Fanthas' and

'The first Fantbnias adventure was released in France in 1911. The dozens of stories which followed made hîm a popular (continued...) Maurice Leblanc's Atsene Lupin2. More recently, Swiss uriter Delacorta has created a more refined version of the master criininal with his characters Goroâish and Aîba.' Although Vidocqf s writing marked an important stage in the development of the genre, it is lacking some of the elements which came to define classic detective fiction. Firstly, as already noted, his stories celebsate the criminal% exploits, not the detectivers. Secondly, the tales read more like adventures than forays into the school of ratiocination that characterize early, and much curent, detective fiction. Vidocq's most lasting contributions to the genre are his use of the first person narrative4 and is portrayal of the police as ineffective bumblers and idiots2

'(...continued) with both the general populace and intellectuals. Some of his fans included Cocteau, Weill, Collette, Picasso and Magritte.

Lupin was dubbed "The Prince of Thieveslw His career spanned from 1907-1925 during which the he had two encounters with the illustrious Holmes. 'Delacorta, pseudonym of Daniel Odier, is best known as the author of piva (1979), released as a film in France in 1981. His series chronicles the adventutes of Gorodish, a suave, extremely intelligent con man, and his nymphet protege, Alba. Although he is a master criminal, Gorodish is a true gentleman and harbours no trace of the eenseless brutality of Fant61nas. Much eéuly detective fiction is narrated by the foil. Watson chronicles HoUnes% exploits; Dupin's few cases are also heralded by his sidekick. The first-pexson narrative was rediscovered by the hardboiled writers although it was not universally used. Third-person narrative is popular in the genre even currently. 'The detectives made famaus by Poe, Doyle and Christie are (~ontinued.~.) Ime ritet Fictional Deteetive

The true originator of the fictional detective mystery is genetally acknowledged to be the American miter Edgar Ailan Poe. In 1841 he published a short story entitled "The Murdere in the Rue Morguea in which he introduced amateur detective Auguste Dupin.-Poe is best knawn for hie tales of Gothie horror like "The Fa11 of the House of Usher," "The Pit and the Pendul~m,~and "The Cask of am ont il lad^.^ Foe's predilection for the morbid ie apparent in his graphic descriptions of the murder victims in "Murders in the Rue Morgue." Hawever, in this story Poe also originated the fully fictional detective and several other genre conventions. Dupin6 heralded a new age in the development of detective methods and established a popular philosophical approach to detective fiction. By relying on close observation, rational deduction and a profound knavledge of human (and animal) nature, he is able to solve the case. "The Musders in the Rue Morguen is introduced by the

'( .. xontinued) al1 %raateurWdetectives who seem to have a knack for solving crimes when the police have failed. In American hardboiled writing, police characters are often either corrupt or invisible. This division creates an obvious separation between detective fiction and the sub-genre of the "." ' In the context of this thesis is it wotth noting that this original fictional detective was French (as are the existential philosophers discuseed herein) although he was conceived by an American author (the.United States genetally being reen as the breeding ground of the hardboiled school.) Through simple observation, Dupin is able to deduce his friend's thouqhts. This type of gaming would be furthex developed by Sherlock Holies. Poe only produced three Dupin stories: "The Murders in the Rue Morguew (1841), "The Myetery of Marie Rogetw (1842) and "The Purloined Letterw (1844). These etories were written in a short period of time when it is supposed that Poe was trying to impose some sense of order and reason on his bitter life. Despite limited output in the genre, he invoked many conventions still ascribed to in traditional detective fiction. Howard Haycraft lists Poe's firsts, which

include : ... the firat conplete if exceedingly awkward use of the least-likely-person theme, the first instance of the scattering of false clues by the real criminal, and the fhst extortion of confession by means of the psychological third degree. (m10)

Haycraft also points tavard Poe's experimentation with a detective story reliant on physical clues ("The Murders in the Rue Morguew), to one more puxely cerebral ("The Mystery of ~arieRogetw) and finally to the development of a balance between the two ("The Purloined Letter"). Other genre

' This introductory section is wosth reading for its exposition of ratiocinative technique. Hawever, it is also sociologically interesting in that it explores an implied homoerotic attraction between Dupin and hici chronicler. This implication can also be found between Houes and Watson, most notably in "The Three Garridebs." 131 conventions Haycraft feels originated with Poe are the character of the detectiwe as an eccentsic, the invention of a "Watsonw as a foi1 and chronicler, the locked room mystery, the throwing of suspicion on an innocent, the surprise solution, deduction through imagining the criminalrs thoughts, conceaïment tbrough the obvious, and the long and inpressive unveiling of the solution of the mystery. To this awe-inspiring list can be added the use of a real crime to project a story and a plausible solutionmu The expansive list above covers most of the conventions practiced in traditional detective fiction, thus substantiating the claim that Poe was the father of the

genre. Poe's success in establishing the detective story was further validated by the wave of writers who followed his lead, most notably in France and Britain.

The ~renchand British Development In 1866 &nile Gaboriau published his first mystery, t'Affaire Lerouae, and introduced detective Lecoq. This detectivers life bars a marked resemblance to the earlier Vidocq. , best known for se Fanttme de LtO&ra (1911)r wrote his first mystery, Se Mvstere de la Cmre

"The Mystery of Marie Rog&tw was based on an actual unsolved murder case. Poe changed the names and location of the incident but the details were derived from news reports. While some sources indicate that the mystery was solved using Poe's logic, others maintain that the case remained unsolved, 132 Jaune, in 1907. Joseph Rouletabille, young reporter and amateur detectiwe, shot to fame in the 1912 film version of this mystery but Leroux's attempts to establish a eeriee failed. In Britain, the wpemy bloodsw werc gaining popularity. These were poorly written, violently sensationalized, eight page magazines that had evolved ftom the true crine broadsheets of the late 1700s. The "penny bloodsm vanished in the late 1800s when more seputable literary magazines were established. The prestigious Strand magazine began publication in 1891. The Strand published short stories and serials by such notable writers as Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and P.G. Wodehouse. Al1 of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock HoUtes mys teries firs t appeared here . During the late 18008, British fiction writers often used an element of mystery in the plots and sub-plots of their novels. unintentionally created the ultimate mystery by dying in 1870 before completing the manuscript of The Mvsterv of Edwin Drood.' Dickens sometimes employed mystery or detectives in his novels but his chief concerns were social.

Several possible solutions to The Mveterv of Edwin Drood have been proposed. In 1980 the book was published with an ending written by Leon Garfield based on suggestions from a variety of sources. Dickens's friend note me Wagagin mite ((160) and me Moonstone (1868). Both etories are long and complex and inte~eavefacts from actual cases with fiction. Although Collins's work is generally considered mystery fiction, his books often include coiplex romantic plots as -11.

Sherlock Halmes

It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who firmly established the detective fiction genre with J4 Studv in Searle+ in 1887. Doyle's character, Sherlock Hohes, is the epitome of rational intellectual perfection and deductive reasoning. Doyle took the ratiocinative story and novel to new heights and initiated the detective naystery story as an armchair or drawing roam puzzle. Holmes's exploits are so acute in detail that they have been used as training manuals for investigative technique by some police forces. The great detectiveos approach was to assemble clues through close observation, then, through logical analysis coupled with a wide knwledge of obscure facts, piece together the mystery and thus solve the puzzle. This scientific, rational method was foreshadawed by Poe. Doyle was writing in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s; an era in which emerging science was viewed as the new saviour of humanity. Writers reacted to this trend in a variety of ways. Jules verne wrote early science fiction 134 stories full of rionderful new inventions. H.G. Wellefs The (1895) dealt with humanity's etrugglee in a bleak futurietic environment. Perhaps the iost poignant plea for sanity in the pandora's box of this scientific revolution was Mary Shelley's -ste& (1818). Philoeophically, the school of logical poeitiviem emerged at the beginning of this century, similarly founded on a faith in the rational. Britain was one of the centres of this school of thought. The effect of science and the development of logical positivism on the detective mystery was the evolution of a ratiocinate methodology. Reason was determined to be the only faculty necessary to obtain knowledge. Through the use of teason, every clue could be accurately assessed and the solution deduced. In this model, society was viewed as a well ordered human group in which crime was an anomaly. Once the crime was detected, rationally solved and the criminal had been brought to justice, society could continue on its safe, well-ordered path. Doyle marked the beginning of this path in Britain. Later British refinements led to the genteel wcozieem,"country housen or "white gloven mysteries . Holmesfs chronicler is his foil, Dr. Watson, who, like his nameless predecessor in Poe's work, never fails to be properly amazed by hie friend's abilities. Holmes is perhaps more of an eccentric genius than hie predecessor, Dupin, 135 having a penchant for playing the violin and occasionally resorting to cocaine to alleviate boredom. Although he is an amateur, his detecting abilities alwaye prove to be saperior to those of the police. Holies often imagines himself in the cririaalts place in order to deduce the next aiove. Al1 of these are traite of the detective story already invented by Poe.'' Doyle solidified these conventions by creating a massive and popular body of work. Perhaps the most intetesthg addition Doyle made to the genre was the introduction of Professor Moriarty, a criminal reminiscent of Fant&mas, the devil incarnate. Holmes sees this master criminal as the central figure to much crime in the world, although his role is not always apparent. Holmests obsession with Moriarty seems to border on paranoid delusion. Their relationship is similar to that between the evil Fantamas and his good twin, Inspecter Juve. In Britain, Holmes is the hero whereas in France, it is the evil Pant6mas who is exalted. In these early examples of the detective genre, the delineation between black and white, good and evil, is the prima- thematic issue. In this way, these stories are similar to adventure stories by writers like Alexandre Dumas, H. Haggard, P.C. Wren, and Anthony Hope.

la Aïthough Holmes says of Dupin that he is "a very inferior fellow," Doyle produced a story entitled "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" that was somewhat reminiscent of "The Murdera in the Rue Morgue." In "A Scanda1 in Bohemia," he employed a device similar to that used in The Purloined Letter." Sherlock Holires has reached a higher level of popularity than any other fictional detective. Aïthough he was first created for the print medium, he has also appeared in films, serials, on television, radio, theatre, cigarette cards, ganes and comic strips. Bolmes hae a very real personality, his own fan club, and he is an international icon for detective fiction. The favourable popular response to the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes was, no doubt, responsible for the continued success and expansion of the detective mystery genre.

Furthel: Development of the ~atiocinativeDetective

In 1929, a Catholic clergyman named Father Knox constructed the Ten Commandments of Detectiont" 1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allawed to follow. II. Al1 or preternatusal agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

Note how many of these commandnents have ben broken- even by members of the British Detection Club! For instance, Agatha Christie openly defied the first cornandment in The Murder of Rouer Ackrovd (1926). G.K. Chesterton's Fathex Brown frequently relied on intuition and the assistance of God. Sax Rohmer managed to violate number v. and further tules of the oath of the club with the invention of Dr. Fu Manchu-a Chinaman who is also a master criminal. In Sins for Father Knox (1973), Josef Skvorecky intentfonally violated each of the Commandments. Post- Modernist mystery writers like Douglas Adams break more rules than they follow and clearly never would have ken allawed entrance into this club at its inception. III. Hot more than one secret room or passage is allawable. IV. Mo hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance arhich will need a long scientific exphnation at the end. V. No Chinamen must figure in the rtory. VI. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccouatable intuition which proves to be right. Vff. The detective himself must not commit the crime. VIII. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader. IX. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his nind; his intelligence muet be slightly, but very slightly below that of the average reader. X. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them. (ms 194)

Father Knox's rules became a central fixture of the London Detection Club whose oath was further detailed by promises to avoid usage of t'Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition,

Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of Gad," and limit use of "Gangs, Conspiracies, Death-Rays, , Aypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, Super-Criminala and

Lunatics." (MS 198) The London Detection Club was founded by Knox's friends GoRa Chesterton (of fame) and Anthony Berkeley (a.k.a. A.B. Cox and Francis Iles). With the creation of the club and its oath, the classic era of detective fiction in Britain was established. Members of the club included Agatha Christie and Dosothy Sayers. In the United States, many writers of popular detective fiction remained within the ratiocinate school. John Dickson 138 Car, knavn for hi8 locked room mysteries, was a member of the London Detection club. Earl Der Biggere (Charlie Chan), S. S Van Dine (), Bllery Queen, () and many others follweà this classic style.

The Hardboiled Detective

During the 1920s in the United States there was a growing trend toward a more intuitive, "gut feelu type of detection. In the midst of the claesic period, a new sub- genre of detective fiction began to emerge. This sub-genre entailed a radical shift away from the classic detective story both in style and philosophical approach. The same feelings of 1088, aimlessness and alienation which informed other writers of the Lost Generation, also informed the writers of detective fiction. The ef fect was a writing style that was sharp, direct, sometimes vulgar and unapologetically violent. However, the detective anti-heroes of this new sub- genre also represented a morality and quick justice that the cortupted legal syatem seemed unable to provide. The private detectives* cases were often complex and convoluted and these men had to endure personal strugglee not only to solve the case but simply to suvive in the hostility of their urban environment. Al1 of the above factors combined to cause the creators of the hardboiled detectives to reject the mode1 of the ratiocinative detective style as naive and, instead, to emhrace a more existential rodel. In so doing, the element of solving a puzzle or playing a game was removed and replaced by a eenae of the sobering reality of survival. The two most mernorable writers of hardboiled detective storiea and novels are Dashiell Hannnett (the Continental Op and Sam Spade) and Raymond Chandler (Philip Harlwe).

The Wild West Connection

Some theorists have concluded that the hardboiled detective descended from the storybook outlaw heroes of the

American Wild West. lz The hardboiled detective was the same quick-àrawing, rough and ready anti-hero that had been introduced in the American Westerns in the 1800s. He is the same lone man fighting against the odds for true justice. The most notable difference is the change of venue from sagebrush to alley, rural to urban setting.13

- The Pulpa The "pulpsW were so named becauae of the minimally processed paper on which they were printed. Part of the

lZ Both Louis LgAmour and Max Brand wrote hardboiled pulp mysteries although they were more famous for the* Westerns. " For detailed study of the relation between western and detective mystery pulp fictions, see William Ruehlmannrs Saint With a GUQ, John G. Caweltita -Gun Mvstigue , or Robert B. Parker's The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Realitym (Doctoral Thesis , , 1957). success of the pulps was bassd on the use of inexpensive materials which made these publications cheap to produce and to purchaee. Hawever, the poor quality paper also made theee magazines fragile and, consequently, over the they have developed a statu8 as rare collectibles. Black Mask magazine's inaugural iaeue was published in 1920. This pulp vas the point of entry for many new hardboiled writers. It was a popular magazine caiiplete with garish cover art and larger-than-life heroes. Pulps offered writers a chance to break into publishing in a variety of genres; mystery, horror, romance, westerns and science fiction. Many niters produced material in more than one genre in an effort to make a sufficient living. Much of the material produced was quickly and carelessly written and, consequently, not particularly mernorable. Pulp writing and art were often sensational, violent, and sexist. These traits are perhaps most apparent in the horror

pulps 0 14 Pulps featured both short stories and serialisations, some of which were subsequently published as novels. The pulps also acted as trial ground for writers who later graduated to full-length novel forn.

l' l' For more information on pulp magazines and artwork eee The Art of Mvsterv & Detective Stories and The Art of Horron Stories, both compiled and annotated by Peter Haining. See also The Shudder Pulpk by Robert Kenneth Jones for further work on violence and sexism in the hotror pulps. 141

Although Black Xask is the magazine most readily associated with hardboiled writing, if did have its cornpetitors. The strongest of these warr Dime Detectives, which began publication in 1932 under Kenneth White. When "Capw Shaw left Black Mask in 1936 iany of the writers he had helped to establish went to Dime Detectives. Most dkstinguished among these was Raymond Chandler. Other notable hardboiled pulps published in the 1930s included Black Aces, Ten Detective Aces, Thrilling Detective, Private Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, Clues, Popular Detective, Detective Tales and Spicy Detective Stories. Dozens of pulp magazines came into circulation during this period, but most of them were short- lived. Aïthough the bulk of material published in the pulps was poorly written and forgettable, they also acted as a testing ground for a number of emerging hardboiled writers.

Comics and Othet Mediums

The initial impetus for comics was the pulps. The most famous cartoon detective of this early period was Chester Gouldrs Dick Tracy, who first appeared in 1931. Many of the masked heroes came into being in the comic books of the 1930s: and Batman, as well as the more ambiguous anti-heroes like The Shadow and The Spider. With the new euccess of other mediurns, like radio and film, some pulp and colic heroes attained even greater 142 levels of ppularity. Both Sain Spade and Philip Marlowe came to the big screen. Dick Tracy aras featured in long-ruming film serializations. Sam Spade and The Shaduw both had succeesful radio shows. No doubt the expansion of these characters into such accessible media had a positive impact on the continued growth of the- popularfty.

The Hardboiled Thriller lQrstery

During and after World War II, hardboiled writing embraced a new tangent : the hardboiled thriller. Typically, thriller writing is even more terse, graphic and unsettling than hardboiled detective writing. The primary stylistic development, from the hardboiled detective novel to the hardboiled thriller mystery, is the removal of the detective. A mystery still presents itself but the anti-hero is now an every-man or a criminal rather than a detective. In addition to the continued exploration of the existential issues of hardboiled writing, this new sub-genre also began to explore the notion of the absurd. Characters stumble through situations or try to calculate their best options, angst-ridden and slwly aware that they are not functioning in a well-ordered universe. Although thriller mystery writers like Jim Thompson and David Goodis had been producing ntaterial for the pulps, along with Hammett and Chandler, the* style was not appreciated until the 1950s. At that time their work was 143 controversfal in the United States and often faced bans and censorship. It was, h-~er, highly acclaimed in France. To date, the only biography of Goodi8 irr in French. ft is only in tecent yeare, eince both of these authors have àîed, that they have ken rediscovered and theit books been re-iesued. Appendh II The following table offers a graphic representation of events oves the period of time of primary concern in this thesis. The first hardboiled stories were published in Black Mask Magazine in 1922 by Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hanmett. This table continues until 1961, the year marking

Dashiell Hanaiett's death. As auch, it cwers the full writing careers of several key players in the genre. By this time, the reigns of both the hardboiled detective mystery and the hardboiled mystery thriller had declined. New work appearing in these genres lacked the intensity and existential angst that had been such a fouadationôl element

of earlier, successful genre novel S. Hardboiled detective and thriller mysteries as well as mystery novels of note are incorporated into the first column. The second coluran lists other literature and philosophical texts of importance published during the same years. The last column is a brief historical outline,

listing events of the day that may have affected the cultural output recorded in the earlier two columns. This chart is not intended to be comprehensive but is simply an attempt ta put cultural and historical events into a CO-relative perspective. unmarked indicates American "Auw indicates Austrian "Aï indicates AustraLian "Bn indicates British "Grn indicates Genaaa "Fm indicates French "Rn indicates Russian "Sn indicates Swiss Bold indicates Eazüboiled

Year Ebdboiled and Literature & Mystery Philosophy - secand year of T.S. Bliot The WWI over for publication of Wasteland four years Black Mask mgazine F. Scott in UA. Fitzgerald The protectionist Carroll John Beautifuf and tarif fs Daly "The Palse the Damned established, Burton Combes" third year of James Joyce prohibition, Peter Collinson Dlysses (BI formation of (aka Dashiell New Ku Klux Eïamœtt) "The Hermann Hesse Klan Road Home" Siddhartha (G) Mussolini forms A.A. Milne The Bertolt Brecht Fascist Red House Tronmieln in der government in Mystery (BI Nacht (G) Italy Sapper (aka Rudolph Carnap formation of H-C-McNeile) The Space the U.Ç.S.R. The Black Gang (logical (second Bulldog positivism) (G) villains Dr. Drumnond) (B) Mabuse and Ludwig Nosferatu star Wittgenstein in German films Tractatus Logico- Philosophi cus (Au) (logical positivism) e.e. cummings Teapot Dome 011 The Gnormous scandai Room hearings in US. D .II. Lawrence The &mird New York (BI Prohibition Enforcement Act Joseph Conrad repeaïed Peter Collinsoai The Rover (BI (aka Dashiell failure of ImmEtt) "ATson P.Ge Wodehouse Hitler1s "Beer Plusn (debut The raimlitable Hall Putschn in Continental Op) Jeeves (BI --Y Agatha Christie Sigmund Freud first birth Murder on the Das Ich und das contsol clinic Links ( second Es (The Id and opens in N.Y. Poirot) (B) the Ego) (Au) Time magazine Dorothy Sayers William Butler founded Whose Body? Yeats receives (debut Lord Nobel Prize for Peter Literature Wimsey) (B) Institute for Social Research founded in Frankf urt ---- Robert Frost A Woadrow Wilson Poem With Notes and mindie and Grace Notes (Pulitzet Calvin Coolidge Prize) elected president of Thomas Mann Der US. Zauberberg (The Magic Leopold-Loeb Mountain) (G) thrill kill of Bobby Franks George Bernard Shaw St, Joan rival gangster (BI Dion 0' Banion Freeman Wills murdered on Crofts E.M. Forster A orders from Al mspector Passage to Capone French's -dia (BI Greatest Case 2 -5 million (debut) (BI Sigmund Freud radios in use Collected in US. Wri tings (Au) Joseph Conrad, Pranz Kafka die -. Rrle Stanley F. Scott Hindenburg Gardner "Beyond Fitzgerald The elected the Lawa (debut Great Ga tsby President in Pa Jenkins) , Hitler John Dos Passos reorganizes ûashiell M-at tan 27,000 member mtt"The Traasfer Nazi party mtt* of Cairfigaai" and Theodore suffrage for "Dead Yellow Dreiser An al1 men in Waœn" American Japan Tzagedy Carroll John first woman Daly ha8 five Brnest governor Race Williams Hemingway In elected in tories Our Time (8s) Dnited States published T.S. Eliot The the Scopes Bar1 Der Kollow Menw nmonkeyn trial 3iggers The Youse Without a Rdolph Hitler Eisenstein film Key (debut Mein Kampf Bat tleship 2harlie Chan) Vol ml (G) Potemkin (R) Joseph T. =Capn Ernest fascist youth Shar becœms Hemingway The organizations editot of BZack Sun Aïso Rises founded in msk Italy and William --Y S .S. Van Dine Faulkner The Benson Soldier 's Pay deaths of Murder Case Houdini and (debut Philo D .Hm Lawrence Valentino Vance) The Pl med serpent (8) Fritz Lang's G.K. Chesterton film The fncreduli ty Franz Kafka The (G) of Fatber Brown Castle (G) (BI founding of the Agatha Christie Book-of-the- The Murder of Month Club Roger Ackroyd (BI

- - -- Carroll John Ernest Daly The Snarl Hemingway Men of the Beast Withou t Women (ss) includes üashiell Vhe Killers international Hammett "The outcry over Cleansing of Virginia Woolf Sacco and Poisonville* To the Vanzetti (first Lighthouse (B) execut ion instaïment of Red Hamest) Hermann Hesse Lizzie Borden Steppenwolf (G) dies Arthur Conan Doyle The Martin Al Jolson stars Casebook of Keidegger Sein in The Jazz Sherl ock Holmes und Zei t (Being Singer, first (ss)(BI and Time) (G) "talkien (existential) Hoover elected president voting age foi Aldous HuXLey women reduced Point to 23 in Counterpoint Britain Dashiell (BI Flsinmptt first scheduled "Black Lïvesm D .H. Lawrence television (first U~Y broadcas ts inrrtal-t of ChatterTeyrs ) Lover (B) RadWhitfield Virginia Woolf "Pirst Bloodm Orlando (B) {debut Mac) Rudolph Carnap Leslie The Logical Charteris Meet Structure of the Tiger the Worid (first of the (logical Saint positivism) (G) series) (B) C.G. Jung Arthur Upfield Relationships The Barrakee Between the Ego Myçtery (first and the Bonaparte Unconsciousness mystery) (Al) (SI - - -est "Black Fridayw Hemingway A in New York Farewell to marks the Rrms beginning of the depression William Faulkner The Hitler appoints Sound and the Himler to SeSc Fury Dashiell St. Valentiners -tt Red Thomas Wolfe Day Massacre -st and me Look Homeward, Dain Curse Angel Canada's annual first four iiquor instalmeats of Jean Cocteau cansumption Tbe -tese Les Enfants leaps firom 9 to Falcon Terrible (F) 102 gallons per capita due to W.R. Burnett Virginia Woolf smuggling LittZe Caesar A Room of One 's Orcin (BI f irst experiment s The Roman Hat Brich Maria with colour Mystery (debut) Remarque Al1 television Quiet on the Margery Western Front Allingham (G) Mystery Mile (debut Campion) Martin KeideggerJhat is Philosophy ? (existential)

formation of the "Vienna Circlen over 1000 American banks close Robert BI Bwms last Allied 1 Am a Fugitive troops leave from a Georgia Rhineland caain Gang Nazis make Sinclair Lewis gains in German Babbitt Nobel elections Prize for Literature film Al1 Quiet on the Western Agatha Christie Sigmund Freud Front wins Muder at the Civilization Academy Award Vicarage (debut and its Miss Marple) (B) Discontents (Au) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, D .H. Lawrence creator of dies Sherlock Holmes, dies

------William German banks Faulkner close, wealthy Sanctuary Germans support Nazis Dasbiell Pearl S. Buck Eamœtt The The Good Earth Glas8 Key jailed Theodore Dreiser Tragic first woman debuts Dick America senator elected Tracy camic in U.S. Eugene O'Neill Mourning internat ional Becomes Electra outcry over Scottsboro, Alabama black youths convicted of rape they did M. Callet not commit Decédé (debut Maigret) (F) Boris Karlof f stars in Frankens tein William Hindenburg Faulkner Lfght elected in August President of Gemany, Nazis Ernest sweep Reichstag Hemingway Death Sax Rohmer The in the Roosevelt's Mask of Fu Afternoon "New Dealm Manchu (sixth of series) Aldous Hdey Linabergh Brave New MorLd kidnapping Bdgar Wallace (B) author of The U.S. Four Just Men Karl Jaspers unemployment (1905) dies (B) Philosophie figures: 56% (existential) blacks, 40% (G) whites jobless atom split at Cambridge -- -- Gertrude Stein BitLer becomes The Autobiography dictator,-- Nazis of Alice B. sweep to power : ToHas construction of first George Orwell concentration Dom and Out in camps, book Paris and burning, labour London (B) unions and Paul Cain Fast political Qze H.GI Wells The parties Shape of Things suppressed, Erle Stanley to Corne (BI boycott of Gardner The Jews, mass Case of the James Joyce immigration of Velvet Claws ülysses allowed artists and (debut Perry into U.S. (B) intellectuals Mason) from Germaay Earl Derr in US. Biggers creator prohibition of Charlie Chan repealed, peak dies of depression, drought and heavy winds create a "dut bowl "Machine Gunn Kelly captured by the F.B.I. - --- P* Scott political Fitzgerald assassinations Tender is the in Germany Night Henry Miller Vublic Rneaay Tropic of No.lw shot by Càncer F-B-1, -tt Tire Ilhia mut, Robert Graves Alcatraz prison secret Agent 1, Claudius (BI opened x-9 (canic book) Rudolph Carnap film The Thin Logical S'tax Maa based on James M. Cain of Language(G) novel by mstaML2 Always (logical Hamet t Rings mice positivism) Rex Stout Fer- de-lance (debut Nero Wolfe)

Ngaio Marsh A Man Lay Dead (debut Alleyn) (Al)

- - pp -- Carroll John T.S. Eliot Nazis repudiate WY Murder in the Treaty of Froni -the East Cathedra2 Versailles, growth of army, Jim Thapscm John Steinbeck introduction of .The Strange Tortilla Flat anti-Semitic bath of Eugene Nuremburg Law IC1ingm in hue Karl Jaspers Detective Suffering and show trials in Wstence iJ.S.S,R- John P, (existential) Marquand Mr. (G) gangsters Koto Takes a "Legsn Diamond, Kaad (debut of Vincent mMad series ) >ogn Col1 and Utch Schultz v cilled in series of gang 3layings Willf am Hitler's Four Faulkner Yeat Plan Absalom, implemented, Absalom! Rome-Berlin Axis fomed, Margaret Olympic Games Mitchell Coae held in Berlin Witb the Wipd (Pulitzer Prize Spanish Civil winner) War begins P. Scott Roosevelt re- Fitzgerald The elected as Crack-Up Pres ident "Cap" Shaw leaves Black Dylan Thomas Bruno Hauptmann Hask Zhenty-Five convicted of Poems (BI Lindbergh Michael Imes kidnapping and Death at the A.J. Ayer killing Presiden t ' s Language, Truth Lodging (debut and Lagic last public John Appleby (logical execution in series) (B) positivism) (B) U.S. held in Owensboro G.K. Kentucky Chesterton, creator of Father Brown, dies James M. Cain Brnest U.S. signs Seretzade Hemingway To neutrality act , Have and Have labour unrest Peter Coffin No t cause strikes, (ab Jonathan minimum wage Latimer) The John Steinbeck law passed for SaGuch for IIÿ Of Mice and Men women mat -de's Head IIindenburg dirigible John Dickson disaster Carr The Burning Court Anthony Boucher The Case of the Seven of Calvary William Faulkner The mobilizes, Unvanquished Hitler named Tfiiae magazine s Clayton Rawson Man of the Year The hi& Top Hat (debut gas masks Great Meriinil issued to Thoraton Wilder British Nicholas Blake play Our Tom civilians (aka CI Day (Pulitzer Lewis) The Prize) - 25 minimum Beast Must Die wage Graham Greene established in Brighton Rock UA, (BI first Jean-Paul Satre appearance of La Nausée ( F ) Supennan Green Hornet debut on radio John Steinbeck England and Chandler The Grapes of France declare The Big Sleep Wrath war on Gennany

Brett Halliday Nathanael West Spanish Civil Dividend on Day of the War ends Deatfi (debut Locust Michael Shayne) begiming of James Joyce evacuat ion of (aka Finnegans Ffake women and Georgiana Ann (BI children f rom Randolph) Eight London Faces at Three Adolph Hitler (debut John JI Mein K'f establishment Malone) English of the translation Manhattan Eric Ambler The Project to Mask of Jean-Paul buiid atomic Dimitrios (B) Sartre Le Mur bomb (The Wall) (ss) (FI unemployment reduced to 10 million in O.S. Batman's first appearance in Detective Comi CS Brnest Churchill Hemingway Por becomes British Mhom t&e Bell Prime Minister Tolls Germans enter Eugene O'Neill Paris, Long Dayrs escalation of Joumey into war -011 3ahn Night Daly Better Roosevelt re - Corpses (final elected for Race Williams) Watcb on the third tenn as Rhine O.S. president me Graham Greene Selective Brie Bre The Power and Service Act Black the Glory (B) allows for first peacetime Frances 6t F Scott draft in US. Richard Fitzgerald and Lockridge Mr. Nathanael West serialized film and MYS. North die The Shadow Meet Murder (debut)

- - James M. Cain F. Scott Japan occupies Mildred Pierce Fitzgerald The Chinese Last Tycoon territory, Corpell joins the Axis, Woolrich me Pablo Picasso ' s attacks Pearl Black eurtain play Desire Harbour , Caught by the U. S. declares Gypsy Rose Lee Tai1 opens in war on Japan (written by Paris starring Craig Rice) The Sartre and Germany and G-Sering deBeauvoir, Italy declare Mtuders directed by war on U.S. and Camus visa versa Virginia Woolf Germany invades and James Joyce Russia die film The Mal tese Fa1 con based on Hamett novel T-S, Eliot Four peak of Axis Quartets advancement8 in WWfI, mass William extelmination Faulkner Co of Jews begins DO- Moses in US. Jean Paul rat ioning Sartre Les begins, women Mouches (The join workforce Plies) (FI in large numbers Albert Camus L 'Etranger (The film Street of Outsider) The Chaace based on Mmof Woolrich short David Gooàïs Sisyphus (F) story Destination ffekaowll mymoad Jean-Paul Germans and Qmnâler The Sartre L être Japanese begin Laày in the et le néant to sui fer Lake (Being and defeats on al1 Nothingness) (FI fronts, Hitler (existential) orders * scorched earth" policy, Italy defeated, round the clock James M. Cain bombing of Double Germany begins --sr, Tnree of a Kind race riots and labour strife Conlell on the U.S. Wwlrich The home-front Black Ange1 film Casablanca Leo Malet 120 receives rue de la Gare Academy Award (debut Nestor Buma) (F) comleu Jean-Paul Woolrich me Sartre Huis Black Path of C'os (No Bxit) attenipted Fear (FI assassination of Hitler Ednnind Crispin The Case of the British Gilded rprv civilian (debut Gervase casualties Pen) (BI mounting with use of Ge- Vl and V2 rockets Roosevelt re- elected as UA. president , Truman as Vice- President

film Murder My Sweet based on Chandler's Fktrewell , My Lovely film Double Iizdemnity based on Cain novel, screenplay co- authored by Chandler Jean-Paul Mussolini Sartre es killed, Hitler CZïmins de la corrimits Liberte (The suicide, Roads to German Freedom- - surrender, V B. trilogy) CF) Day, beginning of Nwemburg George Orwell trials Animal Farm (B) increase of 3-s M. Cain Hermann Hesse kamikaze CIareer in C Das bombings, =.or and Other GlasperlenspiPl UoSobonibs Stories (The Glass Bead Hiroshima and Game) (G) Nagasaki, Japan Mary Roberts surrenders Rinehart The Yellow Room Roosevelt dies, Truman takes office film Mildred Pierce based on Cain novel Rugene OtNiell U-N. set up in The Iceman New York Cameth conclusion of Jean-Paul Nueniburg Sartre La trials Putain respectueuse two films based (The RespectN on Chandler Prostitute) (F) novels, The Big Sleep Simone de (screenplay co- David Goodis Beauvoir Tous authored by Dark Passage 1es hommes sont William mortels (Al1 Faulkner) and Men are Lady in the Mortal) (F) Lake Gertrude Stein film The Blue dies Dahlia screenplay co- authored by Chandler debut of radio show Sam Spade based on Kamett character film The Postman Always Rings mice based on Cain novel three films based on Woolrich novels , DeadLine at Dam, Black bgel, and The ?hase Tennessee Williams A Act passed in Stree tcar Named U.S. limiting Desire labour unions (Pulitzer Prize 1948) Henry Ford and Al Capone die Albert Camus la Peste (The increase in Plague) (FI U.F.O. sightings in Daoid Goodis Thomas Mann U.S. iKightfal1, Doktor Faustus Behdd This (G) film The -, Brasher The Diary of Doubloon based Mickey spillene Anne Frank on Chandlerts 1, llle Jury The High Window three films based on Woolrich stories, Fa11 Guy, Fear in the Night and The Guilty Dashiell Norman Mailer Marshall Plan mnmmtt The Naked and for European Nightmare Town the Dead aid passed in (88) U.S. William James M. Cain Faulkner Truman elected Tne Hoth Xntruder in the as president Dust Corne11 Israel Woolrich Ûeorge Orwell established Rendezvous in 1984 (BI Black three films based on Woolrich stories, I Wouldnlt be in Your Shoes, Retura of the Whistler, and The Night has a Thousand Eyes Arthur Miller eleven Death of a Communists Salesman found guilty of conspiracy to Henry Miller overthrow sexus government in U.S * Jean- Paul W.R.Burnett me Sartre La morte Coiranunist nepaalt Jimgle &ns Z1be People ' s (Iron in the Republic of Ross MacOonald Soub- last of China (laka Kenneth Roads to proclaimed by Millar) The Freedorn Mao Tse-tmg ming Tmt trilogy) (F) (debut Lw apartheid Archer) established in South Africa film The Third Man based on Graham Greene novel film The Window based on Woolrich story Ernest assassination Bemingway attempt on Across the Truman River and into the Trees beginning of Korean War Ezra Pound Seventy Cantos McCarran Act passed William restricting C0~ll Faulkner coaanunist Woolrich SQLvage Requiem for a freedoms in Bride Nun us* J-s M. Cain Graham Greene work begins on Jealous EJbaran The Third Ma the hydrogen (BI bomb U-S. David Goodis Of Mïssing Persas world population 2 -3 Mickey Spillane billion Vengeance is Mine!, My Gzzn film No Man of is mck Her Own based on Woolrich Patricia novel I Married Highsmith a Dead Man Stnîngers on a Ttain

Ross MacDonald The Dromming Pool - . ------J.D. Salinger Korean war The Catcher in escalates tae Rye 15 million James Jones televisions in From Here to u.sq Btemity introduction of colour Albert Camus Lthonrme révolté film Strangecs last issue of (The Rebel) (FI on a Train Black mmk (existential) directed by Alfred Dashiell Ludwig Hitchcock, -tt Wittgenstein based on book imprisoned dies by mghsmith, screenplay by &K. Chesterton Chandler The Father Brown Omnibus (BI

Ernest Britain Hemingway The produces atom Old Man and the bomb, U.S. Sea (Pulitzer tests hydrogen Prize) bamb in Pacific Jim Thampson The Rïller John Steinbeck Eisenhower mide Me and East of Eden elected Ctoppat's Cabin president Ralph Ellison David Goodis The -visible Agatha Street of the Man Christie ' s play L~st and Of The Mousetrap TeneSin Samuel Beckett opens in London riraiting for nickey Spillane Godot (BI Mss He Deadly Arthur Miller wage and price The Crucible controls lifted Simone de Beauvoir The coronation of Second Sex (FI Queen Elizabeth (existential) II Eugene OINiell Korean war and Dylan armistice Thomas die Vietnamese Ludwig civil war Wittgenstein begins David Goodis PhilosophicaZ Tne BurgSar and Investigations execution of The Bitbon in the (Au) (logical the Rosenbergs Gutter positivism) as atdc spies Ian Flemming Casino Royale (debut James Bond) Te~essee beginning of Williams Cat on McCarthy era a Hot Tin Roof (Pulitzer segregation of Prize) schools overturned by Aldous Hwley U. S. Supreme The Doors of Court Perception (BI television in David Goodis William Golding 29 million U.S. Black Ri-, tord of the homes Street of lm Flies (BI Return anâ The fitchcock film Blonde oa the Simone de Rear Window Street c01pe.r Beauvoir The based on w~dèuins(FI Woolrich novella Ernest Bemingway Nobel Prize for Literature Graham Greene blacks boycott The Quiet segregated bus American (8) lines in Montgomery Vladimir Alabama Nabakov Lorita (RI Agatha Christie Witness for me Prosecution (B) David Goodis Bugene O Neil Eisenhower re- Süoot the Piano Long Day s elected , Nixon Pla. Journey into Vice President Night Ross MacDanald Martin Luther The BarBarous Albert Camus la King gains Coast Chute (The attention as Fail) (FI black leader Ed McBain (debut A.J. Ayet The France and Revolution in Britain bomb series) Philosophy (B) Egypt after (logicai seizing of Suez positivism) Canal Bertolt Brecht film Serenade dies based on Cain novel film Nightmare based on Woolrich story Stanley Kubrick film The Killing CO- authored by Thompson film Nightfall screenplay by Soodis - -- Jack Kerouac On fonmrlation of the Road the *Eisenhower Doctrinem Nevil Shute On David Goodis the Beach (B) labour violence Fire in the in Jimny Flesh Samuel Beckett Hoff a' s Ehdgame (B) Teamsters Union Albert Camus desegregation wins Nobel violence in Prize for Little Rock, Literature Arkansas Britain tests thermonuclear bomb film The Burglar screenplay by Goodis Raymond Truman Capote in Southern Chanàïer Breakfast at U.S. tensions Plamck Tiffany ' s mount as desegregation Ross Ma-d Harold Pinter is attempted in The Dmmsters The Birthday schools Party Carroll John Nathan Leopold Daly dies paroled Corne11 William S. striking steel Waolrich math Burroughs Naked workers and is .Y Dancing Lunch longshoremen Partner forced back ta D .Ha Lawrence work by Lady Bisenhower Chatterlyrs &ver banned Castro takes Robert Bloch from U. S . pos t power Cuba psm on grounds of obscenity Raymond Chandïer dies ------William L. John P. Kennedy Shirer The Rise elected and Fall of the President Third Reich American U-2 John Updike bomber shot Rabbit Run down wer USSR Aert Camus Hitchcock film dies Psycho based on Bloch novel 85 million televisions in u-S.

------Ji0 T'homp8oll Joseph Heller Bay of Pigs The Catch022 incident Transgressors first American construction of David Goodis printing of Berlin wall Night -ci Henry Miller's Trapic of Dashiell Cancer Hamœtt dies Brnest Hemingway dies Auster, Paul. The New York Trilmt City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Ra. Middlelrext Penguin, 1990.

Auden, W.K. *The Guilty Vicaragem in The Dyar '8 Band and Other Essavs. New Yorks Randam House, 1962.

Barzun, Jacques, Wendel1 Hertig Taylor. A Catalogue of Crime. New York: Harpes & Rorr, 1971, revieed 1989. Benet, William Rose. The Reade=@s Encvclowdia (Second Edition). New Yorkr Thomas Y. Crawell, 1965.

Benvenuti, Stephano and Gianni Rizzoni. The Whodunit: An Informal Historv of Detective Fiction. Trans. Anthony Egre. New York: MacMillan Pubor 1979. Binyon, TmJo Murder Will Out. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989,

Boardman, Barrington. Fla~pets,Bootleuqers, "Tmhoid Marv, It & the Bomb: An Anecdotal H~S~ONof the United States from 1923-1945. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Bronner, Stephen Eric and Douglas MacKay Kellner, eds. Critical fheorv and Society: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 1989. Busch, Thomas. 'Shifting Paradigmsr Sartre on Critique, Language and the Role of the Intellect~al.~Critical and Dialectical Phenomenolo~Ed. Donn Welton and Hugh JO Silverman. New York: State University of New York Press, 1987.

Cain, James M. The Postman Aiways Rinas mice. [first pub. 19341 New York: Random Bouse, 1978.

Cain, JaWS Mo Double Indemnitv. [firat pub. 19361 Toronto: Random Bouse, 1989. Camus, Albert. The Outsider. [first pub. 19421 Trans. Stuart Gilbert. Middlesext Penguin, 1968. Camus, Aïbert. The Pla~e.[first pub. 19471 Trans. Stuart Gilbert. London: Penguin, 1960. Camus, Albert. The Mvth of Sievphus. [ficet pub. 19421 Trans. Justin O'Brien. London: Penguin, 1975. Camus, Albert. Notebooks8 1942-1951- Trans. Justin O'Brien, New York: Paragon Bouse, 1991. Camus, Albert. The Rebel. [fhat pub. 19511 Tsans. Anthony Bawer, New York: Randam House, l9H. Camus, Albert. Hotebooks r l93S-IgU. Tram . Philip Thody . New York: Paragon Bouse, 1991.

Cam, John. "An Interview with James K. Cain." The Amchair Detective 16 8 1r 4,

Cawelti, John G. Adventure. Hystery. and Romance. : University of Chicago, 1976. Chandler, Raymond. Plavback. [first pub. 19581 New York: Random House, 1977. Chandler, Raymond. The Lon9 Goodbve. [first pub. 19531 Toronto: Random House, 1971.

Chandler, Raymond. . [first pub. 19491 New York: Random House, 1971. Chandler, Raymond. The Ravmond Chandler Omnibus: The Biq Slee~,Farewell My Lovelv, The Hiah Window, . [first pub. 1939, 1940, 1942, 1943 respectively] New York: Modem Library, 1975. Chandler, Raymond The Notebooks of Ravmond Chandler. Ed. Frank MacShane. New York: Ecco Press, 1976

Chandler, Raymond. The Sinmle Art of Murder. [first pub. 19503 New York: Random House, 1972. Collins, Jim. Uncolmion Cultures. New York: Routledge, 1989. Crumley, James. The Wronu Case. New York: Vintage, Random House 1975. Crumley, James. Dancing Bear. New York: Vintage, Random House, 1983. Cuxnuîing, Robert Denoon. The Philoso~hvof Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Random House, 1965.

Daly, Carroll John. The Hidden Band. [first pub. 19291 New York: Harper Collins, 1992. Daly, Carroll John. The Snarl of the Beast. [first pub. 19271 New York: Harpes Collins, 1992. Daly, Carroll John. Murder Prom the East. [first pub. 19351 New Yorkr Intexnational Polygonica, 1978, Daly, Carroll John. The Aàventures of Race Williams. [first pub. 1935-361 New York: ~ystesiousPress 1989. Dooley, Dennie. Dashiell Hamnett. New Yorkr Prederick Ungar Pub- CO., 1984. Drew, Bernard A., Ed. Hard-Boiled Dames. [first pub. 1930- 381 New Yorkt St. nartinrs Press, 1986. Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Stein & Day, 1960.

Finch, G.A., wMarlowe'e Long Goodbye." TAD 6tlr7.

Finch, GOA. "A Fatal AttractionmmTAD 13:2:112. Pinch, GoAm wFrom Spade to Marlowe to Archer." TAD 4:2:107. Fisher, Steve "Corne11 Woolricht--1 Had Nobody." TAD 3:3:164. Flint, R.W. "A Cato of Crueltie~.~Partisan Review. 14t3t3280 Forrest, Katherine V. Murder bv Tradition. Tallahassee: The Naiad Press, 1991. Gamache, Paul "The Harvest of a Private Eye: Philosophical and Technical Experimentation in the Novels of Dashiell Hammett." Master's dissertation. Queen's University, 1988 Garnier, Philippe. Goodis: la vie en noir at blanc. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1984.

Geherin, David. The American Private Eve. New York: Frederick Ungar Pub. Co. , 1985. Glausser, Wayne The Final ChapteromTAD 23tZt190. Goodis, David. Black Fridav. [first pub. 19541 Berkeley: Black Lizard, 1987.

Goodis, David. Niahtfall. [first pub. 19471 Berkeley: Black Lizasd, 1987. Goodis, David. Street of No Return. [first pub. 19541 New York: Random House, 1991, Ooodisr David. Shoot the Piano Plav. [first pub. 19561 Berkeley: Black Iiizatd, 1987. Goodis, David. Caasidv% Girl. [first pub. 19511 New York: Random House, 1992. Goodis, David. The Buular. [first pub. 1953) New York: Random House, 1991. Goulart, Ron. The Dime Detectives. New York: The Mysterious Press, 1988. Grafton, Sue. B is for Homicide. New Yorkt FaWCett Crest, 1991.

Grafton, Sue. G is for Gumshoe. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1990 . Grella, George. "Poe's Tangled Web." TA9 21:3:286. Grella, George. "Murder and the Mean Streets: The Hard- Boiled Detective Novel." TAD 5:l:L

Grun, Bernard. The Thetables of Historv: A Horizontal Linkacre of Peo~leand Events. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975 . Hammett, Dashiell. Red H-eSt, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon. . The Thin Man. [first pub. 1929, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1934 respectively] New York: Avenel Books, 1965. Hansen, Joseph. Skinflick, Gravedimer, Niuhtwork: Three Dave Brandstetter Mvsteries. [first pub. 1979, 1982, 1984 respectively ] Henry Holt Co. 1992. Hawkins, Earriett. Classics and Trash : Traditions and Taboos in Hiah Literature and Po~ularModern Genres. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. Haycraft, Howard. The Art of the Mvsterv Stoxv. [first pub. 19461 New York: Carroll & Graff, 1983. Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleaaure. [first pub. 19411 New York: Carroll & Graff, 1984. Himes, Chester. Cotton Comes to Harlem. New Yorkg Del1 1965. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe . Rea~~raisals: Shif tina Alicmments in Postwar Critical Theorv. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1991. Holquist, Michael. Whodunn&t and Other Questionsz Metaphysical Detective Stories in Poat-War Fiction." New Literarv Bistoy Pol 3 1971-72. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmademism: Historv, Theorv, Fiction. lDcw Yorkt Routledge, 1988.

Johnson, Diane, Dashiell Hammett: A Life. New York: Randam House, 1985. Kaufmann, Walter . Existentialism fram Dostoevskv to Sartre . New ~ork:Meidian, 1975. Kenny, William Patrick. "The Dashiell Hamactt Tradition and the Modem Detective Novelen Doctoral dissertation. University of Michigan, 1964. Kittredge, William and Steven M. iuauzer, tds. The Great American Detective. [first pub. 1894-19781 New York: Mentor, 1978 . Latimer, Jonathan. Murder in the Madhouse. [first pub. 19351 New York: International Polygonics, 1989. Latimer, John. The Lady in the Morcnie. [first pub. 19361 New York: International Polygoniccl , 1988. MacShane, Frank, Ed. Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler. New York: Del1 Pub. 1981. Madden, David, Ed. Toucrh Guv Writers of the Thirties. Illinois : Southern Illinois University, 1968. Mahan, Jeffery B. "The Hard-Boiled Detective In the Fallen World." Clues 1:2:90. MaSt, Gerald. A Short Historv of the Movies . New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976. Mawer, Randall R. "Raymond Chandler's Self-Paroây." TAD 14:4t355. McCauley, nichael. Jim Thm~80n: Slee~With the Devil. New York: Mysterious Press, 1991.

McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1989.

McLeish, Renneth and Valerie. Bloomsburv Good Readina Guide to Murder Crime Fiction & Thrillers. London: Bloomebury, 1990. Mos~~Y, Walter. A Red Death. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

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