Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte Sebastiaan De Vusser Not Made for these Times A Study of Hard-Boiled Identity in Postmodern Literature Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Master in de taal- en letterkunde: Engels 2014-2015 Promotor Prof. dr. Philippe Codde Vakgroep Letterkunde 1 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Prof. dr. Philippe Codde for the useful comments, remarks and engagement through the learning process of this master thesis. I would also like to thank my family for their support during the entire process. In Loving Memory of Jakob Bourgeois, my best friend who died during the making of this thesis. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Part 1: Theoretical Approach ................................................................................................................. 3 Chapter 1 The History of the Hard-Boiled Novel ..................................................................... 4 1.1 The Origins of Detective Fiction .............................................................................................. 4 1.2 The Structure of the Traditional Detective Story ..................................................................... 5 1.3 Publication History .................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2 The Hard-Boiled Identity ......................................................................................... 9 2.1 The Traditional ‘Tough Guy’ ................................................................................................... 9 2.2 The Femme Fatale, the Office Wife and the Female Sleuth .................................................. 11 Chapter 3 Postmodernism ........................................................................................................ 14 3.1 General Introduction .............................................................................................................. 14 3.2 The Role of Parody in Postmodernism .................................................................................. 14 3.3 Postmodern Identity ............................................................................................................... 16 Part 2: Novels........................................................................................................................................ 21 Chapter 4 Motherless Brooklyn ............................................................................................... 23 4.1 Narration ................................................................................................................................ 23 4.1.1 Narration in Hard-Boiled Fiction .............................................................................. 23 4.1.2 Lionel as a First-Person Narrator .............................................................................. 24 4.1.3 Story Structure .......................................................................................................... 26 4.2 Identity in Motherless Brooklyn ............................................................................................ 27 4.2.1 Introduction Identity in Motherless Brooklyn ........................................................... 27 4.2.2 Lionel as the Hard-Boiled Hero ................................................................................ 28 4.2.3 Identity and the Other Members of the Minna Family .............................................. 34 4.3 The Clients as the Link to the Underworld ............................................................................ 36 Chapter 5 Bleeding Edge .......................................................................................................... 39 5.1 Narration ................................................................................................................................ 39 5.2 Analysis of Space ................................................................................................................... 41 5.3 Identity in Bleeding Edge ...................................................................................................... 44 5.3.1 Maxine as the Hard-Boiled Heroine .......................................................................... 44 iv Conclusion 53 Bibliography 57 Word Count: 24.753 v Introduction Hard-boiled crime fiction is considered to be one of the most popular American literary genres of the twentieth century for a variety of different reasons. From a practical point of view, it was easy to distribute because of the low production costs and most authors were contractually obligated to publish a certain amount of stories each year, resulting in a large number of new publications on a regular basis. What set these stories apart from other, more traditional detective stories was that they had a much darker tone and featured a lot of violent scenes. Their protagonists were gloomy figures with a negative vision on life as a result of the dreary reality of society in which they lived, a reflection of the trying economic and social circumstances of the urban society of the 1930s. Academics have often questioned the value of this type of fiction because of its popularity and the nature of its production, but many studies published in recent decades have vowed that it is in fact a valuable literary form that, in some ways, is still evolving. Despite almost being synonymous with the first part of the twentieth century, this type of crime fiction has never really been out of publication and has had a number of notable resurgences over the years. Because of its emphasis on established formal characteristics and story conventions, the genre offers an almost infinite number of possibilities for writers to deconstruct and reconfigure the basic elements on which it is built. As such, there have been many variations on its basic themes, ranging from feminist reinterpretations of the typical male protagonist to light-hearted adaptations that feature the typical characters and storylines in more exotic locations. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is a more recent art form that is not just restricted to the realms of literature. It offers a number of interesting ways for authors to look at conventional literary forms and it emphasizes formal experiments and intertextuality, which allows these authors to incorporate a large variety of texts into their novels, ranging from lowbrow to elite fiction. This makes it the perfect vehicle for these more contemporary reinterpretations of hard-boiled texts, as the postmodern novel does not differentiate between fiction on the basis of perceived literary value. This thesis will focus on how postmodern literature can reappropriate the concept of ‘hard-boiled identity’ and how this concept can be applied to a story that is situated in a more contemporary setting. More pointedly, this study will take a look at how identity is conceived in these different literary 1 genres and how the study of these postmodern adaptations of the hard-boiled identity can result in interesting observations about the role and function of identity in literature in general. I will divide my research into five main sections. The first chapter will focus on explaining the historical and social context of hard-boiled fiction. The second chapter will explain the core characteristics of the hard-boiled identity and will illustrate how these evolved over time. The third chapter will discuss the role of parody in postmodern literature and how postmodernism deals with identity as a concept in general. The fourth and fifth chapter will feature extensive analyses of two different postmodern novels: Motherless Brooklyn (1999) by Jonathan Lethem and Bleeding Edge (2013) by Thomas Pynchon. These analyses will look at how both authors reinterpret the aforementioned conventions of narration and storytelling to respectively create a hard-boiled hero and heroine for the postmodern age. 2 Part 1: Theoretical Approach 3 Chapter 1 The History of the Hard-Boiled Novel 1.1 The Origins of Detective Fiction Even though detective fiction is a quite recent phenomenon that can be traced back to Edgar Allen Poe’s first true detective stories, crime fiction in general is often considered to be one of the oldest literary genres with early examples ranging from biblical tales found in the old testament to Greek myths (Scaggs, 7-8). Central in this type of fiction – at least up until the mid-nineteenth century – was the very moralistic character of the narratives. For instance, one of the most famous early examples of crime and punishment is the biblical story of Cain and Abel, the first of whom is branded a criminal for killing his brother out of jealousy. The criminal is subsequently separated from the law-abiding members of society and becomes an outcast marked by God. At the same time, the honest people get a sense of reassurance that they are in fact different from this identifiable ‘other’. Criminal acts in general are seen as transgressions of socially determined boundaries, which would then later be codified in laws, allowing a certain dominant view of society to reign among its followers (Scaggs, 9). The emphasis on the negative nature of crime is one of the main reasons why these stories have been so popular throughout history. It is used as a cautionary tool, but at the same time it also has a strange allure because of how it shows the transgressive tendencies that are inherent to human