The American Roman Noir

The American Roman Noir
Author :
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Total Pages : 329
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780820320816
ISBN-13 : 0820320811
Rating : 4/5 (16 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The American Roman Noir by : William Marling

Download or read book The American Roman Noir written by William Marling and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1998-10-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The American Roman Noir, William Marling reads classic hard-boiled fiction and film in the contexts of narrative theories and American social and cultural history. His search for the origins of the dark narratives that emerged during the 1920s and 1930s leads to a sweeping critique of Jazz-Age and Depression-era culture. Integrating economic history, biography, consumer product design, narrative analysis, and film scholarship, Marling makes new connections between events of the 1920s and 1930s and the modes, styles, and genres of their representation. At the center of Marling's approach is the concept of "prodigality": how narrative represents having, and having had, too much. Never before in the country, he argues, did wealth impinge on the national conscience as in the 1920s, and never was such conscience so sharply rebuked as in the 1930s. What, asks Marling, were the paradigms that explained accumulation and windfall, waste and failure? Marling first establishes a theoretical and historical context for the notion of prodigality. Among the topics he discusses are such watershed events as the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti and the premiere of the first sound movie, The Jazz Singer; technology's alteration of Americans' perceptive and figurative habits; and the shift from synecdochical to metonymical values entailed by a consumer society. Marling then considers six noir classics, relating them to their authors' own lives and to the milieu of prodigality that produced them and which they sought to explain: Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, and Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely. Reading these narratives first as novels, then as films, Marling shows how they employed the prodigality fabula's variations and ancillary value systems to help Americans adapt--for better or worse--to a society driven by economic and technological forces beyond their control.


The American Roman Noir Related Books

The American Roman Noir
Language: en
Pages: 329
Authors: William Marling
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 1998-10-01 - Publisher: University of Georgia Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In The American Roman Noir, William Marling reads classic hard-boiled fiction and film in the contexts of narrative theories and American social and cultural hi
The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction
Language: en
Pages: 207
Authors: Catherine Ross Nickerson
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-07-08 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This Companion examines the range of American crime fiction from execution sermons of the Colonial era to television programmes like The Sopranos.
Bluff City Underground
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Erik Morse
Categories: Memphis (Tenn.)
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-04-30 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Erik Morse's vertiginous novella follows West Coast graduate student Everly Loennrot as he lands at the city's luxurious Peabody Hotel for a mysterious research
USA Noir
Language: en
Pages: 619
Authors: Dennis Lehane
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-10-14 - Publisher: Akashic Books

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“All the heavy hitters, from Michael Connelly in Los Angeles to Joyce Carol Oates in suburban New Jersey . . . an important anthology.”—The New York Times
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Language: en
Pages: 129
Authors: James M. Cain
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-11-03 - Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The bestselling sensation—and one of the most outstanding crime novels of the 20th century—that was banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence a