The American Roman Noir: Hammett, Cain, and Chandler (Paperback)

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Review

"[An] extremely well-written . . . book that will delight those looking for a new kind of American studies."--American Literature

Product Description

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820320811
• ISBN-13: 978-0820320816
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,761,521 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Study of Noir Literature I've Read!, September 17, 2000

By	Marc Seals (Baraboo, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

William Marling's fine book is a wonderful introduction to the field of hard-boiled detective fiction for the serious scholar. He traces the historical background of noir fiction, provides several case studies of central texts, and gives biographies of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain. He respects the genre without being fawning. This book is very readable and academically sound at the same time.