The focus of this broadly based analysis is on representative noir
stories and novels, and the dialogs, voice-over, and stage directions
of films such as The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always
Rings Twice, This Gun for Hire, The Killers, Gun Crazy, The Asphalt
Jungle, Criss Cross, Night and the City, and Odds Against Tomorrow, in
which the "invisible writing" Philip Marlowe once mentions in Farewell,
My Lovely is traced. The author not only takes a fresh look at the works
of the usual suspects Hammett, Chandler, and Cain but also of Cornell
Woolrich, W.R. Burnett, Lionel White, and Geoffrey Homes. His conclusion
is a kind of rehabilitation of the genre, the tenor being that it is
about time to re-read the classic American noir and to question not a
few of the views presently held. For, in contrast to their alleged
general rejection or disdain, we do, in fact, encounter in works of noir
traditional values, such as trust, reliability, respect, and
friendship. And instead of proof for W.H. Auden's oft-quoted judgment on
Raymond Chandler's novels ("powerful but extremely depressing books"),
there is discernible in Chandler's and his colleagues' narratives an
affirmative stance toward and a longing for the recovery of values.
Significantly many noir characters, including femmes fatales, disprove
the stereotypes of amoral, areligious, and materialistic
this-worldliness typically ascribed to them. Nor do we encounter them as
generally fatalistic and emotionless "automatons" (Camus) but rather as
goal-oriented human beings with their contradictions and sometimes
downright sympathetically modest desires and dreams of life. The catalog
of topics addressed includes, but is not limited to, the true self, the
past, trust, the family, faith, catharsis, atonement, grace, plus the
didactics of noir, and, yes, humor. All of the above proves the genre's
yet to be discovered multi-faceted nature. Readers will also, if mainly
in passing, find references to the Western and to authors as diverse as
E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Émile Zola, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen
Crane, G.K. Chesterton, Lincoln Steffens, Theodore Dreiser, Bert Brecht,
Walter Benjamin, Arthur Miller, Albert Camus, and Paul Auster. Beside
other paraphernalia, readers will also learn about the death Raymond
Chandler and his legendary private detective, Philip Marlowe, forgot to
explain, to what French writer Cain's plots hark back, and who, as early
as 1776, appealed to the reader, instead of simply condemning him or
her, to consider the circumstances and the environment that ultimately
make someone commit a crime. - The author holds a Dr. phil. (PhD) from
Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany, in American Studies. His book is
aimed at students and scholars but also at those with a deeper interest
in classic films noirs and the novels and stories behind them.
- Postage outside the EU upon request.