Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir

by John T. Irwin

Early in the twentieth century a new character type emerged in the crime novels of American writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond the "hard-boiled" detective, most famously exemplified by Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon . Unlike the analytical detectives of nineteenth-century fiction, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s Inspector Dupin, the new detectives encountered cases not as intricate logical puzzles but as stark challenges of manhood. In the stories of these characters and their criminal opposites, John T. Irwin explores the tension within ideas of American masculinity between subordination and independence and, for the man who becomes "his own boss," the conflict between professional codes and personal desires. He shows how, within different works of hard-boiled fiction, the professional either overcomes the personal or is overcome by it, ending in ruinous relationships or in solitary integrity, and how within the genre all notions of manly independence are ultimately revealed to be illusions subordinate to fate itself. Tracing the stylistic development of the genre, Irwin demonstrates the particular influence of the novel of manners, especially the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He goes on to argue that, from the time of World War II, when hard-boiled fiction began to appear on the screen in film noir just as women entered the workforce in large numbers, many of its themes came to extend to female empowerment. Finally, he discusses how these themes persist in contemporary dramatic series on television, representing the conflicted lives of Americans into the twenty-first century.

Genres: Nonfiction, Noir, Literary Criticism

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 21, 2006

Reviews

[Gabriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mystery to a Solution was such a fantastic book that this, its acknowledged sequel, would have to be a let-down, almost regardless of its own individual merit. That said, this was a let-down.

This is a fine book, in its own way, but the long sections on The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (book and film) really have nothing at all to do with Irwin's thesis, and that thesis might have been better served not by a fairly limited survey of several works (Burnett, Cain, Chandler, Hammett and Woolrich), but by simply focusing on The Maltese Falcon and condensing a large chunk of this book into two chapters: one on the book, and another on the film.

Irwin, as always, has interesting insights into everything that he discusses, but it just doesn't hang together here. The strong points are the chapters on film noir and the opening chapter on Hammett and the Falcon. Sandwiched between is an awful lot of filling, including a discussion of Woolrich's novel that takes up almost half of the book (when combined with the chapter on the film) and really has nothing to do with the book Irwin has already laid out in his first three chapters. Disappointing, but definitely interesting.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an impressive work of literary criticism because Irwin does nothing but give his own reading and analyses. So much of literary criticism is arguing with other critics and that is why the books are weighed down with a massive amount of footnotes. Dissertation disease: where you have to have read everything an have accounted for any line of thought that preceded yours. Irwin just reads the books and discusses. In the latter chapters Irwin makes a good case that Fitzgerald was more influential that Hemingway (the critics choice) as a key influencer among those hard-boiled writers who aspired to more literary acclaim. And he does a great job comparing the novel vs screenplay versions of The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. All in all this book is chock full of original criticism and others will have to argue with it in their dissertation books.

[Simon Popek · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ⭐

[Zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful study about the development of hard-boiled fiction and film noir. Two important figures crop up throughout: Edgar Allen Poe as the progenitor of this kind of detective story, and F. Scott Fitzgerald as the high art writer whose books most resemble the themes and issues of hard-boiled fiction. Irwin focuses in particular on the books (and films):

The Maltese Falcon







and