America is elsewhere : the noir tradition in the age of consumer culture / Erik Dussere.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dussere, Erik, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Detective and mystery stories, American--History and criticism.

Detective and mystery stories, American.

Noir fiction, American--History and criticism.

Noir fiction, American.

Film noir--United States--History and criticism.

Film noir.

National characteristics, American, in literature.

Masculinity in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 pages ) illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, [2014]

Summary:

America is Elsewhere provides a rigorous and creative reconsideration of hard-boiled crime fiction and the film noir tradition. America is Elsewhere provides a rigorous and creative reconsideration of hard-boiled crime fiction and the film noir tradition within three related postwar contexts: 1) the rise of the consumer republic in the United States after World War II 2) the challenge to traditional notions of masculinity posed by a new form of citizenship based in consumption, and 3) the simultaneous creation of "authenticity effects" - representational strategies designed to safeguard an image ofboth the American male and America itself outside of and in opposition to the increasingly omnipresent marketplace. Films like Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, and Kiss Me Deadly alongside novels by Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler provide rich examples for the first half of the study. The second islargely devoted to works less commonly understood in relation to the hard-boiled and noir canon. Examinations of the conspiracy films from the Seventies and Eighties-like Klute and The Parallax View-novels by Thomas Pynchon, Chester Himes and William Gibson reveal the persistence and evolution of these authenticity effects across the second half of the American twentieth century.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I: Postwar Spaces, Postwar Men

1. Last Chance Texaco: Gas Station Noir

2. The Publishing Class: Detectives and Executives in Noir Fiction

PART II: Maps of Conspiracy

3. The Gumshoe Vanishes: Conspiracy Film in the Sixties Era

4. Flirters, Deserters, Wimps and Pimps: Pynchon's Two Americas

5. Black Ops: Ghetto Space and Counterconspiracy

PART III: Postmodernism and Authenticity

6. Postmodern Authenticity, or, Cyberpunk

7. The Space of the Clock: The Corporation as Genre in The Hudsucker Proxy

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed October 24, 2013).

ISBN:

0-19-997073-4

OCLC:

859536892