Literary Influences: The Hard Boiled Detective Novel
Notes from a Lecture by Dr. David E. Whillock, Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Communications at TCU. Presented Sept. 5, 2007 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth as part of a series titled: American Cinema: Film Noir and the Detective Film.
[The sources of this material include a history of Black Mask magazine written by Keith Alan Deutsch and available in full at BlackMaskMagazine.com]
The hard-boiled detective novel is a genre developed by American writers in the 1920s. Among the first hard-boiled detectives was Terry Mack who first appeared in Carroll John Daly’s story “ Three Gun Terry” in the May 15,1923, issue of Black Mask, a popular fiction magazine founded by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in April, 1920.
Mencken and Nathan ( a well-known literary figure and drama critic respectively) started Black Mask to make money when their more intellectual, high-brow periodical Smart Set failed to do so). The first issue offered, "Five magazines in one: the best stories available of adventure, the best mystery and detective stories, the best romances, the best love stories, and the best stories of the occult." After only eight issues (priced at 15 cents per issue), the founders sold Black Mask for a huge profit.
Where the original magazine had only a few pages of detective stories (along with all its other attractions) and they were like the standard British detective stories of Arthur Conan-Doyle , Agatha Christie, and others, [Did you know that A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh, wrote “one of the glories of this literature, an acknowledged masterpiece” of the genre The Red House Mystery?] it was a new editor of Black Mask hired in 1926 who really emphasized the realistic, tough-guy detective stories of the new genre. “Cap” Joseph Shaw brought a gritty, blue-collar outlook that became the new identity of the magazine. As Shaw wrote in a 1927 editorial. "Detective fiction as we see it has only commenced to be developed. All other fields have been worked and overworked, but detective fiction has barely been scratched." By 1933, Black Magic was publishing nothing but crime stories. And hugely successful!
It was Daly’s “Three Gun Terry” that had started the new wave. The Americanized vocabulary and tough-guy vernacular illustrated by the quote below remain characteristic of the genre to this day:"I have a little office which says 'Terry Mack, Private Investigator,' on the door; which means whatever you wish to think it. I ain't a crook, and I ain't a dick. I play the game on the level, in my own way."
“Daly followed Terry Mack with a detective called Race Williams and it was this violent and wisecracking character who really set up the prototype for the hard boiled sleuth. The detective stories appearing in Black Mask grew more violent, the style harder, the dialogue blacker, and the wit dryer.” But it was Dashiel Hammitt whose writing seemed most to influence the detective genre and the magazine. “He alone seemed to have first realized the full potential of hard boiled detective fiction beyond its gunslinging appeal. As an ex-Pinkerton detective turned self-taught writer, Hammett was uniquely qualified to give his characters the three dimensions of which other writers of the tough detective story were largely incapable.” Another legendary author of the genre, Raymond Chandler, was first published in Black Mask in 1933.
[see excerpts from Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder” elsewhere on tviewlalabplus.blogspot.com]
Among the identifying characteristics of hard-boiled detective fiction are its use of rough, American vernacular and the tough guy exterior of its detectives. The detectives have their own soft spots and their own code of justice, but their code of justice is not the same as that of the society. One of the devices of the genre is the unfolding and testing of this code of justice.
Each hard-boiled detective has his own city, and his city is like a character in his tale. His relationship with his city is like his relationship with women, both as love object (salvation) and fatal attraction (destroyer). She is beautiful, but in his relationship with her, he peels back the layers of her reality and reveals her flaws and dangers.
Perhaps the development of the portrait of women in this genre owes something to the post-war change in the status of women. Remember, it was 1920 when women could first vote in federal elections, and, while their men were away at war, women at home had developed a new level of independence and self-reliance that would grow alongside the genre through the coming decades.
It is useful to contrast hard-boiled detective fiction with traditional English detective fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle and others (and to recall that among the earliest writers of such fiction was Edgar Allan Poe whose “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) featured the ratiocination of Inspector C. Auguste Dupin).
Patterns in Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction1. The drama of solution (on which traditional English detective fiction focused intently) is subordinated to the accomplishment of justice. It’s not so much about solving the case and seeing justice (as the detective interprets it) done.
2. The intimidation and the temptation of the detective are important elements of the plot whereas the traditional plots relied on elaborate back stories of the characters and crimes and back stories behind the back stories.
3. The hard boiled detective’s investigation of the crime always leads him to some sort of personal issue of self-doubt or self-image where the traditional English detective’s investigation typically leads him (or her) to a solution (with supreme confidence and little or no personal involvement).
4. Where his English predecessors were detached solvers of puzzles, the hard-boiled detective gets emotionally involved and morally committed to his cases, and his personal moral stance over against the criminal is highlighted. He is not merely solving a case but exorcising personal demons by bringing justice to the criminal.
Motifs in Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction
1. The detective is a marginal professional, operating in unsuccessful surroundings, living hand-to-mouth, always in debt and needing to make a little dough. Out of this setting emerges the reality of the question of what will it take to buy him off.
2. The detective chooses his marginal lifestyle because he rejects respectability and is incurably insubordinate and rebellious. This circumstance begs the question of his personal choices as vices or virtues and whether they will lead him to success or ruin.
3. The detective, though he chooses his own world, can function comfortably in various worlds: among the rich, his unintimidated honesty is prized; among the corrupt, he knows how to play the streetwise game. Among criminals and police, men and women (but often not so comfortably), he makes his confident, undeterred way. His adaptability sharpens the question of his own identity.
4. From the opening of the hard-boiled detective story or novel, the crime he sets out to investigate is never as simple as it first seems, and the detective himself entangles the detective himself in its implications. It’s not just that it gets more complicated but that his own involvement gets more complicated.
5. The detective is continually twisted emotionally, personally, even spiritually, by the changing landscapes and shifting situations revealed by his investigation.
6. There is a rhythm of exposure in the plot development as one exposed truth leads to another and that one to yet another, with each one presenting new ethical, personal challenges to the detective as much as obstacles to his solution of the case.
The Hard-Boiled Detective: The Ideal Type
He is fortyish and works alone, a man’s man with no family and a mostly unexplained past. He has many casual acquaintances emerging from that past, but few friends. He lives on fried eggs and steak, cigarettes and coffee, bourbon and Scotch. He either carries a gun or makes a point of not carrying one, and, in either case, he can take one away from almost anybody. He’s always short of cash. but he always has a few bucks to share. His relationship with the police ranges from ambivalence to contempt, and his relationship with women is similar. For him, sex is a double-edged sword of attraction and fear, and he often finds himself involved with a desirable but disturbed (and disturbing) female who is both buxom and blonde. The aggressive, dominant woman who controls weaker men is a challenge to his sexual status and himself, but like most challenges, he handles it well.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Choosing: The Way We Read and Write
An Essay by Mr. B. (revised)
“That’s just the way he writes,” she says.
And what seems like weeks of energetic, earnest teaching and richly evocative learning experiences swirl down the Friday afternoon toilet bowl. Oh, I comfort myself by checking the A/B Day student calendar. It’s only the fifth class period we have met. Fourth if you don’t count the first day, and what sane person would? It just feels like longer because I think I have pushed the same idea every class period of every day.
Choices, choices, choices. I’ve approached them from every angle, observed them, forced them, interpreted them, analyzed them, and challenged them. I’ve made them and allowed them and accepted them and twelve-powerful-worded them. And over and over and over again, I have connected them to this tiny crumb of essential truth:
In order to write well (i.e. to have the intended effect on the reader) every writer must make choices. If you do not choose the way you express yourself, if you do not consider other possible ways you might use, you cannot write well. Likewise, when you read, (or listen) you cannot possibly understand all that a writer seeks to communicate if you cannot imagine what choices she or he made.
It is such a simple idea to those who already know it that we forget that it must be learned and applied and used. It must be believed and trusted and implemented. Yet, taking it for granted because we rely on it so completely, we neglect to teach it. Like so many simple but essential fundamentals of the academic community, this basic concept is a doorway to everything that follows. Without passing through this door, one simply cannot write effectively or purposefully. One cannot read to analyze, make inferences, evaluate, or fully understand. Without passing through the simple portal of the academic faith, one can never be at home in a literate environment; one can only pretend. Without knowing the secret of choices, one may grasp an occasional insight or realization as it blows past in the midday breeze, but one can never enter into the comfortable conversation of those whose lives are enriched and deepened by their awareness of choices and their consequences.
When Housman writes, “The time you won your town the race /We chaired you through the market-place,” there is only one thing that we believe with absolute and unassailable confidence: he did not pen those words without making choices because “that’s just the way he writes.” We cannot know what other choices occurred to him, whether he thought of saying “won the race for your town” or “carried you through the town square.” We cannot know if he considered using the third person or moving those opening lines to another place. We cannot know, though we often think we are so good at guessing, what he intended. In the end, we cannot even know that he did in fact choose his words with care, yet we believe it so fervently that we think we know.
If choices are made, then we have something to explore. If we cannot imagine other ways of saying the same thing or other things to say, if we cannot hold passionately and irrevocably to our faith in the necessity of choice, there is nothing to question, nothing to discuss, nothing to wonder about, nothing to claim, nothing to discover. If choices are made, we can ask why an author might have chosen as he or she did even though we cannot know the answer. We can examine the effect of what we read in contrast to what else might have been written, and only when we have done that can we hope to understand.
And, this just in: Even if we investigate as a choice something an author never consciously chose, we deepen our understanding of the effect of his or her work. Thus, even if Housman never considered chairing his young athlete through the town square or down Main Street, we, by inquiring, by imagining other choices, enrich our experience of the poem and increase its effect on us. And, furthermore, I would argue that by reading as if there were choices, we give ourselves access to those unintended (inspired, subconscious, passionate) choices that are so rich an element of every artist’s work.
I rode to school with a math teacher this morning, and I learned something else about this doorway to literary/artistic understanding. My mathematical colleague observed (of a computer problem he had encountered), “I knew that if I thought about it, I am a reasonable person, and I could find the answer.” First, let me be quick to say that he chose not to see the problem as insoluble. He chose not to think that, even if it were soluble, he could not solve it. He chose instead to apply the essential tenet of the math teacher’s faith: reason will lead me to the solution. Choices and choosing do apply, but the expectation is not to enrich or deepen one’s experience, to expand one’s understanding of possible interpretations and meanings of a text. The expectation, the goal, is to find the solution. As surely as the literary critic believes (but cannot know) that the author made choices that are full of possibilities to consider, the mathematician/scientist believes that there is a single, reasonable explanation or solution. Both thinkers may enter the doorway of choice, but their paths very quickly diverge.
This is not just the way I write. It is not just the way people talk these days. This sentence that you are reading right now is the product of a long struggle to understand this thing I am wanting to say. And this sentence includes words that I chose from among others that I rejected. Maybe I would have been better off to say that it contains words I picked from a thesaurus full of possibilities. (And so you know, I just went back and added the “among” between “from” and “others” and like it a bit better. I like the “thesaurus full of possibilities” a lot! I will not change it again because I like this idea of actually doing what I am writing. Unless tomorrow I think of a better way.)
Should I capitalize “thesaurus”? No.
Suppose Housman had chosen one of these ways to write his poem. What difference would it make in its effect on you?
We cheered and praised him in the town
The day he laid his victory down.
or
Oh, youth,proud winner of the race,
you make us all you are,
and when we raise you up
and lift voices to cheer you,
we are all made you,
winners proud and lifted,
youthful, up.
or
A lad not twenty yet when he
Won for his town the victory
Was lifted up and carried high
While other lads stood idly by.
or
You won the race for us that day;
Not for yourself alone you won.
And afterwards, our favorite son,
You left us with no more to say.
or...
“That’s just the way he writes,” she says.
And what seems like weeks of energetic, earnest teaching and richly evocative learning experiences swirl down the Friday afternoon toilet bowl. Oh, I comfort myself by checking the A/B Day student calendar. It’s only the fifth class period we have met. Fourth if you don’t count the first day, and what sane person would? It just feels like longer because I think I have pushed the same idea every class period of every day.
Choices, choices, choices. I’ve approached them from every angle, observed them, forced them, interpreted them, analyzed them, and challenged them. I’ve made them and allowed them and accepted them and twelve-powerful-worded them. And over and over and over again, I have connected them to this tiny crumb of essential truth:
In order to write well (i.e. to have the intended effect on the reader) every writer must make choices. If you do not choose the way you express yourself, if you do not consider other possible ways you might use, you cannot write well. Likewise, when you read, (or listen) you cannot possibly understand all that a writer seeks to communicate if you cannot imagine what choices she or he made.
It is such a simple idea to those who already know it that we forget that it must be learned and applied and used. It must be believed and trusted and implemented. Yet, taking it for granted because we rely on it so completely, we neglect to teach it. Like so many simple but essential fundamentals of the academic community, this basic concept is a doorway to everything that follows. Without passing through this door, one simply cannot write effectively or purposefully. One cannot read to analyze, make inferences, evaluate, or fully understand. Without passing through the simple portal of the academic faith, one can never be at home in a literate environment; one can only pretend. Without knowing the secret of choices, one may grasp an occasional insight or realization as it blows past in the midday breeze, but one can never enter into the comfortable conversation of those whose lives are enriched and deepened by their awareness of choices and their consequences.
When Housman writes, “The time you won your town the race /We chaired you through the market-place,” there is only one thing that we believe with absolute and unassailable confidence: he did not pen those words without making choices because “that’s just the way he writes.” We cannot know what other choices occurred to him, whether he thought of saying “won the race for your town” or “carried you through the town square.” We cannot know if he considered using the third person or moving those opening lines to another place. We cannot know, though we often think we are so good at guessing, what he intended. In the end, we cannot even know that he did in fact choose his words with care, yet we believe it so fervently that we think we know.
If choices are made, then we have something to explore. If we cannot imagine other ways of saying the same thing or other things to say, if we cannot hold passionately and irrevocably to our faith in the necessity of choice, there is nothing to question, nothing to discuss, nothing to wonder about, nothing to claim, nothing to discover. If choices are made, we can ask why an author might have chosen as he or she did even though we cannot know the answer. We can examine the effect of what we read in contrast to what else might have been written, and only when we have done that can we hope to understand.
And, this just in: Even if we investigate as a choice something an author never consciously chose, we deepen our understanding of the effect of his or her work. Thus, even if Housman never considered chairing his young athlete through the town square or down Main Street, we, by inquiring, by imagining other choices, enrich our experience of the poem and increase its effect on us. And, furthermore, I would argue that by reading as if there were choices, we give ourselves access to those unintended (inspired, subconscious, passionate) choices that are so rich an element of every artist’s work.
I rode to school with a math teacher this morning, and I learned something else about this doorway to literary/artistic understanding. My mathematical colleague observed (of a computer problem he had encountered), “I knew that if I thought about it, I am a reasonable person, and I could find the answer.” First, let me be quick to say that he chose not to see the problem as insoluble. He chose not to think that, even if it were soluble, he could not solve it. He chose instead to apply the essential tenet of the math teacher’s faith: reason will lead me to the solution. Choices and choosing do apply, but the expectation is not to enrich or deepen one’s experience, to expand one’s understanding of possible interpretations and meanings of a text. The expectation, the goal, is to find the solution. As surely as the literary critic believes (but cannot know) that the author made choices that are full of possibilities to consider, the mathematician/scientist believes that there is a single, reasonable explanation or solution. Both thinkers may enter the doorway of choice, but their paths very quickly diverge.
This is not just the way I write. It is not just the way people talk these days. This sentence that you are reading right now is the product of a long struggle to understand this thing I am wanting to say. And this sentence includes words that I chose from among others that I rejected. Maybe I would have been better off to say that it contains words I picked from a thesaurus full of possibilities. (And so you know, I just went back and added the “among” between “from” and “others” and like it a bit better. I like the “thesaurus full of possibilities” a lot! I will not change it again because I like this idea of actually doing what I am writing. Unless tomorrow I think of a better way.)
Should I capitalize “thesaurus”? No.
Suppose Housman had chosen one of these ways to write his poem. What difference would it make in its effect on you?
We cheered and praised him in the town
The day he laid his victory down.
or
Oh, youth,proud winner of the race,
you make us all you are,
and when we raise you up
and lift voices to cheer you,
we are all made you,
winners proud and lifted,
youthful, up.
or
A lad not twenty yet when he
Won for his town the victory
Was lifted up and carried high
While other lads stood idly by.
or
You won the race for us that day;
Not for yourself alone you won.
And afterwards, our favorite son,
You left us with no more to say.
or...
About Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Sophie's World is the first (and maybe the only?) book being read and discussed by the Lupine Literary Luncheon League this year. Many LLLL participants have expressed interest in talking about philosophy and philosophies, and this seems like a manageable way to do so. Meeting at B Lunch every Wednesday.The following is a plot summary from Wikipedia.
Sophie Amundsen (Sofie Amundsen in the Norwegian version) is a fourteen year old girl living in Norway in 1990. She lives with her cat Sherekan and her mother. Her father is a captain of an oil tanker, and is away for most of the year. He does not appear in the book.
Sophie's life is rattled as the book begins, when she receives two anonymous messages in her mailbox (Who are you? Where does the world come from?), as well as a post card addressed to 'Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen'. Shortly afterwards she receives a packet of papers, part of a correspondence course in philosophy.
With these mysterious communications, Sophie becomes the student of a fifty-year-old philosopher, Alberto Knox. He starts out as totally anonymous, but as the story unfolds he reveals more and more about himself. The papers and the packet both turn out to be from him, although the post card is not; it is addressed from someone called Albert Knag, who is in a United Nations peacekeeping unit stationed in Lebanon.
Alberto teaches her about the history of philosophy. She gets a substantive and understandable review from the Pre-Socratic Greeks through Jean-Paul Sartre. Along with the philosophy lessons, Sophie and Alberto try and outwit the mysterious Albert Knag, who appears to have God-like powers, which Alberto finds quite troubling.
Sophie's life is rattled as the book begins, when she receives two anonymous messages in her mailbox (Who are you? Where does the world come from?), as well as a post card addressed to 'Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen'. Shortly afterwards she receives a packet of papers, part of a correspondence course in philosophy.
With these mysterious communications, Sophie becomes the student of a fifty-year-old philosopher, Alberto Knox. He starts out as totally anonymous, but as the story unfolds he reveals more and more about himself. The papers and the packet both turn out to be from him, although the post card is not; it is addressed from someone called Albert Knag, who is in a United Nations peacekeeping unit stationed in Lebanon.
Alberto teaches her about the history of philosophy. She gets a substantive and understandable review from the Pre-Socratic Greeks through Jean-Paul Sartre. Along with the philosophy lessons, Sophie and Alberto try and outwit the mysterious Albert Knag, who appears to have God-like powers, which Alberto finds quite troubling.
Friday, September 7, 2007
A.E. Housman: To an Athlete Dying Young
THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
William Carlos Williams: So much depends
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
The Simple Art of Murder , An Essay by Raymond Chandler
In this essay, Raymond Chandler (himself a popular writer of "hard-boiled detective" fiction) writes about the genre. Mr. B. has copies in his classroom.
This excerpt is the final paragraphs of the essay:
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch or a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would ne adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.
This excerpt is the final paragraphs of the essay:
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch or a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would ne adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.
Learning Opportunity Announcement
Language Arts Lab Learning Opportunity
I’m sorry, but I only discovered this event on Monday, Sept. 3, and I didn’t have time to get the information out except hastily and by word of mouth. I am going to attend, and I would be pleased to take some interested students with me.
The events are at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, and it is free. If some students want to go, we will leave immediately after school in my car. We will arrive at the Modern in time for a look around at the Ron Mueck Exhibit and the permanent collection. When the museum closes at 5:00, we will go somewhere nearby to eat and then return for the 6:00 program described below. When the event is over (8:40 or so) I will return the students who ride with me to Timberview to get into their own cars or to be picked up by parents.
NOTE: This is NOT a school-sponsored event. It is NOT required (or even expected) of Language Arts Lab students. It is something I am going to do and want to give students access to. There will be other similar events during the year, and some of them will happen on the same short notice. Parents with questions should e-mail me or call me at home 817.423.0694.
Jim Benton, Language Arts Lab Teacher
American Cinema: Film Noir and the Detective Film
With gratitude to the College of Communications at Texas Christian University, we are pleased to offer Modern patrons an opportunity to enjoy a four-part lecture and film series taught by Dr. David E. Whillock, Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Communications at TCU. This series is an abbreviation of a full course offered to adults through the TCU Master of Fine Arts program.
These lectures and screenings explore the cultural, narrative, and critical impact of literary and cinematic forms of film noir and the detective film in the United States. The course introduces the film lover to the technical and aesthetic processes used in developing the style and form found in the American cinema since 1941. Dr. Whillock's lectures will be followed by film screenings. A question-and-answer session will follow. There is no charge. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. The text used for the series is Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Cinema by Foster Hirsch.
Wednesday, September 5, 6–8:40 pm Literary Influences: The Hard Boiled Detective Novel; Screening: Murder My Sweet (1944, directed by Edward Dmytryk)
Wednesday, September 26, 6–8:40 pm Visual Styles of Film Noir: IconographyScreening: Out of the Past (1947, directed by Jacques Tourneur)
Wednesday, October 10, 6–8:40 pm Literature and Film: Problems of AdaptationScreening: The Big Sleep (1946, directed by Howard Hawks)
Wednesday, November 7, 6–8:40 pm Women in Film Noir: The Virgin and the Femme Fatale; Screening: Body Heat (1981, directed by Lawrence Kasdan)
I’m sorry, but I only discovered this event on Monday, Sept. 3, and I didn’t have time to get the information out except hastily and by word of mouth. I am going to attend, and I would be pleased to take some interested students with me.
The events are at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, and it is free. If some students want to go, we will leave immediately after school in my car. We will arrive at the Modern in time for a look around at the Ron Mueck Exhibit and the permanent collection. When the museum closes at 5:00, we will go somewhere nearby to eat and then return for the 6:00 program described below. When the event is over (8:40 or so) I will return the students who ride with me to Timberview to get into their own cars or to be picked up by parents.
NOTE: This is NOT a school-sponsored event. It is NOT required (or even expected) of Language Arts Lab students. It is something I am going to do and want to give students access to. There will be other similar events during the year, and some of them will happen on the same short notice. Parents with questions should e-mail me or call me at home 817.423.0694.
Jim Benton, Language Arts Lab Teacher
American Cinema: Film Noir and the Detective Film
With gratitude to the College of Communications at Texas Christian University, we are pleased to offer Modern patrons an opportunity to enjoy a four-part lecture and film series taught by Dr. David E. Whillock, Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Communications at TCU. This series is an abbreviation of a full course offered to adults through the TCU Master of Fine Arts program.
These lectures and screenings explore the cultural, narrative, and critical impact of literary and cinematic forms of film noir and the detective film in the United States. The course introduces the film lover to the technical and aesthetic processes used in developing the style and form found in the American cinema since 1941. Dr. Whillock's lectures will be followed by film screenings. A question-and-answer session will follow. There is no charge. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. The text used for the series is Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Cinema by Foster Hirsch.
Wednesday, September 5, 6–8:40 pm Literary Influences: The Hard Boiled Detective Novel; Screening: Murder My Sweet (1944, directed by Edward Dmytryk)
Wednesday, September 26, 6–8:40 pm Visual Styles of Film Noir: IconographyScreening: Out of the Past (1947, directed by Jacques Tourneur)
Wednesday, October 10, 6–8:40 pm Literature and Film: Problems of AdaptationScreening: The Big Sleep (1946, directed by Howard Hawks)
Wednesday, November 7, 6–8:40 pm Women in Film Noir: The Virgin and the Femme Fatale; Screening: Body Heat (1981, directed by Lawrence Kasdan)
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Valliteration!
While we were thinking about quotes from "V for Vendetta", who could leave this one out?
Evey Hammond:Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey Hammond: Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey Hammond: Oh. Right
. V: But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona.
V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. [carves V into poster on wall]
V: The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. [giggles]
V: Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
Evey Hammond: Are you like a crazy person?
V: I am quite sure they will say so. But, to whom am I speaking with?
Evey Hammond: I'm Evey.
V: Evey? E-V. Of course you are.
Evey Hammond: What does that mean?
V: It means that I, like God, do not play with dice and I don't believe in coincidences.
Listen to the Muslims
This poem began as a mis-hearing of the first line of Shel Silverstein's poem "Listen to the Mustn'ts" and became a writing exercise:
Listen to the Muslims, child.
Listen to the Sikhs.
Listen to the Buddhists and
The Christians and the freaks.
Listen to the atheists;
The listen close to me:
Your life would be much better if
You find someone like me. -- Ashlie F.
Insanity can occur when you
Don't listen to me. -- Nana A.
No one knows for sure your thoughts
Until you set tem free. - Sloane F.
God is there for everyone
Despite what they believe. - Kalish S.
What you think you thought from these,
Listen to them, please. - Alec H.
Jesus is the Savior whom
I choose for me. - Eric L.
'Cause you'll listen to anything
When you're stuck in a tree. - Jaime Z.
Put your faith in God
For he is the key. - V. McLaurin
All of them are wrong because
The truth is in the trees. - John S.
You must believe in something, child.
In something must believe. - Christine M.
These religious people
Have really got to pee. - Sarah W.
So many different beliefs
The Christian one is me. - Sierra N.
You should forget all that
And stick to me. - Anonymous
Now give me back the hall pass
So I can go and pee. - Kelli B.
Whatever faith you have or lack
In this place you are free. - b.
Listen to the Muslims, child.
Listen to the Sikhs.
Listen to the Buddhists and
The Christians and the freaks.
Listen to the atheists;
The listen close to me:
Your life would be much better if
You find someone like me. -- Ashlie F.
Insanity can occur when you
Don't listen to me. -- Nana A.
No one knows for sure your thoughts
Until you set tem free. - Sloane F.
God is there for everyone
Despite what they believe. - Kalish S.
What you think you thought from these,
Listen to them, please. - Alec H.
Jesus is the Savior whom
I choose for me. - Eric L.
'Cause you'll listen to anything
When you're stuck in a tree. - Jaime Z.
Put your faith in God
For he is the key. - V. McLaurin
All of them are wrong because
The truth is in the trees. - John S.
You must believe in something, child.
In something must believe. - Christine M.
These religious people
Have really got to pee. - Sarah W.
So many different beliefs
The Christian one is me. - Sierra N.
You should forget all that
And stick to me. - Anonymous
Now give me back the hall pass
So I can go and pee. - Kelli B.
Whatever faith you have or lack
In this place you are free. - b.
Listen to the Mustn'ts
Listen to Mustn'ts, child, listen to the Don'ts.
Listen to the Shouldn'ts, the Impossibles, the Won'ts.
Listen to the Never Haves, then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child, Anything can be.
-Shel Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Margaret Mead Quote
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
- Margaret Mead
Ian McKellen on Acting and Life
"One of the few things I know my mother said about my acting [she died when he was 12] -- she said it to my aunt -- 'If Ian does become an actor, it's a wonderful job because it brings pleasure to a lot of people.' I was comforted by that. I needed my parents' approval, and in death I had it from her." (The New Yorker, 8/27/7, p. 51)
"We were do-gooders," he said [of his family, "You were here on this earth to leave the world a better place that you found it." (ibid.)
"We were do-gooders," he said [of his family, "You were here on this earth to leave the world a better place that you found it." (ibid.)
"Appalachian Autumn"
This the the abstract of an essay in The New Yorker (8/27/7) about Aaron Copland that illustrates the complexity of issues related to art and its accessibility to common folk. Mr. B. has a copy of the magazine in his classroom.
The essay quotes Copland from a speech in March, 1949:
Lately I've been thinking that the Cold War is almost worse for art than the real thing -- for it permeates the atmosphere with fear and anxiety. An artist can function at his best only in a vital and healthy environment for the simple reason that the very act of creation is an affirmative gesture. An artist fighting in a war for a cause he holds just has something affirmative he can believe in. The artist, if he can stay alive, can create art. But throw him into a mood of suspicion, ill-will and dread that typifies the Cold War attitude and he'll create nothing. (p. 37)
The essay quotes Copland from a speech in March, 1949:
Lately I've been thinking that the Cold War is almost worse for art than the real thing -- for it permeates the atmosphere with fear and anxiety. An artist can function at his best only in a vital and healthy environment for the simple reason that the very act of creation is an affirmative gesture. An artist fighting in a war for a cause he holds just has something affirmative he can believe in. The artist, if he can stay alive, can create art. But throw him into a mood of suspicion, ill-will and dread that typifies the Cold War attitude and he'll create nothing. (p. 37)
Abstract
A Critic at Large
Appalachian Autumn
Aaron Copland confronts the politics of the Cold War.
by Alex Ross August 27, 2007
A CRITIC AT LARGE about Aaron Copland and the politics of the Cold War. In May of 1945, American composer Aaron Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for his ballet score “Appalachian Spring.” Copland seized the nation’s attention, post-war, and his works became synonymous with the heartland, matching the collectivist ethos of the New Deal. Beneath the patriotic surface, these scores also bore traces of the leftist politics that preoccupied so many artists and intellectuals in the Roosevelt era. At the height of the Cold War, political watchdogs noted Copland’s leftist leanings. Between 1949 and 1953, Copland endured media vilification after his appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace; denunciations from anti-Communists in Congress; and a session before Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Copland emerged unscathed, and retained his iconic status, but he was never quite the same afterward. Postwar, New Deal populism began to acquire a dubious reputation. In 1946, as the country was tilting to the right, Copland introduced his Third Symphony, which echoed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s recent work and the populist language of Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace. Mentions Virgil Thomson’s critique of the Third Symphony. Describes Shostakovich’s appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in March, 1949. Mentions Nicolas Nabokov and the Americans for Intellectual Freedom. Copland, appearing at the conference, distanced himself from the propaganda on both sides. Mentions Time magazine and Life magazine. After the conference, Copland traveled to Paris and met the composer Pierre Boulez. In the fall of 1949, Arnold Schoenberg denounced Copland on the radio, and the F.B.I. opened a file on him. Copland had reason to worry: he had already been labeled a “fellow traveler” by Life magazine and he was a gay man. Mentions Rep. Fred Busbey’s condemnation of Copland in Congress, in January of 1953. In May, 1953, Copland was called before McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Copland’s political predicament did not bring about a wholesale change of style. He never abandoned tonality in favor of twelve-tone writing, and, in several postwar pieces he retained a version of his populist manner. But the conspicuous stylistic split that appears in his later music seems symptomatic of the political polarization of the time. Mentions his opera “The Tender Land,” and his dissonant work “Connotations,” created in the late fifties and early sixties. After “Connotations,” his output rapidly dwindled. In the eighties, he began suffering from memory loss and Alzheimer’s. Copland died in 1990, at the age of ninety.
The New Yorker’s archives are not yet fully available online. The full text of all articles published before May, 2006, can be found in “The Complete New Yorker,” which is available for purchase on DVD and hard drive. Many New Yorker stories published since December, 2000, are available through Nexis. Individual back issues may be purchased from our customer-service department at 1-800-825-2510.
A Critic at Large
Appalachian Autumn
Aaron Copland confronts the politics of the Cold War.
by Alex Ross August 27, 2007
A CRITIC AT LARGE about Aaron Copland and the politics of the Cold War. In May of 1945, American composer Aaron Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for his ballet score “Appalachian Spring.” Copland seized the nation’s attention, post-war, and his works became synonymous with the heartland, matching the collectivist ethos of the New Deal. Beneath the patriotic surface, these scores also bore traces of the leftist politics that preoccupied so many artists and intellectuals in the Roosevelt era. At the height of the Cold War, political watchdogs noted Copland’s leftist leanings. Between 1949 and 1953, Copland endured media vilification after his appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace; denunciations from anti-Communists in Congress; and a session before Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Copland emerged unscathed, and retained his iconic status, but he was never quite the same afterward. Postwar, New Deal populism began to acquire a dubious reputation. In 1946, as the country was tilting to the right, Copland introduced his Third Symphony, which echoed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s recent work and the populist language of Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace. Mentions Virgil Thomson’s critique of the Third Symphony. Describes Shostakovich’s appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in March, 1949. Mentions Nicolas Nabokov and the Americans for Intellectual Freedom. Copland, appearing at the conference, distanced himself from the propaganda on both sides. Mentions Time magazine and Life magazine. After the conference, Copland traveled to Paris and met the composer Pierre Boulez. In the fall of 1949, Arnold Schoenberg denounced Copland on the radio, and the F.B.I. opened a file on him. Copland had reason to worry: he had already been labeled a “fellow traveler” by Life magazine and he was a gay man. Mentions Rep. Fred Busbey’s condemnation of Copland in Congress, in January of 1953. In May, 1953, Copland was called before McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Copland’s political predicament did not bring about a wholesale change of style. He never abandoned tonality in favor of twelve-tone writing, and, in several postwar pieces he retained a version of his populist manner. But the conspicuous stylistic split that appears in his later music seems symptomatic of the political polarization of the time. Mentions his opera “The Tender Land,” and his dissonant work “Connotations,” created in the late fifties and early sixties. After “Connotations,” his output rapidly dwindled. In the eighties, he began suffering from memory loss and Alzheimer’s. Copland died in 1990, at the age of ninety.
The New Yorker’s archives are not yet fully available online. The full text of all articles published before May, 2006, can be found in “The Complete New Yorker,” which is available for purchase on DVD and hard drive. Many New Yorker stories published since December, 2000, are available through Nexis. Individual back issues may be purchased from our customer-service department at 1-800-825-2510.
Man with a Pipe
This is an image and artical from the Kimbell Art Museum website (linked below) that offers information about Picasso's "Man with a Pipe" - a cubist work that is more or less reminiscent of the boxes in Mr. B.'s classroom.
On viewIn early July 1911, Picasso left Paris for Céret, a small town near Arles, in southwestern France. Braque joined him there in August and the two painted their ultimate Analytical Cubist works in intense dialogue. Composed in something like jigsaw puzzle fashion from interlocking and overlapping fragmentary facets, some roughly legible as an eye, mustache, or hand, Man with a Pipe exemplifies two especially important, albeit idiosyncratic, tendencies common to the 1910-12 works by Braque and Picasso. First, the painting belongs to a group of oval-shaped canvases initiated in the spring of 1910 by Braque, perhaps to stress the sculptural sense of Cubism, perhaps to emulate the somber oval portraits painted by Rembrandt and his contemporaries. Second, around that same time, both painters also began to paint with particularly dark palettes. Man with a Pipe presumably represents the interior of a dimly-lit, smoke-filled bar (hence the letters "est" detached from the word "restaurant" and the letters "AL" printed on the corner of a white "journal," meaning "newspaper" in French). Nevertheless, the nocturnal mood seems intended as a challenge to seeing in conventional terms, as if in these very dark paintings Braque and Picasso invited viewers to strain their eyes in a difficult new way of looking. Of course, a similar melancholy mood was a hallmark of Picasso's 1901-4 Blue Period paintings, which often treated the subject of figures in a cabaret setting.
Picasso's Analytical Cubist compositions of 1910-12 were a touchstone for many abstract painters, among them Piet Mondrian, whose beautiful Composition No. 7 (Facade), is in the collection of the Kimbell. With this in mind, it is worth noting that Mondrian helped organize an exhibition of modern art in October 1912 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, including Man with a Pipe and eleven other Picasso paintings.
Provenance HistoryPrivate collection, Paris;(M. Knoedler & Co., New York);purchased by Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, 1966.
© 2000 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Man with a Pipe 1911
Oil on canvas
35-3/4 x 27-7/8 in. (oval) (90.7 x 71.0 cm)
Acquired in 1966
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Man with a Pipe 1911
Oil on canvas
35-3/4 x 27-7/8 in. (oval) (90.7 x 71.0 cm)
Acquired in 1966
by the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth
On viewIn early July 1911, Picasso left Paris for Céret, a small town near Arles, in southwestern France. Braque joined him there in August and the two painted their ultimate Analytical Cubist works in intense dialogue. Composed in something like jigsaw puzzle fashion from interlocking and overlapping fragmentary facets, some roughly legible as an eye, mustache, or hand, Man with a Pipe exemplifies two especially important, albeit idiosyncratic, tendencies common to the 1910-12 works by Braque and Picasso. First, the painting belongs to a group of oval-shaped canvases initiated in the spring of 1910 by Braque, perhaps to stress the sculptural sense of Cubism, perhaps to emulate the somber oval portraits painted by Rembrandt and his contemporaries. Second, around that same time, both painters also began to paint with particularly dark palettes. Man with a Pipe presumably represents the interior of a dimly-lit, smoke-filled bar (hence the letters "est" detached from the word "restaurant" and the letters "AL" printed on the corner of a white "journal," meaning "newspaper" in French). Nevertheless, the nocturnal mood seems intended as a challenge to seeing in conventional terms, as if in these very dark paintings Braque and Picasso invited viewers to strain their eyes in a difficult new way of looking. Of course, a similar melancholy mood was a hallmark of Picasso's 1901-4 Blue Period paintings, which often treated the subject of figures in a cabaret setting.
Picasso's Analytical Cubist compositions of 1910-12 were a touchstone for many abstract painters, among them Piet Mondrian, whose beautiful Composition No. 7 (Facade), is in the collection of the Kimbell. With this in mind, it is worth noting that Mondrian helped organize an exhibition of modern art in October 1912 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, including Man with a Pipe and eleven other Picasso paintings.
Provenance HistoryPrivate collection, Paris;(M. Knoedler & Co., New York);purchased by Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, 1966.
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