crimeculture
Into the
Shadows: The Role of the City in the Roman Noir
by Robert E. Skinner, Xavier
University of Louisiana
What
are the ingredients that make up a successful and compelling crime story? One could argue that it requires a
crime, pulled off in a strikingly original way. Others would say a villain who remains hidden in plain sight
until the final denouement, or a hero who thrills us with his wits or his courage. All those things are true to an extent,
but for me, the one essential ingredient for an original and compelling noir novel is the backdrop, and by this,
I mean the city.
The
city has become not only the setting for our modern mythology, it is also the symbolic locus of our deepest fears and dreads. Its dark alleys, shadowy streets, and
featureless buildings are the hiding places for thieves who suck at our
economic lifeblood, predators who steal the innocence of our children, and
psychopaths who torture and murder for reasons so deeply imbedded that even
they do not understand what drives them. Likewise, the protagonist who navigates this environment must be from and
of it. His survival is based upon
his knowledge of the city’s quirks and its dangers. The description “street smart,” is worn like a badge of
merit.
Yet
in the hands of the best writers, the city becomes more than simply a
backdrop. As written by a
Chandler, Himes, Walter Mosely, or James Lee Burke, the city becomes a
character of shifting identities and intentions, an entity that is as much a
threat to the protagonist as the human enemies he seeks to expose and punish. In his study, Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City, Nicholas
Christopher states that, “for the individual faced with a physical and
psychological labyrinth so fantastical in scope or design as to be
unnegotiable, the quest [for truth] may devolve from a goal of illumination
with a slim chance of escape . . . to one of bare survival while seeking out
the least excruciating torment.” (New York: Henry Holt, 1997, 264)
The
importance of the cityscape to the story of crime can be traced back to Vidocq and
Dickens, but in America it has its real roots in the gangster novel of the
1920s, most notably Armitage Trail’s Scarface and W. R. Burnett’s Little Caesar. In each of these stories, the gangster
is part proletarian man, seeking to better himself, part
naturalistic hero as envisioned by Fenimore Cooper. He makes his own rules and prevails by virtue of his wits
and courage. The gangster is,
perhaps, the first urban hero, but like the folkloric Jesse James and Billy the
Kid he emulates, he is a tragic figure. His flaws eventually overwhelm his merits and he pays a high price for
his dreams. When Burnett’s Rico is
cut down in a dark alley at the end of Little
Caesar, the dying gangster cries out as though he can’t believe it, “Is
this the end of Rico?” (New York: The Literary Guild of America, 1929, 308) It is almost as unbelievable to the
reader, because while we may fear Rico, we identify with him, too. Which of us does not yearn for the kind
of freedom that Rico represents? And yet, by living within a concentration of humanity and institutions,
how may we escape the rules that living there imposes upon us? In a real sense, it isn’t the police
bullets that kill Rico. It’s the
city he seeks to dominate.
The
menace of a great city is also exemplified in what may be the first great noir story of the twentieth century, Dashiell
Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Set in San Francisco at the end of the
1920s, it concerns the efforts of a ruthless private eye named Sam Spade to
untangle a web of treachery and deceit connected with the whereabouts of a
jewel-encrusted statuette. The
story is also distinguished by virtue of the fact that it is as much about the
hero as it is the solving of the mystery.
Spade
is as intriguing today as he was seventy-five years ago. He shares with earlier American heroes
the virtues of quick wits, contempt for institutional authority, physical
courage, and the ability to use words as both defense and weapon. But on closer inspection, Spade is
anything but heroic. He’s a
womanizer, a liar, and a crook, relentless in his greed, and incapable of human
intimacy.
Interestingly,
Hammett says very little about San Francisco during the course of the
story. Spade rides the cable cars,
visits the waterfront, and passes through hotels, diners, and bars during his
investigation, but Spade could be in any city, and perhaps that is the point. Spade would still be Spade in any other
city.
At
the same time, there is a continual movement of characters between these few
settings, creating an unshakeable impression of dynamic forward motion. Everyone is running, but all roads
lead to the same dead end.
The
moment of highest drama in this story is not when the schemers finally learn
that their sought-after grail is a worthless chunk of lead; rather it’s the moment
that Spade confronts both his love for Brigid O’Shaunessey and the knowledge that
she’s the murderer of Miles Archer.
In
spite of his many conquests, it seems probable that Spade has never known real love,
and his decision to turn her in is visibly difficult for him. When Brigid pleads with him in the name
of their love to let her go, Spade delivers an eloquent speech, perhaps the
most memorable in crime fiction. He says, in essence, that when one of your associates has been killed, a
good detective must do something about it. It doesn’t matter what you thought of the man, he was your
partner and deserves your loyalty. To let the killer go free, Spade says, is “bad for that one
organization, bad for every detective everywhere.” (Dashiell Hammett, The
Maltese Falcon [New York: The Library of America, 1999], 582)
Commentators
have lauded this scene as the finest articulation of Hammett’s philosophy,
placing it on an equal plane with the Protestant Work Ethic. However, I think this is a misreading
by those who wish to romanticize both Hammett, who was a real detective, and
Spade, whom we take to be Hammett’s alter ego. Spade, on first glance, is master of all he surveys, but his
romance with Brigid undermines his image of self-sufficiency. Faced with the loss of Brigid or the
loss of this self image, the choice is clear—Brigid
must go, even if it means to the gallows.
At
the story’s conclusion, Spade returns to the spot where the adventure began,
his office. His appearance is that
of a man drained of all his vital energy. He has done what a good detective should by exposing Brigid as the
murderer, but in so doing he has lost the regard of perhaps his only friend,
his loyal secretary, Effie. With
everything he valued gone or compromised, all the consolation left to Spade is
his partner’s widow, a woman he despises. The door closes on the empty man in the drab office,
and his story ends. In retrospect,
it is probably no accident that there are no more novels about Spade. Even Hammett must have recognized that
his creation had chased the dragon into the darkness and was consumed by it.
The
impact of The Maltese Falcon can be
seen in the work of both the hard-boiled pulpsmiths and the more ambitious
writers who developed what we now call the noir novel throughout the 1930s. The
pages of Black Mask served as the
launching pad for a number of characters cast in the Spade mold, many of them
memorable in their own rights. A
characteristic that many of these characters share is their chronic drunkenness. Although it was used as a comic device
at the time, viewed in today’s light the stories take on a sinister aspect. One is left with an impression that the
only way these heroes can bear the moral murkiness of the city is by numbing
themselves with alcohol.
Less
humorous is the picture presented in Horace McCoy’s No Pockets in a Shroud (New York: Signet, 1948). In this novel, a womanizing newspaperman
named Mike Dolan develops a social consciousness when he starts a hard-hitting
newsmagazine in an unnamed city. McCoy offers the picture of a man reaching for redemption as he battles a
faceless public corruption, but just as that redemption is at hand, the fledgling editor is assassinated by unseen killers. It reminds us uncomfortably of the
death of Little Caesar, but unlike
Rico, Mike Dolan was fighting for good.
The
work of James M. Cain, particularly Double
Indemnity, also reflects this sinister view of urban life. We almost like Walter Neff, the
smooth-talking insurance salesman of Double
Indemnity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969). Like Chandler’s Philip
Marlowe, he has a both sense of humor and all the sophistication that befits a
man-about-town. However, it is
clear from the beginning that Neff, like Sam Spade, lacks a moral compass. After one look at Phyllis Dietrichson’s
legs, Neff’s life seems to lose its luster for him. There’s nothing approaching love between Neff and Phyllis. Money is the ultimate goal, and sex
only the icing on the cake. By the
time Neff realizes that he’s being led to his doom, it’s too late for
redemption. He makes an attempt
when he kills Phyllis and then retreats to his mid-city office building to
leave a taped confession, but succumbs to loss of blood before he can make good
his escape. He remains trapped in the
city’s darkness from which the only exit is the gas chamber at San Quentin.
As
the 1930s came to a close, the second giant of American mystery, Raymond
Chandler, published The Big Sleep. Perhaps no American crime writer so
successfully used the city as both landscape and character. In his hands, Los Angeles became a
backdrop at once romantic and malevolent, peopled by characters of devious
complexity.
In
marked contrast to the spareness of Hammett’s descriptions of San Francisco,
Chandler uses the entire and varied landscape of Los Angeles for his canvas. Because Chandler is so much more
expansive in his descriptions, one gets a better feel for the vastness of the
city, as well as sharp interpretations of the differing neighborhoods. However, this expansiveness offers no
comfort to Marlowe. In a very real
sense, it is every bit as claustrophobic as Spade’s San Francisco:
"Outside
the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed
What
is particularly interesting about Marlowe’s relationship to the city is the
powerful effect it has on him. Others may talk of California as the land of golden opportunity, but
Marlowe suffers a powerful alienation:
"It
got darker. The glare of the red
neon sign spread
Because
we see Marlowe over the course of seven novels, we learn his characteristics
and moods to a depth not possible with Spade. Spade’s one-room apartment with its one book, bottle of
Bacardi, and sack of Bull Durham suggests a life so narrow, so closed off, as
to barely exist. By contrast,
Marlowe’s life includes chess problems, knowledge of flora and fauna, an eye
for women’s fashions, and a passable knowledge of literature. His active commentary on all he
observes has a way of making him a more engaging character. However, his charm is a mask, because the
city drags on him like an oppressive weight. To Marlowe, and to his audience, it seems as though he lives
in an environment that is decaying around him, and within the decay is the
lingering smell of violent death so horrifying that Marlowe has to reach the
admission of discovery obliquely, like a man walking on tiptoe:
"The
floor of the bathroom was too short for him . . .
Marlowe’s universe includes the glitter of Hollywood not far
away, but Marlowe isn’t concerned with glitter. Indeed, he seems to find it revolting:
"A
long-limbed languorous type of showgirl blonde lay
It is small wonder that Marlowe is a lonely man. He seeks a purity in his surroundings and fellow citizens that would be difficult to discover in all
but the most perfect utopia, a state of being that no realistic man could ever
expect. As time goes on, Marlowe’s
bitterness deepens and his regard for his city moves more toward hate. He seems trapped there, whether by
virtue of his profession or an inability to see the effect that living in Los
Angeles has on him. By the time
Chandler’s masterpiece, The Long Goodbye (New York: The Library of America, 1995) concludes, Marlowe is at his lowest
ebb. He feels betrayed by the one
friend he has allowed himself to have, and for reasons even he cannot
sufficiently explain, he rejects the long-awaited chance at romantic
fulfillment that comes his way. He
resumes his tattered mantle of rectitude and once again submerges himself in a
loneliness that, to a modern reader, seems almost pathological. Although it takes a longer time to
happen, Marlowe, like Spade before him, has been sucked dry.
Another
author for whom place is a character in the drama is
the African-American novelist, Chester Himes. Although he had a distinguished, if un-remunerative career
as a mainstream novelist, readers more likely know of him through the eight
novels in the “Harlem Domestic Series.” The Harlem of Himes’ imagination is a tangled maze of both real and
imaginary landmarks that form a symbolic locus of American racial
oppression. The casts of these
stories are mostly black, but their bizarre appearances and outlandish names
seem more influenced by Dickens than Chandler.
They
form two distinct groups in Himes’s universe: the honest, God-fearing people who live in poverty and pray
for the day they’ll enter heaven, and the wolves, who prey on their own kind,
knowing that no matter how many lambs they eat, they will, themselves, be eaten
in the end. Although the
characters and stories may appear as gross exaggerations, Himes insisted that
they reflected the truth that a black man’s life is one of absurdity.
When
white people invade Himes’s landscape, they come as aggressors, to exploit, to
cheat, or to punish. The pimps,
drug dealers, and other criminals are often depicted as the white man’s
handmaidens. The watchful reader
will note that white clothing, white hair, or abnormally pale skin are clues that a particular character is up to no
good. Among the worst are women of
mixed race. They are invariably
avaricious and sometimes murderous, using their sexual allure as a weapon in
their quest to gain advantage.
Harlem
is a relatively small part of greater New York City, but because nearly all the
action takes place there, it grows in our imaginations, particularly when Himes
launches into one of his vivid prose poems:
"Looking
eastward from the towers of Riverside Church,
For Himes, Harlem isn’t merely a town with a population. He offers the view that it’s a single
organism that’s engaged in a desperate battle for life itself. The human inhabitants are literally
enmeshed in the ghetto, trapped there by racism and doomed to live out a hideous
struggle against poverty, ignorance, and suffering. That insects and animals squabble over bones is a stark
lesson on the utter hopelessness of such an existence.
Himes’s
sets nearly all of the novels between darkness and dawn, giving the impression
of a universe without light, or rather, a universe illuminated only by
flickering neon. Action takes
place in shadows, or, at best, in puddles of weak, sickly light that emphasize
the grotesque, where evil grows like a nauseating fungus.
Few
people in Harlem can afford the services of a private detective, which is
perhaps why Himes does not follow in Hammett’s and
Chandler’s footsteps in this regard. Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are nearly unique in that they
are official members of the New York Police Department. The badge gives them an authority that
opens nearly every door in Harlem, but it also places an awesome responsibility
on them. Although Himes’s attitude
toward them was initially one of deep ambivalence, the two detectives eventually
grow into the role of protector of the squares and suckers who co-exist with
the whores, thieves, muggers, and dope dealers.
Nearly
indistinguishable in the beginning, they develop separate, distinct
personalities within the first few novels. Grave Digger is the more thoughtful and articulate of the
pair. Coffin Ed, given to fits of
psychotic rage after being nearly blinded by acid, is utterly fearless and
devoted to his partner. At times
the pair engage in discussions that articulate a diamond-edged philosophy about
the lot of American black people.
But
like Spade, Marlowe, and many of the others, the lives they lead leave a mark
on them. Siegfried drinks the
dragon’s blood in order to gain the dragon’s strength. Ed and Digger become the dragon. In order to simply survive, they, too,
become part of the self-destructive organism that is Harlem:
"One
whole side of Coffin Ed’s face convulsed in a
The
popular image of crime fiction heroes is that they are men who use violence to
control violence, and that they accept that stoically as heroes should. But after experiencing so much lying
and hypocrisy and blood, their wounds run deep. After Digger pins the murder of sexual predator Ulysses
Galen on a dead man in The Real Cool
Killers, the detective visits the girl he knows to be the real killer. Confronting her with his knowledge, he
tells her, “Don’t lie to me. I’m
dog-tired and you children have already made me as depressed as I’ve ever
been. You don’t know what kind of
hell it is sometimes to be a cop” . . . He sat there listening to her, a big
tough lumpy-faced cop, looking as though he might cry (Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers [Edinburgh:
Payback Press, 1995], 325-36).
Himes’s
most ironic comment on the effect policing has had on his heroes comes from the
mouth of Coffin Ed at the end of The Heat’s On. Having been driven to a throat-cutting fury by an attempt on Grave
Digger’s life, Ed ingenuously complains,
“What
hurts me most about this business is the
Himes
offered two alternative endings for his Harlem series, and in each of them, the
impotence of the hero might be considered an important secondary theme. In Blind
Man With A Pistol (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1997), Digger and Ed struggle
to solve the murders of a number of white homosexuals by a mysterious black man
who wears a fez. Hampered by the
race riots boiling around them, the two detectives eventually learn that
powerful forces are at work to prevent them from uncovering a scandal among New York’s rich and powerful.
Plan B (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1997),
a novel left unfinished at Himes’s death, begins with Digger’s enraged murder
of a pimp, but soon becomes more concerned with the machinations of Tommson
Black, a mysterious underground revolutionary who plots the overthrow of white
capitalist society. Digger and Ed
eventually confront Black with the knowledge of his guilt, but during the
interview the detectives turn on each other. When Coffin Ed attempts to shoot Black, Digger kills his
partner. Black then kills Digger,
knowing that his remorse at the death of his friend would be
used by his white superiors to get to Black.
In
both of these scenarios, the hero has become an irrelevancy. The truth does not set them free, nor does
it provide any justice. As James
Sallis says near the end of the recent biography, Chester Himes: A Life, “the self-interrogations-of the detective
story, of Harlem, of American society—are
done. We are all guilty, and
Chester Himes has written our confession” (New York: Walker & Company,
2000, 310).
Among
the more recent generation of noir writers, James Lee Burke has particularly
excelled in writing stories in which the hero’s emotional torment is a central
issue. Beginning in the late 1980s
with The Neon Rain (New York: Henry
Holt, 1987), Burke began the adventures of Dave Robicheaux, Vietnam vet, police
detective, and full time drunk. When we meet him, he is already a failure at marriage, a gambling addict,
and a man teetering on the edge professionally. Although he has been on the wagon for some time when he
makes his first appearance, he is hanging on by his fingernails, always
threatening to slide over the edge into alcoholic oblivion.
A
recovering alcoholic himself, Burke has infused his writing with harrowing
examinations of men and women fighting their desire for drink or suffering the
torments of having fallen off the wagon. He knows clinical depression from close association, and Robicheaux’s
struggles are nightmarish in their intensity.
A
casual reading of the Robicheaux novels might bring the objection that they
aren’t true noir stories, since many of them take place in small Louisiana
coastal towns or that they belong to the subgenre known as “country noir.” A closer reading of the Robicheaux
series makes clear that Burke is a subtler craftsman than many of his predecessors.
Burke’s
love for Louisiana is on display in nearly all of his novels. At some point in his stories, he will launch
into a richly detailed scenario seen through a golden light of reminiscence
that taps into our own remembrances of home:
"We
drove to Mulate’s in Breaux Bridge for pecan pie
Robicheaux’s yearning for a better time is at odds with the
corruption he sees at every level. Often his enemies are highly-placed corporate
types or corrupt politicians whose lairs are inevitably in the city. Just as inevitably, their dirty work is
done by characters so vile and grotesque that they seem barely human:
"His
hair was silver, long and thin, and it hung
As Burke fell more and more into a formula that always included
corporate and civic corruption, urban mob connections, and homoerotic violence,
it became clear that although Robicheaux had left the city after the events in The Neon Rain, he had not escaped from
it. The corruption of the city
inevitably reaches out into the idyllic and unspoiled countryside, ruining not
only the rivers and forests, but also the people. Louisiana is a symbolic Garden of Eden, and Robicheaux,
depressed, paranoid, and alcoholic, is all that stands between it and the
Devil.
It must be said that noir fiction is an essentially pessimistic view of both humanity and its institutions. However, as we look into the future, the sense of optimism that enabled us to believe in a hero, like Beowulf, who could selflessly enter the darkness, vanquish the monster, and come back into the light both whole and triumphant seems increasingly difficult to locate. Likewise, the qualities that identify a hero seem less concrete than they once did, and the monsters they fight seem so much more powerful. In the wake of 9/11, we search not only for the hope that good will eventually triumph over evil, but for a hero who can realize that goal. Sadly, optimism and the makings of a hero are equally ephemeral, yet the shadows that make up the city remain infinite, broken only by infrequent patches of light and safety.
References
Burke, James Lee. The Neon Rain. New York: Henry Holt & Co.,
1987.
___Heaven’s Prisoners. New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1988.
___A Morning for Flamingos. Boston: Little Brown,
1989.
Burnett, W. R. Little
Caesar. New York: The Literary
Cain, James M. Double
Indemnity. in Cain X Three.
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. New York: The Library
___Farewell, My Lovely. New York: The Library of America,
___The High Window. New York: The
Library of America,
___The Long Goodbye. New York: The
Library of America,
Christopher, Nicholas. Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir
Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. The Library of
Himes, Chester. A Rage in Harlem (The Harlem Cycle,
volume
___The Real Cool Killers (The Harlem Cycle, volume 1).
___The Heat’s On (The
Harlem Cycle, volume 2). Edinburgh:
___Blind Man With A Pistol (The Harlem Cycle, volume 3).
___Plan B. (The Harlem Cycle, volume 3). Edinburgh:
McCoy, Horace. No Pockets in a Shroud. New York: Signet (#690),
1948.
Sallis, James. Chester Himes: A Life. New York: Walker &