Unreal Cities: the Veterans’ Homecoming and the Fate of Postwar Noir

Noir fiction was shaped, in the aftermath of World War II, by a generation of ex-servicemen who wrote, under the guise of crime stories, about the difficulty of returning to American cities and civilian life. Their often paranoid tales of victimization, violence and murder dramatize the homecoming v...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Benoît Tadié
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Association Française d'Etudes Américaines 2022-05-01
Series:Transatlantica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/18870
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Noir fiction was shaped, in the aftermath of World War II, by a generation of ex-servicemen who wrote, under the guise of crime stories, about the difficulty of returning to American cities and civilian life. Their often paranoid tales of victimization, violence and murder dramatize the homecoming veteran’s radical estrangement from his alienated and alienating city and community. Sometimes the gulf between the two can be bridged, and the stories highlight reaffiliation and reintegration. Sometimes it cannot, and they foreground flight and exclusion. This article looks at the emotional premises, narrative patterns and political implications of these tales, thus suggesting that the main aesthetic and ideological traits of postwar noir grew out of the veterans’ foundational and problematic experience of homecoming.
ISSN:1765-2766