Interesting addition to our discussion! I did not read
Gorer's essay, but I think that reality was slightly
different. And simpler. It is difficult to mix up France and
the UK in the same sentence when speaking of eroticism and
the 50s. Even if Europe was on the prudish side at the time,
France was more liberal when looking at eroticism in the
arts, including literature - but not in cinema. At the same
time in the UK, a lot of (gen, lit and other, incl famous
writers) novels were forbidden and/or submitted to censorship
during the same period (40s, early 50s) for indecency, with
moral justification. So perception of could be very different
in these two countries.
In the USA, naturalistic lit had shown already that some
eroticism could surface easily in American modern novels,
contrasting heavily with the ambient bigotry. Pulp lit under
HB and naturalistic influences made quickly a mix of violence
and sex scenes, even when it was not the main purpose of the
books. All this could give a quick caricature of American
novels when it was pushed to the extremes of pastiches. As I
already said, Chase's Orchids was a pastiche by intentions.
The same with Vian's "American novels", wherein he added
black humor and derision to the pastiche (and were certainly
not his best works, not even really representative of Vian's
lit works- except by their provocative side). I do not think
that Chase was really thinking that America was as he painted
it in his first books; he just blew up the major traits,
prominent clich鳬 of American noir/HB lit of the time. America
was an excuse: It just happened that American HB novels were
good sellers... so he wanted to fake it. Real America was
really not his goal, which explains his fantasies. During the
same time, Peter Cheyney (also a British) was already a very
successful writer with novels mimicking American HB and was
presented as an American writer, or at least making every
efforts to let readers to believe it.
But America, even during these days, was seen in France and
the UK more as a country were extreme violence was accepted
and this physical violence was graphically depicted
everywhere in its literature (and cinema), contrasting with
the French or British lit wherein physical violence was
milder or seldom extreme- I speak here of general lit and
genre lit. So, to do like in an American novel it was
perceived you had to describe violence. Things changed later
of course.
Maybe Gorer's essay is more revealing of the American views
and values of the 40s and 50s than of the real influence of
American lit on foreign writers (a wild guess of
mine...).
E.borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocites.com/Athens/6384
Jay Gertzman :
>Gorer's essay "The Erotic Myth of America" (1950) is
extremely
>provocative. He says that French and English writers
(Boris Vian and
>Chase are his examples, and so could Bertold Brecht
be) saw the US as a
>kind of anarchistic no man's land where all kinds of
sensual appetites
>are given their head, so to speak. Especially
fascinating are those
>which conflate sex and money, and idolize the latter
in order to blur
>the twisted frustrations the former present to
Texas-sized venal and
>fragile egos. This is a myth, of course. Nothing
since 9/11 could
>possibly give evidence of its validity, God knows,
but only show the
>wisdom of our fearless leaders (from Bush-Cheney to
Lieberman-Kristol)
> of just war against "haters" and "terrorists." That
having been
>piously intoned, I think Gorer has a lot of value to
say about Chase
>(a.k.a. Rene Raymond). He writes of his ignorance of
American geography,
>his female characters "always in heat," his absurd
attempts at American
>slang, his "paste board characters," his focus on men
torturing each
>other. He says the popularity of Chase's novels allow
"fulfillment of
>deeply felt but furtive wishes. . . . American
culture is thought to be
>the source of the imaginative sins which the readers
of these books
>commit during their solitary orgies." As for Chase's
models, Gorer cites
>Hemingway's To Have and To Have Not, and Chase's own
Twelve Chinks and
>a Girl, as well as Faulkner.
>
>I believe George Orwell liked No Orchids.
>
>
>
>
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 02 Jan 2005 EST