Title
Wharton to Hemingway to Highsmith: American Noir Comes of Age
Document Type
Book Chapter
Annotation
Identifying the three authors as "literary links in the evolution of American noir," Boswell argues that Wharton's examination of the dark side of marriage, greed, and power in The Age of Innocence (1920) anticipates the noir genre and that Hemingway's To Have and Have Not and "The Killers" are classic noir due in part to their shocking storylines and depiction of powerlessness and violence. Concludes that Patricia Highsmith's 1950 Strangers on a Train extends the noir genre through her engagement with these same themes found in Wharton and Hemingway. Includes an examination of film adaptations of each work.
Published in
Date
2019
Pages
232-52
COinS
Citation
Tyler, Lisa, ed. Wharton, Hemingway, and the Advent of Modernism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019.