In the first posting of this call for papers, Miranda Hickman's university
affiliation was inadvertently deleted. Please see below for the
correction.
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“Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid”: Raymond Chandler and the Chandleresque
Events of the past few years attest to a significant revival of interest in
Raymond Chandler: The Library of America has published Chandler’s complete
works in two volumes; his letters have been re-issued; an enhanced print of
Howard Hawks’ “The Big Sleep” has been released; and Tom Hiney’s new
biography has appeared. Clearly, forty years after his death, Chandler’s
work exerts a powerful hold on our cultural imagination. This collection of
essays traces Chandler’s legacy in Western culture—and
considers what our latter-day preoccupations with Chandler might reveal
about the invisible desires of our culture.
In more than two decades of fiction- and essay-writing, Chandler created a
distinctively American literary aesthetic: a fatalistic romanticism that has
marked indelibly what we associate with the tradition of the hard-boiled.
He refined the prose of pulp predecessors like Dashiell Hammett,
foregrounding the interiority of his detective and creating a world that,
while fundamentally fallen, is partially (and crucially) redeemed by the
possibility of a lone hero, “neither tarnished nor afraid,” who can traverse
it with honor. In part, Chandler’s appeal arose from his ability to
negotiate skillfully between highbrow and pulp registers, which in turn
stemmed from a typically American defiance of the divide between the two.
Aimed at a broad academic audience, this collection explores how and why
Chandler’s aesthetic force has persisted in Western culture. Of what does
that force consist, and what has it achieved? In what forms has it
survived, and what accounts for its survival? Accordingly, we seek essays
that consider the formation and/or the transmission of the Chandleresque:
how Chandler developed his signature style, and then how the “Chandleresque”
came to be appropriated, transmuted, and disseminated.
Although the study of detective fiction is a growing field, it remains
largely cordoned off from other fields of inquiry, as well as ripe for
further theorization. By examining how Chandler’s achievements inflected
the work of later writers, artists and film directors, our collection seeks
to draw the field out of isolation; to consider its history and development;
and to address its place within the larger field of cultural production.
We currently have commitments from six scholars. Ultimately, through
attention to a variety of genres and media, the essays in this collection
will define the semantic range and impact of the Chandleresque. Please
send essays of approximately 6000 words or 25 pages by October 1, 2000 to
one of the addresses below. If you plan to contribute, please send an
e-mail message by August 25, 2000, indicating your interest and describing
your project in brief.
Prof. Miranda B. Hickman
Department of English
853 Sherbrooke Street West
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T6 Canada
mhickm1@po-box.mcgill.ca
or
Prof. Michael Sharp
Department of English
State University of New York
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 U. S. A.
msharp@binghamton.edu
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