Monthly multimedia exploration of popular literature and film with d.a.i. teacher Scott Stelle.
It's been said that crime fiction is especially good at capturing the political and cultural zeitgeist. This quarter we will be exploring neo-noir crime fiction of the 1970s to compare the period with our own. Paranoia and malaise created by the Vietnam War, Pentagon Papers, Watergate and creeping inflation are feelings that we can understand well since we also live in a crisis-ridden world. Wikileaks, Snowden and the January 6th congressional hearings disclose a world of criminal elites running things with scant regard for the rule of law. However, the political institutions in the 70s hadn’t yet abandoned the American people nor had money come to completely dominate politics.
Military defeat in Indochina and the elusive pursuit of the American Dream had by the early 70s provoked frustration, bitterness, and political disillusionment. The psychological trauma and political gravity of the period deeply touched America’s collective imagination, and yet a few voices within crime fiction not only evoked this paranoid atmosphere but auspiciously renewed the genre as well. This quarter we are going to explore three authors representative of the post-Watergate generation, who realistically expressed the corrupt world that Americans have been increasingly living in.
Fr. 13.1.: George Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970: film, 1973)
Fr. 3.2.: Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers (1974: film: Who'll Stop the Rain, 1978)
Fr. 3.3.: Newton Thornburg, Cutter and Bone (1976: Cutter's Way, 1981)
In English
Location: d.a.i. library (Room 1)
Admission: free
Further dates: Fr. 3.2., Fr. 3.3.