FINAL Final

Since my group focused on Sara Paretsky’s Indemnity Only, we had difficulty finding a lot of information and responses from the time period given as it was most recent, even with Peter’s help. I did, however, learn a little more about how to use search engines and which engines to use specifically with the help of the resource desk in the library. My group didn’t convene until a little later in the process and, up until then, we had all been continuously contributing which is why the information seemed a little choppy and disjointed. After meeting up, we came to a common understanding on who was to work on what, who wasn’t working, and what needed to be done. During this time, we also went back through some of our prior research and edited it up to make sure it had more of a common theme coming from the same voice.

Although we’d all contributed to the plot, I was the one to go back and revise it to hopefully add some more specifics as well as try to make it sound more fluid. Again, this was after meeting with the group. Before that, I was having difficulty finding things on my own, so I went to the resource desk at the library and emailed Peter. There wasn’t a lot of actual tangible text that would be of use, but Peter did point me in the right direction on how to properly use the school’s data bases. Doing so, I found articles on several of her books in relation to similar authors of the time period, all discussing breaking the atypical feminine mold in detective literature before their novels. It was greatly emphasized, especially in Sara Paretsky: Overview by Kathleen Klein that before these novels, the female character in hardboiled fiction was typically the sexual object or the femme fatale who turned into the villain. Several articles from the UMW databases following these lines identified that Paretsky was one of the first to write a female P.I. from a feminist outlook. Also in Women, Myster, and Sleuthing in the ‘80s by Hileman as well as Dial Femme for Murder, Paretsky talks about developing her characters to have a realistic and cynical outlook on the world and their circumstances, as well as to have their smarts about them. They break into roles that were designed for men of that time period, and often times do a better job than they do. Paretsky even dated back to Adam and Eve, pointing out Adam’s blame of Eve for the eating of the forbidden fruit. She comes off as a strong feminist who is determined to infiltrate this idea of women being inferior in any of sort of way to men.

This seemed to be a very common them not only in Indemnity Only, but also in Paretsky’s other books. This could also be confused with writing styles since it seems to be common in her novels, but the realistic feminist characters are hard to deny. Another thing that was brought up in the articles that the book verified was the throwing over of typical patriarchies, especially since it’s a feminine PI (who is in a few professional roles, also new for the time period) bringing down several men. The issue of white collar crime is more specific to the Warshawski books, which somewhat introduces the breaking of another mold, that being the condemnation of those who normally get away with crimes. After further research, I realized that white collar crime more or less piqued in the 80s, with a lot of corporate fraud tied into it. The “victims” of these crimes typically ended up being the companies themselves with men who were previously rich and powerful becoming subject to the law. This is more of what we saw in Indemnity Only, but occupational fraud that benefits a single person at the expense of the company was also a raging trend of the 80s (“White Collar Crime.” Reference For Business – Encyclopedia of Small Business, Business Biographies, Business Plans, and Encyclopedia of American Industries. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Val-Z/White-Collar-Crime.html). While the goal of white collar crime typically involves smuggling money, it usually ends up costing the corporation much more than they were able to get away with, especially since it’s unlikely that the crime of the company will forever go unnoticed. I also discovered that the type of fraud we saw in Indemnity Only is seen more among corporations that are more established, or with more powerful figures running them. Because of their credibility, they’re not as prone to extensive background checks like other smaller, less established companies might be. Another thing to take notice about the novel is how it was the guys at the top of the line who were orchestrating the fraud, while those of lesser power either idled ignorantly or unknowingly came upon, much like Peter Thayer did. It’s here that we see the effect of being an established, rich, white male in a corporate setting.

The other people in the group noticed this also, but they discovered a more prominent connection with labor unions than I found. These were more of my contributions, other than rewriting the plot summary, but it’s hard to tell what is to be placed where since a lot of the reading was more or less the same. As I said, it was hard to find a lot of information, but especially differentiating articles. I more discovered the feminist plot amongst Indemnity Only and following with her other novels. Eventually, I was lead towards researching things such as Sara Paretsky herself and strong themes throughout the novel, such as white collar crime and feminism, to relate back to the book rather than articles revolving around the actual novel. It was hard to find much other than the break of feminism in many resources since that seemed to be the main impact of the book, especially for the time period it was written in. Overall, I think our book was a little more challenging than the others, but I enjoyed my group and everyone in it which helped the experience. It was difficult to find all the necessary information, but I think that my group worked nicely with the resources available and am overall pleased with just our rough draft of the article, let alone the final product.

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Final that I swore I thought I hit publish last night on

The Glass Key Wikipedia Research

            I began doing my research for this article where probably everyone else did as well: a Google search. I had done this many times before so I thought that maybe if I sat and sifted through the usual crap the internet had to offer that I could find something useful. I was tasked with finding the critical receptions of The Glass Key and so I casually searched “glass key critical receptions” thinking that it would find me many useful links. At first I thought I had hit a gold mine, considering every link was to a different review or opinion on Dashiell Hammett’s novel. After taking down a couple links and quotes I entered class that night feeling more than prepared; that was until I displayed what I had come up with and basically got shut down immediately. None of my information dated before 2007 and the links I was using were hardly educational. Back to square one.

With newfound passion to sit for hours and not stop until I had what I thought to be worthy I once again retreated to my Google safe place. This time was different; this time I was going to use filters and not trust any .com that claimed to be a know-all. I even had moved myself to the library to limit the distractions. I came away with a few notable names reviewing the book but once again nothing dating to before 1987. Being that I thought there was nothing that could help me besides changing the way I enter my Google search, I felt that I was doing very well. That night during class after my information was again not sufficient, Professor Groom suggested that as a class we should use Peter Catlin, a librarian at Mary Washington that specializes in these fields.

Instead of listening to Professor Groom like I should have from the beginning, I thought I would use our library’s own databases for my research instead. The databases are so huge and full of relevant information, that they were almost too much; I felt like I needed to include a little bit of everything. I ended up with what I thought I would be able to just transfer over to the Wikipedia article but it was actually still just a bunch of hooblah when I came to present it in class again. Running out of options, I reached into the back of my mind and remembered how much Jim Groom had mentioned Mr. Catlin and how much he could help.

That night I emailed Peter basically asking him if there was anything he could find on Dashiell Hammett or The Glass Key that dated before 1980, but preferably right around when the book was published in 1931. The next day after I had opened my email I found that Professor Groom was very right to recommend Peter because he is fantastic. He used the library’s personal search engine that can find things from other libraries nationwide and dished me some great information. I scheduled an appointment with Peter for the next day; I quickly became excited because I knew that my classmates, like me, were lazy and probably weren’t heeding Jim Groom’s suggestions to use Mr. Catlin.

After my meeting with Peter, I came away with three different critical receptions from newspaper from The New York TimesThe Chicago Tribune, and The Bookman and each one had the original scan of the document. I also found out that Simpson library has quite the selection on Dashiell Hammett and his works (an entire six foot long shelf actually).  Each book about Hammett mentioned The Glass Key at least four to five times and so it made my job a lot easier. Going to the index I would just look up the novel, and it usually even had its own contents about it (i.e Reviews, characters, etc.). Each book would bring up the different reviews of the novel, but most of them would repeat the same three or four names reviewing it, like Raymond Chandler, and so I figured that they were probably pretty important reviews.

Each book had so much information in fact, that I began adding to the other parts of the Wikipedia article’s Google doc. For example, The Glass Key although published as a novel in 1931, was originally run as a four-part series in the Black Mask magazine. I offered this information to Professor Groom and even he hadn’t known that, so they were a great resource, as was Peter Catlin. Using Peter actually almost felt like cheating since he was so helpful, but that just goes to show that if a professor suggests something, you should at least look into it.

This Wikipedia article project by itself has changed my almost decade old way of doing research entirely.  For too long and too often I would trust any link or any information on the internet because I had never had the right way shown to me in a way where it warranted results. Basically what I am saying is not only did I get to read a very good book, but I also gained a life skill in the sense that this project has changed who I am academically and how I view certain research tools.

 

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More wikiness

Writing for Wikipedia is a challenge. When we write as students, it’s all about: What does the teacher want? What will make him/her happy so I’ll get a good grade? Whereas with an encyclopedia it’s all about: What will be useful to the reader? For this class, it’s a double challenge because the students have to consider both.

Someone writing a paper on Cotton Comes to Harlem might have to explain things about Chester Himes, or the blaxploitation film genre. In a web environment like Wikipedia, hyperlinking to related articles can accomplish all of that. Linking related articles into the new and newly revised articles will strengthen the encyclopedia. Maybe I’ll work on that.

Another challenge with Wikipedia editing is citing everything. In traditional papers, we build our own arguments and conclusions from available evidence. Wikipedia, however, is not the place for original research. It’s all about the available evidence. Our arguments and conclusions belong elsewhere. This brings to mind the recent Philip Roth vs Wikipedia incident. Roth found that the article on his novel The Human Stain had wrong information about what inspired it. He had his people contact Wikipedia to get it fixed, but Wikipedia responded that his word was not good enough: It had to be published somewhere, so the article would have a citable source. So he wrote about the situation in the New Yorker magazine, and that became his source. In our case, we can draw our own conclusions about the novels, but we have to be careful to filter out ideas that are not supported by citable sources. All in all, I think the class did an admirable job, especially considering that is probably the first time most of us have attempted anything like it.

Even though it is a challenge, I love this Wikipedia project. It’s an opportunity to make something that people can really use, to make the world a better place, even if only in a small way. @DrGarcia tweeted about an article from the London School of Economics on the scholarly benefits of writing for Wikipedia. Writing for Wikipedia is making a contribution to public knowledge, making something people can use, benefit from and build upon. And the student can point back to it and say, “I did that.” I’ve heard that some people think student work gets stuffed in the back of desk drawers and forgotten. That is not happening here. Hardboiled will not be forgotten.

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Wikipedia Reflection Final Draft

Since my group focused on Sara Paretsky’s Indemnity Only, we had difficulty finding a lot of information and responses from the time period given as it was most recent, even with Peter’s help. I did, however, learn a little more about how to use search engines and which engines to use specifically with the help of the resource desk in the library. My group didn’t convene until a little later in the process and, up until then, we had all been continuously contributing which is why the information seemed a little choppy and disjointed. After meeting up, we came to a common understanding on who was to work on what, who wasn’t working, and what needed to be done. During this time, we also went back through some of our prior research and edited it up to make sure it had more of a common theme coming from the same voice.

Although we’d all contributed to the plot, I was the one to go back and revise it to hopefully add some more specifics as well as try to make it sound more fluid. Again, this was after meeting with the group. Before that, I was having difficulty finding things on my own, so I went to the resource desk at the library and emailed Peter. There wasn’t a lot of actual tangible text that would be of use, but Peter did point me in the right direction on how to properly use the school’s data bases. Doing so, I found articles on several of her books in relation to similar authors of the time period, all discussing breaking the atypical feminine mold in detective literature before their novels. It was greatly emphasized, especially in Sara Paretsky: Overview but Kathleen Klein (Klein, Kathleen Gregory. “Sara Paretsky: Overview.” St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers. Ed. Jay P. Pederson. 4th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. St. James Guide to Writers Series. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Dec. 2012 http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.umw.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1420006265&v=2.1&u=viva_mwc&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w) that before these novels, the female character in hardboiled fiction was typically the sexual object or the femme fatale who turned into the villain. Several articles following these lines identified that Paretsky was one of the first to write a female P.I. from a feminist outlook. Also in Women, Myster, and Sleuthing in the ‘80s by Hileman (Paretsky, Sara, and Monica Hileman. “Women, Mystery, and Sleuthing in the ’80s.” Sojourner: The Women’s Forum 14.7 (Mar. 1989): 16-17. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 135. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.umw.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1100033930&v=2.1&u=viva_mwc&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w ), she talks about developing her characters to have a realistic and cynical outlook on the world and their circumstances, as well as to have their smarts about them. They break into roles that were designed for men of that time period, and often times do a better job than they do. Paretsky even dated back to Adam and Eve, pointing out Adam’s blame of Eve for the eating of the forbidden fruit. She comes off as a strong feminist who is determined to infiltrate this idea of women being inferior in any of sort of way to men.

This seemed to be a very common them not only in Indemnity Only, but also in Paretsky’s other books. This could also be confused with writing styles since it seems to be common in her novels, but the realistic feminist characters are hard to deny. Another thing that was brought up in the articles that the book verified was the throwing over of typical patriarchies, especially since it’s a feminine PI (who is in a few professional roles, also new for the time period) bringing down several men. The issue of white collar crime is more specific to the Warshawski books, which somewhat introduces the breaking of another mold, that being the condemnation of those who normally get away with crimes. After further research, I realized that white collar crime more or less piqued in the 80s, with a lot of corporate fraud tied into it. The “victims” of these crimes typically ended up being the companies themselves with men who were previously rich and powerful becoming subject to the law. This is more of what we saw in Indemnity Only, but occupational fraud that benefits a single person at the expense of the company was also a raging trend of the 80s (“White Collar Crime.” Reference For Business – Encyclopedia of Small Business, Business Biographies, Business Plans, and Encyclopedia of American Industries. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Val-Z/White-Collar-Crime.html). While the goal of white collar crime typically involves smuggling money, it usually ends up costing the corporation much more than they were able to get away with, especially since it’s unlikely that the crime of the company will forever go unnoticed. I also discovered that the type of fraud we saw in Indemnity Only is seen more among corporations that are more established, or with more powerful figures running them. Because of their credibility, they’re not as prone to extensive background checks like other smaller, less established companies might be. Another thing to take notice about the novel is how it was the guys at the top of the line who were orchestrating the fraud, while those of lesser power either idled ignorantly or unknowingly came upon, much like Peter Thayer did. It’s here that we see the effect of being an established, rich, white male in a corporate setting.

The other people in the group noticed this also, but they discovered a more prominent connection with labor unions than I found. These were more of my contributions, other than rewriting the plot summary, but it’s hard to tell what is to be placed where since a lot of the reading was more or less the same. As I said, it was hard to find a lot of information, but especially differentiating articles. I more discovered the feminist plot amongst Indemnity Only and following with her other novels. Eventually, I was lead towards researching things such as Sara Paretsky herself and strong themes throughout the novel, such as white collar crime and feminism, to relate back to the book rather than articles revolving around the actual novel. It was hard to find much other than the break of feminism in many resources since that seemed to be the main impact of the book, especially for the time period it was written in. Overall, I think our book was a little more challenging than the others, but I enjoyed my group and everyone in it which helped the experience. It was difficult to find all the necessary information, but I think that my group worked nicely with the resources available and am overall pleased with just our rough draft of the article, let alone the final product.

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Devil in a Blue Dress:The Doodle Version

 

Herrrrre we go again.

  1. This lovely little doodle here came from something Jim Groom mentioned in class; something along the lines of “the world of Easy Rawlins that we are viewing”. I really like this idea in general when it comes to literature; that what we are reading and the opinion we are getting is essentially the one reality of our narrator  and there are (or could be) multiple other realities that are influencing this one. I think the fact that we see this world through Easy gives the scenery a much more logical spin. Easy is very methodical with his actions, and I really like that about him. Easy Rawlins is written into many other novels by Mosley, and I think this is because he is such a solid character. The scene and the characters can change around him, kind of like actors walking on and off a stage; but Easy remains steadfast and interacts without losing his own character.
  2. This quote just really struck me, for some reason. I think because it is just so honest. I don’t think I would go as far as applying it to real life, but for the “world” of this novel, it seems accurate. Who has the power? The man with the most money. That’s the person who has the least amount of debt to pay, and therefore the most freedom. So in a sense, money does seem to control things, kind of like a god-figure.
  3. Aside from an attempt at the class “The Who” symbol, this is also a nod to Easy’s ever-present “Voice”. I really like this voice; it never tries to get ahead, it only tries to stay alive. I think it’s less of a conscience and more of an instinct. It’s not exactly telling Easy what’s right and what’s wrong, it’s telling him what he needs to do to stay alive. I think that’s the very heart of this novel, that “dog-eat-dog” outlook and the sheer necessity to stay alive.
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Final Post and Paper!

Lauren Mello

Groom

Hardboiled: American Detective Fiction

12/16/12

Researching Indemnity Only

.            I was assigned to the Indemnity Only group for the Wikipedia project. I was really

excited because I really enjoyed the book, and felt that it would be interesting to research

as well.  I offered to look up themes because that was the subject that I was particularly

interested in. I remembered that two common themes that stood out while reading the

book were: feminism and labor unions. Sabrina offered to research labor unions, so I took

on the task of researching feminism and gender equality. I knew that Sara Paretsky was a

groundbreaking author for introducing feminism and gender equality into the American

Detective Fiction genre. I was interested in finding out how she expressed feminism

through her main character, V. I. Warshawski.

.             I went to the library to see if the librarian could help me look for information about

Paretsky and feminism. We were able to find the database Literature Resources from Gale

which had quite a few articles about Paretsky and her work. Luckily a lot of them were

discussing how she influenced the new feminism movement in the American Detective

Fiction genre. Two sources in particular helped me to see how Paretsky wanted to

introduce the idea of feminism into her work: Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, a journal,

and the Female Dick and the Crisis of Heterosexuality, a critical essay. Both of these

articles provided additional insight as to what Paretsky was trying to do with her writing.

 

.         One particular article was actually an interview conducted by Monica Hileman from

Sojourner: A Woman’s Forum with Sara Paretsky. The interview discussed the reaction

that Paretsky received from her books and main character V.I Warshawski.  Paretsky said

that overall she was receiving good feedback and that a lot of women liked Warshawski as a

character. This encouraged Paretsky to share her envision for the protagonist. In the

interview she said, “It’s important for women to develop confidence in their bodies. I think

it’s encouraging to have characters like V.I who are confident and can hold their own

physically as well as verbally.”(Paretsky, Hileman)  This line made it seem like Paretsky

was particularly interested in encouraging women to gain confidence and stand up for

themselves. Paretsky definitely created Warshawski in that vision in several ways. First

off, Warshawski was in shape and made sure to take care of her body. This helped her

various times throughout the book when things got physical. For example, the time when

Master’s henchmen attempted to abduct Warshawski outside of her office, this did not

work well for the men. She was able to fight them off for a long time and caused some real

damage before they finally succeed in taking her, barely. Secondly, she also has a very

strong personality. She knows what she wants and she is going to get it. I think that

Paretsky succeeded in making V.I Warshawski a dominating female main character and

this helped enforce her theme of feminism and gender equality by proving that a woman is

capable of doing a ”man’s” job like being a private investigator.

 

.          The second resource I found was a critical essay by Ann Wilson titled “The Female

Dick and the Crisis of Heterosexuality”. The essay talked about how select female authors,

Paretsky included, shaped the idea of a strong female in a male dominated field.  Wilson

stated that, “…A heroine modeled on a hard-boiled detective is a woman who is self-reliant

and independent, a prototype of a feminist ideal.” This went along with Paretsky’s earlier

statement about having a very confident woman as the protagonist. According to Wilson,

Warshawski is a prime example of a feminist. Throughout the essay she goes on to talk

about how Paretsky influenced the new style of writing that involved having strong female

leads that in many ways out shine the men in the story. As she is describing the new style

of writing she goes on to say, “The conventional representation of the female body as

weaker than a man’s and therefore less effective in situations which require physical power

is exposed by Paretsky as a ruse: each author puts her heroine in situations which require

agility of mind and body.” Paretsky’s goal in writing Warshawski the way she did was so

that there would be a new image in American Detective Fiction that showed the ability of a

woman to function and succeed at the same level as a man.

 

.           Overall I found that Paretsky broke the norm for American Detective Fiction

writers. She helped to influence a new style of writing that involved a strong capable

female lead in a male dominated field. For the Wikipedia article I researched the theme of

feminism and gender equality. I also helped to form the character list and connected them

to each other. As needed we reviewed each other’s work to create a more uniform voice.

Once we all agreed on what information that was to be submitted we all met at the library.

I uploaded the information onto Wikipedia and formatted it to provided titles, sections, and

categories to clearly present our content. The project was frustrating at times when we

could not find enough information for a topic, but in the end we had enough resources to

create a solid and reliable Wikipedia page for help others learn about Indemnity Only.

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Final Paper

FSEM paper

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Devil in a Blue Dress: book vs movie!

I thought that Devil in a Blue Dress was actually a really easy read. I felt like all the previous books that we have read this semester have had really detailed plots while Devil in a Blue Dress was pretty straight forward. That being said, I was really interested in seeing the movie and how it would differ from the book. It actually was pretty different, first off in the book we see this connection between Easy and Daphne they even go and stay together for a few days. In the movie that connection was lost, I felt that Daphne was almost against Easy and that there were no feelings other than being acquaintances. That was really disappointing because that helped to move the story along in the book, and it made it a little bit more interesting.  I also felt like they diluted Allbright’s personality. In the book we get this mental image that Allbright is an elitist and has a very strong personality. He showed this by wearing all white and talking in a manner that you would think he was extremely well educated. In the movie he was still a prominent character but his clothing style was changed, and he didn’t seem as controlling as in the book. Overall I thought that the book was much better than the movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

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Edited Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity, by James M. Cain, is a story about murder, love, and money. It was published in 1943 as a short story in the book, Three of a Kind. Because of its popularity, in 1944 Billy Wilder directed the film which was based off the book. I took an interest in specifically researching the topic of Double Indemnity’s critical receptions. Through this process, I found that critical reception is an incredibly important aspect in a novel’s success. It not only reflects James M. Cain as a writer, but reflects the time and interest of the public during the 1940s.

While researching Double Indemnity, I found it quite difficult locating a lot of information about the story other than the plot summary. I found it even more challenging finding reviews from the 1940s that I could use as useful forms of critical reception. After Google and database researching, I had accumulated very little information, by myself. With some help from our trusty UMW librarian, Peter Catlin, I was pointed to several different locations to obtain research. He first listed two websites that provided in being very helpful. He listed several other books that the library didn’t have, but could be requested on inter-library loan. Lastly, he suggested I take a look at the microfilms available in the library. I found these to be incredibly helpful.

Prior to the experience I gained with Double Indemnity research, I had never seen nor heard of microfilm. Microfilm is defined as micro-photographs of newspapers or magazines. Because I was utterly ignorant as to how to operate microfilm, and what it was, I called upon the reference librarians. Through painstaking trouble, they finally found the films I was looking for, and set up the machine with the film in it. I soon realized that microfilm contains years of newspaper prints, and for a while I scrolled through the months until I found the date and article name Peter Catlin had suggested. What I found interesting about the newspapers from 1943 was the drastic contrast between newspapers then and newspapers today. While scrolling through, a large amount of the print was covered in ads from that time. Beautiful women smoking cigarettes, and countless models wearing the newest clothing styles, covered the pages. These women accompanied all the microfilms I viewed, and I was fascinated by them.

After collecting all the research I had found, I finally began to it format it into a legible story.

James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity was positively reviewed by critics after it was first published. According to John K Hutchens who reviewed of Three of a Kind in the New York Times, says Cain’s, “men and women are the most highly combustible characters in modern fiction, an aspect of his story-telling that would be a little ridiculous in a lesser craftsman…it is one device in the general scheme of a writer who holds you by the sheer, dazzling pace he sets.” Hutchens later says, “One reader, for instance, does not for a moment believe that the …cagey insurance man in “Double Indemnity”, having taken one look at the figure of a latter-day Lucrezia Borgia, is ready at once to attempt murder for her. But you do not think of this at the time, because you are too busy wondering what will happen next. If this is not necessarily the sign of an artist it is the certain mark of a first-rate storyteller, and surely Mr. Cain is precisely that.” In May of 1943, Time published an article reviewing Three of a Kind. The review said, “All three stories have the rancid air of authenticity which Cain obtains by screwing down his competent microscope on a drop of that social seepage which discharges daily into U.S. tabloids and criminal courts. And as in any drop of ditch water, the action in Cain’s tales is of infusorial violence.” The review goes on to say, “The Embezzler and Double Indemnity are stern moral warnings that it is easier to embezzle money than to put it back, to murder husbands than to collect their accident insurance. Both tales are also remarkable examples of the art with which Cain makes unfamiliar readers feel at home in such worlds as banking and insurance, the skill with which he uses business routines to build suspense.” Cain continued to get raving critical receptions from the trio of short stories composed in Three of a Kind, and in particular Double Indemnity. Dawn Powell, a writer for The Nation, wrote in her review published in May 1943, that, “The best story-and the best Cain has done for a long time-is Double Indemnity…” While some reviewers today look back at Double Indemnity and Cain in a critical manor, Hutchens put reality in perspective. “For, when Mr. Cain’s faults have all been pointed out-and the principal one that the character doesn’t matter much in his writing-the pertinent fact remains: when he is at the top of his form it is all but impossible to put down the story he is telling.”

After reading through all the reviews I could find, I found that several noted an interesting beginning to Three of a Kind. While it does not necessarily pertain to the critical reception of Double Indemnity or Three of a Kind, I found it note worthy that several reviewers had mentioned the unusual preface of the book. John K. Hutchens says of Cain, “Just as surely, he is no mere sensationalist.” In an uncommonly interesting preface to this book he declares that he is “probably the most misread, misreviewed and misunderstood novelist now writing,” and goes on to say that he makes “no conscious effort to be tough or hard-boiled or grim.” He contradicts this disavowal a bit later with an admission that such was his “morbid fear of boring a reader” that he “certainly got the habit of needling a story at the least hint of a let down.” A review from The New Yorker, says, “Mr. Cain’s preface intimates that from now on he will abandon such intense tales” in favor of a broader kind of writing.” From both quotes, it seems as though Cain was quite concerned with the reception of his stories. He did not want to be stereotyped as the typical ‘hard-boiled writer’, or in any way categorized. Ironically, his stories, including Double Indemnity, are often referred to as the epitome of noir and hard-boiled fiction, something he utterly opposed. Although, when Cain says that he feared boring a reader, he must have known what the reader at the time in 40s wanted. From the late 1930s to the late 1940s the public was engrossed by the idea of the noir novel. Cain, therefore was feeding the public what he knew would entertain them. Whether Cain accepted it or not, he was writing in his time for the people of his time. And, when it’s all said and done, a good novel is a good novel, and Cain exemplifies this notion with Double Indemnity.

Bibliography

Dingy Storyteller. Time [serial online]. May 24, 1943;41(21):102. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed December 6, 2012.
By, J. K. (1943, Apr 18). A cain three-decker. New York Times (1923-Current File). Retrieved from http://ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/106673745?accountid=12299
Powell, Dawn. “Mr. Cain’s Art.” The Nation 22 May 1943: n. pag. Web.

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The final of the final.

Cotton Comes to Harlem Research

Maureen Iredell

Every good Wikipedia article must be supported by relevant sources; otherwise the article will seem less trusted as an article should be.  While researching Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes, there were many opinions that both support the jokes in the novel and some that claim that the novel is too farfetched for the time period.  Adding in one’s own opinion can make the article more relatable, but there cannot be any sense of bias in the writing.  In order to incorporate this opinion with facts of the era, there needs to be multiple sources and a validation from professionals, to prove that the writing is completely valid.

Through this research I personally focused on the plot summary, the theme of poverty at the time and how the film adaptation came about and the response to it.  Understanding that there were other people who would be contributing to this article helped me realize that one person’s perspective cannot be representative of every perspective.  Although the plot and the themes were observation and opinion based, there would still be many readers that would want the article to be reliable enough to classify as a factual resource.  In order to achieve this, the additional suggested sources need to be providing other plot summaries that are related to this article.  Whether the person loves the Blaxploitation genre, or if they believe that literature mentioning racism is does not represent the truth, they need to be able to trust the research and agree that everything shown is both believable and non-biased.

The plot was an easy part to get down, because we had already put together the main points that just needed to be expanded upon. There was little to no research going into this portion of the article because all that was needed was a good understanding of how the book went and then the ability to reiterate it in just a few paragraphs.  While the plot was simple enough to remember from the book, there was also a challenge when remembering how the setting and each event came to be and when.  The setting was in 1965 Harlem, New York, played out to be full of descriptions of how the characters had to deal with poverty, racism and even sexism, but for those that lived through the events, the plot of this novel shows advances within that time period of exposing how strong Black men and women should be, but it also puts a lot of blame on the white Americans that try hard to keep that African strength down.  This book is just fiction and hard-boiled with the murders and crimes, but there is still a lot of references to how oppression affects all of those underneath it.

Poverty in America in the late 1960s can be found in facts, but it is also seen in actions taken by the characters in this novel, because Himes wanted the reader to believe that the richer folk were actually manipulating the rest of the population into acting the way that they wanted them to.  There were two movements occurring in the story line that had people giving their life savings away to ideas they thought would help their lives for the better.  The descriptions of how these people were putting all of their savings and how the ones that still did not have enough had to stand outside a gate and pray that they could only a part of it, make any reader, critical or not, wish that anything could have helped this community out.  There is also people, not in the movements, that had to resort to violence and crime in order to make ends meet, like the two criminals who stole purses out of the back of a woman’s dress to get what today is considered enough money to live off of.  In the literary article, The Shape of Poverty in 1966, the author goes into specific details of what the means of living were at that time. It goes on to say that the “majority of the country” was in better standards than it was seven years ago in 1959, but there are actually 1 out of 7 people in America were in “households with money incomes for the year lower than the poverty line” (1).  This is all occurring many years after the Depression, but there are still apparent effects of it that show up now and again to show that this era was still a time of minimum spending and little to no ability to get what you want.  The novel ends with some humor when the reveal of Uncle Bud having the money and taking a vacation that he well deserves still shows that every single person of this time works harder than even today to get half as much.

The final and largest research done was for the film adaptation of the movie by Ossie Davis, which had all of the themes from the book with added humor and blaxploitation of Grave Digger and Coffin Ed.  The film keeps the main characters of the two detectives, Iris, Deke and many of the other cameos that show up, but the only characters that did not show up at all was Colonel Calhoun.  He was what was to be considered the main “bad guy” for the entire novel and without his appearance there was also no Back-to-South movement.  This movement helped to classify the era of a time where African Americans can no longer be discriminated against and so white Americans tried to send them back to areas where they could “work” again to get them cheap labor.  Without this motif in the movie the plot changes slightly to follow the two detectives more than Deke who had to fight Calhoun the entire way.  Another difference in the movie was when Iris and Mabel fight over Deke because there was a lot more sexual tension both between Deke and Mabel and Mabel and Iris, but in the film there was just a quick blow on the head to Mabel and that was that.  This shortened murder was most likely to help keep the violence to a minimum when Davis was trying to write a screenplay that focused most on how humorously disturbing the treatment of African Americans were at the time.

These changes from the book to the humorous movie created different opinions of how the viewers perceived the movie. A review by Howard Thompson expresses great gratitude of the movie as he is excited to say that the cast was “marvelous” and that the general plot of a “sly caper” that “tilts a neighborhood” is so excellent that it will be remembered for a long time (2).  On the other hand, a review in the Times that specifically claims that it was a “meretricious thriller that should offend the sensibilities of any audience—black or white” and thus disapproved of the movie (3).  Although the movie was planned to be focused on the two detectives the whole time, Chester Himes eventually thought that the matched his idea and “had a black orientation that [he] liked” (4).  Although the film included many adaptations that changed the overall feeling of the plot, Ossie Davis captured the essence that was the amount of oppression within Harlem in the 60s-70s.

In conclusion, the research for this novel has been both challenging and educational.  There were setbacks when trying to plan each part of writing as well as communication with the other contributors, but mainly it was simple to put facts and opinions together in order to make a reliable Wikipedia article.  Databases used such as the movie and book reviews from the University of Mary Washington’s online library, Google books and the Hein’s online database helped to connect claims to actual perceptions that occurred in the correct time period.  I found two reviews of the film as well as specific interviews from Himes himself and general facts about 1960s poverty.  It was a little difficult, though to find the best source that would properly back up the ideas expressed.  Although the plot and the themes were all opinions of what was read and how it was interpreted, it was good to find other reviews of the book, especially directly from that time, and add their opinions to the mix of how it was perceived.  The film adaptation was difficult because it did have opinions of what was actually seen, but there were still facts of how it was made and how the author of the book actually responded to it.  Once all of the themes and the differences of opinion to fact were put together, the article was then filled out to resemble a fully resourceful article.

Works Cited:
1.  Orshansky, Mollie. “The Shape of Poverty in 1966.” The Poverty Roster, 1966 3rd ser. 31 (1968): n. pag. Hein Online. Web. 5 Dec. 2012.

2.  Thompson, Howard. “MOVIES THIS WEEK.” Times [New York] 27 Aug. 1995, sec. 03624331: n. pag. Acedemic Search Complete. Web. 2 Dec. 2012.

 

3.  ”Honkies in the Woodpile.” Times [New York] 6 July 1970, 96th ed., Pg 72 sec.: n. pag. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Dec. 2012.

 

4.  ”Author Himes Likes Director Davis’ Handling of Film.” Jet 11 June 1970: 60-61. Google Books. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. <http://books.google.com/books?id=KzgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59&dq=chester+himes&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xQC8UOzWG8650QHavIDgBQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAzge#v=onepage&q=chester%20himes&f=false>.

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