Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

most fastidious visions of London in “The Waste Land” published in 1922. As I have noted
above, Chandler had created a very personal style, developed from his own sensibility, and
a richness of vocabulary and aesthetics during his time spent in England. Naremore notices
that all of Chandler’s “novels depend upon the narrative voice of Marlowe - who is a
synthesis of tough guy and cultural aristocrat, who views Los Angeles almost like a visitor
from abroad. As Jacques Barzun observes, even Marlowe’s name connotes ‘Englishness,
Elegance, and Establishment’” (Naremore 1998:85).
After Hammett and Chandler, James M. Cain and Horace McCoy were the most
influential pulp writers. Differences in style are however to be found between these two
sets of leading writers of the hard-boiled school. Cain’s most famous stories include
criminals that serve as narrators and as readers we know right from the start “who done it”
and the reasons why the criminal felt compelled to commit that crime. This type of firstperson
narration will in fact have a major influence on noir style, and as the story
progresses the suspense grows not around the investigation of who the culprit is but rather
in scrutinizing who he really is, as if the reader is allowed to pierce through his
consciousness as the story unfolds.
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