Subject: (urth) The genres of PEACE

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 11:29:11 +0000

I don't know if this observation has been made before, but each of
PEACE's five parts is "in the mode," so to speak, of a different genre. 
(I'm referring to the predominant action of each part, not to the short
tales embedded within them.)

Part one is, I think, in the "genre" of serious realistic fiction, the
"Dickens and Jane Austen and Proust and Stendahl" that Charles Turner
craves.  We see a scene of childhood innocence about to be shattered, as
in the beginnings of many "literary" novels.  (Actually, I'm less sure
about this first part than about the others.)

Part two is a screwball comedy, with its eccentric, spirited heroine
baiting her stuffy suitors, the "scavenger hunt" for the Chinese egg,
and its farcical discovery in the barn.

Part three is a horror story, of course; even the storytelling frame is
a frequent device of horror stories.

Part four is a hardbooiled detective story.  We have a crime being
investigated (forgery) and an alluring but treacherous woman whom the
"detective" gets entangled with.  The bogus treasure is out of THE
MALTESE FALCON, and Gold's dusty bookshop is out of THE BIG SLEEP.  Weer
even compares himself to "Humphrey Bogart or Charlie Chan." (213)

And part five is a documentary, or a journalistic expose: a day in the
life of a corporation.

I doubt that Weer intended this structure.  But Wolfe has experimented
with telling a single story through several different genres elsewhere,
in the four-part story beginning with "The Dark of the June."  Here he
applies the technique to a man's life.

Incidentally, I take back what I said earlier about beginning to
understand PEACE.  I still think there was a lot of truth in what I said
about Weer's psychology; but I no longer think that the book can be seen
as fundamentally a straightforward psychological novel in disguise, as I
was trying to read it.  There's too much more going on.

--Adam

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 08:49:40 +0000

after you've said it that it seems surprising that we haven't been using it
as a mantra!

>even compares himself to "Humphrey Bogart or Charlie Chan." (213)

That part is especially good, Adam.  (Although technically: wasn't the
bookshop in THE BIG SLEEP more an open, uncluttered, false front for
something else?  I remember Bogart bamboozling the faux-bookwoman regarding
obscure titles.  Or were you talking about the bookstore across the street
from that one, with the real bookwoman who keeps a bottle in her desk and
looks better without her glasses on?)

=mantis=

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 21:29:42 +0000

Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:
> That part is especially good, Adam.

Thanks.  I actually got the part four-detective story connection first,
and that encouraged me to go after the others.

> (Although technically: wasn't the
> something else?

Well, I was seeing the bookshop as just an allusion, not evidence for
any real parallelism with THE BIG SLEEP (although the decrepit Blaine,
with his "proud, cold eyes (184) does put me in mind of General (?)
Sternwood).  It's actually been a long time since I either read or saw
THE BIG SLEEP.

One thing I didn't mention in my original post was that my list of
genres was surprisingly cinematic.  "Screwball comedy" is really a film
genre, and part four owes as much to film noir, it seems to me, as to
written detective stories.  And parts three and five could also easily
be films.  Surprisingly, because there are almost no explicit references
to films, although there is that unexplained projector and can of film
in his memory office.  (Any other references aside from the Bogart
mention I quoted above?)

--Adam