Academic literature on the topic 'Gary, Romain (1914-1980) – Style'

Resumo: Este artigo aborda a pseudonímia e a heteronímia na obra do escritor Romain Gary (1914-1980), a fim de considerar a função psíquica desses fenômenos. Nascido em Vilna, na Lituânia, de origem judaica, Gary imigrou para a França na adolescência. Por duas vezes foi agraciado com o Prêmio Goncourt, uma delas por um livro publicado com o pseudônimo Émile Ajar, o que gerou um grande polêmica porque, tradicionalmente, o Goncourt só pode ser concedido uma única vez a um autor. Uma breve incursão na teoria literária será feita para considerar a noção de autoria e, em seguida, tendo em vista o suicídio do escritor, serão utilizadas algumas noções freudianas a fim de verificar a hipótese de que o autoextermínio de Gary coincidiu com os aspectos disfuncionais de um processo por meio do qual o escritor buscava simultaneamente a invenção de si mesmo, o reconhecimento e a anonimidade.

Despite the now-traditional tendency of noir scholarship to call attention to the retrospective and constructed nature of this genre— James Naremore argues that film noir is best regarded as a “mythology”— one feature that has rarely come under question is its association with the city (2). Despite the existence of numerous rural noirs, the depiction of urban space is associated with this genre more consistently than any other element. Even in critical accounts that attempt to deconstruct the solidity of the noir genre, the city is left as an implicit inclusion, and the country, an implict exclusion. Naremore, for example, does not include the urban environment in a list of the central tenets of film noir that he calls into question: “nothing links together all the things described as noir—not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even a resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings” (10). Elizabeth Cowie identifies film noir a “fantasy,” whose “tenuous critical status” has been compensated for “by a tenacity of critical use” (121). As part of Cowie’s project, to revise the assumption that noirs are almost exclusively male-centered, she cites character types, visual style, and narrative tendencies, but never urban spaces, as familiar elements of noir that ought to be reconsidered. If the city is rarely tackled as an unnecessary or part-time element of film noir in discursive studies, it is often the first trait identified by critics in the kind of formative, characteristic-compiling studies that Cowie and Naremore work against.Andrew Dickos opens Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir with a list of noir’s key attributes. The first item is “an urban setting or at least an urban influence” (6). Nicholas Christopher maintains that “the city is the seedbed of film noir. […] However one tries to define or explain noir, the common denominator must always be the city. The two are inseparable” (37). Though the tendencies of noir scholars— both constructive and deconstructive— might lead readers to believe otherwise, rural locations figure prominently in a number of noir films. I will show that the noir genre is, indeed, flexible enough to encompass many films set predominantly or partly in rural locations. Steve Neale, who encourages scholars to work with genre terms familiar to original audiences, would point out that the rural noir is an academic discovery not an industry term, or one with much popular currency (166). Still, this does not lessen the critical usefulness of this subgenre, or its implications for noir scholarship.While structuralist and post-structuralist modes of criticism dominated film genre criticism in the 1970s and 80s, as Thomas Schatz has pointed out, these approaches often sacrifice close attention to film texts, for more abstract, high-stakes observations: “while there is certainly a degree to which virtually every mass-mediated cultural artifact can be examined from [a mythical or ideological] perspective, there appears to be a point at which we tend to lose sight of the initial object of inquiry” (100). Though my reading of these films sidesteps attention to social and political concerns, this article performs the no-less-important task of clarifying the textual features of this sub-genre. To this end, I will survey the tendencies of the rural noir more generally, mentioning more than ten films that fit this subgenre, before narrowing my analysis to a reading of Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948), Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949), They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1949) and On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). Robert Mitchum tries to escape his criminal life by settling in a small, mountain-side town in Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947). A foggy marsh provides a dramatic setting for the Bonnie and Clyde-like demise of lovers on the run in Gun Crazy (Joseph Lewis, 1950). In The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950), Sterling Hayden longs to return home after he is forced to abandon his childhood horse farm for a life of organised crime in the city. Rob Ryan plays a cop unable to control his violent impulses in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). He is re-assigned from New York City to a rural community up-state in hopes that a less chaotic environment will have a curative effect. The apple orchards of Thieves’ Highway are no refuge from networks of criminal corruption. In They Live By Night, a pair of young lovers, try to leave their criminal lives behind, hiding out in farmhouses, cabins, and other pastoral locations in the American South. Finally, the location of prisons explains a number of sequences set in spare, road-side locations such as those in The Killer is Loose (Budd Boetticher, 1956), The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953), and Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948). What are some common tendencies of the rural noir? First, they usually feature both rural and urban settings, which allows the portrayal of one to be measured against the other. What we see of the city structures the definition of the country, and vice versa. Second, the lead character moves between these two locations by driving. For criminals, the car is more essential for survival in the country than in the city, so nearly all rural noirs are also road movies. Third, nature often figures as a redemptive force for urbanites steeped in lives of crime. Fourth, the curative quality of the country is usually tied to a love interest in this location: the “nurturing woman” as defined by Janey Place, who encourages the protagonist to forsake his criminal life (60). Fifth, the country is never fully crime-free. In The Killer is Loose, for example, an escaped convict’s first victim is a farmer, whom he clubs before stealing his truck. The convict (Wendell Corey), then, easily slips through a motorcade with the farmer’s identification. Here, the sprawling countryside provides an effective cover for the killer. This farmland is not an innocent locale, but the criminal’s safety-net. In films where a well-intentioned lead attempts to put his criminal life behind him by moving to a remote location, urban associates have little trouble tracking him down. While the country often appears, to protagonists like Jeff in Out of the Past or Bowie in They Live By Night, as an ideal place to escape from crime, as these films unfold, violence reaches the countryside. If these are similar points, what are some differences among rural noirs? First, there are many differences by degree among the common elements listed above. For instance, some rural noirs present their location with unabashed romanticism, while others critique the idealisation of these locations; some “nurturing women” are complicit with criminal activity, while others are entirely innocent. Second, while noir films are commonly known for treating similar urban locations, Los Angeles in particular, these films feature a wide variety of locations: Out of the Past and Thieves’ Highway take place in California, the most common setting for rural noirs, but On Dangerous Ground is set in northern New England, They Live by Night takes place in the Depression-era South, Moonrise in Southern swampland, and the most dynamic scene of The Asphalt Jungle is in rural Kentucky. Third, these films also vary considerably in the balance of settings. If the three typical locations of the rural noir are the country, the city, and the road, the distribution of these three locations varies widely across these films. The location of The Asphalt Jungle matches the title until its dramatic conclusion. The Hitch-hiker, arguably a rural noir, is set in travelling cars, with just brief stops in the barren landscape outside. Two of the films I analyse, They Live By Night and Moonrise are set entirely in the country; a remarkable exception to the majority of films in this subgenre. There are only two other critical essays on the rural noir. In “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir,” Jonathan F. Bell contextualises the rural noir in terms of post-war transformations of the American landscape. He argues that these films express a forlorn faith in the agrarian myth while the U.S. was becoming increasingly developed and suburbanised. That is to say, the rural noir simultaneously reflects anxiety over the loss of rural land, but also the stubborn belief that the countryside will always exist, if the urbanite needs it as a refuge. Garry Morris suggests the following equation as the shortest way to state the thematic interest of this genre: “Noir = industrialisation + (thwarted) spirituality.” He attributes much of the malaise of noir protagonists to the inhospitable urban environment, “far from [society’s] pastoral and romantic and spiritual origins.” Where Bell focuses on nine films— Detour (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Out of the Past (1947), Key Largo (1948), Gun Crazy (1949), On Dangerous Ground (1952), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Split Second (1953), and Killer’s Kiss (1955)— Morris’s much shorter article includes just The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Gun Crazy. Of the four films I discuss, only On Dangerous Ground has previously been treated as part of this subgenre, though it has never been discussed alongside Nicholas Ray’s other rural noir. To further the development of the project that these authors have started— the formation of a rural noir corpus— I propose the inclusion of three additional films in this subgenre: Moonrise (1948), They Live by Night (1949), and Thieves’ Highway (1949). With both On Dangerous Ground and They Live by Night to his credit, Nicholas Ray has the distinction of being the most prolific director of rural noirs. In They Live by Night, two young lovers, Bowie (Farley Granger) and Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), attempt to escape from their established criminal lives. Twenty-three year old Bowie has just been released from juvenile prison and finds rural Texas refreshing: “Out here, the air smells different,” he says. He meets Keechie through her father, a small time criminal organiser who would be happy to keep her secluded for life. When one of Bowie’s accomplices, Chicamaw (Howard DaSilva), shoots a policeman after a robbing a bank with Bowie, the young couple is forced to run. Foster Hirsch calls They Live by Night “a genre rarity, a sentimental noir” (34). The naïve blissfulness of their affection is associated with the primitive settings they navigate. Though Bowie and Keechie are the most sympathetic protagonists of any rural noir, this is no safeguard against an inevitable, characteristically noir demise. Janey Place writes, “the young lovers are doomed, but the possibility of their love transcends and redeems them both, and its failure criticises the urbanised world that will not let them live” (63). As indicated here, the country offers the young lovers refuge for some time, and their bond is depicted as wonderfully strong, but it is doomed by the stronger force of the law.Raymond Williams discusses how different characteristics are associated with urban and rural spaces:On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved center: of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. (1) They Live By Night breaks down these dichotomies, showing the persistence of crime rooted in rural areas.Bowie desires to “get squared around” and live a more natural life with Keechie. Williams’ country adjectives— “peace, innocence, and simple virtue”— describe the nature of this relationship perfectly. Yet, criminal activity, usually associated with the city, has an overwhelmingly strong presence in this region and their lives. Bowie, following the doomed logic of many a crime film character, plans to launch a new, more honest life with cash raised in a heist. Keechie recognises the contradictions in this plan: “Fine way to get squared around, teaming with them. Stealing money and robbing banks. You’ll get in so deep trying to get squared, they’ll have enough to keep you in for two life times.” For Bowie, crime and the pursuit of love are inseparably bound, refuting the illusion of the pure and innocent countryside personified by characters like Mary Malden in On Dangerous Ground and Ann Miller in Out of the Past.In Ray’s other rural noir, On Dangerous Ground, a lonely, angry, and otherwise burned out cop, Wilson (Rob Ryan), finds both love and peace in his time away from the city. While on his up-state assignment, Wilson meets Mary Walden (Ida Lupino), a blind woman who lives a secluded life miles away from this already desolate, rural community. Mary has a calming influence on Wilson, and fits well within Janey Place’s notion of the archetypal nurturing woman in film noir: “The redemptive woman often represents or is part of a primal connection with nature and/or with the past, which are safe, static states rather than active, exciting ones, but she can sometimes offer the only transcendence possible in film noir” (63).If, as Colin McArthur observes, Ray’s characters frequently seek redemption in rural locales— “[protagonists] may reject progress and modernity; they may choose to go or are sent into primitive areas. […] The journeys which bring them closer to nature may also offer them hope of salvation” (124) — the conclusions of On Dangerous Ground versus They Live By Night offer two markedly different resolutions to this narrative. Where Bowie and Keechie’s life on the lam cannot be sustained, On Dangerous Ground, against the wishes of its director, portrays a much more romanticised version of pastoral life. According to Andrew Dickos, “Ray wanted to end the film on the ambivalent image of Jim Wilson returning to the bleak city,” after he had restored order up-state (132). The actual ending is more sentimental. Jim rushes back north to be with Mary. They passionately kiss in close-up, cueing an exuberant orchestral score as The End appears over a slow tracking shot of the majestic, snow covered landscape. In this way, On Dangerous Ground overturns the usual temporal associations of rural versus urban spaces. As Raymond Williams identifies, “The common image of the country is now an image of the past, and the common image of the city an image of the future” (297). For Wilson, by contrast, city life was no longer sustainable and rurality offers his best means for a future. Leo Marx noted in a variety of American pop culture, from Mark Twain to TV westerns and magazine advertising, a “yearning for a simpler, more harmonious style of life, and existence ‘closer to nature,’ that is the psychic root of all pastoralism— genuine and spurious” (Marx 6). Where most rural noirs expose the agrarian myth as a fantasy and a sham, On Dangerous Ground, exceptionally, perpetuates it as actual and effectual. Here, a bad cop is made good with a few days spent in a sparsely populated area and with a woman shaped by her rural upbringing.As opposed to On Dangerous Ground, where the protagonist’s movement from city to country matches his split identity as a formerly corrupt man wishing to be pure, Frank Borzage’s B-film Moonrise (1948) is located entirely in rural or small-town locations. Set in the fictional Southern town of Woodville, which spans swamps, lushly wooded streets and aging Antebellum mansions, the lead character finds good and bad within the same rural location and himself. Dan (Dane Clark) struggles to escape his legacy as the son of a murderer. This conflict is irreparably heightened when Dan kills a man (who had repeatedly teased and bullied him) in self-defence. The instability of Dan’s moral compass is expressed in the way he treats innocent elements of the natural world: flies, dogs, and, recalling Out of the Past, a local deaf boy. He is alternately cruel and kind. Dan is finally redeemed after seeking the advice of a black hermit, Mose (Rex Ingram), who lives in a ramshackle cabin by the swamp. He counsels Dan with the advice that men turn evil from “being lonesome,” not for having “bad blood.” When Dan, eventually, decides to confess to his crime, the sheriff finds him tenderly holding a search hound against a bucolic, rural backdrop. His complete comfortability with the landscape and its creatures finally allows Dan to reconcile the film’s opening opposition. He is no longer torturously in between good and evil, but openly recognises his wrongs and commits to do good in the future. If I had to select just a single shot to illustrate that noirs are set in rural locations more often than most scholarship would have us believe, it would be the opening sequence of Moonrise. From the first shot, this film associates rural locations with criminal elements. The credit sequence juxtaposes pooling water with an ominous brass score. In this disorienting opening, the camera travels from an image of water, to a group of men framed from the knees down. The camera dollies out and pans left, showing that these men, trudging solemnly, are another’s legal executioners. The frame tilts upward and we see a man hung in silhouette. This dense shot is followed by an image of a baby in a crib, also shadowed, the water again, and finally the execution scene. If this sequence is a thematic montage, it can also be discussed, more simply, as a series of establishing shots: a series of images that, seemingly, could not be more opposed— a baby, a universal symbol of innocence, set against the ominous execution, cruel experience— are paired together by virtue of their common location. The montage continues, showing that the baby is the son of the condemned man. As Dan struggles with the legacy of his father throughout the film, this opening shot continues to inform our reading of this character, split between the potential for good or evil.What a baby is to Moonrise, or, to cite a more familiar reference, what the insurance business is to many a James M. Cain roman noir, produce distribution is to Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949). The apple, often a part of wholesome American myths, is at the centre of this story about corruption. Here, a distribution network that brings Americans this hearty, simple product is connected with criminal activity and violent abuses of power more commonly portrayed in connection with cinematic staples of organised crime such as bootlegging or robbery. This film portrays bad apples in the apple business, showing that no profit driven enterprise— no matter how traditional or rural— is beyond the reach of corruption.Fitting the nature of this subject, numerous scenes in the Dassin film take place in the daylight (in addition to darkness), and in the countryside (in addition to the city) as we move between wine and apple country to the market districts of San Francisco. But if the subject and setting of Thieves’ Highway are unusual for a noir, the behaviour of its characters is not. Spare, bright country landscapes form the backdrop for prototypical noir behaviour: predatory competition for money and power.As one would expect of a film noir, the subject of apple distribution is portrayed with dynamic violence. In the most exciting scene of the film, a truck careens off the road after a long pursuit from rival sellers. Apples scatter across a hillside as the truck bursts into flames. This scene is held in a long-shot, as unscrupulous thugs gather the produce for sale while the unfortunate driver burns to death. Here, the reputedly innocent American apple is subject to cold-blooded, profit-maximizing calculations as much as the more typical topics of noir such as blackmail, fraud, or murder. Passages on desolate roads and at apple orchards qualify Thieves’ Highway as a rural noir; the dark, cynical manner in which capitalist enterprise is treated is resonant with nearly all film noirs. Thieves’ Highway follows a common narrative pattern amongst rural noirs to gradually reveal rural spaces as connected to criminality in urban locations. Typically, this disillusioning fact is narrated from the perspective of a lead character who first has a greater sense of safety in rural settings but learns, over the course of the story, to be more wary in all locations. In Thieves’, Nick’s hope that apple-delivery might earn an honest dollar (he is the only driver to treat the orchard owners fairly) gradually gives way to an awareness of the inevitable corruption that has taken over this enterprise at all levels of production, from farmer, to trucker, to wholesaler, and thus, at all locations, the country, the road, and the city.Between this essay, and the previous work of Morris and Bell on the subject, we are developing a more complete survey of the rural noir. Where Bell’s and Morris’s essays focus more resolutely on rural noirs that relied on the contrast of the city versus the country— which, significantly, was the first tendency of this subgenre that I observed— Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate that this genre can work entirely apart from the city. From start to finish, these films take place in small towns and rural locations. As opposed to Out of the Past, On Dangerous Ground, or The Asphalt Jungle, characters are never pulled back to, nor flee from, an urban life of crime. Instead, vices that are commonly associated with the city have a free-standing life in the rural locations that are often thought of as a refuge from these harsh elements. If both Bell and Morris study the way that rural noirs draw differences between the city and country, two of the three films I add to the subgenre constitute more complete rural noirs, films that work wholly outside urban locations, not just in contrast with it. Bell, like me, notes considerable variety in rural noirs locations, “desert landscapes, farms, mountains, and forests all qualify as settings for consideration,” but he also notes that “Diverse as these landscapes are, this set of films uses them in surprisingly like-minded fashion to achieve a counterpoint to the ubiquitous noir city” (219). In Bell’s analysis, all nine films he studies, feature significant urban segments. He is, in fact, so inclusive as to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss as a rural noir even though it does not contain a single frame shot or set outside of New York City. Rurality is evoked only as a possibility, as alienated urbanite Davy (Jamie Smith) receives letters from his horse-farm-running relatives. Reading these letters offers Davy brief moments of respite from drudgerous city spaces such as the subway and his cramped apartment. In its emphasis on the centrality of rural locations, my project is more similar to David Bell’s work on the rural in horror films than to Jonathan F. Bell’s work on the rural noir. David Bell analyses the way that contemporary horror films work against a “long tradition” of the “idyllic rural” in many Western texts (95). As opposed to works “from Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman to contemporary television shows like Northern Exposure and films such as A River Runs Through It or Grand Canyon” in which the rural is positioned as “a restorative to urban anomie,” David Bell analyses films such as Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that depict “a series of anti-idyllic visions of the rural” (95). Moonrise and They Live By Night, like these horror films, portray the crime and the country as coexistent spheres at the same time that the majority of other popular culture, including noirs like Killer’s Kiss or On Dangerous Ground, portray them as mutually exclusive.To use a mode of generic analysis developed by Rick Altman, the rural noir, while preserving the dominant syntax of other noirs, presents a remarkably different semantic element (31). Consider the following description of the genre, from the introduction to Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide: “The darkness that fills the mirror of the past, which lurks in a dark corner or obscures a dark passage out of the oppressively dark city, is not merely the key adjective of so many film noir titles but the obvious metaphor for the condition of the protagonist’s mind” (Silver and Ward, 4). In this instance, the narrative elements, or syntax, of film noir outlined by Silver and Ward do not require revision, but the urban location, a semantic element, does. Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate the sustainability of the aforementioned syntactic elements— the dark, psychological experience of the leads and their inescapable criminal past— apart from the familiar semantic element of the city.The rural noir must also cause us to reconsider— beyond rural representations or film noir— more generally pitched genre theories. Consider the importance of place to film genre, the majority of which are defined by a typical setting: for melodramas, it is the family home, for Westerns, the American west, and for musicals, the stage. Thomas Schatz separates American genres according to their setting, between genres which deal with “determinate” versus “indeterminate” space:There is a vital distinction between kinds of generic settings and conflicts. Certain genres […] have conflicts that, indigenous to the environment, reflect the physical and ideological struggle for its control. […] Other genres have conflicts that are not indigenous to the locale but are the results of the conflict between the values, attitudes, and actions of its principal characters and the ‘civilised’ setting they inhabit. (26) Schatz discusses noirs, along with detective films, as films which trade in “determinate” settings, limited to the space of the city. The rural noir slips between Schatz’s dichotomy, moving past the space of the city, but not into the civilised, tame settings of the genres of “indeterminate spaces.” It is only fitting that a genre whose very definition lies in its disruption of Hollywood norms— trading high- for low-key lighting, effectual male protagonists for helpless ones, and a confident, coherent worldview for a more paranoid, unstable one would, finally, be able to accommodate a variation— the rural noir— that would seem to upset one of its central tenets, an urban locale. Considering the long list of Hollywood standards that film noirs violated, according to two of its original explicators, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton— “a logical action, an evident distinction between good and evil, well-defined characters with clear motives, scenes that are more spectacular than brutal, a heroine who is exquisitely feminine and a hero who is honest”— it should, perhaps, not be so surprising that the genre is flexible enough to accommodate the existence of the rural noir after all (14). AcknowledgmentsIn addition to M/C Journal's anonymous readers, the author would like to thank Corey Creekmur, Mike Slowik, Barbara Steinson, and Andrew Gorman-Murray for their helpful suggestions. ReferencesAltman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 27-41.The Asphalt Jungle. Dir. John Huston. MGM/UA, 1950.Bell, David. “Anti-Idyll: Rural Horror.” Contested Countryside Cultures. Eds. Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London, Routledge, 1997. 94-108.Bell, Jonathan F. “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir.” Architecture and Film. Ed. Mark Lamster. New York: Princeton Architectural P, 2000. 217-230.Borde, Raymond and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002.Christopher, Nicholas. Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.Cowie, Elizabeth. “Film Noir and Women.” Shades of Noir. Ed. Joan Copjec. New York: Verso, 1993. 121-166.Dickos, Andrew. Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2002.Hirsch, Foster. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999.Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden. New York: Oxford UP, 1964.McArthur, Colin. Underworld U.S.A. London: BFI, 1972.Moonrise. Dir. Frank Borzage. Republic, 1948.Morris, Gary. “Noir Country: Alien Nation.” Bright Lights Film Journal Nov. 2006. 13. Jun. 2008 http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/54/noircountry.htm Muller, Eddie. Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1998.Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley, C.A.: U of California P, 2008.Neale, Steve. “Questions of Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 160-184.On Dangerous Ground. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1951.Out of the Past. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. RKO, 1947.Place, Janey. “Women in Film Noir.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: BFI, 1999. 47-68.Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres. New York: Random House, 1981.Schatz, Thomas. “The Structural Influence: New Directions in Film Genre Study.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 92-102.Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. London: Bloomsbury, 1980.They Live by Night. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1949.Thieves’ Highway. Dir. Jules Dassin. Fox, 1949.Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

L’attribution d’un style à un auteur peut constituer un enjeu problématique. Certains « cas » surprennent, tel le cas Gary/Ajar. Au-delà de l’enjeu socio-littéraire, un enjeu stylistique s’impose. Deux voies de la recherche s’ouvrent : celle de la genèse de l’écriture selon chacun des « auteurs » par l’observation des manuscrits et des processus d’écriture correspondants ; celle de la composition et configuration linguistique du matériau verbal constituant le « style » où l’analyse quantitative apporte sa contribution. À partir du corpus étudié (trois romans de Romain Gary et trois romans d’Émile Ajar écrits durant la même période auxquels s’ajoutent deux romans de Paul Pavlowitch) la question a été posée de l’attribution des œuvres signées Émile Ajar. Pour atteindre cet objectif, il a été nécessaire d’appliquer plusieurs méthodes de type philologique : enquête biographique et contextuelle, analyse génétique des manuscrits, analyse linguistique et stylistique couplée à des méthodes d’analyses quantitatives. Pour l’attribution des œuvres, la thèse croise diverses approches statistiques. Celle liée à la « théorie de reconnaissance des formes » élaborée au laboratoire d’Études linguistiques appliquées de l’Université d’État de Saint-Pétersbourg – expérimentée pour la première fois sur la langue française – est apparue décisive quant aux résultats obtenus. Elle permet de conclure, à partir de l’analyse systématique d’éléments syntaxiques, au fait que les styles respectifs de l’auteur Ajar et de l’auteur Gary ont été générés par un même écrivain
The attribution of a style to an author may constitute a problematic stake. Certain "cases" surprise, such as the case of Gary and Ajar. Beyond the socio-literary stake, a stylistic stake leads. Two different ways open to the search: first, the genesis of the writing for each "author" by the observation of manuscripts and corresponding processes of writing; second, the composition and the linguistic configuration of the verbal material constituting the "style", a search for which the quantitative analysis will be used. From the studied corpus (three Roman Gary's novels and three Emile Ajar's novels written during the same period to which were added two Paul Pavlowitch's novels) the question of the attribution of Emile Ajar's novels was asked. To reach this objective, it turned out necessary to apply several methods of philological analysis: biographic and contextual research, genetic analysis of manuscripts, linguistic and stylistic analysis coupled with quantitative methods. For the attribution of the novels, the thesis crosses different approaches. That based on the "theory of pattern recognition” elaborated in the Laboratory of Applied Linguistic Studies of the Saint-Petersburg State University - used for the first time on the French language - seemed decisive to obtain our results. This method allows to conclude, from the systematic analysis of syntactical elements, that the novels of the author Ajar and the author Gary were created by the same writer

La rivalité entre la réalité et l’imaginaire, thème récurrent dans les œuvres de Romain Gary, ouvre un espace agonistique, dans lequel se déploie le mythe. La réalité, selon Gary, démystifie progressivement le monde, par l’action de la science, de l’individualisme et de la solitude. Elle interdit toute forme d’espoir et clôture le temps, dans une circularité qui interdit une ouverture vers un avenir. Mais il est possible, pour l’homme, de ne pas collaborer à la réalité, en lui opposant la force de l’imaginaire. En inventant ce qui n’est pas contre ce qui est, l’homme produit de la dignité, de l’espoir, un futur possible ; par l’imaginaire, l’homme crée un mythe qui aspire son action à transgresser l’ordre ontologique du monde : l’imaginaire produit de la réalité. Les œuvres d’art montrent à l’homme ce qui n’est pas, pour l’exhorter à réaliser la Beauté ici-bas. Gary développe un humanisme esthétique, où l’homme doit incarner par son comportement les mythes qu’il invente et devenir ainsi un exemple à imiter. La réconciliation entre réalité et imaginaire demeure impossible : l’échec perpétuel du mythe exige son recommencement. L’homme fait des songes et les songes font les hommes : l’homme est un animal mythologique
The competition between the reality and the imaginary one, recurring topic in Romain Gary works, opens an agonistic space, in which the myth is spread. Reality, according to Gary, demystifies the world gradually, by action of science, individualism and loneliness. It prohibits any form of hope and fence time, in a circularity which prohibits an opening towards the future. But it is possible for man not to collaborate with the reality, by opposing to it the force of the imaginary one. While inventing what is not against what is, man produced the dignity, the hope, a possible future; by the imaginary one, man creates a myth which pushes his action to contravene the ontological order of the world : the imaginary one produced reality. The works of art show man what is not, to exhort him to carry out the beauty in the world. Gary develops an aesthetic humanism, where man must incarnate by his behaviour the myths, which he invents, and become thus an example to be imitated. Reconciliation between reality and imaginary remains impossible: the perpetual failure of the myth requires it’s restarting. Man dreams and the dreams make man : man is a mythological animal

Au-dela de la question du double ou de l'imposture, ce travail porte sur la question du sujet de l'inconscient inscrit dans sa repetition sous un nom d'auteur ou un autre. La coupure du pseudonyme etant ici lue comme un changement d'adresse transferentielle, un desir de transmission de la psychanalyse a la generation suivante, entre savoir et verite. Un mot d'esprit therapeutique, traitant par associations faussement libres des preoccupations de l'auteur sur la folie et l'histoire
Beyond the interrogation concerning the double name and identity of the author, is here questioned that of the subject of the unconscious, as it appears in the repetition in writing. Being read in the change of name and writing a desire of transmitting to the next generation some kind of "witz", being therapeutic both for the author and the reader. An endeavour to express something of the writer's questions on "insanity" as lived by himself and the world around him

On connaît l’image de Romain Gary : écrivain, deux fois prix Goncourt (Les racines du ciel en 1956 et La vie devant soi en 1975 sous le pseudonyme d’Emile Ajar), héros de la France libre, homme de conviction, séducteur aux mariages flatteurs… en un mot, personnage multiple, amateur de travestissements. On connaît moins ou pas une autre facette de Romain Gary : diplomate et analyste des relations internationales. Après avoir intégré le Quai d’Orsay à la fin de l’année 1945, il occupe une succession de postes jusqu’en 1960, de Sofia à Los Angeles, en passant successivement par Paris, Berne, New York, Londres et La Paz. Durant cette Carrière, Romain Gary brille de beaucoup de feux, plus encore après sa distinction par les Goncourt, feux que le Département découvre avec une certaine inquiétude. De disponibilité en disponibilité, le fossé entre l’écrivain et le diplomate ne cesse de se creuser. Romain Gary est conscient de la difficulté qu’il soulève en termes de gestion de ressources humaines. La rupture avec la Maison des bords de Seine s’impose. Si le diplomate écrivain pratique le métier diplomatique de façon somme toute assez classique, il y ajoute quelques touches importantes de modernité : précurseur en matière de politique de communication, novateur dans la politique d’influence. A travers son œuvre et ses prises de position publiques, l’écrivain diplomate donne libre cours à une approche, quoique empreinte d’une teinture classique, somme toute moderne des relations internationales : nécessité de la protection de l’environnement dès les années 1950, nécessaire évolution des colonies françaises vers l’indépendance, protection des droits de l’Homme, place de l’humanisme dans les relations internationales… Sur la question de la construction européenne, bien que très gaulliste dans son approche, il pose des questions très pertinentes encore aujourd’hui. Dernier d’une grande lignée de diplomates écrivains, Romain Gary demeure toujours d’une grande actualité pour ceux qui veulent embrasser carrière diplomatique, littéraire ou celle de chercheur en relations internationales.

Ce mémoire propose de mettre en lumière les particularités langagières des protagonistes d’Adieu Gary Cooper et de L’angoisse du roi Salomon de Romain Gary et les implications de celles-ci tant sur le plan diégétique que sur celui de la lecture. En examinant d’abord, par le biais de la sémiotique, Jean et Lenny, les protagonistes des deux romans, et en questionnant ensuite les caractéristiques propres à leur langage, cette étude tentera de dégager le métadiscours des deux romans portant sur le pouvoir des mots (chapitre 1). Elle cherche également à comprendre comment les deux protagonistes, en transformant le parler normatif, réussissent à accepter l’échec de leurs programmes narratifs et à quitter des situations oppressantes (chapitre 2). Ultimement, l’analyse en arrive à montrer que c’est par un effet de contamination du langage des autres que les personnages finissent par se sortir de positions aliénantes (chapitre 3). Alors que la critique s’est essentiellement concentrée sur les aspects thématiques de l’oeuvre garyenne, cette recherche souligne l’intérêt d’une étude stylistique pour les romans portant la signature de « Romain Gary ».

Dans l’œuvre de Romain Gary, l’imagination revêt un aspect complexe. Elle varie selon les multiples postures adoptées par l’écrivain. Le caractère protéiforme de l’imagination nous appelle donc à considérer ses multiples formes, même les plus excentriques. C’est dans les méandres de la « folle du logis » que nous rencontrons la fantaisie. Elle prend l’aspect d’une défense du rire, de la légèreté et de la liberté créatrice. La fantaisie chez Gary se manifeste également dans la création et l’invention des images mentales qui se déploient à travers le fantastique, le féerique, la folie et le fantasme. En décloisonnant les frontières entre la réalité et l’imagination, la fantaisie remet en question les conventions, interroge le langage en le détournant. Le jeu parodique est poussé dans ses derniers retranchements chez Gary. Cette hypothèse de lecture se confirme par la publication tardive du Vin des morts qui dévoile un visage encore méconnu de l’écrivain. En effet, l’univers sombre des ténèbres, semblable à l’atmosphère macabre du Roi Peste de Poe, nous appelle à mettre en exergue l’imagination excentrique de l’écrivain en herbe, et que nous retrouvons plus tard dans Pseudo. La fe masque de la folie et « l’effervescence de la jeunesse » nous portent à considérer l’excentricité comme une réaction à un contexte décadent. Paradoxalement, le rire fantaisiste chez Gary se heurte à une réalité consternante et laisse souvent entrevoir l’angoisse implacable de l’écrivain
In the work of Romain Gary, the imagination takes on a complex aspect. It varies according to the multiple positions adopted by the writer. The multidimensional character of the imagination therefore calls us to consider its multiple forms, even the most eccentric. It is in the meanders (the complexities) of the "chattered mind" that we meet fancy. It takes on the appearance of a defense of laughter, lightness and creative freedom. Gary's fancy is also manifested in the creation and invention of mental images that unfold through the fantasy, the madness and the magical world. By bringing together the boundaries between reality and imagination, fancy challenges conventions, interrogates language by diverting it. Parody play is pushed to its limits by Gary. This hypothesis of reading is confirmed by the late publication of Le Vin des morts” (the Wine of the Dead) which reveals a face still unknown to the writer. Indeed, the dark universe of gloom, similar to the macabre atmosphere of King Pest of Poe, calls us to highlight the eccentric imagination of the aspiring writer, whjch we find later in Pseudo. The mask of madness and the "effervescence of youth" lead us to consider eccentricity as a reaction to a decaying background. Paradoxically, Gary's whimsical laughter comes up against an appalling reality and often reveals the writer's relentless anguish

Cette thèse examine les enjeux associés au déracinement culturel vécu dans l’enfance et ses effets sur la créativité dans la vie adulte. Elle applique les acquis de la psychologie interculturelle et de domaines rapprochés à l’étude de deux auteurs français d’origine juive russe, Nathalie Sarraute et Romain Gary, dont les liens à leurs cultures d’origine n’ont pas jusqu’à présent fait l’objet d’études approfondies. Notre analyse des traces dans le discours autobiographique et l’oeuvre de fiction de ces deux auteurs de la présence de leurs cultures d’origine, d’accueil et de celles de l’expérience du déracinement révèle des phénomènes analogues : comment les propos autobiographiques deviennent un moyen de positionnement au sein de la culture d’accueil ; comment leur oeuvre de fiction expose une attitude critique commune envers cette culture d’adoption ; comment les facteurs culturels influent sur la réception de leur oeuvre ; comment la réception agit sur le discours autobiographique ; comment la créativité est mise en oeuvre pour interroger les enjeux de l’identité personnelle. Cette thèse montre comment, malgré la rareté des représentations manifestes des cultures d’origine dans leur fiction et leur discours autobiographique, l’influence de la tradition littéraire russe (et de l’humour juif, dans le cas de Gary) est cruciale pour la lecture de leur oeuvre, et pour rendre compte de son caractère innovant dans le champ littéraire français : l’oeuvre de Sarraute peut être perçue comme étant écrite contre Tolstoï et comme prolongeant les explorations des relations humaines de Dostoïevski ; l’oeuvre de Gary montre sa dette envers la culture yiddish et les modèles russes de mystification dans sa création d’Émile Ajar. En outre, cette recherche découvre que certaines différences dans la démarche artistique des deux auteurs sont attribuables à des stratégies identitaires contrastées endossées comme moyen de dissimulation d’une interrogation ou d’un vide identitaire communs, causés par l’expérience traumatisante du déracinement dans l’enfance. Ces stratégies identitaires peuvent se résumer comme silence et anonymat dans le cas de Sarraute, et dissimulation et invention dans le cas de Gary, et peuvent être perçues comme les caractéristiques constantes non seulement des contenus mais aussi de la production de leur oeuvre littéraire. Notre examen de la fiction et du discours autobiographique de ces deux auteurs sur une longue période offre de nouveaux apports au domaine de la psychologie interculturelle : il confirme le caractère traumatisant du déracinement culturel vécu pendant l’enfance et ses effets persistants dans la vie adulte, la complexité des processus d’acculturation, y compris le rôle des relations de groupes, et la difficulté et l’intérêt de la représentation ou de l’expression de tels traumatismes par la créativité littéraire.
This thesis examines issues asociated with childhood cultural displacement and its effects on creativity in adult life. It applies insights from intercultural psychology and related fields to the study of two French authors of Russian Jewish origin, Nathalie Sarraute and Romain Gary, whose links to their cultures of origin have not before been the subject of sustained scholarly attention. Our investigation of the traces in these authors’ autobiographical discourse and fictional works of their cultures of origin, host cultures, and of the experience of displacement, reveals similar patterns: how their autobiographical statements become a means of positioning themselves within French society; how their fiction displays a common critical stance towards their host cultures; how cultural factors impact on the reception of literary works; how reception shapes autobiographical discourse; and how creativity is used to explore questions of personal identity. This thesis shows that while manifest representations of Sarraute and Gary’s cultures of origin may be scarce in their fiction and autobiographical discourse, the influence of the Russian literary tradition (and of Jewish humour, in the case of Gary) is crucial in understanding their work, and in explaining its innovative contribution to French letters: Sarraute’s work can be seen as writing against Tolstoy, and continuing Dostoevsky’s explorations of power in human relationships; Gary’s work shows its debt to Yiddish culture and to Russian models of mystification in his creation of the heteronym Émile Ajar. In addition, this research shows that many of the differences between the two writers can be ascribed to contrasting identity strategies, taken up as a means of dissimulating a 6 common questioning or lack of personal identity, which is caused by the traumatic early experience of cultural displacement. These identity strategies can be summarized as silence and anonymity in the case of Sarraute, and dissimulation and invention in the case of Gary, and can be seen as consistent features not only of the content but also of the production of their literary works. The examination of these authors’ fiction and autobiographical discourse over the span of their careers offers new understanding to the field of intercultural psychology: it shows the traumatic nature of childhood cultural displacement and its lasting effects on adult life, the complexity of processes of acculturation, including the role of group relationships, and the challenges and benefits of representing or expressing such trauma through literary creativity.
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Malgré une grande diversité de formes et une profusion d'idées, de personnages et de situations, l'œuvre de romain Gary est en réalité sous-tendu par une même pensée profonde qui gouverne, détermine et transforme tous les autres éléments aussi bien au niveau de la forme qui du fond. Cette pensée peut être définie comme la constellation de deux idées : 1) l'homme est dominé par une aspiration indomptable vers la beauté et la dignité; 2) mais ce principe d'évolution dont découlent estime, respect et justice est aussi une passion difficile, prête a tous les excès. Pour orienter ce désir impérieux, la fiction apparait comme le seul moyen que possède l'homme. Dans l'absence d'absolus, il s'agit d'inventer, d'imaginer un idéal que l'homme peut par la suite essayer d'incarner de sa vie même. Cette volonté d'incarner le rêve dans le cadre du réel, de passer de la fiction a la réalité, constitue la clef de voute de l'œuvre. Cette constatation initiale permet d'intégrer l'analyse des différents traits saillants du roman Garyen (forme, style, personnages, espaces, temps, idées) dans une interprétation de l7ensemble de l'œuvre
Despite an extraordinary diversity of forms and a profusion of ideas, characters and situations, the work of romain Gary is in fact structured by a single underlying fundamental principle which rules, determines, and transfroms the remaining components both on the level of form and content. This principle may be defined as a constellation of two ideas : 1) man is dominated by a passionate aspiration towards beauty and dignity,. 2) but this principle of evolution, source of respect and justice, is at the same time a difficult and excessive passion. Fiction appears to be the best means to control and orient this ardent aspiration. In a world without absolutes, man has to invent, to imagine an ideal, that he can try to incarnate in real life. This determination to incarnate a dream in real life, to transgress the frontier between fiction and reality, is the cornestone in the life and work of gary. This initial observation makes it possible to integrate the analysis of the different saliant traits of the work (forme, style, characters, space, time, ideas) in a synthesized interpretation

L’œuvre romanesque de Romain Gary est un écho du XXe siècle. Des périls de l’histoire, l’écrivain n’en ignore aucun. La Seconde Guerre mondiale forge sa conscience morale ; elle est la source de son gaullisme, basé sur un idéal de l’Homme, auquel il demeure fidèle. Mais au-delà de cette matrice, les années d’après-guerre façonnent également sa pensée. Car ses carrières diplomatique et littéraire n’ont pas été dissymétriques. Des quinze années passées au Quai d’Orsay, nombre de ses romans sont directement inspirés. La diplomatie révèle donc la topographie de la pensée de l’écrivain, qui ne résulte pas seulement du traumatisme de la Shoah et de la fraternité de la Résistance, mais est également forgée en réaction au totalitarisme soviétique et à la résurgence des nationalismes. Explorer sa carrière diplomatique, c’est aller aux sources de son œuvre romanesque, déceler dans l’événement le matériau de la fiction. Romain Gary a donc doublement composé avec l’histoire immédiate, cherchant à en comprendre les déterminants – c’est le travail du diplomate – et à en dépeindre les effets – c’est l’œuvre de l’écrivain. Dès lors, le roman apparaît comme le palimpseste de la dépêche. Et c’est en démêlant cet écheveau, entre diplomatie et littérature, histoire et fiction, que sa pensée politique apparaît avec le plus de clarté, de complexité aussi, et de nuances : en tirant ce fil, son œuvre romanesque démontre son unité et sa cohérence tant vis-à-vis des événements historiques que des positions de l’homme
The novels of Romain Gary echo the events of the 20th Century. None of the great crises of the period is ignored by the author. Gary’s moral conscience was forged by the Second World War and it led him to a philosophy of Gaullism based on a human ideal, to which he always remained faithful. But beyond this matrix the post-war years also shaped his thinking. His diplomatic and literary careers follow a symmetrical path. His fifteen years working for the French Foreign Ministry were the direct inspiration for several of his novels. It is diplomacy which reveals the writer’s intellectual topography. This was not just a product of the trauma of the Shoah and the fraternity of the resistance but was also forged in reaction to Soviet totalitarianism and the resurgence of nationalisms. To explore his diplomatic career is to discover the sources of his novels, to reveal the factual basis of his fiction. Romain Gary made a double usage of contemporary events, first as a diplomat intent on understanding underlying causes, second as a writer painting a picture of the effects. Thus the novel can be seen as a palimpsest, a reworking of the diplomat’s despatch. As this skein is untangled, as diplomacy and literature, history and fiction are teased apart, Gary’s political thinking is revealed in the greatest clarity, complexity, and nuance. As the thread is drawn out, Gary’s novels demonstrate a unity and a coherence both with regard to historical events and to his own personal convictions