Abstract
Chapter 2 examines the history of necropornography in modern crime fiction. It proposes that a fascination with the sexualized cadavers of women pervaded the detective genre beginning with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842). It situates Poe with respect to a narrative tradition of “sexual tales of murder” (Karen Halttunen) centrally concerned with the sexuality of female victims. The chapter examines eroticized cadavers and dissection scenes in George Lippard’s The Quaker City (1845), La huella del crimen (1877) by Raúl Waleis (Luis V. Varela), Jonathan Latimer’s The Lady in the Morgue (1936), Michael Storme’s Hot Dames on Cold Slabs (1952), and So Nude, So Dead (1952) and Widows (1991), both by Ed McBain.
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Notes
- 1.
For critiques of the von Hagen’s exertion of an eroticized and sexualized visual power and the hyper-sexualization of plastinated cadavers in his exhibitions, see Deller 245–6, Desmond 48–9 and Linke 16–17.
- 2.
According to the editor of the 2009 edition of La huella del crimen, critics who identify it as the first detective novel published in Spanish include “[Pedro Luis] Barcia, [Jorge] Lafforgue, [Néstor] Ponce, [Jorge] Rivera, among others” (Setton “Criterios” 7).
- 3.
In his postscript to La huella del crimen, Román Setton observes that the denouement of the novel confirms the affirmative character of classical detective fiction (in accordance with Pierre Macherey’s definition of “affirmative culture”): “law and the State [are] vehicles of reason. Confidence in progress, which is characteristic of the Generation of ’80, is clearly seen […] in the economy of the crime’s resolution: a steely logic and procedures of applied science, utilization of scientific advancements, prudence in judgement, reestablishment of order, and progress of justice” (“Raúl Waleis” 304).
- 4.
Gene Janes’s novel Death in a Nudist Camp appeared in Sydney, Australia, c.1952 (Johnson-Woods 26) and a story with the same title but attributed to Jimmy Rizutto appeared in the May 1954 issue of The Saint Detective Magazine, published in New York but with reprint editions in Australia and the United Kingdom (Crime, Mystery & Gangster Fiction Magazine Index).
- 5.
My colleague Loredana Comparone informs me that Moravia plays here with two senses of the word “beccamorto,” which means both “gravedigger” and “a man who shamelessly or clumsily flirts with a woman.” I am indebted to Loredana for her translation of the Italian passages cited here.
- 6.
The latent homoerotic affect and violent homophobic repression that characterizes hard-boiled fiction is perfectly exemplified by another usage of the “pumping slugs” imagery in Storme’s novel, when one Chicago gangster fantasizes about shooting a rival: “it would be kinda nice to hear the sloppy thuds as bullets from his Luger found their way into Cabello’s belly” (55). On the antagonistic homoerotics of hard-boiled fiction, see Forter (27) and Breu (14–15).
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Close, G.S. (2018). Necropornography in Modern Crime Fiction. In: Female Corpses in Crime Fiction. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99013-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99013-2_2
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