New Dealers always seemed to be comparing actual capitalism with ideal government. They judged capitalism by its apparent effects and government by its announced intentions
Jim PowellTags: the-great-depression
Although the United States, with its unit banking laws, had thousands of bank failures, Canada, which permitted branch banking, didn't have a single failure during the Great Depression.
Jim PowellTags: the-great-depression
David Lawrence, founder of US News
Jim PowellTags: the-great-depression
In Woolrich's crime fiction there is a gradual development from pulp to noir. The earlier a story, the more likely it stresses pulp elements: one-dimensional macho protagonists, preposterous methods of murder, hordes of cardboard gangsters, dialogue full of whiny insults, blistering fast action. But even in some of his earliest crime stories one finds aspects of noir, and over time the stream works itself pure.
In mature Woolrich the world is an incomprehensible place where beams happen to fall, and are predestined to fall, and are toppled over by malevolent powers; a world ruled by chance, fate and God the malign thug. But the everyday life he portrays is just as terrifying and treacherous. The dominant economic reality is the Depression, which for Woolrich usually means a frightened little guy in a rundown apartment with a hungry wife and children, no money, no job, and desperation eating him like a cancer. The dominant political reality is a police force made up of a few decent cops and a horde of sociopaths licensed to torture and kill, whose outrages are casually accepted by all concerned, not least by the victims. The prevailing emotional states are loneliness and fear. Events take place in darkness, menace breathes out of every corner of the night, the bleak cityscape comes alive on the page and in our hearts.
("Introduction")
Tags: fiction crime police noir pulp cop the-great-depression cornell-woolrich
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