Tennessee Noir, or William Gay’s “The Paperhanger”
William Gay’s “The Paperhanger,” which was first published in the February 2000 issue of Harper’s Magazine, was then included in the 2002 collection of short stories entitled I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, which develops its own powerful version of Tennessee blues. Set at the heart of Gay’s...
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| הוצא לאור ב: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse, |
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| מחבר ראשי: | |
| פורמט: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| שפה: | Anglais |
| יצא לאור: |
Journal of the Short Story in English
2024
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| גישה מקוונת: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| סיכום: | William Gay’s “The Paperhanger,” which was first published in the February 2000 issue of Harper’s Magazine, was then included in the 2002 collection of short stories entitled I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, which develops its own powerful version of Tennessee blues. Set at the heart of Gay’s rural Tennessee, the story follows a rather traditional crime story pattern: a little girl, four years old, mysteriously disappears on the construction site where her well-off Pakistani parents have a big house built by a herd of workers; the place and neighboring woods are searched by the law for hours that turn into days, but she is never found. Unable to cope with their grief and loss, the parents split and experience an inexorable downfall. As, a few of months later, the mother, revisits the abandoned place where “she lost her daughter,” the mystery is solved and the chilling circumstances of the girl’s disappearance revealed. Starting with a brief introduction of the author’s career and with tentative definitions of noir as a genre, this paper aims to show how “The Paperhanger” interweaves Gay’s own brand of southern Noir with a (rather) traditional crime story plotline, addressing questions of class conflict and retaliation, through a subtle combination of horror and poetry. |
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