As I mentioned in my last post, I have been writing stories set in 1955, about a private investigator, in the style of the old hardboiled detective series. It has given me the oddest case of anemoia.
For those of you not familiar with the word, it’s a neologism from about twenty years ago that means a nostalgia or longing for a time or place you’ve never known. In my case, it’s New York City in the mid 1950s. And it is not something I ever expected.
I have visited the Big Apple a few times, and it gives me a strange sense of déjà vu, mostly because I have seen the city so often on television or in the movies that parts of it feel familiar even though I know I have never been there before. My wife doesn't have this problem because she grew up there, so for her, watching the same shows just has added subtext depending on which borough, or even which neighborhood, she sees.
But I am not missing New York City of the 21st century, but something seventy years ago, before I was even born.
For research on these stories, I have been watching old movies, mostly black and white. I have watched a lot of film noir, but also more straightforward crime dramas, and comedies as well. Not only did I want to get a sense of the pace and rhythm of life in that era, but I also wanted a sense of what life was like as reflected by the popular entertainment. What kind of technology was unremarkable, and how was it used? How did social situations work? What kind of things might draw attention, and what might not?
Here’s the main thing I learned: our notion of the squeaky clean 1950s is a product mostly of people who were comparing it to the more chaotic period of the 1960s and the 1970s. The Hays Code, which regulated the moral content of the movies, had already begun to weaken, but television shows had a higher degree of self-censorship, which led to an split perspective on the American culture: if your memories from the time came from sitcoms and variety shows, then your impressions might be very different than if you spent your time watching Kiss Me Deadly or Sweet Smell of Success.
The technology level also surprised me. Watching Humphrey Bogart use a car phone in Sabrina (1954) or Mike Hammer listening to a message on his answering machine in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) makes me realize that at least at some levels of wealth, these were unremarkable. But most of the elevators still had operators, if the building even had an elevator: many four and five story buildings did not.
NYC itself had the familiar icons of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, but taxicabs were mostly black. Greenwich Village was already an artistic hub filled with jazz clubs and beat poets, but Soho was an industrial wasteland known as Hell’s Hundred Acres. Times Square had been dropping a ball on New Year’s Eve for almost fifty years, and the Broadway theaters were in the midst of a Golden Age. The Mafia had switched from bootlegging alcohol to trafficking narcotics, especially heroin, in addition to gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, and extortion. The Statue of Liberty still greeted ships coming in, but people were arriving by plane as well: Newark Liberty International Airport opened in 1928, LaGuardia in 1939, and JFK (called Idlewild Airport) in 1948. The Staten Island Ferry had been long established, but Staten Island did not yet have a bridge to New York.
Balancing the old New York against the more modern city we tend to imagine can be difficult, and it doesn’t help to know that the first glass and steel skyscrapers like the Seagram's Building were in the process of being built. Part of the way I’m dealing with it is by being vague: my main character lives and works in a generic Big City so far, in an unnamed area between the rough lower class, and the somewhat better middle class. I’m reluctant to get too specific, because putting in in a time and place that are not my own, I know that there are nuances and distinctions I just can't get right.
Just posting this will probably open me up to a ton of stuff that I’m getting wrong, or just missing entirely. And that’s fine by me, since any information helps me refine the style and presence of what I’m writing.
What I didn't expect was to become so engaged in this world. Nostalgia doesn't quite capture the feeling, since it’s not really a wistful fondness. Anemoia gets closer, since the time and place I’m describing has never really existed even if based on New York City at a definite time.
So I need a new word to describe what writers go through when a character refuses to go away after their story is over, and in fact demands more: more backstory, more people in their world, more situations to test them.
I’ve written three so far. The first is published in Pinup Noir 3. Another has been submitted for an upcoming anthology; I’m not sure what to do with the third. And I’ve got lots of ideas swirling, so we’ll see how far this goes.