As Time Goes By: Film Noir and Nostalgic Reminiscence in Rubem Fonseca's Vastas emoções e pensamentos imperfeitos

Abstract

This article examines the notion of nostalgia in Brazilian Rubem Fonseca's postmodern noir novel, Vastas emoções e pensamentos imperfeitos (1988). Although nostalgia has always been a fixture of film noir and the hardboiled novel, with postmodern noir, such a theme passes through significant permutations. As the more contemporary neo-noir detective reminisces about the past, much of this nostalgia is for classic movies and film noir itself. The narrator-protagonist of Fonseca's novel, for example, makes constant allusions to Golden Age Hollywood motion pictures to make sense of existence. Such an enterprise, however, is problematic. If on one level the nostalgic narrator longs to recuperate the substance of artistic tradition in classic film, on another level, he becomes disoriented by the simulacra of cinematic imagery. Through this contradictory fascination with classic motion pictures, the novel is able to demonstrate the dialectical conflict of the modern Kantian subject—the protagonist is caught between his desire for a substantive understanding of himself and the disconsolate recognition that any notion of self is inevitably reduced to a mere appearance or simulacrum. This study alleges that the supposedly postmodern dilemmas of contemporary noir actually hearken back to certain philosophical impasses of the enlightenment. The narrator's existential malaise parallels that of the modern subject and, therefore, is able to rescue a sense of humanity.