Joyland

“God help me, I was being gallant. I have wondered often since what would have changed (for good or for ill) had I not been. What I know now is that gallant young men rarely get pussy.”

The cynicism with which Devin questions the virtue of chivalry is a hallmark of the hard-boiled detective. Chivalry, however, is also a trait of the hard-boiled detective whose world-weary exterior shields a heart of gold. The vernacular is also typical of the hard-boiled detective story. King tends to be colorful in his language, which makes the hard-boiled detective a good fit.

“Out in front stood a tightly muscled guy in faded jeans, balding suede boots splotched with grease, and a strap-style T-shirt. He wore a Derby hat tilted on his coal-black hair. A filterless cigarette was parked behind one year. He looked like a cartoon carnival barker from an old-time newspaper strip. […] The guy was bopping to the beat, hands in his back pockets, hips moving side to side. I had a thought, absurd but perfectly clear: when I grow up, I want to look just like this guy.”

Devin’s thought—“when I grow up”—underscores the idea that Devin has yet to come of age. Ironically, the description of Lane Hardy couldn’t be further from either Devin’s ambition (famous author) or what he actually becomes (commercial magazine editor). Lane’s description here is reminiscent of the bad boy, Candlewick (or Lampwick), from Pinocchio’s Toyland. In Disney’s version, Lampwick is depicted with a cigar and a Derby hat. Even more ironically, this person that Devin is so strongly drawn to turns out to be a serial killer.

“‘Who knows, this place might be your future.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, although I already knew what my future was going to be: writing novels and the kind of short stories they publish in The New Yorker. I had it all planned out. Of course, I also had marriage to Wendy Keegan all planned out, and how we’d wait until we were in our thirties to have a couple of kids. When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.’”

Devin will never become the kind of writer he dreams of being. He is slated for a comfortable life writing for commercial magazines. The observation that life never turns out the way you plan is typical of the cynicism of the hard-boiled