A Hard-Boiled Hero in an Atomized World: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s El hombre de mi vida and Milenio Carvalho Lament Neoliberal Alienation

Neophilologus (2024) 108:227–244 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-024-09800-4 A Hard-Boiled Hero in an Atomized World: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s El hombre de mi vida and Milenio Carvalho Lament Neoliberal Alienation José Ortigas1 Accepted: 20 January 2024 / Published online: 9 February 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 Abstract Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Pepe Carvalho detective novels comprise a seminal series, spanning eighteen novels from 1972 to 2004, that consolidated the novela negra as a popular, denunciatory genre in Spain. While much has been written about the early entries in the series, the latter novels, namely El hombre de mi vida (2000), Milenio I: Rumbo a Kabul, and Milenio II: En las antípodas (2004), have not received similar attention. Critics like Colmeiro, Balibrea, and Nichols have accurately read these novels as a denunciation of the most evident negative consequences of globalization at the turn of the new millennium, principally gentrification, displacement, and the exploitation of both labor and natural resources. Here, I expand this analysis to consider another of the deleterious effects of free-market rationality: The increasing personal alienation that has come to characterize modern neoliberal societies, a phenomenon recently analyzed by political philosophers like Brown (2015) and May (2012), and psychologists such as Verhaeghe (2014). I argue that, as the Carvalho character evolves throughout the series and neoliberalism achieves cultural hegemony, the depiction of the solitary protagonist in the final three novels denounces the growing isolation of the individual in a transnational society. This is reflected in the trope of the voyage, Carvalho’s nostalgic melancholia, and the progressively alienated condition of the marginalized detective as his relationships with others, tenuous in the best circumstances, begin to fully disintegrate. Keywords Detective fiction · Neoliberalism · Alienation · Free-market rationality · Social atomization · Vázquez Montalbán José Ortigas 1 Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA 13 228 J. Ortigas Introduction Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Pepe Carvalho detective novels comprise a seminal series, spanning eighteen novels from 1972 to 2004, that consolidated the novela negra as a popular, denunciatory genre in Spain. While much has been written about the early entries in the series, the latter novels, namely El hombre de mi vida (2000), Milenio I: Rumbo a Kabul, and Milenio II: En las antípodas (2004), have not received similar attention.1 Critics like Colmeiro, Balibrea, and Nichols have accurately read these novels as a denunciation of the most evident negative consequences of globalization at the turn of the new millennium, principally gentrification, displacement, and the exploitation of both labor and natural resources. Here, I expand this analysis to consider another of the deleterious effects of free-market rationality: The increasing personal alienation that has come to characterize modern neoliberal societies, a phenomenon recently analyzed by political philosophers like Wendy Brown and Todd May, and psychologists such as Paul Verhaeghe. I argue that, as the Carvalho character evolves throughout the series and neoliberalism achieves cultural hegemony, the depiction of the solitary protagonist in the final three novels denounces the growing isolation of the individual in a transnational society. This is reflected in the trope of the voyage, Carvalho’s nostalgic melancholia, and the progressively alienated condition of the marginalized detective as his relationships with others, tenuous in the best circumstances, begin to fully disintegrate. Vázquez Montalbán and the Carvalho Series Though best known for his detective novels, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939– 2003) was also an accomplished essayist, journalist, and poet. A former member of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSUC), he was jailed by the Franco regime for three years, starting in 1962, for subversive political activities. Beginning his career as journalist upon his release, he would publish in Spain’s leading periodicals until his death in 2003. While his other writings are both widely read and well-respected, it is the enduring popularity of the Carvalho series that garnered Vázquez Montalbán worldwide acclaim. The series spans eighteen novels and various short stories over a period of thirty years (1974–2004). As such, it is a chronicle of the era that witnessed the implementation of multinational free-market capitalism in Spain. In the early novels, Vázquez Montalbán utilizes the taciturn, nostalgic figure of the hardboiled protagonist to reflect his own disenchantment with the failed leftist project of modernization of post-Franco Spain, betrayed by the collusion between corporate oligarchs and an acquisitively corrupt political class.2 In the latter entries, he questions the insidious ways in which a neoliberal ethos has come to permeate even our 1 For analysis of the early novels, see Balibrea (1999, 2007, 2011), Close (2008), Colmeiro (2014), and Nichols (2011). 2 Belenguer (2006) argues that the series “seriously considers the accommodation under successive Socialist governments to a determinist ideology of neo-liberalist centrism that dismisses utopianism as irrational and unnecessary, that legitimizes political lethargy” (p. 24). 13 A Hard-Boiled Hero in an Atomized World: Manuel Vázquez… 229 interpersonal relationships. To effect his critique, Vázquez Montalbán appropriates the tropes of the hard-boiled detective novel, a genre born during the economic and cultural crises of the 1920s and 1930s in the United States. A Hard-Boiled Hero The hard-boiled genre arises largely as a response to the social upheaval and insecurity that characterized US society in the 1920 and 1930s. This condition was triggered principally by two factors: a wave of violence perpetrated by organized-crime syndicates and complicit police forces seeking to profit from the illicit distribution of alcohol during the Prohibition Era (1920–1933); and the crisis of capitalism caused by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 (Mandel, 1994, pp. 31, 34). The figure of the uncompromising private investigator emerges in this milieu of violently corrupt social institutions, endemic injustice, and economic instability.3 Though there are important contextual differences, critics have noted similarities between the social climate of the Prohibition-era U.S. and post-dictatorship Spain in the mid- to late- 1970s (Close, 2008, p. 157; Colmeiro, 1994, pp. 211 − 12). Both societies were beset by economic tumult, political instability, and a generalized distrust of government structures. Like the Stock Market Crash in the U.S., the global oil crisis of 1973, coupled with the antiquated development policies of the Franco regime, led to financial distress in Spain. As the nation underwent an “accelerated economic and cultural trans (...truncated)