Greg's message gave already additional details about Carco's
work and history.
However it is a fact that Carco was always published,
promoted and perceived in France at the time as a literary
author. But, by his subjects (French underground, night life,
small crooks, pimps..etc) and settings (realistic and of the
naturalist vein) we indeed could see him as a
*distant* root having had some influence on a part of French
Noir (to answer Juri). Not as a founder. I think this is the
best way to position this author.
His style of writing is certainly not "behaviourist" enough
(as far as I remember, as I red 3 of his novels long time
ago-and don't have them with me now) to be linked directly to
the early Noir/HB lit domain.
But we could certainly find part of his influence in the
writings of Albert Simonin the author who really created a
new style of HB/Noir novels with French mobsters and typical
French settings during the fifties (and with the dialog and
the narrative text itself written almost totally in French
slang).
Besides authors like Carco we must remember this French
tradition coming from the early 19th Century for
"feuilletons" , stories mixing melodrama, action, adventures,
gore and some social realism - as being one of the important
historical segments of French popular literature. It
developed also into the typical stories of "mauvais garcons"
(literally: bad boys- name for "natural" outlaws).
"Feuilletons" are as well *one* of the roots of typical early
20th Century Gallic mystery (not HB) writers like: Gaston
Leroux - Maurice Leblanc - Alain et Souvestre
(duo of Fantomas fame).
Carco was doing a literary and talented revisiting of the
"mauvais garcons" world. He was also using some slang in his
dialog.
(In France some type of slang has a literary tradition and a
long history).
Besides "Jesus-la-Caille"(title= nickname of the central
character) the second in fame of his novels was: "L'Homme
Traque'"(literally: the Hunted Man). As for 'Perversity' the
English title is the direct equivalent of the French
Perversite', but I do not remember having red that one.
Hope this was not too long.
E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384
--- Juri Nummelin <
jurnum@utu.fi> wrote:
> Francis Carco's "L'Homme traque" was translated
in
> 1930 into Finnish as
> "Vainottu" ("Hunted", "Haunted" or something
like
> that). The book seems
> to have won a prize from the French Academy. Is
this
> an early example of
> French noir?
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