Glenn wrote:
I'm new to the boards so please bear with me.
<bunch snipped>
Would you say that this book is hardboiled or noir? Why or
why not?
***************** Welcome to the group, Glenn. I haven't read
the book you ask about, but I can relay to you a couple
hardboiled/noir definitions that float around on
rara-avis.
Jim Doherty's definitions:
hardboiled = tough and colloquial noir = dark and
sinister
If that's too complex, Jack Bludis's definitions whittle it
down even further:
hardboiled = tough noir = screwed
Personally, I like them both. Jim adds colloquial to the
hardboiled definition because he sees it as a class- or
street-oriented genre, so although James Bond and Sherlock
Holmes may be tough as nails, their somewhat aristocratic
airs keep them out of the hardboiled club.
Noir is more complex, I think. Some people on the list think
it goes beyond just atmosphere, and must relate to the
protagonist's state of mind, with fear and desperation being
on the short list. Some see noir as an extension of the
pessimistic determinism in the early writings of American
naturalists such as Jack London and Stephen Crane, and that
the noir protagonist is doomed from the beginning.
It's also fairly well accepted that the two genres are not
mutually exclusive of one another, so a book can be both
hardboiled and noir. In my experience, only rarely is noir
divorced from hardboiled.
miker
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 06 Jan 2005 EST