--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, vhend1234@a... wrote:
> Hi, Max,
> Thanks for the new listings. Funny thing about the
H's. Without
getting into
> a debate, how are you separating the hardboiled
women from the
noir? Who is
> on your noir list?
> Vicki
>
Hi Vicki,
I agree with a number of the distinctions that have been made
here between noir and hardboiled. Noir is dark; the noir
character is screwed. I'd also say that in noir the character
did not go "looking" for trouble, but it found him/her
anyway. Which is why I would put most police procedurals and
PI novels more in the hardboiled category
(of course there's no reason why they can't be in both). They
both seem to share a certain attitude towards violence and
the violent and harsh nature of the world. I think hardboiled
is also more often about working class people and uses
colloquial language (another distinction that's been made
here). That said, many authors seem to work in both areas. So
Dorothy Hughes' RIDE A PINK HORSE (about a criminal on the
lam in Mexico) but IN A LONELY PLACE is more purely noir.
Patricia Highsmith (another H) wrote some excellent noir
novels but I wouldn't call any of them hardboiled. Helen
Nielsen is another excellent author who worked in both
hardboiled and noir. Margaret Millar did some fine noir. Vin
Packer is also more noir, and one of my favorites.
A couple Hughes novels have been reprinted recently by the
Feminist Press in an imprint called "Femme Fatales: Women
Write Pulp." Some of the other books they have look
interesting and may be noirish--such as Evelyn Piper's BUNNY
LAKE IS MISSING (the movie version was pretty dark).
Max
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