At 10:10 AM 02/03/2007, you wrote:
>I know what you mean. Ken Bruen is one of my
favorites (one of very few
>authors I will buy in hardback, have even ordered
books from the
>overseas because of the delay before their US
printing), but I'm kind of
>dreading the probable imitators, fearing they will
try to imitate the
>distinctive style and miss the substance.
I took the original query a bit differently than you, to mean
who is breaking new ground in noir writing, not just who are
the new, or more recent writers in the field. So I'm not sure
what Ken Bruen, or many of the others named so far are doing
that takes noir or hardboil in a new direction. Not that I
provided much info of that sort when I suggested Ken Harvey
either, but still I'd like to go on that riff for a
bit.
What's new about Ken Bruen? I've read only the one about
killing Tinkers, and liked it- looking forward to reading
more. It strikes me that much of that book's appeal comes
from the style, which on one level is based upon catching the
street vernacular, which is our working definition of
hardboil. What's different with Bruen is the location of
those particular streets, but even here it strikes me that
there are older precedents, going back to Roddy Doyle etc.
There were elements of noir and crime in The Commitments and
Paddy Clark etc. too, though we don't normally consider them
crime writing. Right now, I think Ellroy is still noir's
leading stylist, even if we're not always happy with the
results.
So is Bruen a new direction on this basis, or did I give too
superficial a read to see something new in the
substance?
If new locations are enough to consider them a new path, then
I'd like to mention Jose Latour, whose mean streets are in
Havana. For a number of reasons, most of them obvious, we
haven't had a lot of information about day to day life in
Cuba, let alone crime and government corruption. And the
aforementioned Ken Harvey finds mean streets in, of all
places, Newfoundland. Again, a lot of what we get written
about Newf is of tye-diddley-aye outporters and their Irish
roots, with only a suggestion of a broader mean streak. But
the infamous Cod Co. improvisational comedy group developed a
humour based upon a culture of limited-opportunities, fixed
attitudes and hard drinking. Harvey's is the first noir I've
seen that gets down to the cultural inescapability of
street-level crime in St. John's, and by inference, other
communities as well.
It also strikes me that one of the difficulties of dealing
with this question is that writing for books is no longer the
primary medium for noir or most genres. There are many
techniques, character, plot lines and styles that are now
broken on television or the movies before we see them in
novels or short stories. "Memento" and "Pulp Fiction" at
least drew attention to non-chronological storytelling which
is a relatively new trend to noir and hardboiled fiction, I
think, but only one has a link to text and even that one has
a related chicken/egg question.
>"Is there anyone who has debuted since 2000 (and yes
the date is
>arbitrary) who is blowing other Avians away? If so,
please share."
>
>Charlie Huston, both his crime and vampire nor
series, have the first
>volume collecting his Moon Knight on
order.
Cross-overs are new and expanding in noir and, obviously,
other genres. Don't know that many of them blow me away, but
it promises interesting possibilities.
>Dominic Stansberry is pre-2000, right? I wasn't as
impressed by The
>Confession as some (nor was I offended by it), but
Last Days of Il Duce
>and Chasing the Dragon were great. I've go to get
some more of his.
The thing I like about Stansberry is that, based on his
Manifesto, there's an awareness of a need to push the
envelope, that the genre cannot live on nostalgia alone, even
though many of us were uncertain that he's found significant
new ground himself. But he's interesting both for the effort
and the anticipation of the possibility that something
different and exciting will emerge from this corner.
>And a few rara-avians:
>
>Duane Swierzcynski, with two crime novels that are
pretty different in
>subgenre, but both wit breakneck paces.
>
>Dave Zeltserman whose Fast Lane twists the PI genre.
Looking forward to
>his next -- isn't it imminent Dave?
>
>Allan Guthrie was first published after 200, right?
I've really liked
>both of his, looking forward to his next.
>
>Richard Aleas's Little Girl Lost was a nice series
debut.
>
>Terrill Lee Lankford published two (very good)
pre-2000 books before
>immersing himself in the film industry. Post-2000 he
came back with two
>books set in its underbelly.
>
>These may not be rewriting the rules of the genre/s
(with the possible
>exception of Dave's subversion, but there's decades
ol precedent for
>that, too), but they are renewing it by writing very
well within them.
Be specific, please. Let's assume they're all good writers
and worth reading, and they're relatively new at the genre,
but what do they do that looks to at least to promise new
ground? I'm not denying that they do this (I don't know), I
just want more info.
For my part, I think there's a trend to broaden the
availability of crime, where and how it occurs. So many
stories I read or see now take place against an ongoing
background of criminal activity at different distances from
the primary characters, with the sense that it's always
around and ready to draw people in. That criminal (and
immoral) behaviour is not an either/or, white hat vs. black
hat, isolated set of events, but rather that corruption is a
constantly available and partaken at varied times according
to needs and desires, by all. This thought occurred to me
when watching The Black Doneleys last night on telly, and I
think it applies to Harvey's
"Inside" as well. I think we're going to see more sub-urban
noir in the future, playing off that idea, getting away from
the largely urban nature of noir. And we'll see more of it
set in multi-cultural communities, mixed with multi-cultural
issues, with culture tied less and less to geography. We get
a bit of that with Bruen, his protag moving from Galway to
England & back. Mobility in the age of globalization is
ripe for crime-writing exploitation. A lot of that might be
happening under the heading of "terror" but that's just
another form of crime, isn't it, for writing purposes?
The other thing I think I see now, and though I haven't read
it
(discuss among yourselves, please) my sense from what I've
heard is that Gun Monkeys might be an example, is the
depiction of violence for the sheer, adrenaline pumping
pleasure of it, which is something that has appeared before
but usually under a form of self-censorship which compels a
condemnation of this behaviour. I have read some unpublished
work that picks up this theme as well, and I'm wondering if
there isn't more of it related to youth gangs.
And finally, what I like to read and write about are the
difficulties of making individual decisions between right,
wrong, moral, criminal, etc. in this multi-media age of
uncertain values.
But that's just me, Kerry
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