RARA-AVIS: Re: Noir and Otto Penzler

From: cptpipes2000 (cptpipes@hotmail.com)
Date: 11 Aug 2010

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    Jack Bludis wrote
    > In noir fiction, the protag is screwed from the first decision, and things never get better although there are little twinkles of hope here and there, but in the end, he or she is screwed.
    >
    > If there is a happy ending, it's not noir.
    >
    > I've always believed that and now Otto Penzler said it. Maybe that doesn't satisfy everyone, but it satisfies me.

    I recently finished the HCC reprint of Jack Clark's Nobody's Angel and thought it was terrific.

    It would fit nicely on the shelf beside the kind of noir fictions you are referring to, but I don't think it was written in mind.

    What I found most interesting about it was that its contemporary portrayal of the early 90s is distant enough from the current landscape that I really felt as if I were dropped into a much different era just as I do when reading, say, an Ed McBain book from the 50s.

    Chris



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