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RARA-AVIS: Noir/Hardboiled and popular fiction (long... but interesting) 

So, after pages and pages of dissertation about the merit of the words Noir
or HB to define a certain type of mystery fiction novels that appeared
around the 20's in the USA and survived until 1997  all over the world,
after having evolved to a broader base of subjects, types of writing, and
characters... we still do not know  what most of you all are really speaking
about!

In order of appearance in the thread:

A.
-most of the time references for 'proof' are given ONLY for novels of the
30's and 40's with a timid extension to the 50's . Chandler and Hammett,
being apparently the only sources to take into consideration to judge if a
definition is working and well fit...

-cinema now seems to receive the same treatment: only films of the end 30's,
40's and early 50's are considered for examination

Are you not all here confusing the analyse of a genre with the research
about its historical foundation?
What about the HB/Noir that was produced after this time period?
Your system is excluding it...?

With the same method and approach applied to literary novels, all the novels
of the modern literature should be judged only by the criteria found in the
origin of the  modern novel as a literary genre ( origins currently
admitted: 1605- Don Quixotte/Spanish - mid17th century for French
literature: La Princesse de Cleves-  English literature: end 18th
century,early 19th- you name yourself the elected...  ) to see if they
deserve to be named 'novel'.
Maybe could we apply something more evolutive...


B.

-Excess of rules and definitions in a system leads to paradox...
(Daily observation in the messages dealing with the  Hb/Noir definition)

Well, yes it is a fact. Should you have asked your colleagues of the
mathematics department about it they could have explained it very quickly .
A clue: axioms are the culprits.

So be prepared not to cover the whole domain even with a top definition!
Paradoxes are difficult to  accept, but unavoidable.

Then: what about the artistic freedom? Artists are here to break the rules
and evolve. You will have to allow this to the Hb/Noir writer...or cineast.
But they did'nt wait for you: they already did it...
In the 50's and later...

Why not to prefer a set of characteristics that will describe most of the
domain, to a strict definition that will be more a double edge knife than a
working tool?
Strict definition being unavoidably subject to endless arguments leading to
nowhere.
Popular arts have often lousy words to name them: what is Sci-Fi?
Worse: in English there is no good word describing these strips of drawings
telling a story-  comic (s) is finally the best we can find .' Graphic
novel' is pathetic, and is unable to cover all of the genres of ...comics.

As academics always enter ' popular' genres  or their critic late ( when it
is less dangerous to emit opinions as some 'masters' of the genre were
already elected by others) the vocabulary stays a little loose, coming more
from a habit than from an analyse. 
Same apply for popular fiction and HB. We have to accept it. It is not the
result of a plot.


C

-Horror! Genres can overlap... and they do!
HB can be Noir, and vice versa...

Well yes... Even if it is a nightmare for publishers/producers that like
very much simple categories,  writers and cineasts are arrogant enough to
overlap genres in  
one work.  Well, well well... what a world!

To avoid endless arguments I will illustrate this by examples taken from
American films:
- a lot of 'westerns' from mid- sixties onwards are really hard-boiled (some
earlier examples can be found as well). In fact they are more from the
Hard-Boiled genre
due the plot and the type of characters. They are in  HB developed in a
western setting...
Best examples: 'The Wild Bunch'  'ride the High Country' both by Peckinpah.
Western with obvious Noir coloration: 'Johnny Guitar'

-'Blade Runner' is more HB with a tint of Noir than SF in the cinema
treatment it received!  But IMO the novel by Philip K Dick is SF,
speculative and poetic SF, but definitely SF... NOT HB!

Same kind of overlap will be found in mystery literature. Fortunately.


D

- by two times, the word  Noir was rejected only because of its French origin...

Then you should call them (films and novels): Gothic - authentified
Anglo-Saxon label . If you do not see why, go back to your books (sorry:texts)
But then you will encounter another pitfall: the German origin of that kind
of literature.... Gosh, foreigners... again!

There is a big problem with novels in the English literature; real literary
genre appeared so late that it is maybe normal to admit that other cultures
had a better vocabulary to differentiate genres of novels, to establish
nuances and patterns, as they had already a tradition for analyzing, and  a
wider experience to review, novels of the literary genre long before the
English culture.
 
Somebody said that Noir was more an impressionist definition: absolutely
true, as the word was chosen in French to * evoke* multiple analogies
between different medias, in their forms and in their inspirations, and the
word Noir was itself making an analogy with its former uses to qualify fate(
bad luck) and also pessimism in some arts (humour noir, roman noir -long
before HB/Noir appeared).

Americana: recently, an American writer publishing mystery  novels of
quality with some success and applause from the critics declared  " In
America today the kiss of death the critics can give to an author is to
qualify his work as: literary or Noir..." well, well well... 


Short conclusion for a too long text:

Let us try to make a set of characteristics typical of the genres we want to
analyze giving an overview of what HB/Noir is, avoiding strict definitions.
We will certainly discover they overlap. 
But we have to account for the whole history of the genres, not only for
their early forms, if we want something appropriated.


E.Borgers



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