>----------
>From: Ryan
Benedetti[SMTP:rhino@cybercen.net]
>Sent: 25 November, 1997 5:58 PM
>To: Hard-boiled List
>Subject: RARA-AVIS: Auster and Lethem
>
>Has anyone out there read Paul Auster's
>_New York Trilogy_ or _Leviathan_?
>And since I'm asking, how about _Gun With
>Occasional Music_ by Johnathan Lethem?
>Auster is more pensive and post-modern,
>whereas Lethem is more humorous and
cyberpunkish,
>but they're both definitely hard-boiled
>structure/content-wise. Some hard-boiled
>fans I've met, my father is one of them,
will
>only read straight, concrete realism,
>whereas others enjoy a more "artistic" style
>that plays with the form and formula a bit.
>I emphasize the quotes above since realism
>can be as artistic as any other style.
>From recent discussions in this group,
>I gather that we have two strands
>here: "hard-boiled" and "noir." "Noir" seems to
be
>the bastard, post-industrial, stepchild
>of gothic romance. "Hard-boiled" seems
particular
>to a type of post-war, commercial, detective
fiction.
>
Noir is usually film, as in film noir, but I like another
pretentious
french term "roman noir" or black novel. Noir has destinct
themes as
well:
* The location (usually a city) as a character-like element
in the
story.
* A sense of entrapment.
* Action at night.
* Those who pass for decent folk sucked down by a flaw,
greed, a woman
OR decent folk in the wrong place at the wrong time.
* Fate as enevitable. Justice by nature.
Obviously there are others and books to describe them. Cain
and Thompson
are prime examples of Roman Noir, Detour, DOA, the Killers,
of Film
Noir. Hardboiled and Noir cross lines, but Hardboiled is
often paired
with "detective fiction" where as to me the noir novel needs
no
detective and is much more effective with a regular joe or
jane. The
Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemntity, for example.
Vanished
by Mary McGarry Morris is like that as well.
--Len
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