My understanding of the whole hardboiled/noir issue has
always been that
the "Hardboiled" title had a lot more to do with the main
character rather
than the "style" of the book. I've always thought noir
implies that the
general flow of the main characters is from good to evil,
from innocence to
corruption. I've agree that "noir" describes the mood more
consistently,
but aren't we really just talking about titles publishers
just slap on
penny dreadfuls (in most cases)? Has there ever been any
author or
filmmaker who has bothered to satisfactorily define what they
mean by
either title? I think the general nature of this discussion
implies that
there has not.
On a completely different note, I thought that it would be
interesting to
use the general model (albeit more informally) of the book
discussions to
start a more systematic discussion of films in the genre. It
has been (as
far as I've seen) disparate remarks on good or bad movies
out. Would
anyone else be interested in doing something like this? We
could possibly
have the list farther ahead than the reading list, as movies
are often more
difficult to find copies of. Just a random thought.
To switch topics again, I was looking at the Black Lizard
copy of _The
Postman Always Rings Twice_ and on the back it said that
"[_Postman_] was
acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for _The
Stranger_." I hadn't
heard this before and was curious just where he said
this.
Finally, I saw a book at the library a while ago which came
with a music CD
to listen to, with separate tracks for different parts of the
book and
different settings. I was wondering if anyone had heard what
music
different classic authors in the genre were fans of, and what
are some good
author/musician pairings.
Sorry about the length,
Brian Long
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