Dear Bill,
In response to your question about definitions of
"hardboiled" and "noir," I have to say that I don't find
having definitions of these terms very helpful as either
reader, writer, or critic. When teaching, I point out that
the word "jazz" has become so devalued as to mean nothing --
which is to say, to mean too much: you have to point to show
what you intend to mean. In our time, "noir" has suffered the
same fate, though I take this soup originally to have come
off the same stove upon which post-war despair simmered to
French existentialism, i.e., Camus. It's not by accident that
L'Etranger was modeled on Horace McCoy and his kind. (If you
want a great "noir" novel, there's none plus noir than They
Shoot Horses: a dance into the abyss.) "Hardboiled" still
means something, I think, but chiefly in opposition to
something else, and it's really more a marketing tool than a
useful description. Well, yeah, sure Hammett and Chandler.
Pelecanos. But what about Danny Woodrell, Jack O'Connell,
Shira Rozan, John Harvey? There's just too much rich,
various, highly original work going on these days for us to
be held to historical categories.
Jim
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