RARA-AVIS: Black noir

From: Mark Sullivan ( DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net)
Date: 26 Mar 2004


The recent mentions of Goines and Heard have made me a bit curious about Black hardboiled fiction. I've only read a smattering -- Himes's Harlem Cycle, plus Run Man Run, a few Iceberg Slims, Nathan Heard's Howard Street, Vern Smith's Jones Men, Walter Mosley, Ronin Ro's Street Sweeper
(bad, and not good bad). I've gathered a number more that I have not read -- a few by Goines, several of the Old School Books authors like Pharr, Cooper and Perry, a bunch of blaxploitation novelizations and Holloway House books, particularly by Readus. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could help me figure out a reading list to get me started, with recommendations about the best authors and their best books. Perhaps it could be broken down into categories like the following:

Vintage Black hardboiled/noir

Contemporary Black hardboiled/noir

Whites writing Black hardboiled/noir

Maybe they could be further broken down into literary and trashy examples, with trashy a classification of genre not quality -- not that there's a clear line between the two, but I'd put most Holloway House books towards the trashier end, seemingly trying to be a Black Gold Medal.

Mark

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