--- JIM DOHERTY <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> Re your comments below:
>
> > I was talking about how various other
"implied"
> > necessary conditions
> > seem to appear -- crime, lack of
> self-consciousness
> > -- when you are
> > applying/enforcing your definition.
>
> "Crime" is implicit in the very subject of
this
> list.
> I always assumed it was clear that we were
talking
> about crime (mystery, suspense, detective, call
it
> what you will) fiction. I mean, what is
Rara-Avis
> about, romance novels set in the Regency
period?
> What
> book did the term "rara-avis" appear in, THE WAR
OF
> THE WORLDS? Rara-Avis is about crime fiction,
so
> all
> discussions, unless specifically qualified, can
and
> should be safely assumed to be about crime
fiction.
>
Even granting you this point -- and your qualification wasn't
immediately apparent to me, anyway -- does AND THEN THERE
WERE NONE/TEN LITTLE INDIANS qualify? How about THE RETURN OF
DR. FU MANCHU? THE CROOKED HINGE? THE HOUND OF THE
BASKERVILLES? THE SPY THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD? Or Joe R.
Lansdale's classic short story "Night They Missed the Horror
Show"? They're all crime stories, they all have a dark and
sinister atmosphere (at least I think so); are they all
noirs?
I personally think that it's a lot harder to define
"noir" or "hardboiled" than, say "police procedural" or "spy
story". Those latter two are structural definitions, they
describe the plot. The first two are stylistic definitions.
You could have a noirish police procedural, or a hardboiled
one, or one that's neither. They're approaches to subject
matter, it seems to me, and it's a lot harder to quantify
that kind of thing.
It's tempting to be a hardass, keep it simple, in/out. If you
can quantify a spy story, why not noir? I understand
completely, for in the past I often thought this way myself.
But I was an idiot. Sometimes the straightforward thing just
doesn't work: there's just too many counterexamples, and
there'll always be a smartass who'll share them. Is somebody
who's just finished Goodis's DOWN THERE and wants something
similar really going to get that from FALLING ANGEL, a book
where it's revealed the hero sold his soul to the devil and
the investigation was a way for Satan to collect?
That doesn't mean you can't define noir or hardboiled, I just
think it pays to be nuanced about it. List the criteria that
generally distinguishes noir fiction
(forboding atmosphere, realism, crime story, downbeat ending,
weak or insufficient protagonist, paranoia or defeatism,
etc.), list authors or books that easily fit (Woolrich,
Goodis, Cain, Kersh's NIGHT AND THE CITY, etc.), note the
marginal cases (Lansdale, maybe), note the ones that seem not
to fit (FU MANCHU series), and then fight it out on an
individual author and book basis. When you're done, the sum
total of the works in the "easily fit" and "maybe fit"
catagory should give you a picture of noir fiction.
I know that sounds ridiculously complicated, but I think fans
of genres do it unconciously all the time. It's just
verbalizing the gut feeling people get when they wonder if an
author fits this or that classification. For instance, you
were talking in another post about how the SERE NOIRE guys
classified noir writers. Do you think that Chandler fits?
Whatever that French guy did, does it seem right to you? Is
he noir in the way THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? is noir? I
don't think so. And that quick opinion is based on what I
know about noir fiction, hardboiled fiction, and
Chandler.
I agree with you completely about post 1963 noir films,
incidentally. But that's another discussion.
doug
now reading George Pelecanos's DOWN BY THE RIVER WHERE THE
DEAD MEN GO.
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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