Well, this is Sisyphus's work, certainly. I'll make one last
push up the mountain before I let the boulder roll down on me
one last time.
--- JIM DOHERTY <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Doug,
>
> Re your comments below:
>
> > 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?
>
> No
[Snip of my other examples. Mr. Doherty claims FU MANCHU,
HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD
are all noirs. (CROOKED HINGE is a John Dickson Carr
fair-play mystery with a lot of sinister atmosphere, by your
lights it would probably qualify.)]
But this is the folly of abstractions. You've lumped together
a Victorian Detective story, a spy story, and a pulp "Yellow
Menace" adventure and all called it
"noir", defining "noir" as a "dark and forboding atmosphere".
Hey, it's America, define things how you like. And certainly
within the context of your definition you're right. But in
practice calling those all "noirs" glosses over the real
fundamental differences between them. The devil's always in
the details.
*In practice* the term "noir" has come to mean, for crime
fans, the Cornell Woolrich/David Goodis style of story. If
you want to replace the meaning of the word as it's commonly
understood, go to it, but the burden's on you to show that
your definition is better.
Don't we already have useful words meaning "dark and
forboding atmosphere"? Isn't one "gothic"? Isn't another
"paranoiac"?
> Nor, by defining noir or hard-boiled, do I mean
to
> suggest that there aren't gradations within
the
> parameters. For example, most would probably
agree
> that Mike Hammer is more hard-boiled than
the
> Continental Op who, in turn, is more
hard-boiled
> than
> Phil Marlowe. But that's not the same as
saying
> that
> Hammer's hard-boiled and the Op's not, or that
the
> Op's hard-boiled and Marlowe's not.
>
> Even within a author's work, even within a
given
> series, there can be gradations. Chandler's
"Red
> Wind" is more noir that "Trouble Is My
Business,"
> and
> FAREWELL, MY LOVELY more noir than THE HIGH
WINDOW.
This is the other problem, since obviously there are lots of
"gradations" as you put it, and while I can simply point to
STREET OF NO RETURN and say "that's a noir" and SPY and say
"that's a spy story" you have to reinvent the wheel, claim
they're both "noirs", remind us of your own definition of
"noir", and then distinguish between them. That's part of
what I meant when I said your definition wasn't useful.
>> > 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?
>
> Yes, but that has nothing to do with what is
meant
> by
> "hard-boiled" and "noir." Those terms are
just
> descriptions of a type of story. They're
not
> guarantees that a given reader is going to
like
> everything that fits those parameters.
This is the other part of what I mean when I say your
definition isn't useful. Well, I suppose if somebody wanted
to simply read crime stories with forboding atmospheres, it
might work. Let me rephrase it then: your definition is of
limited usefulness.
(Do you classify all crime fiction this way? By style?
"Hard-boiled, noir"...I guess the rest would be
"realistic, poetic, fantastic"?)
I don't think styles define stories. Obviously here you're
lumping together some pretty dissimilar books and authors.
And I, at least, think you miss the mark as a result: FALLING
ANGEL is a PI story with a dark forboding atmosphere, but I
really don't think that makes it a "noir". At it's heart it's
a straight up horror story, done in PI fancydress.
> All of that depends on the individual writer,
the
> individual reader, the individual book,
the
> particular
> mood the reader's in when he picks up that book,
and
> a
> whole host of other things that have nothing to
with
> whether or not a given book is hard-boiled or
noir
> or
> both or neither.
You're pressing down too hard on this. I like Chandler, I
don't like Robert Crais. That doesn't mean as a rule of thumb
I don't think of both their work as hard-boiled. I was saying
something much more basic, that your classification schema
would reclassify a lot of books, resulting in odd, eccentric
groupings. It might work for you, of course.
> If you want a definition of hard-boiled or noir
that
> guarantees that a reader will enjoy all
books
> falling
> within a particular classification, I'm
sorry,
> there's
> just no such thing. That's something every
reader
> is
> going to have to decide on a book-by-book
basis.
Absolutely! Well said! But your definition, on it's face
quite simple, in practice redraws the lines on the map. I
want to be sure we're all at least talking about the same
thing.
>
> That's essentially what I did. And I
discovered
> that
> the criteria that generally distinguishes noir is
a
> dark and sinister atmosphere. Not weak
> protagonists.
> Not downbeat endings. Not defeatism. Just a
dark
> and
> sinister atmosphere. Further I discovered that
not
> only Goodis, Cain, Kersh, and Woolrich,
but
> Spillane,
> Chandler, Hammett, and, yes, Sax Rohmer, all
easily
> fit the parameters.
Well, I don't think you did it correctly. I hate to sound
like John Kerry here, but I really think if you are looking
to define "noir", you need to get big and sloppy and nuanced
with it. It's not as seductively clear as "dark and forboding
atmosphere", but it'll end up being more accurate. And I
think tossing Chandler in with Cain just obscures the
differences between the two, the stuff that made them worth
reading in the first place.
doug
PS. I don't think Chandler or Hammett are noir writers.
They're pretty much the antithesis of it, in fact, no matter
how much dark and forboding atmosphere you spot. You're on
somewhat stronger ground with Spillane, although Hammer's
essential strength and heroism doesn't qualify him,
IMHO.
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo!
- Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 16 May 2004 EDT