Etienne,
Great post on existential/existentialism. I sometimes think
"existentialism", as a word, is just getting too far away
from the root.
Charlie.
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "E.Borgers"
<webeurop@y...> wrote:
> I support most of the declaration Ed Gorman made
here on noir.
> His directions are the good ones to try to put words
together to
> describe "noir".
>
> I always, and I suppose I'm not the only one,
considered that a
noir
> novel is noir first by the level of existential
point of view it
> carries, found in the characters, in the setup or in
the look the
author
> has on the world as described in his
novel.
>
> On the other hand, I saw rather often in the
Anglo-Saxon analyses
and
> comments about noir literature a confusion between
existential and
> "existentialism"; the problem is that
"existentialism" is also the
name
> of a philosophical current of the 20th century, with
many
variations. By
> saying existential we stay one step above, as
-evidently
> -"existentialism" is only one way of treating the
existential
problems.
> To make it short: it does not have to be
"existentialist" (in the
modern
> philosophical sense) to be existential ( a broader
sense).
> Therefore Camus, Sartre, Gabriel Marcel,
and
other "existentialists"
> (mainly in Europe) are not the necessary references
for describing
or
> giving a definition of Noir.
> Even if some of them expressed their admiration for
the then
emerging
> American "romans noirs" including some of the
mystery/crime genre,
even
> if some short stories by Sartre are real noir lit
(see "Le mur"and
other
> stories).
>
> I think that existential is one of the key factor of
roman noir.
And of
> film noir.
> So, "existential hero" is a good start.
>
> E.Borgers
> Hard-Boiled Mysteries
> http://www;geocities.com/Athens/6384
> Polar Noir
> http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ejgorman99@a... a 飲it:
>
> >I always assumed that the phrase "existential
hero" was an apt
description of
> >noir protagonists. But I recently read a piece
about Sartre who,
it turns
> >out, felt that existentilism was often a
philosphy of joy and
liberation.
> >
> >I think a lot of this present discussion about
noir makes it sound
as if noir
> >is the only possible (or legitimate) way to look
at the world. A
piece in the
> >London Sunday Times a few months ago made the
point that too much
> >contemporary crime writing makes a "fetish" out
of grimness for
its own sake. I agree.
> >It's like the old John Candy-Eugene Levy SCT
hillbilly movie
critics who judged
> >all films by how many explosions were in them.
"Blowed it up real
good!" if
> >you recall. Darkness for its own sake strikes me
as a form of
arrested
> >adolescance. Life is too complicated and too
ambiguous to be
reduced to "darkness."
> >
> >Ed Gorman
> >
> >
> >[Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
> >
> >Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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