It seems to me the heart of Stansberry's excellent essay is
the following: "Because that which has been strangling the
genre is the mentality that rationalism and logical must
prevail. That order must be restored. That good must
triumph."
It is hard to argue with the notion that most current writing
that's considered "noir" involves at least some concession to
the "happy ending." I would hold up Connelly's excellent
Bosch series as an example. The genre would be helped by more
breaks with this formula. An example of this would be
Lehane's "Mystic River." One could say "logic" triumphs in
that the murderers are exposed. Yet everyone else is pretty
much fucked. And the villains are sad cases as well. I would
question whether the problem is a refusal to enter the "dark
side" of the irrational (or woo woo). To me it is a desire to
protect the reader from the existential "truth" that life
itself may be meaningless. Poe was Poe, the father of the
horror story as well as the mystery. It does not follow that
mysteries that are not woo woos are ergo not noir. Or even
that Poe is the father of noir, a mid 20th century
phenomenon.
However, I do feel Stansberry is right in suggesting current
"noir" has been sugar coated a bit. We writers need to strip
away the coating, write tougher, harder, uglier stuff. That
is, be truthful.
For some reason I feel this is a particularly American task.
Not to knock the French. I am not sure why this is the case.
Maybe because our nation does so many dark things, and
everyday reality here can be so distant from that created by
TV, or that no other country on earth has the great
disparities of wealth that we have.
Tim Wohlforth
P.S. That's why I liked the recently demised Plots With Guns
and the new Thuglit site. Tough uncensured writing, younger
writers, male and female, with balls.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 29 Oct 2005 EDT