Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: can noir writers advocate social reform?

From: Michael Robison ( miker_zspider@yahoo.com)
Date: 25 Nov 2006


Patrick King wrote:

Crime & Punishment is a herald of the coming revolution. In it the middle class are depicted has living 2 families to an apartment. Nothing can be more pessimistic, nor have given Marxism in Russia a wider open door.

************* Nothing more pessimistic, eh? How about that wonderful Marxist liberation of the Russian people that resulted in the death of millions? A small price to pay for economic equality and the establishment of a workers' paradise, I guess.

I agree that Crime and Punishment is a solid antecedent to the noir genre. It did what noir would do so well in the coming century, exploring crime from an out-of-control criminal's point of view. Dostoyevsky is heavily interested in the religious connotations, too, and his concept of redemption through transgression resonates years later through the works of Graham Greene and Flannery O'Connor and others.

miker

 
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