My apologies for being absent from this dialog for days at a
time. It has been many years since I read LOLITA and Cain's
BUTTERFLY-- long enough that I don't feel comfortable being
hard-over on this. My memory is that BUTTERFLY was more noir
or near-noir than LOLITA. I do not believe that every novel
wherein the male lead is lured to his doom by a female
(regardless of age) is noir.
Jailbait novels were relatively common in the first few
decades of paperbacks. Some, such as several by Gil Brewer,
were noir. Many others were backwoods comedy romps trying to
catch the Tobacco Road audience and I wouldn't consider them
noir novels.
Perhaps my problem is that I have trouble labeling a funny
novel Noir. As I recall it, LOLITA is a very funny
novel.
On the other hand, I do believe a novel can be both
hardboiled and funny.
Just today I began reading a very funny novel I learned about
through Keith Roberts' memoir (of sorts) LEMADY. The book is
DON'T POINT THAT THING AT ME by Kyril Bonfiglioli and it
manages to be both tough and very, very funny.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "E. Borgers"
<webeurop@...> wrote:
>
> I agree with Patrick.
> Especially for "Buttefly" which is really
noir.
> Confusion here is that a lot of the "speakers"
consider noir as
as sub-genre or a sub-sub-genre, of mystery/crime lit. It's
not.
> Noir is wider than mystrery lit, and as I advocated
it here many
times, HB is just one of the sub-genre it included.
> Noir covers parts of gen lit, mystery, humor...the
list is long.
>
> A little bit as in the mathematical theory of sets:
it contains
sub-sets and intersects with other sets (genres or type of
lit) than mystery/crime.
>
> Speaking of the origins, archaic forms, noir and
mystery/crime
lived togheter and influenced one another all along the
way.
> Even starting with the Bible...
>
> E.Borgers
> POLAR NOIR
> http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
>
>
> Patrick King <abrasax93@...> a 飲it
:
> Thanks for your response, but why don't you
consider
> Lolita inparticular, and nymphette novels in
general,
> noir novels? What other genre do they fall under?
It's
> the same problem that involves many other noir
novels:
> the anti-hero falling under the sway of a
female,
> leading to his downfall. The only real difference
is
> that the female is under 18-years-old, adding
another
> demention to the level of obsession and to
the
> darkness of the story. Cain's Butterfly is
essentially
> this same problem, isn't it? Would you not
consider
> Butterfly a noir novel?
>
> Patrick King
> --- Richard Moore <moorich@...>
wrote:
>
> > I admire Nobokov's LOLITA but do not consider
it a
> > noir novel.
> >
>
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 01 Feb 2007 EST