Patrick Anderson reviewed Richard Aleas's Songs of Innocence
in this morning's Washington Post (sorry, don't have the URL,
read it on paper). Damn, Charles, how much did you pay him
for that major rave? Not saying it's inaccurate, though. I
finished the book the day before yesterday and also liked it
a lot. So, now can we have a case with Susan as the POV
PI?
About Anderson's review, though. He tries to tackle the noir
definition thing. And I think he fails, mixing up noir and
hardboiled. No, I'm not saying the two can't mix, but I am
saying that Chandler's "down these mean streets" line is
about hardboiled, whereas Anderson uses it as his definition
of noir. True, the mean streets can and do feature heavily in
noir, but he emphasizes the "man . . . who is not himself
mean" part as essential to noir. That I do not buy. Some of
my favorite noirs feature mean men, and women.
Mark
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