Allan Guthrie wrote:
I take your point about THE BIG HEAT. Retrospectively, it
probably isn't noir, but as you're reading the book you're
immersed in a corrupt and brutal world where the protagonist
loses his wife to a car bomb and goes rogue because he can't
get justice any other way. In the moment, it feels like
noir.
**************** Kinda hinges on how much you weigh the
outcome. Does the protagonist have to be totally screwed in
the end
(the Jack Bludis understanding), or can a prevailing air of
nastiness and doom throughout, Jim's dark and sinister, carry
the day? I'm sorta greedy in that I gotta tendency to want it
all, both dark and sinister and screwed, but I have to admit
there are books, like The Big Heat, where the prevailing mood
seems enough. The Black Dahlia is an example. Charles
Williams's Scorpion Reef is another.
Like many here, I'm not overly concerned about the definition
of noir other than to establish a foundation for discussing
it, but there is a vast difference between the Jack and Jim
definitions, one of mood and one of fate. I am satisfied with
recognizing who believes what when I read a post, and
adjusting the context accordingly.
Something I didn't get to mention yesterday and I'll just
mention briefly because it's morning and I want to sit on the
porch and drink coffee and read Connelly's Chasing the Dime:
I have seen very few developments in noir. At the core it
remains the same. That is not a complaint, but a compliment.
Noir evokes powerful and universal themes. But one
interesting variation I see relates to The Big Heat if we can
call it noir, and that is a branching of noir over the first
twenty years with a tendency to lessen the accountability of
the protagonist for his situation, to more enoble him and
make him a victim of circumstance. If he did transgress, it
was not for totally selfish reasons. I see Build My Gallows
High as an example.
miker
____________________________________________________________________________________
Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative
vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 02 Aug 2007 EDT