Oh yes, there will continue to be, and are, excellent examples of applying the genre to new points on the old time/space continuum, but my point is that in personifying the relentlessness of death, NCFOM comes down to the essence of noir, and effectively summing up the basic ideas of the genre. Hell, one of the key points in the narrative was the assurance that things were no better in the past, that things have always been this way and we can expect will continue to be so. I think we can infer that this observation applies to place as well as time.
And I'm not saying that NCFOM advances the philosophy of noir, just that it underlines the point, putting an exclamation at the end of the sentence in a way that few, fans or otherwise, could miss, and that it will take an advance in the noir vision itself to keep the genre as vital in this century as it was in the last. I've no idea what that might be. Maybe we're at the end of literature? Had to follow the end of history, right?
That said, I've fallen behind reading my Jason Starrs. Have to correct that soon, and fully expect to be entertained and enlightened when I do.
Best,
Kerry
----- Original Message -----
From: jacquesdebierue
To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 11:46 PM
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Re: talking tough
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "gsp.schoo@..." <gsp.schoo@...> wrote:
>
> Dave, man, TRY picking up? Another case of books overfat with filler? Know what you mean though, but isn't that what noir is about--the "doomed" thing. Aren't we defeated by our own foolishness, by our illusions and sometimes, our allusions? It's not really noir if it's only "them" that's fucked, am I right?
>
No, it's got to be us that's fucked. Or close enough to us to hurt.
> What's with this neo-noir thing BTW? Have we agreed that noir itself is dead? I'm not fighting it. Pretty much thought No Country for Old Men summed it all up, myself. Put the old genre out of her misery, that did. After Stansberry called for defib, stat, have we agreed the nurses left the room? Cutbacks in the budget, probably. I'm just poking the corpse, unaccustomed as I am to crossing the line into concensus.
>
Cormac McCarthy does not prevent anyone from writing good noir books. I thought The Road was more noir than anything he's written, though, but if you add No Country for Old Men, you have a nasty package. But I don't think most noir writers today are competing in that same territory. Many write urban novels with urban (sometimes suburban) characters, and there is a lot to say about this fauna. Jason Starr did a real job on the fauna, a brutal job actually. After reading the book, I thought the job was necessary. You gotta bury certain things and certain ways of living. Jason, I'm not calling you a social undertaker but you came close!
Best,
mrt
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Jun 2009 EDT