Well, as mentioned here earlier, that might be Double Indemnity. But I also think that title effectively sums up the coin-toss scene in No Country for Old Men, and again in the final scene when death takes the time to corrupt youth before limping off down the street.
Have I got a deal for you,
Kerry
----- Original Message -----
From: sonny
To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 4:01 PM
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re:Noir -- Penzler, Kerry, Brian, Jack and MRT
wow, has that ever been done fictionally? death AS a salesman? it must have been.
--- On Tue, 8/17/10, gsp.schoo@MOT.com <gsp.schoo@murderoutthere.com> wrote:
> From: gsp.schoo@MOT.com <gsp.schoo@murderoutthere.com>
> Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re:Noir -- Penzler, Kerry, Brian, Jack and MRT
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tuesday, August 17, 2010, 3:01 PM
> Death IS a Salesman? I used to be in
> sales. Is that a freudian slip? Too noirish for me to
> contemplate any further.
>
> Best etc.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: gsp.schoo@MOT.com
>
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 2:47 PM
> Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re:Noir -- Penzler, Kerry,
> Brian, Jack and MRT
>
>
>
> Thanks David. Something to chew on. My first thought
> is that both Greek tragedy, as you lay it out, and noir
> highlight the inherent futility of human morals and values.
> My point would be that they are intended to transcend the
> human condition rather than confront it or adapt to it and
> the tragedy is that they cannot do this. So in that sense
> noir is Greek tragedy, though perhaps we might recognize
> Noir as the Grecian Formula.
>
> Similarly Loman's ideals prevent him from adapting
> to his circumstances. Death Is a Salesman is not noir unless
> you consider suicide a crime (which the law does) and noir
> is in the genre of crime fiction. For some that means the
> protagonist must be more than criminal but depraved, but I
> think that is not essential to the genre and in some cases
> I'd suggest this is just an inability to empathise with the
> character's plight. I see Sam Spade as a doomed character in
> this sense: damned if he does and damned if he doesn't run
> off with Ms. O'Shaugnessey.
>
> Anyway, yes, Greek tragedy and noir pretty damned
> close, dependent upon whether you see catharsis as coping or
> a route to transcendence. Gets sticky, I'll admit.
>
> Best,
> Kerry
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Corbett
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 1:47 PM
> Subject: RARA-AVIS: Re:Noir -- Penzler, Kerry,
> Brian, Jack and MRT
>
> Excuse me if I'm contributing to this topic after
> the parade has passed, I've been outside reliable Internet
> range. I've had a chance now to catch up, read all the
> postings now, as well as Otto's piece (Otto the relentless
> conservative writing for the Huffington Post -- now THAT is
> noir).
>
> I don't have anything scintillating to add, except I
> notice that the discussion of tragedy seems limited to
> Shakespeare. I wrote a piece for Crimespree a few years back
> titled "Noir, Tragedy and Other Dreary Bummers," that
> covered some of this same terrain, but my tragedy references
> were Greek, which I think is non-trivial since Athenian
> tragedy had such an influence on existentialists like Camus
> and Sartre, and they in turn had such an influence on crime
> writing (and vice versa -- Camus reportedly claimed THE
> STRANGER was a response to POSTMAN).
>
> One key point: the Greeks did not see tragedy as a
> means to "transcendence" but to catharsis, which entailed a
> shared identification with the hero, not a sense of
> transcending his plight, despite the fact the hero was
> portrayed as somewhat different than ordinary men or women.
> Sophocles is credited with inventing the tragic hero, and he
> used the word "deinos" to describe him, a word that combines
> terrible, wondrous and strange in its meaning. He was seen
> as both repellent and admirable, and his strangeness lay in
> his relation to the gods--he was portrayed as isolated, and
> the gods largely absent. This resonates with Camus' idea of
> the "benign indifference" of the universe. (In Euripides,
> the gods weren't absent; they were all too present: petty,
> callous, vengeful.)
>
> But in both Sophocles and Euripides, the hero faces
> a crisis in which disaster can only be averted by a
> compromise that, in his or her view, would constitute a
> betrayal of something he or she considers supremely
> important. The hero refuses to make this compromise and is
> thus destroyed. Antigone has to choose between loyalty to
> the state in a time of civil war or devotion to her brother
> and the rituals of burial. Orestes has to avenge the murder
> of his father, but this requires the murder of his mother,
> which is strictly forbidden. In all these cases, the moral
> choices are not obvious or easy. (Antigone after the 1960s
> was seen as a "rebel," but the Greeks abhorred her refusal
> to obey Creon, even as they sympathized with her devotion to
> Polynices, her brother.)
>
> Aristotle, writing a century later in his POETICS,
> argued that the best tragic protagonist was neither a
> righteous nor villainous man, but "a man not pre-eminently
> virtuous and just [but] whose misfortune . . . is bought
> upon him not by vice or depravity but by some error of
> judgment."
>
> This is where I believe a dividing line between
> tragedy and noir might be meaningfully drawn. Not in some
> intrinsic belief in hope or transcendence (tragedy) versus
> the absence of same, but in whether the hero's misfortune is
> caused by an error of judgment -- caused by his own nature
> or our inability to predict perfectly the consequences of
> what we do -- as opposed to "vice or depravity."
>
> Willy Loman is a tragic hero because he cannot give
> up his belief in the American dream, even as it destroys him
> and his family. This is an error of judgment (a "tragic
> flaw," a concept almost as widely abused and misunderstood
> as noir), but not a sign of depravity. As pretty much
> universally noted here on the list, Frank Chambers in
> POSTMAN and George Neff in DOUBLE INDEMNITY suffer their
> misfortunes because of their own embrace of lust and greed.
>
> Or is that too tidy?
>
> David Corbett
> www.davidcorbett.com
>
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>
>
>
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>
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