Ron Clinton quoted from David Corbetts essay:
> " Noir is precisely about men and women whose misfortune is
> brought about
> through “vice or depravity.” It’s a subgenre of
> tragedy, in which the error
> of judgment is the belief, often born of desperation, that
> a criminal act
> can redeem one’s pitiless luck."
>
> That last sentence encapsulates exactly how I envision noir
> and, as someone
> else on this list mentioned, it's a heckuva lot richer (and
> accurate) than
> "noir = screwed."
>
Ron is exactly right, that last sentence encapsulates it, and the someone else who mentioned that it was better than "noir=screwed" and the person who said that was me, the originator of "noir=screwed." I'll leave it to the group to say whether it beats Jim Doherty's "dark and sinister." (I contend that it is)
I would contend that the last that last sentence is the best and most concisely accurate definition definition of noir that I've seen here or anyplace else.
Jack Bludis
"Shadow of the Dahlia," a Shamus finalist novel at Amazon.com
and BarnesandNoble.com New edition trade-paper, Kindle, and Nook
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 07 Nov 2010 EST