Kerry wrote:
"But what is noir? A style or a point of view toward human
nature?"
Oh no, here we go again. But it's been quiet lately, so I'll
bite, at least in response to what George wrote:
"Aside from the titles themselves, which suggest a
Chandleresque world, I don't think of Macdonald as being
hardboiled or noir."
I always thought of Macdonald as hardboiled, but I think
that's probably mostly because when I first read the Archers
I believed anything with a private eye was hardboiled by
definition. Thinking back, now, I'd probably have to agree
that the Archer books aren't very hardboiled. They kinda fit
into (define?) that category of quiet hardboiled, as was
recently noted of Michael Collins' Dan Fortune series.
As for noir, though, I definitely find Archer's world to be
noir, full of dark psychological secrets which go back
generations. Most of the people Archer deals with live in a
very dark world. The difference between Macdonald and, say,
Goodis is that the latter's books are told from the
perspective of a flawed hero tormented by his psychology
while Archer delves into others' secrets in the noir world.
Although he doesn't quite vanish like Robbe-Grillet's
narrator in Jealousy, he is rather self-effacing. We don't
really know a whole lot about Archer compared to other
private eyes, especially first person PIs. He stands removed,
serves as the seemingly objective observer of others'
compulsions and obsessions, kinda like Marlowe and those mean
streets, into this noir world goes a man who is not himself
noir.
Mark
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