RARA-AVIS: The Bouchercon Noir Panel

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 24 Oct 2002


The panel on "Noir Authors with Novel Approaches" which included Jack Bludis and myself turned out to be a lot of fun. Not only was it a good panel, but it was great to meet Jack, as well as Graham Powell who was in the audience, face to face.

Another one of the panelists, Eddie Muller, who's written a great noir novel, THE DISTANCE, and three books about film noir, DARK CITY, DARK CITY DAMES, and THE ART OF NOIR (coming in November), brought up a point about the definition of noir that I thought I'd pass along.

I've always maintained that noir was strictly a question of atmosphere. If it was dark and sinister, it was noir, period. Others have maintained that certain plot mechanics and character types have to be present (i.e. the doomed protagonist [to use Jack's phrase "noir equals screwed"], the femme fatale, etc.)

Eddie suggested that there was a difference between what he called noir "atmospherics" and noir "content."
 And he was pretty convincing. I'm not sure I totally accept his premise, but it does provide a way of reconciling the two points of view.

JIM DOHERTY

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