MrT:
>Currently rereading Conrad's _Heart of
Darkness_,
>fantastic.
And then different Avians on how short sentences have to be
to be in modern novels.
Finally, Miles said (smartly):
>Certainly HOD qualifies as noir. And it was very
unusual, for it's day, in
>that it had no 'happy ending'. I would also offer
MOBY DICK as noir, or at
>least part of the foundation of the genre.
I totally agree with Miles' statement. An important part of
Conrad's works are distant roots of modern noir (modern
distant roots: let us say from the end of the 19th
century-1870- and until approx 1920, to make the
distinguishing from even more ancient traces we could find
occasionally). And its modernism has nothing to do with the
length of its sentences. He's also a (rather unspoken) major
influence on the best of modern lit
(mainstream). A short story (close to novella) I always
considered as exemplary of Conrad's universe, low-key noir,
without a mix of pure melodrama and emphasis, is : "Youth"
(by the way it's also with Marlow) -(maybe Mario could
consider rereading it also…). Most of the time Conrad's best
texts conveys *indirectly* their content of essential
feelings and perception of destiny, with no cheap call to
sentimentalism or to exacerbated "melodramatism". That's
where he cuts it short IMO.
Few years back there was even a very interesting discussion
about that kind of topics on R-A, picking-up these literary
authors that were distant roots for modern noir, or were
influential. Other traces of influences can be found in some
works of the best popular
"adventures" novels authors (Stevenson, London and
others).
Mark, on "Apocalypse Now", film by Coppola:
>I think it's a
>flawed masterpiece
It's an overvalued film, by an overvalued director! And from
any angle you may analyze it, it does not show a better side…
Not even a very good film per se, even if you do not link it
to Conrad's HOD: Operatic, melodramatic, no focus (the
story)… etc I expressed this point of view many times on R-A
about this film.
E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens6384
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 25 Jul 2003 EDT