Jim Sallis wrote <snipped>:
"Hardboiled" still means something, I think, but chiefly in
opposition to something else, and it's really more a
marketing tool than a useful description. Well, yeah, sure
Hammett and Chandler. Pelecanos. But what about Danny
Woodrell, Jack O'Connell, Shira Rozan, John Harvey? There's
just too much rich, various, highly original work going on
these days for us to be held to historical categories.
*************
My first exposure to noir fiction was a Library of America
collection of six noir novels from the 30s and 40s. McCoy's
THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? was one of them. Reading them
was enough to dig up the ambiguity factor involving the
definition of noir. Five of them (Anderson's THIEVES LIKE US,
Woolrich's I MARRIED A DEAD MAN, Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS
RINGS TWICE, Gresham's NIGHTMARE ALLEY, and the McCoy title)
had an easily discernable thread of desperation and impending
doom. Fearing's THE BIG CLOCK stuck out like a sore thumb.
Nevertheless, noir fiction seems alive and well today. Kent
Harrington's DARK RIDE is pure noir, and Woodrell doesn't
seem to have much problem with the noir label. My
introduction to Woodrell was his wickedly funny and ironic
GIVE US A KISS: A COUNTRY NOIR.
And existentialism is surely the philosophy of noir. The
collapse of an accepted set of values and the struggle to
reconstruct a life from the ashes is right up the old noir
alley. Existentialism suggests that a man is defined by the
choices he makes, and a major noir theme is the exploration
of the results of bad or limited choices. It also anticipates
the antagonistic relationship between man and society based
on the restrictions that society places on a man's
choices.
miker
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