----- Original Message ----- From: "Grimes" <
redgrimes@sbcglobal.net>
> As I've learned from Rara-Avis, "noir" gets to
atmosphere (dark and
> sinister, as Jim D. puts it) and "hard-boiled" gets
to character (the
tough
> outsider who adheres to his code, maintains his
dignity and even wins a
few
> even as he takes his lumps).
Don't get hung up on Jim's definition, Steve. Some of us have
our own definitions. In my case, I don't see how you can
separate noir from character. Applied to atmosphere only,
Jim's definition describes Gothic, not noir. In noir, the
sinister element comes from the character's perception of the
world (a worldview which is often twisted and paranoid
--
'noirotic', if you will). And Jim's definition doesn't take
into account the mortality of the protagonist, which is
hugely important in (and possibly even fundamental to) noir
(as Russell James once pointed out). I see the difference
between hardboiled and noir in the reaction to events. For
example, when a hardboiled character is shot it makes him
angry and acts as a spur to further acts of toughness; when a
noir character's shot he spends the rest of the book dying
(if he's shot in the foot, he'll prod and poke and eventually
the wound will become infected). To respond to your original
post, Steve, I'd agree that Chandler's hardboiled, but I see
Marlowe operating in a hardboiled (not noir) world.
Al
-- # 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 : 14 May 2004 EDT