I think you can divide noir fiction roughly into two
camps:
-- lush romantic nightmares of the soul.
The root "pulp" source is probably Woolrich, I'd also toss
into this camp Goodis and Derek Raymond. A lot of the more
"highbrow" or self-conciously "literary" efforts also fall
this way: TAPPING THE SOURCE, say, or Robert Stone (maybe
Hubert Selby?). There's not much humor here; indeed, as has
been said, humor here would definitely break the mood.
(There's a good interview with Stone somewhere where he
confesses he's not a very "up" kind of guy.)
-- sardonic, bitter, "it's all a bad joke and then you
die" sort of stuff.
The obvious example here is Willeford, but I'd also toss in a
lot of Thompson, who seemed to see life as a bitter joke
played out at his own expense (consider my favorite Thompson
book, POP. 1280) or Cain.
An interesting comparison would be THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS
TWICE versus Horace McCoy's THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?
Both noirs, both similar sorts of stories
(desperate people trying to make a go of it during the
Depression and failing). But very different in their effect,
mainly because there's a sardonic, bitter edge to Cain that's
lacking in McCoy, who takes the whole thing very seriously. I
like both stories very much, but there's very different vibes
at work.
So, humor *can*, I think, co-exist with noir, it's just a
certain kind of black, bleak humor.
doug
---
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:
> "True, we're usually talking what is called
"black"
> humour here,
> fittingly enough. (How about a debate defining
black
> humour?)"
>
> Richard Pryor?
>
> Although that's a joke, much of his humor is
based
> on laughing at life's
> absurdities, as is much of the humor in
noir
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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