--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, bruce@b... wrote:
>
> On Feb. 3, Frederick Zackel asked, "is Kafka
noir-ish?" and gave an
> interest sample from The Trial.
>
> That subject interests me, too. Does anyone have any
suggested
reading
> for 19th and early 20th C literary influences for
early noir
writers?
>
> Thanks for whatever notes you can
provide.
>
> Best,
> Bruce
It's a topic that interests me as well. I think you can
definitely trace the roots of noir to the Gothic novel, which
is not surprising since most comtemporary genre fiction
(i.e., mystery, horror, sf) can be traced back to it, but in
some ways noir carries on that tradition in the most pure
form. The noir novel removes god from the equation (you have
the hand of fate in place of the hand of god-- the difference
being that fate punishes good and bad alike) and expands the
scope of the action (e.g., instead of the hero/heroine
trapped inside the confines of the castle, he or she is
trapped inside the city). If you look at an author like
Cornell Woolrich, you can certainly see a lot of
similiarities with the gothic in terms of mood and plot (even
if the particular figures and scenes are different--although
in some of the later American gothic work the city becomes
more prominent). A lot of the Gothic isn't that readable
anymore & (IMHO) the best works are typically ones that
bring in the supernatural (e.g., Matthew Lewis' THE MONK),
but in many the supernatural is explained (Ann Radcliffe's
work) or there is only the grotesque and not the supernatural
(e.g., George Lippard's THE MONK OF MONK'S HALL, which is
American and presents a Gothic portrait of mid-19th century
Philadelphia).
Somewhere between the Gothic and the noir mystery you can
place the sensation novel, which developed in 19th century
England (also, not suprisingly a point on the way to
development of the mystery). A lot of these are still quite
readable today (if you don't mind the length)--e.g., Dickens'
BLEAK HOUSE, Mary Braddon's LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET, Wilkie
Collins THE WOMAN IN WHITE or (my favorite) ARMADALE, or
Charles Reade's HARD CASH. These books have complicated plots
in which the hero/heroine finds him/herself in circumstances
beyond his/her control often involving legal machinations or
criminal charges. As a sample, here's a plot synopsis for
HARD CASH that I pulled off a Web site:
"In Hard Cash, a father incarcerates his son in order to
cover up a crime. The doctors who admit him have a kickback
scheme worked out with the hospital--they get money for each
patient admitted. Once in the hospital, the hero tries to
prove his sanity but finds it impossible to battle against
doctors who refuse to look past the diagnosis that caused his
admission to his actual mental condition. He also must
negotiate with the head of the hospital, a woman who is madly
in love with him and refuses to allow him out of her
sight.
He cannot prove his sanity and only escapes when there is a
fire in the asylum. There is one "good" doctor in the story
who refuses to bleed patients, deny them food, or admit the
sane to mental hospitals. The other doctors think him a
quack, but he saves several lives."
Not that far from some of the mental hospital noir tales of
our century.
>From these same common roots you can trace a number
of other
developments, for example the precursors of the political
thriller are books like Joseph Conrad's THE SECRET AGENT
(also rather noirish).
I'm also interested in the roots of hardoiled fiction, which
I think owes a strong debt to the working class fiction of
the late 19th centuries--authors like Jack London (in the US)
and Arthur Morrison
(in the UK). Some of Morrison's works might be the earliest
examples of the hard-boiled crime novel (in the UK at
least--I know 19th century British lit much better than 19th
century US): CHILD OF THE JAGO (1894) & THE HOLE IN THE
WALL (1902) are really crime stories about life in London's
slums and make use of working class dialect to some extent at
least.
Max
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