Jay:
> I assume that novelists who can
> be called noir, like Cain, McCoy, Algren, Dahlberg,
Fante, or
> Benjamin Appel are not social reformers or
proletarian novelists
inciting to
> social change, and that social reformers like James
T Farrell,
John Dos
> Passos or Michael Gold, however much they deal with
evil, the
criminal
> underclass, and political corruption, cannot be
considered noir or
> hardboiled. Does this distinction make
sense?
I believe this is just what the Marxist theorists meant when
they said that this kind of gloomy, pessimistic literature -
or pessimism and nihilism themselves - cannot do good for the
mankind, but only makes the readers more passive toward the
society. It's essentially the same thing that Georg Lukacs
said about Franz Kafka.
Hope I'm not opening Pandora's box again. :)
Juri
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