You miss argueably the most important: Jim Thompson. By all
accounts Thompson definitely had a political agenda. Note
especially A Hell of a Woman, The Grifters and The Killer
Inside Me. Apparently, Thompson's father was a corrupt
Oklahoma sheriff. Thompson was humiliated by that fact his
entire life, much as Ellroy is by the murder of his
mother.
--- Jay Gertzman <
jgertzma@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I had always believed that noir describes,
gives
> reality checks, and
> faces clearly the power of violence,
predatory
> behavior, and
> self-deception. No one is relieved of guilt or
moral
> compromise.
> Therefore the sinister, brooding atmosphere
it
> projects. But recently I
> read Steve Lopez's 1994 novel _Third and
Indiana_,
> about the organized
> drug trade in Philadelphia, set in the
"badlands"
> section of
> Kensington. It has all the ingredients of
noir:
> young teens trapped in
> the distribution system and unable to escape
from
> the sadistic drug
> lord, except when he murders them b/c he
suspects
> them of shorting him,
> or just wants to spread terror. It's very good
about
> the social
> injustice, governmental hypocrisy (hiding
> indifference behind propaganda
> about "a war on "drugs" and "super-predators"),
and
> newspaper priorities
> that focus on sensational thefts but ignore
the
> suffering of the decent
> but poor residents who lose sons and daughters
to
> addiction, or murder
> at the hands of the organized criminals. But
Lopez's
> moving and tragic
> ending is clearly designed to make readers
take
> action: with
> melodramatic eloquence, Lopez incites, even
shames,
> his readers. I
> assume that this, then, is a proletarian and
polemic
> novel of social
> protest, therefore not noir and not hardboiled
(in
> that hardboiled has
> connotations of noir). It does not (at least at
the
> end) project that
> sinister, brooding, resigned noir aura. 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?
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have
been
> removed]
>
>
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