----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Vorzimmer" <
jvorzimmer@austin.rr.com>
> I was looking over your Top 200 Noirs and I noted a
couple of things.
> First,
> I don't see any women on the list
Have another look, Jeff. There are one or two (Kathleen
Sully, Vin Packer, Margaret Miller). Not many, granted, but
that's perhaps because noir is historically a very
male-dominated area. Some of the top exponents of noir today
are female -- Sara Gran, Vicki Hendricks, Megan Abbott,
Louise Welsh, Nicola Monaghan, Christa Faust, to name but a
handful -- but that's a relatively recent occurence. The
cut-off point for my list was 1997.
> and such a list should at least include
> Highsmith and Caspary or to rephrase--they really
should have been among
> the
> authors you read.
I don't get along with Highsmith, sorry. Not a fan of the
slow build. Haven't read Caspary and I agree I should read
her. Along with many, many other authors.
> Second, I see Boris Vian's I Spit on Your Graves,
which
> really isn't worthy of a Top 200 list.
I have no answer to that.
> Third, it's a strange definition of
> noir that allows you to include Tobacco Road, but
not The Maltese Falcon
> or
> The Big Sleep.
If the list was my top 200 hardboiled detective novels then
MF and BS would be there. Maltese Falcon is one of my
favourite novels and I know some people think of it as noir
but I don't. Tobacco Road is absurdist noir at its finest. If
you don't connect absurdity with noir, fair enough, I'm sure
lots of people don't. But to me, they're easy bedfellows,
both being about the futility of human endeavour.
> Fourth, there are much better Willefords than the
two you
> list.
Very likely. There are a few I haven't read. I find it hard
to imagine any novel being a better noir novel than Pick Up,
though, an exceptional novel about a relationship between two
drunks.
> That said, I must add you are still the biggest
influence on what I read.
God help you!
Some others I'd add to the list if I were compiling it today:
Dark Hazard, W R Burnett: about a man who loves a greyhound
more than his wife. The Outsider, aka The Stranger, Albert
Camus: re-read it recently and it's a fine book, particularly
in the lack of backstory. Even at 120 pages, though, I
thought it was a bit too long and could do with a few cuts.
Night Of The Hunter, Davis Grubb: Hard to read it without
imagining Mitchum. Which isn't a bad thing. Terrific writing,
though. Lemons Never Lie, Richard Stark: Hard Case reprinted
this clever twist in the Parker series, in that Parker isn't
in it. Superb nonetheless. Lots of peripheral bank robbery
stuff, but the main storyline is revenge-based. GBH, Ted
Lewis, 1980: I've only read three of his novels but each one
is magnificent. This one's about an ex-porn king who's in
hiding, the whys and wherefores told in interwoven parallel
narratives. Fat City, Leonard Gardner: about third-rate
boxers in Stockton, CA. One of the best novels I've ever
read, regardless of genre.
Al
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