RARA-AVIS: Re: This Sporting Life.... Noir and Class

From: Eric Chambers ( nqexile@yahoo.com.au)
Date: 20 Feb 2008


A few interesting points here."Your more hard-boiled and Nor stories
 usually take in place in less conservative locales" I have never thought about it that way. A lot of the fiction we are concerned with here involves the juxtaposition (clashes?) between people of different class, colour, money, education, status and sex.Some of it takes place in very conservative locales indeed. One sport that there are a lot of crime novels about is horse-racing. Anybody know any in this category you could define as hard-boiled or Noir. How about the gambling and casino industry?

Rugby ( correctly 'Rugby Union') and Rugby League are both hard-played full-body contact sports. Both are currently big money sports. Rugby Union has a lot of tradition and prestige involved. Both sports inspire a lot of passion. In other words I can't see any reason why they wouldn't be a fitting subject area for Noir or hard-boiled fiction. I don't know of any though. What about Grid-Iron ( As we name American football in Australia?) Anybody aware of any football Noir or hard-boiled fiction?
   

Charlie Williams" cs_will@hotmail.com wrote,--- In rara-avis-l@ yahoogroups. com, Steve Novak <Cinefrog@.. .> wrote:
> Anyone knows about crime novels with rugby in them???...I know of
 one being
> written at this time by a French author and friend...but aside from
 that???
 
 Interesting question that had me wracking my brains to no avail. In
 the UK at least, I suspect that rugby is way to middle class to allow
 much dabbling in the murky waters of crime. There are probably a few
 PD James or Colin Dexter-style investigations that touch on rugby or
 its players, but that is because the mystery is traditionally more
 middle class (like rugby). Your more hard-boiled and noir stories
 usually take in place in less conservative locales, and concern the
 kind of people who... well, don't care about rugby. Actually I'm just
 talking about England here, not the UK. Rugby has a different
 demographic in Wales, and rugby league (as in This Sporting Life, as
 I recall) is staunchly working class.
 
 Thinking about it, I can't think of many sports-themed noir or
 hardboiled stories at all (boxing and betting aside). Hey, maybe it's
 because teamwork and camaraderie keeps you on the straight and narrow?

       
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