Never mind what, how about where is noir

There were many interesting points (and some not so interesting ones) mentioned during last week's recap of the shitstorm surrounding the Edgar PBO pick, but two things stick out for me: first, that any book that polarizes people this much automatically has a better chance at being remembered and finding a wider audience, and two, that this is the first time in quite a while that a proper noir novel has won an Edgar.

It remains to be seen whether THE CONFESSION really signals another shift towards noir and all its ambiguous pleasure, but the tide does seem to be turning. If so, it may be due to the forces outlined in Stansberry's "Noir Manifesto," written 2 years ago for the New Review of Literature and reprinted on his own site. He uses his then-recent reading of Jean-Patrick Manchette's THE PRONE GUNMAN to compare and contrast the state of French crime fiction in the 1970s with US crime fiction in 2003:

In the trajectory of Manchette’s career as a noir writer it is possible to read the trajectory of the genre itself. In many ways, it is a genre frozen in time, or even gone backwards. In fact, if you examine the best seller racks on this side of the Atlantic, it is not hard to argue that the mainstream American crime novel is today, at the turn of the new century, in a state similar to that of its French counterpart in the sixties: weighed down by its conventions, by the expectations of the audience, and by the inelasticity of its publishers. Reduced to irrelevance, a distraction for bored readers in airports and beaches. A mere commodity.

But of course, crime fiction—with is roots in pulp fiction--has always been a commodity. What has really happened is that the darker world of noir has been displaced in the marketplace by a different kind of crime novel: the commercial thriller (more likely on its jacket puffery to announce itself a literary thriller, though in truth that genre all but expired with Graham Greene). And these thrillers, no matter the surface similarities to noir fiction, have aesthetic and political intentions quite the opposite of Manchette and those writers he admired.

The noir tradition in which Manchette was writing had its roots in the vernacular, and focused on the crimes of desire by people hemmed in by social conditions. Noir writers like Dave Goodis, Jim Thompson, Dorothy Hughes, Chester Himes and Charles Williams were social determinists whose work demonstrated considerable empathy for the little guy, the down- and-outer, the outsider who has been pushed out, excluded, trapped. Who then takes hopeless action to escape that trap—and ultimately fails.

In contrast, the primary ethos of the new breed of crime melodramas does not share such concerns. These books are instead much more akin to the old western dime novels—which focused on the rescue of Pollyanna tied to the railroad track. Pollyanna in the contemporary thriller may take on many forms. She may be a beautiful woman threatened by a serial killer. A boy threatened by an abusive father. Or even America itself, threatened by nuclear destruction, or terrorism, or an insane president. These novels may lobby on the behalf of some worthy cause—they may fall on this side or that of the political spectrum—but there is one thing that can be counted upon. The world can be divided neatly into good and evil. And good shall ultimately triumph.

It's the standard ethos of order out of chaos which marks current work as belonging to the crime fiction mold, and which Stansberry wishes to challenge:

It is tempting to argue that there is no choice now for the writer of crime—if he or she be anything other than a hack, an employee of New York accountants—than to turn the genre conventions upon their various heads. To do so in ways both sacrilegious and savage. Take the old icons and beat them into the dirt. Berate them. There may have been a time when Sherlock Holmes was a vital character—but over the years he has become an insufferable bore, with his pipe, his witticisms, his self righteousness. And, the shades of Marlowe and Sam Spade are on the verge of the same nattering senility.

But structural change, formal experimentation, a willingness to spit in the face of publishers, to disregard unintelligent readers, to kill off your lead character in the middle of a series, to bend the lines between fiction and non-fiction, to blur the lines of genre—or even to take the opposite tact, and be a steadfast loyalist, to work within the dying conventions while all around the house burns—all of these in the end are just tactics, addressing the symptoms but not the cause, doomed to fail if they do not recognizing the true nature of the failing.

Because that which has been strangling the genre is the mentality that rationalism and logical must prevail. That order must be restored. That good must triumph.

Such are the assertions of small minds, of mercantilism. It is the jingoism of the day world, of the happy ending, of a material world desperately afraid of its nocturnal counterpart.

Now,  I think it's fair to say that anyone who's read this blog for even a short length of time knows I love noir. I think that those who write it best take risks, meet challenges and gleefully bust through artificial constraints. But I'm not so sure that they don't subscribe to their own version of the "order out of chaos" idea. Especially since "order" can mean many different things: less disorder, rearrangement, alteration. Or false order, where it seems that the protagonist is leading a perfectly nice life, but so much simmers underneath. Only by laying bare those hidden (and true) desires and wishes can a sort of order be restored, however uncomfortable and nasty, to the protagonist, his or her world and viewpoint.

But it could just be me arguing semantics or finding some sense of so-called rationalization in why I read the stuff. Ultimately it's to confront fears in a controlled environment, because no matter how unseemly the noir world gets, in the end, it's just fiction like anything else.

In the 2 years since this essay was first published, lots has happened in the world of noir: new imprints, new writers, new approaches. The world may even be more accepting of this nihilistic viewpoint. But these books will never sell like conventional thrillers will...

Comments

[Ingrid]

Do I take it that Stansberry's solution to the dilemma of mercantilism and the falling out of favor of the noir genre was to write a noir serial killer thriller?

[Keith]

But these books will never sell like conventional thrillers will...

The unconventional rarely does. Most buyers (of anything) want to repeat previous experiences, not run the risk of wasting money finding out they don't like a new one.

[Otis]

Now that's the kind of Monday rant that gets the juices flowing.

My comment? Yeah, what he said.

[Cornelia Read]

I just finished re-reading Geoffrey O'Brien's HARDBOILED AMERICA: Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir. I liked his take on the pressure to make the classic paperbacks more commercial, even back in the day:

"The hardboiled literature on which the paperbacks thrived and to which they ultimately contributed partook, in its heart, of a demonic vision. Publishers often tried to make that vision more ribald and colorful than the original texts warranted. After all, the public wanted gunfights and Lana Turner, not existentialism and _l'acte gratui_."

But even if noir titles (neo or otherwise) don't outsell thrillers out of the gate, I think the best of them tap into something so deep that they may well outsell them over time. There's staying power in those demonic visions, because there's staying power in the hydra-headed American ethos of Puritanism--and mercantilism-- whose traces they're trying to kick over.

O'Brien continued:

"[But] as far as content goes, once could trace the elements of noir and hardboiled fiction back through that gothic strain which runs like a crack down the middle of American literature... Demons had been around in America since the beginning, infesting the backwoods settlements of Charles Brockden Brown and the imagined European castles of Edgar Allan Poe, the Indian camps of James Fenimore Cooper and the New England villages of Nathaniel Hawthorne... but it wasn't until Hammett that demons rode on the municipal bus and rented rooms in cheap hotels."

I figure that gothic crack is going to continue FORWARD as well. Might look like it's taking a hiatus every once in a while, but so does the San Andreas Fault. THE CONFESSION feels like a preliminary tremor, and the fearful reaction to it makes me think Stansberry's got a thumb on the Richter Scale .

[Graham]

You know, THE CONFESSION really does read a bit like a Gothic. Sort of "Had I but known... that I was a killer." It's a similar self-reflective style.

[Charlie W]

I refuse to accept that "noir" is a genre. "I'm a noir writer..." It's like saying "I'm a manic depressive." Sometimes you're noir, sometimes you're not. A novel can turn out noir, but it might not. You know when you're writing it - in your bones - but you might not have known when you conceived the innocent, lamb-like germ of an idea. Mental hang-ups that maketh noir, not career choices. Jim Thompson - the guy was sad and frustrated. He wrote those books because that's the kind of art that wanted out.

"I'm a noir writer..." The opposite of that is "I'm an blanc writer". What's blanc? Optimistic? Pure? Peace?

That said, I do think we need these books out there, and that they need to be read. Like any healthy diet, you need the sweet and the savoury, the rough and the smooth. The noir with the blanc. Look at Shakespeare - tragedy... comedy... tragi-comedy... etc

[David Terrenoire]

I've written a boatloaod of "dark and criminal" (as David Firks described them) short stories. The trouble is, there's hardly a market for them. It takes me a good four to six weeks for me to write a decent short and then to sell it for ten or twenty bucks for a readership of a few hundred is hard to take. I don't blame the pubs. As we've discussed before, EQMM and AHMM don't buy true noir, and that leaves a bare handful of online and print venues. So, in the interest of paying the rent I write novels and I have a better chance of selling a novel that's a thriller, or an action adventure. I also write funny, which lifts the darkest story up out of the shadows until you couldn't properly call it noir. Of course, there's always the odd piece that proves the rule, but as a working writer, trying my best to be true to a story and at the same time sell the piece, I find the time spent on noir, as much as I love writing it, a poor investment of my time.

I can hear the artists out there now, gnashing their teeth, but I'm not an artist. At best, I'm a craftsman, and proud of it.

[David Terrenoire]

Damn, I'm not a very good proofreader, either.

[Brian Thornton]

I agree with Charlie W.'s point about statements such as "I'm a writer of noir fiction..." I think if you're a practicing fiction writer, you're not really flexing your creative muscles if you're not trying on new perspectives, new voices, new plotlines all the time. Thanks for pointing that out, Charlie. I hadn't really thought of it that way before.

Brian

[David J. Montgomery]

I moderated a noir panel at the last Bouchercon, with Victor Gischler, Charlie Stella, Dave Corbett and Terry Faherty as the panelists. We spent quite a bit of time discussing just what the hell noir is, and I'm not sure we really came up with any kind of definition. I suppose the truest thing to say is that, if crime fiction is a continuum from light to dark, noir is on the dark end.

[David Terrenoire]

David,

Cue Justice Potter Stewart: I know it when I see it.

(And with a name like mine, I know noir.)

[Jennifer Jordan]

At 2002's annual 'What is Noir Panel?', Loren D. Estelman summed it up perfectly.

"Noir is French for black."

[Xavier Lechard]

"In the trajectory of Manchette’s career as a noir writer it is possible to read the trajectory of the genre itself. In many ways, it is a genre frozen in time, or even gone backwards. In fact, if you examine the best seller racks on this side of the Atlantic, it is not hard to argue that the mainstream American crime novel is today, at the turn of the new century, in a state similar to that of its French counterpart in the sixties: weighed down by its conventions, by the expectations of the audience, and by the inelasticity of its publishers. Reduced to irrelevance, a distraction for bored readers in airports and beaches. A mere commodity."

French crime fiction in the sixties was much more versatile and challenging than Mr Stansberry thinks. Of course it had its share of commercial rubbish but works by authors such as Boileau-Narcejac, Louis C. Thomas, Sébastien Japrisot, Fred Kassak or Hubert Monteilhet could hardly be said to be "weighed down by conventions" or "mere commodities". These authors weren't noir, but didn't write comfort stuff either.
I am tired of that habit of some Noir apologists to be either patronizing or contemptuous of other sub-genres.

[Brian Thornton]

I think Xavier makes a good point when he says, "I am tired of the habit of some Noir apologists to be either patronizing or contemptuous of other sub-genres." It was interesting for me to have a conversation about Mr. Stansberry's book "The Confession" with a good friend and avowed noir fiction afficionado who raved about the ending of "The Confession," because it was so revolutionary to have the narrator revealed as the killer near the end.

I could only scratch my head over that one, having read at least two so-called "cozies" by Agatha Christie that employed a similar twist over seventy years ago: "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," and "Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None."

My friend had never read them, sniffingly dismissed to them as "cozies" (this same friend had read Jim Thompson's "Killer Inside Me," though). I think there's something to be learned from good writing, regardless of the genre. In fact, speaking as someone who has occasion to read more than his share of utterly terrible writing during the course of his work day (no, I'm not a critic), I think there's a lot to be learned from reading bad writing, too.

For my money, Christie doesn't do much with characterization, and she's not one for social criticism. But she knew her poisons (no pun intended), and she was an adroit plotter. If some of her stuff seems cliched these days, it is because (as has been argued ad infinitum about Hammett and Chandler) success breeds immitation.

Brian

[Phillip]

I didn't know that the runaway bride modeled for the cover of The Confession.