Neo-Noir Gets Controversial

Over the weekend a nice little teapot tempest brewed in several places, including the RARA-AVIS mailing list and the Rap Sheet blog. It began when Kevin Burton Smith editorialized on what he termed "disturbing trends" in the current spate of what's being termed neo-noir:

In the original noirs, the main characters were usually just more-or-less regular joes: migrant workers, insurance salesmen, professors, news hawks, coffee-shop waitresses, B-girls, cut-rate private eyes, mildly bent cops, low-level crooks. The sort of people you’d meet in a bar or on the street. Or getting off a hay wagon. Just regular schmucks, with more-or-less normal levels of intelligence. And their fall was presented as tragedy, with one bad decision, one moment of weakness, one fatal flaw serving as the catalyst that ignites a world of hurt.

Nowadays, though, the characters are more often big-shot celebrities, serial killers, globe-trotting hit men, cannibal dope fiends and the like--over-the-top sociopathic cartoons who seem to exist mostly in fiction. And these guys are usually criminally clueless. These books aren’t presented as morality plays, but as clusterfucks of stupidity and venality. These characters come pre-doomed and pre-damned; dumbshits who seem compelled to make one obviously bad decision after another--the sort of stupid choices that owe more to plot machinations than anything else.

What happens to them isn’t some slow, inevitable tragic fall from grace into the darkness of the abyss, but more a turned-to-11 amplification of atrocities and bad luck, betrayals and misunderstandings and coincidences that, again, exist only in fiction.

Smith's tack is deliberately provocative, and taken on its most general terms, there's much to agree with. The number of nodding heads included Ed Gorman, who said that "too much of it is parodistic in nature, feeding on what came before rather than extending and enhancing it, a literary exercise that is essentially black comedy."

The problem, as I and others pointed out in the Rap Sheet backblog string, is the lack of examples in Smith's post. Steve Mosby best encapsulated the criticism with his comment:

Since everyone would agree that gratuitous violence is wrong - by definition - the only real point I can see is that 'new' noir misses the point of 'old' noir. But it's impossible to discuss without examples, as it seems to be a marketing objection more than anything? Whether the authors you're talking about would describe themselves as noir or have been marketed as noir is surely pretty crucial, otherwise you're just saying you're fed up with violence in books in general, and there's no need to talk about noir at all.

And Allan Guthrie, whose novel HARD MAN I cited right around the time Eddie Muller criticized it for many of the points Smith made (and much as I liked the book from a black comic standpoint, I did wonder if I would have enjoyed it even more had I been 100% invested in the characters as human beings instead of pieces of a literary chess board) went back in time for greater context:

It's easy to say that extreme violence in fiction is a current trend but don't you think critics were saying that in the late 20s/early 30s in reaction to THE BASTARD, RED HARVEST, FAST ONE, etc., or THEY DON'T DANCE much in 1940, or KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE later in the decade, or in response to some of Wade Miller (I'm thinking of the excruciating torture scene in GUILTY BYSTANDER) and Jim Thompson's work in the 50s, or Jack Ehrlich in the 60s and 70s (try BLOODY VENGEANCE)? Spillane wasn't writing disturbingly violent books?

And really, Guthrie nails it. Humanity and emotion is independent of time; claims of gratuitous violence  have been made for decades. And this argument will probably be raging a good 50 years from now, if not even later into the future.

Comments

[Nathan Cain]

I've said it at my blog, and I'll say it here, I think Smith ought to name names. His comments are so broad it's hard not to agree with them. Who isn't opposed to "gratuitous violence" and "sadism"? Books have to be judged individually.

[Graham]

I don't have a problem with the violence, but I agree with another point Kevin made: noir used to be about the little guy, usually powerless. When he tried to improve his life (typically through illegal or immoral means) he ended up screwing it up for himself and usually for others as well.

It seems that many characters these days are hit men or political fixers or other people with power and connections. I kind of miss that whole "real people doing things real people can do" thing.

[Steven Torres]

I don't know enough about the genre to differentiate between what's neo and what's not. I've read none of the books Al mentioned for instance. I thought Smith's post was really a question of packaging - whatever these books he talks about are, they're not noir. Doesn't mean they can't be good black comedy - I think Starr and Bruen's BUST is that. But if a book is sold to you as noir (which has more to do with marketers than with writers, I think), it ought (if I read Smith right) to be of a certain type as defined in the post.

I think, for whatever reason, noir is being used interchangeably with "hardboiled". That may be a problem right there. On the other hand, noir means dark/black. Leaves a lot open for interpretation.

Given the cover of Guthrie's latest, "Guthrie nails it," is pretty good.
Guthrie's novel is also pretty good, but is it a noir comedy? Can that be?

[John]

I don't think it's appropriate to criticize Kevin's lack of examples now, since he has admitted that it was not formal criticism (whatever that means). Here is what he said on The Rap Sheet comments section:

"If I were presenting this as piece of formal, serious criticism -- or one that I was being paid for, why yes of course I would provide examples. And I'd drop so many names even Sarah would be envious.

But this was what I thought was obviously an off-the-top-of-my head piece"

[David J. Montgomery]

It's possible that I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I don't remember the last time a book was pitched to me as being "neo-noir." The term noir doesn't feature very prominently in publishers' vocabularies. So I'm left wondering which books we're talking about.

[David J. Montgomery]

p.s. I'm onboard with the thought, however, that a lot of the books being published today aren't very good.

(How's that for a generalization!)

[Sarah]

Yeah, but that generalization's been true for decades. Sturgeon made his comment back around 1951, I believe.

[Steve Mosby]

There is a problem there in comparing a random selection of newly-published titles with a pre-filtered canon of established classics...

[John]

"neo noir"...I thought pink was the new black?

[Jim Winter]

The "neo" tag really isn't valid. Noir is defined by type of story, not the time period when it's set. It's not the Western.

Put simply, noir is WHAT it is, not WHEN it is.

[John]

But if the noir written now has different characteristics then the noir written then, yeat still retains enough of the old characteristics to classify it as noir (all of this is very subjective, of course) then the "neo" tag would be valid because it wouldn't be the same type of story.

"Neo" in this sense refers to new characteristics, not date of publication.

[Jenny Davidson]

I like gratuitous violence and sadism!

[David Thayer]

Maybe what Kevin is identifying as "neo" reflects a mindset that absurd or extreme circumstances dictate idiotic storylines filled with effortless heroics and special effects. Thrillers are suffering more than traditional noir from the need to escalate violence beyond the reader's ability to digest just how fiendish the villain really is.

[patti abbott]

Isn't the umbrella big enough for all writers to shelter beneath? Can't we let the readers make the determination? Can't we just all get along?

[Victor Gischler]

As an author who's been labled "neo-noir" from time to time, I felt compelled to chime in. (compelled = I have a few minutes to spare while I'm drinking this mug of coffee.)

I think Kevin Burton Smith does a great job in listing the differences between "neo" noir and more traditional noir. What I'm not too crazy about is the implication that practitioners of neo-noir don't know what they're doing ... that perhaps we were aiming higher and ultimately had to fall back on over-the-top violence when we failed to write something "better." Perhaps this isn't the intended implication, but it could be taken that way.

Speaking for myself (and I've said this before on panels) I've never sat down to my computer thinking "I'm going to write some noir today." I simply write what I want and it comes out however it comes out.

I suppose this over-concern about categorization is one of the reasons my new book is something I wrote with specific disregard for categories, genres or sub-genres. (Hey, I managed to work in a plug. I'm awesome!)

Jenny Davidson wrote: "I like gratuitous violence and sadism."

Jenny, will you be my new pal? (Or should I say neo-pal?)

Victor

[Ali]

I just gave up smoking a month ago so don't have the inclination to comment, without suffering terminal cravings.

I like good books - and as for Neo, didn't he take the red pill?

Ali

[Otis]

Count me with Victor, master-of-the-by-the-by-plug, and Jenny as an afficionado of the cathartic power of gratuitous anything.

And, as an aside, since the Neo-Noir field seems to be male-dominated, should it not be referred to as "Guy Noir" ?

... And, yes ...I apologize...

[Otis]

Count me with Victor, master-of-the-by-the-by-plug, and Jenny as an afficionado of the cathartic power of gratuitous anything.

And, as an aside, since the Neo-Noir field seems to be male-dominated, should it not be referred to as "Guy Noir" ?

... And, yes ...I apologize...

[Richard S. Wheeler]

Nihilism destroys fiction. It basically says that evil isn't evil and good isn't good, so why should anyone care? When noir or any other type of fiction unfolds in a nihilistic framework, it loses its power to rivet a reader. What vanishes with nihilism is tragedy. If the decline of a noir hero is not tragic, the whole exercise is pointless. I believe that the growing nihilism I see in genre fiction will greatly reduce its popularity.

[Keith]

After somewhat too much good Scotch, I'm inclined not only to agree with Richard Wheeler, but to say that a lot of what I read that I assume is "neo-noir" seems to be written by people to whom genuinely bad things have never happened.

I get the sense that profanity and sex are used like any junior high school geek uses a leather jacket: as a way of donning an easy symbol of something longed for but fundamentally not true.

[Victor Gischler]

Hmmmmmmm. I dunno, guys. Some of the above comments sound dangerously close to "You kids turn down that damn rock-n-roll music." When I was in grad school we all worried post-structuralism was destroying fiction. Now Nihilism? You know what I think? I don't think ANYTHING is destroying fiction -- not nihilism, not global warming and not transfat. I think some people write some kinds of books and others write another kinds. Some readers blah blah and other readers blah blah.
Too simple? I guess it's more fun to continue the argument. Okay, your feet stink. How about that?

Victor

[Richard S. Wheeler]

Perhaps you are right, Mr. Gischler. I may be generalizing from my own preferences. For me, in this sort of story heart-rending tragedy is important, and if it is missing, I set the novel down and cross that author off my lists. But then, my idea of a good story might well be embodied by an MGM musical starring Gene Kelly.

[Victor Gischler]

Mr. Wheeler:

Those heart-rending stories are great when done well, and I would not want to live in a world without them. I want to live in a world with SINGING IN THE RAIN and KILL BILL both. I like to think I'm eclectic, but maybe I just have no attention span.

Victor

[Victor Gischler]

Mr. Wheeler:

Those heart-rending stories are great when done well, and I would not want to live in a world without them. I want to live in a world with SINGING IN THE RAIN and KILL BILL both. I like to think I'm eclectic, but maybe I just have no attention span.

Victor

[Ali]

Anyone got a smoke?

Ali

[Jennifer Jordan]

A good book is a good book no matter what it's about. The same can be said of a shit book.

We've all read pure, classic noir done very badly, haven't we?

I like good books. Some of them are violent (blood cover to cover). Some of them are rather on the darker side of dark (like deep black hole sucking all light dark). There very content does not define them; it is the skill of the writer in question.

Sweeping a whole genre or sub-genre aside based on matters that are best left to the individual tastes of the individual book buys just begin an argument between friends that could never, truly end.

Ali, you got a light?

[Jon Jordan]

These discusions drive me nuts. My first thought is that the people complainging want more books that are what they prefer to read. In the quest they read books they "think" are what they want and discover they are not.

Noir is like porn, I can't tell you what it is but I know it when I see it.

Way too much time is spent argueing this stuff, and genreally the most vocal combatants are the ones with the least open minds on the subject.

In the end there are only two kids of books. Good books and bad books.

[TruthHurtsFeelTheStab]

"In the end there are only two kids of books. Good books and bad books."

Not if you're a nihilist who believes that there is no point to argue good and bad because both are non-existant... oh wait, Mr Jordan, that indeed seems to be your point (or perhaps "non-point"). Thanks for being inconsistent with yourself, you raving nihilist lunatic.