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Post by stephen on Apr 30, 2019 13:26:28 GMT
Noir is perhaps my favorite genre of literature -- certainly, it's the milieu I like to work in the most in my own writing. It's easy to satirize and parody (for my money, the best Calvin & Hobbes strips were the Tracer Bullet riffs), but so damned hard to get right, but there are writers out there who can make it seem so effortless and operatic. So I wanna talk about them. I wanna talk about not just the undisputed heavyweights in the medium (Chandler, Hammett, Thompson), but also about the newer, lesser-known voices in the hard-boiled world. This is the place where we'll jaw about the best stories about dames, schemes, double-crosses and big scores.
I'll kick it off.
James Ellroy: For my money, this is the best noir writer of all time. Yeah, Ray and Dash and Jim are the forerunners of it all, but Ellroy's poisoned pen outstrips them all because he understands the seedy soul that infuses noir and knows that it needs to make the reader feel like bugs are scurrying underneath his skin, and that the only way to stop them is to keep reading. His L.A. Quartet is flawless from start to finish. The Black Dahlia, his most autobiographical fictive work, perfectly captures the mantra of obsession better than any writer I've ever encountered. The Big Nowhere is his first truly expansive novel, and while it's probably my least favorite of the four, it's only because the other three operate on such a high plane and improve upon the foundation set by this book. L.A. Confidential is truly sprawling and epic in a way few books are, and I've spoken of the mastery of its adaptation elsewhere. And then there's White Jazz, the slimmest, toughest and most rewarding novel of them all to read, as it puts you in the rapidly degenerating headspace of the second most crooked cop in literature (as he squares off against the first).
I've also praised Ellroy's Underworld U.S.A. trilogy as being the pinnacle of historical literature, and it obviously shares some noir sensibilities considering its creator. Ellroy's more minor novels (Brown's Requiem, Clandestine, the Lloyd Hopkins books) are all great reads as well and come highly recommended, but the world of 1946-'58 evoked in Ellroy's quartet is arguably the most immersive world-building of a bygone era, not just in location but in spirit. |
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 30, 2019 13:44:33 GMT
I love noir in all its forms that I can get it in (film, novel, alcoholic, female) and all the writers you listed although I sometimes like writers who swerve what can be parodied in it in the first place. For example I really love Emmanuel Carrère who would never be called a noir writer (by anyone, ever  ) yet I sort of see him that way. To me he wrote the greatest true crime book L'Adversaire (The Adversary) and an amazing short novel - The Class Trip which weirdly play with the tropes and twists and turns of noir while subverting it while you read it. I also sometimes prefer the lesser discussed real noir writers like Woolrich, Goodis and Charles Williams whose A Touch Of Death I often refer back to......often I actually prefer lesser writers than Ellroy (who is great though) - short, swift, brutal. |
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Post by stephen on Apr 30, 2019 13:51:13 GMT
I've never read Carrère, but I'll make The Adversary a priority after I'm done with the Ken Follett book I'm currently reading.
Interestingly, there's another French author who absolutely makes my Top 5 when it comes to noir writers: Jean-Patrick Manchette. He wrote The Prone Gunman (adapted into the Sean Penn action flick The Gunman, although I assure you the novel is a work of art and far better than that film would suggest) and Fatale, which I always thought would make for a truly harrowing adaptation under the right director (Jonathan Glazer has always been my go-to for this). Manchette's prose is clipped, sharp as a stiletto and so matter-of-fact, and yet its pared-down nature belies a philosophical, almost poetic outlook. He was an influence on the underrated James Sallis (who wrote Drive, which reads very much like Manchette) and even on me, as I named a major antagonist in one of my stories after him.
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Post by jimmalone on May 4, 2019 14:32:50 GMT
I love Ellroy's L.A. Confidential. One of THE great crime novels definitely. I love the complexity of it. And The Black Dahlia is a great read as well, while seemingly the total opposite. Much of its greatness is between the lines, in it's "silence", in the tragic of the incident and in what it means for the detectives working on the case.
I heavily disliked American Tabloid and Because of the Night though. Both of them are written rather poorly. Ellroy makes the mistake here that many crime writers do. He wants to shock readers and targets the simple instincts of mankind rather then to develop a good story with good characters.
A "noir writer", if you want to label him that way, I love is certainly Michael Connelly. He's still far behind Raymond Chandler, if there is any "heir" to him it is Connelly. Not only does he write a good prose (stylistically, while as I said far behind Chandler, he is way above most other writers (not only crime), but he develops a very fitting melancholy in reminiscence of Chandler and has those typical lonely wolf figure, who fights always on different fronts and who will fight for what he thinks is right, even if he knows he's gonna lose and even if it's not within the law.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 4, 2019 15:32:15 GMT
Not yet mentioned but he should be is Donald Westlake who wrote under a lot of names, has some classics that lean towards noir definitely, and some very funny non-noir crime novels and many fine films that came from his work - one of the best modern noir adaptations imo of Jim Thompson's The Grifters too.
He wrote a lot over a long career but even some of the later stuff is aces like The Ax and has good short story collections too.....
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Post by Viced on May 4, 2019 17:00:50 GMT
Not yet mentioned but he should be is Donald Westlake who wrote under a lot of names, has some classics that lean towards noir definitely, and some very funny non-noir crime novels and many fine films that came from his work - one of the best modern noir adaptations imo of Jim Thompson's The Grifters too. He wrote a lot over a long career but even some of the later stuff is aces like The Ax and has good short story collections too..... Amen, buddy. The very hardboiled masterpiece that is the Parker series (up until Butcher's Moon, at least), the hilarious and well plotted Dortmunder series, some early stuff that is more noir-ish but also pretty subversive (the kind of oddball THE CUTIE, the depressing existentialism of MEMORY)... crazy how much he wrote and how much of it is good. And THE AX has got to be on the shortlist for best literary endings of all time, tbh. But when it comes to strictly noir, I think David Goodis is the man to beat. Dude effortlessly made everything he wrote seem either booze-soaked, full of regret, or poetically down and dirty (and usually all of the above). |
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Post by pacinoyes on May 22, 2019 22:24:08 GMT
Just wanted to mention a bit more the great Cornell Woolrich, more detective fiction than noir per se but he wrote the 2 novels that inspired films by Truffaut - Bride Wore Black and Waltz into Darkness (Mississippi Mermaid). His later book Rendezvous in Black is a real great and complicated one and ambitious as anything by an older writer that I've read too.....I have to get some of his other stuff actually.
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Post by stephen on Jun 28, 2019 17:34:12 GMT
Thought I'd resurrect this ol' thread to get a chance to talk about the great Chester Himes.
I've spoken about Himes before in passing a time or two, usually in terms of adapting his great novels into a noir franchise. Himes began his career in the early '30s while he was serving a stretch for robbery, writing periodicals for Esquire and the like before branching out into his "Harlem Detective" series: pulp crime books that positively blazed with gritty violence, dark humor (in more ways than one), corruption, jazz, sex and the like.
The "Harlem Detective" series compromises nine books, all of which feature two black NYPD detectives named Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. These are tough operators to say the least; Coffin Ed and Gravedigger are the forerunners of guys like Vic Mackey, using physical brutality and sometimes even torture to get their man. However, Himes is skilled at keeping these two men sympathetic and somehow rootable, primarily because they exist in a world where their brutality is preferable to the alternative.
They've made a couple of solid movies based on these books, but the franchise is positively ripe for a resurgence. Michael K. Williams and Mahershala Ali would make the perfect pairing.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 18, 2019 23:56:23 GMT
George Pelecanos - is another guy I've liked though I'm no sure how much he goes to noir tbh instead of straight crime fiction.
Been involved in TV writing and producing Deuce, The Wire..........surprised he hasn't gotten into film. The Night Gardener of his would make a great movie.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 9, 2021 20:09:29 GMT
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) Up to 7/10 Come Back, Charleston Blue (1972) 7.5/10 You should totally read the series by Chester Himes. I went on a binge of Coffin Ed/Gravedigger Jones five or so years ago. Michael K. Williams and Charles S. Dutton were always my personal picks for the roles. Did it work? First time thread-jumping a convo. Edit: It worked  I've read Real Cool Killers and liked it! Himes immediately puts you into the atmosphere of it and it gets surprisingly violent. Do you have particular favs outside of that one? Michael K Williams is a sure thing for current casting. Dutton now too old no? Maybe in the 90s.... but if we were there I'd cast Yaphet as Coffin and like Joe Morton as Gravedigger. |
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Post by stephen on Feb 9, 2021 20:17:06 GMT
You should totally read the series by Chester Himes. I went on a binge of Coffin Ed/Gravedigger Jones five or so years ago. Michael K. Williams and Charles S. Dutton were always my personal picks for the roles. Did it work? First time thread-jumping a convo. Edit: It worked I've read Real Cool Killers and liked it! Himes immediately puts you into the atmosphere of it and it gets surprisingly violent. Do you have particular favs outside of that one? Michael K Williams is a sure thing for current casting. Dutton now too old no? Maybe in the 90s.... but if we were there I'd cast Yaphet as Coffin and like Joe Morton as Gravedigger. If Dutton's too old, then yeah, I actually like the idea of Williams re-teaming with Erik LaRay Harvey from Boardwalk Empire. |
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 9, 2021 20:20:09 GMT
Did it work? First time thread-jumping a convo. Edit: It worked I've read Real Cool Killers and liked it! Himes immediately puts you into the atmosphere of it and it gets surprisingly violent. Do you have particular favs outside of that one? Michael K Williams is a sure thing for current casting. Dutton now too old no? Maybe in the 90s.... but if we were there I'd cast Yaphet as Coffin and like Joe Morton as Gravedigger. If Dutton's too old, then yeah, I actually like the idea of Williams re-teaming with Erik LaRay Harvey from Boardwalk Empire. Now that's great casting. Hit send, Stephen. (Studio looks at our casting, crumbles it and casts Idris Elba and Kevin Hart) |
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Post by stephen on Feb 10, 2021 17:09:30 GMT
If Dutton's too old, then yeah, I actually like the idea of Williams re-teaming with Erik LaRay Harvey from Boardwalk Empire. Now that's great casting. Hit send, Stephen. (Studio looks at our casting, crumbles it and casts Idris Elba and Kevin Hart) In a post- Perry Mason reboot world, I really do want this to be a proper series. |
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Post by stephen on Jun 9, 2021 2:15:11 GMT
One of my great joys getting me through this pandemic has been dipping my toe into Irish noir, and if you're looking for extremely taut and tantalizing storytelling set on the Emerald Isle, Dervla McTiernan is a fantastic entry-point. Her Cormac Reilly series is top-notch, perfectly weaving the mysteries and the character's lives so deftly. Her first novel, The Ruin, is heartbreakingly good and would make a fantastic film (they all would, but that one in particular is just excellent).
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 26, 2022 17:43:21 GMT
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Post by stephen on Aug 26, 2022 17:53:14 GMT
Viced, do you see this?! DO YOU SEE THIS?!?!?!?
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 26, 2022 21:01:59 GMT
I've never been a fan. It's all so sordid. I like ugliness, but there has to be a balance of hope or just common decency with all of the nastiness. Obviously, there are exceptions, but that's the general rule I have with noir.
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) yet I sort of see him that way. To me he wrote the greatest true crime book L'Adversaire (The Adversary) and an amazing short novel - The Class Trip which weirdly play with the tropes and twists and turns of noir while subverting it while you read it.
