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…