Patricia Abbott's Essential Noir Novels

Patti Abbott is a terrific writer of short stories-- her work has appeared at Thuglit, Hardluck Stories, Spinetingler, Thrilling Detective, and a bunch of others besides. She also lives in Detroit, so you know she's bad-ass. She runs one of the most fun blogs around at www.pattinase@blogspot.com.
Here's her choices for essential noir fiction; some nice surprises here:

They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Horace McCoy
Solomon's Vineyard, Jonathan Lattimer
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
No Orchids for Miss Blandish, James Hadley Chase
The Day of the Locusts, Nathaniel West
The Bride Wore Black, Cornell Woolrich
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James Cain
A Kiss Before Dying, Ira Levin
1984, George Orwell
Pickup, Charles Willeford
Miami Purity, Vicki Hendricks
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
In the Cut, Suzanne Moore
Waiting for Mr. Goodbar, Judith Rossner
Play It as It Lays, Joan Didion
The Golden Egg, Tim Krabbe
The Song is You, Megan Abbott
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ighiguro
Autobiography of a Face, Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy

No More Prayers, No More Platitudes

Here’s the thing: I don’t believe in platitudes or prayer or “sending out good vibes”. I don’t think that “supporting the troops” or “caring about children” makes you special. I don’t believe that the world is going to change if you only think good thoughts and don’t worry about it. I also don’t believe that love conquers all, or that good guys always win in the end or that there’s a reward or a punishment after we’re dead. I don’t believe in spirit guides or guardian angels.
And I don’t believe that my fiction should reflect any of that horseshit.
I compromise every day. Every single day. I smile politely when someone says they’re gonna pray for all the poor folks in Haiti instead of actually, I don’t know, DOING something. I say “Good for you” when I see a bumper sticker urging us to support the troops when, come on, man, what else am I gonna do? NOT support them? I nod sympathetically when someone espouses on how we should think of the children, why isn’t anyone thinking of the children, when it seems obvious to me that only sociopaths don’t care about children, so why mention it?
I do all this every day because I have to in order to maintain the semblance of normal relations and peace. But really, I find it all rather idiotic.
So when you tell me that my fiction is too dark, too pessimistic, all I can tell you is: surely there’s a Dr. Seuss book around somewhere for you, yes?
I should make it clear that I’m not generally a cranky, unhappy guy-- in fact, I’m pretty cheerful most of the time. I’m a cynic, sure, but honestly, that’s not so bad, is it? We could benefit from MORE cynics in the world, I think. But my writing tends to reflect my belief that none of this really means anything at all… and that it’s okay that it doesn’t. On our trip through this world we have to be sure to pack our own meaning along with the toothbrush, but we can’t be surprised when our personal meaning turns out to have no relevance whatsoever to anyone else.
I’ll play the game in my day-to-day life, though, because NOT playing it takes a lot more energy, and comes with nothing but misunderstandings.
In my fiction, though, I’m the one who makes the rules. In my fiction, I get to call out the emptiness behind your platitudes, the pointlessness of your prayers. This is as close as I can come to a sort of manifesto.

Dave Zeltserman's Top 20 Noir Novels

So I put out the call to some of my favorite writers and critics lurking in the dark underbelly of Noir City, and the response was gratifying. I'll have several to post in the following couple of weeks, but let's get started with this:

Dave Zeltserman is one of the strongest voices in crime fiction these days, innovative as a stylist and totally committed to a dark, uncompromising vision. His novels include the acclaimed "Man out of Prison" trilogy-- Small Crimes, Pariah, and Killer. Most recently, he's explored the horror genre with the bizarre Caretaker of Lorne Field, and put out a collection of short stories called, appropriately enough, 21 Tales. Coming in February of 2011 is another novel, Outsourced.

Here's Dave's list of essential noir fiction:
1) Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
2) Grimhaven by Charles Willeford
3) Savage Night by Jim Thompson
4) Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson
5) The Name of the Game is Death by Dan Marlowe
6) Anyone's My Name by Seymour Shubin
7) The Woman Chaser by Charles Willeford
8) How Like a God by Rex Stout
9) Dirty Snow by George Simenon
10) A Swell-Looking Babe by Jim Thompson
11) The Getaway by Jim Thompson
12) The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
13) How the Dead Live by Derek Raymond
14) Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill
15) Miami Purity by Vicki Hendricks
16) Dead City by Shane Stevens
17) I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane
18) Wake Up Dead by Roger Smith
19) The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay
20) Mr. Arkadin by Orson Welles

"Essential" Noir Novels

A couple days ago, the always fun and enlightening Paul David Brazil brought my attention to a terrific list of “essential noir” novels-- you can see it here:http://www.onlinedegree.net/20-essential-works-of-noir-fiction/
Great list. But looking over it I found that it differed dramatically from my own; after all, even though there are books we’d all agree are must-reads, the ones we find “essential” mostly comes down to subjective evaluations, yeah? That is, the books that really impacted us on a personal level as readers or writers.
And because I’m obsessive this way, I just had to come up with my own list of essential noirs, 21 of them in all (I tried to settle at 20, but one more occurred to me and I didn’t have the heart to cut any of them out)…
Here they are, in no particular order:

Double Indemnity-James M. Cain
The Postman Always Rings Twice- James M. Cain
Pop. 1280-Jim Thompson
The Killer Inside Me- Jim Thompson
The Parker series- Richard Stark
(yes, I’m cheating. It’s a series. Sue me.)
Black Friday- David Goodis
Shoot the Piano Player-David Goodis
Red Harvest-Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett
Fast One- Paul Cain
Talented Mr. Ripley- Patricia Highsmith
No Country for Old Men- Cormac McCarthy
Slammer- Alan Guthrie
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?- Horace McCoy
The Black Angel- Cornell Woolrich
Bury Me Deep- Megan Abbott
The Name of the Game is Death- Dan J. Marlowe
The Black Mass of Brother Springer- Charles Willeford
The Burnt-Orange Heresy- Charles Willeford
The Black Dahlia- James Ellroy
A Kiss Before Dying- Ira Levin
The Jack Taylor series- Ken Bruen
(Cheating again, damn my hide.)

Tell you what: Send me your list of essentials and I’ll make a future post out of them. Cool?

Tragedy is funny

The line between existential and black comedy is a seriously thin line. I mean thin, like Lindsay Lohan right before her latest stint in rehab, or thin like your patience with hearing about Lindsay Lohan. Seriously thin.
Basically, noir fiction is about bad things happening to someone. Repeatedly. Bad things that just get worse and worse, spiraling downward-- not out of control, necessarily, but in a never-ending descent; I’ve always fashioned my stories like water running down a drain, going faster and faster as the protagonist searches in vain for a stopper. And the closer it gets to running out entirely, the faster the spin of water down the drain.
See why I never use metaphors or similes in my work? I suck at them. But you get the point.
Now look at a good black comedy. The Coen Brothers ‘Barton Fink’ comes to mind. If you described the plot of that movie to someone, without mentioning that it’s a comedy, you’d be describing a noir: neurotic NY playwright comes to LA to write for the movies, suffers surreal case of writer’s block, feels like he’s losing his mind in a dingy little hotel room, meets a strange and mysterious salesman who may be a psychotic serial killer. And what makes the movie a comedy? There aren’t any jokes in it, right? There’s not even any physical humor to speak of. The comedy is solely in the situation, in subtle reactions and sly dialogue.
This link between comedy and noir occurred to me recently when someone asked me to explain a bit about the book I just started working on. I began describing some of the action (without giving away too much, I hope), about a protagonist who makes a huge mistake, takes an even huger risk to fix it, screws THAT up, and winds up with a dead body he has to get rid of. Then, of course, it turns out the guy he’s killed is very important, and the protagonist has to scramble to cover his tracks and of course, the water starts spiraling down the drain from there.
I was describing this to someone, and this someone started laughing at the absurdity of the story. And the more I went on, the more the person laughed. And it dawned on me: Oh, yeah. This IS kinda funny, isn’t it? Because noir and black comedy have the exact same story pattern.
It makes me wonder how hard it would be to turn some classic noir, say Double Indemnity or maybe Night of the Hunter into a comedy. Maybe if Walter Neff does a spit take when Phillis suggests killing her husband? Or if Reverend Powell is continuously getting smacked in the nuts in his pursuit of those little brats?
Mel Brooks famously said “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die”-- and noir is about a protagonist falling down an open manhole, falling, falling. The punch line is when he hits the bottom.

Some More Film Noir Notes

The Naked City
1948-Jules Dassin
Fantastic police procedural only slightly marred by the unnecessary voice-over narration. Two sturdy detectives track a murderer, following up leads and meeting all sorts of interesting types, before the exciting finale on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Notable especially for all the great on-location shots of NYC.

Black Angel
1946
Based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich; a superior noir. June Vincent’s estranged husband has been accused of murder. With the help of the awesome Dan Duryea as the victim’s hopelessly alcoholic songwriter husband, she sets out to find the real killer.
Also with Peter Lorre as the inevitable sleazy nightclub owner. Surprising ending. Solid movie.

The Lady from Shanghai
1948-Orson Welles
Welles is a tough-guy sailor, hired by the seductive Rita Hayworth to work on her husband’s yacht. Intrigue, suspicion, and murder follow. The scene in the hall of mirrors, toward the end, is masterful.

The Big Clock
1948
A great cast in a top-notch noir. Ray Milland is a magazine publisher who misses a vacation with his wife and winds up spending time with another woman—a woman who winds up murdered, and all the clues point to Milland as the killer.
Also starring Charles Laughton and the beautiful Maureen O’Sullivan.

Niagara
1952-Henry Hathaway
A young couple on a delayed honeymoon to Niagara Falls meets another couple whose marriage is falling apart: Marilyn Monroe is the evil vixen, Joseph Cotton is her shell-shocked war vet husband. With her lover, Monroe plots to murder her husband; the husband’s making plots of his own, and the young couple gets involved against their wills. Joseph Cotton is great in this one, and Monroe shows that she could actually act when given half the chance.

A-Hunting We Will Go