New OA

The new issue of Oxford American, one of my favorite magazines, has a great essay by Barry Hannah, one of my favorite writers, about teaching noir:

I came to noir late, because of my thin judgment after I picked up a Mickey Spillane novel and wanted to see what the man who nearly outsold the Holy Bible had to teach, but found the writing beneath even decent adolescent lit. Another baffling case was Louis L’Amour, with his mega-nation of readers. Such rank dumbo prose from the man President Reagan awarded the Medal of Freedom, which I didn’t win despite staying so near the phone waiting. Evil and good were black and white in the worlds of these millionaire scribes, all right, but were chased after by men with a child’s crayon. Noir would have helped L’Amour, whose tales needed less light on the subject—and please let there be scheming broads and dames with cleavage, mystery, and the gritty naturalism of hard-boiled fiction. Lawyers, guns, and money, to steal from Warren Zevon. Meanness, a sine qua non. Crimes of murder and theft motivated by wild greed or love. Some heartless nastiness. Guns are dispensable in much current noir, but I, the mentor of fine students at Sewanee and Ole Miss, own a nickel-plated Smith and Wesson .38 revolver with a two-inch barrel, bought in a local pawnshop, because the pistol was a souvenir from my diving into the greats and their times—Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain—the classic noirs. Of course, I am a fool but also of an age to hold license to be a goddamned fool, still clinging to the sad myth of tough boy at sixty-four as I roar down hell’s highway on my cherished Kawasaki 1500cc cruiser. Who knows if I’m carrying my piece in my handlebar bag, searching for evil and its minions as well as the boring good?

I’ve also done deep research in preparing for the noir studies of my golden years by turning ungolden, with bile and spleen rising. My twenty-year career in alcoholism is a clichéd bore, but sober for most of sixteen years, I can live more intensely the ever-sordid hunger for booze that marks all classic noir.

Comments

[Frank]

Not sure if you're into comic books, but I am really an excellent noir series (no superheores) right now called Crimial. It's put out by Marvel and you'll find it in the adult comics section of your nearest decent book shop. think you'll like it. :)