"Do you get much—"

(Two scenes on Bush Street, Nob Hill, San Francisco. Photos, as always, by your humble blogkeeper)

Your kind comments on my previous post got me reflecting fondly on San Francisco's Bouchercon 2010 and my other recent crime-fiction convention, and I realized I had more to show and tell. (So does Ali Karim, though he exaggerates about me and the waitress.)

Back in Philadelphia, a pair of profane utterances ran through Noircon 2010 like leitmotifs through a Wagner opera. Here, then, are some of that conference's best-loved lines:

"Do you get much pussy?"

— inmate to George Pelecanos after Pelecanos had talked to a prison audience about being a writer


"Do you get much pussy?"

— shouted response to "Any questions?" following every subsequent panel session. Much laughter ensued.


"Fuck you!" (and variants including "Fuck you, Cullen!", "Fuck you, Peter!" and "Fuck you, Megan!")

— panelists' response to the equally ubiquitous (and equally jocose) post-discussion question "How do you define noir?" Much laughter ensued.

Want more? See you at Noircon 2012, Nov. 8-11.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Detectives Beyond Borders meets Fantômas, plus a question for readers

I've begun my journey down the roads where Noircon 2010 will lead me.

Fantômas, first of Louis Feuillade's five French silent films from 1913 and 1914 about the master-of-disguise thief and anti-hero, included two silhouette shots, one of which John Ford might well have had in mind when he repeatedly framed characters in doorways in The Searchers.

The movie's moral ambivalence and inconclusive ending were not what I expected from a 1913 film serial; I'll be watching further episodes.

Next up, Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain's original 1911 novel, Fantômas.

***

The Web site to which most links in this post take you is rich with articles on such subjects as "Fantômas & the avant-garde" and "Pulp surrealism." Juan Gris included a Fantômas novel in one of his paintings, for example, and René Magritte used the character as a direct source for several paintings.

Offhand, I can think of no other figure from popular culture who held such fascination for high culture. Can you?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Noircon 2010: The boys of late autumn

That's my contribution to the coolest souvenir that anyone took home from Noircon 2010.

This is the guy the souvenir belongs to, Steve Weddle. He chose an appropriate memento given that baseball, once the summer game, is now played in November. (Read his Noircon report for an idea of the gentle camaraderie of crime-fiction conventions.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

What was new at Noircon / #Noircon2010 ?

For me, it was:

Meeting: Hilary Davidson, Jedidiah Ayres, Cullen Gallagher, Cameron Ashley, Meredith Anthony, Jared Case, Lawrence Light, Wallace Stroby, Larry Withers, Sharyn Pak Withers, Steve Weddle, Todd Mason.

Getting acquainted or reacquainted with: Fantômas, Patricia Highsmith,

Drinking: Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Brew.

And that was in addition to the congenial company I'd come to know from previous conventions.

New beer, new friends, new books. What could be better?

***

What books, authors or beers have you met for the first time at a crime-fiction convention?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

The Hendrick's and Tonic Crime-Convention Cost-of-Living Index ©

(#Noircon2010: David White [left] and Howard Rodman discuss Fantômas)Christa Faust (left), here with Butch on her lap and Vicki Hendricks to the right, provided one of those hotel-bar, a-ha! moments that make crime-fiction conventions such a treat for the mind even as they wreak havoc on the body.

She had bought Darwyn Cooke's graphic-novel version of Richard Stark's The Hunter, an adaptation I'd found slightly disappointing for its fidelity to Stark's novel. I reasoned that a comics adaptation ought to add something that words alone could not accomplish. Christa argued for strict obedience to the source; I defended infidelity.

But then she said look at the hands, at the panels in which hands fill the frame and their attitude tells the story. Stark's novel tells us about Parker's hands, but I don't think it focuses on hands nearly as much as Cooke does. So thanks, Christa, for opening my eyes to the power of hands.

***

So, what is the Hendrick's and Tonic Crime-Convention Cost-of-Living Index (HAT-3C-LI ©)?

A Hendrick's gin and tonic cost $14.24 with tax at Bouchercon 2010's convention hotel in San Francisco; at Noircon's hotel in Philadelphia the cost was $9.90.

Using the San Francisco cost as a baseline and assigning it a score of 100, Philadelphia's Hendrick's score is 69.5, nothing to laugh at in these hard times.

What's your city's Hendrick's score? (Trust me: You'll enjoy the research.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Noircon Day 3: The Tremor of Highsmith

Back when I read Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery, I noted one critic's suggestion that Highsmith had abandoned character almost entirely for the political by the time she wrote the book.

I suspect Highsmith biographer Joan M. Schenkar might disagree; she took a more personal approach in her talk Saturday at #Noircon2010. Schenkar stressed the importance of forgery in Highsmith's fictional world, for example, particularly in the person of Tom Ripley, protagonist of The Talented Mister Ripley plus four additional novels and a number of film adaptations.

The Tremor of Forgery, Highsmith tells us, is the slight shake that even the most expert forger produces at the beginning and the end of his false signatures. A novel whose title conceit undermines a theme so important in the writer's work? Sounds pretty personal to me.

Even better: The novel's murder weapon — if indeed the victim has been killed — is a typewriter and the protagonist/killer a writer. The machine, Schenkar says, is identical to Highsmith's own, a typewriter the author treasured. (The apparent murder renders the machine inoperable, an especially suggestive state of affairs.)

***

Later, fellow Noircon attendee Richard Edwards interrupted a Star Wars techie chat with Mike "Cashiers du Cinemart" White that had begun in a hotel bar long ago and far away and offered welcome news: Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir, the podcast series Edwards hosted with Shannon Clute, will resume this summer. Unfortunately, their Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed series is not coming back.

***

Overheard at the hotel bar: "Bitch-slapping the synapses of your brain," upon which another fellow attendee, knowing what I do for a living, asked, "Does bitch slapping take a hyphen?"

(To which I should have replied: "Bitch-slapping takes a hyphen — and likes it." )

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Noircon Day 2: Beer beyond borders

(Help-wanted sign, South Street, Philadelphia. Note to self: Keep looking.)

Here are some things attendees said on Day 2 of #Noircon2010:

David Goodis "seemed like the real thing."

— George Pelecanos

"One of the things I love about noir is ugly sex, dysfunctional sex, sex that doesn't work."

— Christa Faust, during panel on "Pornography and noir fiction."

"I embraced ... being an impostor."

— Jim Zervanos , of his short story in Philadelphia Noir

Top Noircon discovery so far: Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Brew.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Pre-con recon at Noircon

#Noircon2010 starts Thursday evening, but a few of us got an early start Wednesday at a reading from Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection.

I didn't know "Cashiers ... " during its incarnation as a movie and popular-culture 'zine, but I loved the reminiscences Mike White read of his days working at a big movie theater. And I got a great kick out of co-author Chris Cummins' discussion of Gremlins, its screenplay, and its weird novelization. I may yet turn out to be a geek after all.

Afterward, got a jump on Noircon socializing with fellow attendees including Anita Thompson, Ed Pettit, Duane Swierczynski, Dennis Tafoya and Scott Phillips.

***

Also today, some good news from super-organizer Jon Jordan about Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis: "The hotel assures me that the bar will be open to the legal limit each night as long as things don't get crazy. So as long as no one is dancing nude on the bar we should be good to go on that front."
See you in St. Louis!

***

This is Detectives Beyond Borders' 1,500th post.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

DBB welcomes Noircon

Early arrivals are on their way to #Noircon2010 in Philadelphia, which opens Thursday evening. Here's what they can expect when they get here.



See you at the hotel bar and the P&P.

***

I was a convention virgin when I signed up very late for Noircon 2008, but I got experienced quickly, and before the event was over, I resolved to sign up for that year's Bouchercon. I attended, and the rest is convention history — an ongoing history, I am happy to say. So I have a certain sentimental attachment to Noircon 2008, because a crime fan never forgets his first con.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

I con, you con, we all con ...

I left Bouchercon, now Bouchercon is coming to me. Sunday, James R. Benn, Henry Chang and Stuart Neville, all members of my "Flags of Terror" panel at Bouchercon last week, will appear in Philadelphia in support of their new books.

Nov. 4-7 is Noircon 2010, which will bring former Boucherconers including Megan Abbott, Patti Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Christa Faust, Laura Lippman, Duane Swierczynski and many more, to town. (Among the many more is George Pelecanos, so this could be a good con.)

I'm turning into a regular con artist.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010