Hammett and Hollywood

Reeder

Waded into a sea of wankers at Toronto's Eaton Centre this afternoon, including one who talked and looked like Oliver Reeder from The Thick of It. Of course, we were at an espresso bar called Aroma, so what does that make me?

***

My favorite part of Richard Layman's introduction to Return of the Thin Man is its reference to Hammett during his time in Hollywood as a "stylish moneymaker."

The volume's two stories, After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man, are not novels but rather Hammett's screen stories for what became the movies of the same names (for which Hammett did not write the screenplays). Indeed, the beginning of the former reads like directions from a screenplay:

"A train whistle sounds as the Chief arrives slowly in the Santa Fe Station in San Francisco. A stateroom in the train is stacked high with hatboxes, and suitcases, books, flowers, magazines, half-empty boxes of fruit. Although it is afternoon, the stateroom is not yet made up."

And that reminds me of Lawrence Block's comment during his interview with Duane Swierczynski at Noircon 2012 in Philadelphia about Hammett as a seminal figure in the influence of the movies on novel writing. Said Block:

"I think it started the most obviously with Dashiell Hammett. He wanted to write screenplays."

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Lawrence Block at Noircon; Vicki Hendricks on noir; a question for readers

Ace chronicler (hmm, note to self: Write story about bruising, colorfully ethnic detective called Ace Kronicler) Cullen Gallagher posts video of Lawrence Block's acceptance speech upon receiving the David L. Goodis Award at Noircon 2012.

And visit Vicki Hendricks' blog post Noircon 2012 — the best!, where she says, among other things, that

"The definition of noir has broadened in the last several years with writers of any dark villain or alcoholic detective laying claim to the sophisticated French film term, but real noir devotees, as well as expert Otto Penzler, anchor the meaning with classic writers of the 40s and 50s, such as James M. Cain and Patricia Highsmith. For a novel to fall into the noir category, the narrator or point of view character has to be the criminal. Most often these people are undereducated, born into lower economic groups, and demonstrate warped psychology that winds them deeper into the dirt, from start to finish. No happy endings, no series possibilities."

That last point — that noir and series are irreconcilable — came up during a panel discussion at Bouchercon this year. I suggested Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor as a PI who comes close to being a noir character. What do you think? Can a crime series, PI or otherwise, be noir?

***

My noir songs program at Noircon happened at the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art. Here's why the exhibit/performance space bears that name:


(Photo by Lou Boxer)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

What they said at Noircon

Your humble blogkeeper talking
 about noir songs at the
Philadelphia  Mausoleum
 of Contemporary Art
 during Noircon. Photo courtesy
 of Cullen Gallagher.

More wise, entertaining, and interesting things that people said at Noircon 2012:

"It's like modern folklore, really."

— Alison Gaylin, on true crime

"It's increasingly impossible to tell an American noir story."

— Kent Harrington, on the globalization of crime

"Noir is "the beating heart of yearning. It's not about `problems.'"

— Robert Olen Butler

Fellow Noircon attendee: "Are you a dog person or a cat person?"

Me: "Neither. I'm a vegetarian."

— Exchange at hotel bar Saturday night

  © Peter Rozovsky 2012

Noircon 2012: More Block, Kent Harrington, ratlines in crime fiction

I don't remember how the subject came up, but Lawrence Block turned the talk to crime-fiction conferences during Saturday's keynote Noircon interview. During a panel at one such convention, Block told interviewer Duane Swierczynski, someone asked him:

"How are you going to spend eternity? I thought, `On a fucking panel.'"

Later, Block was asked about the genesis of his early paperback book about a successful assassination plot against Fidel Castro (republished decades later by Hard Case Crime as Killing Castro). In 1961, Block said, a third-rate paperback publisher ("He aspired to be second-rate") commissioned a quickie biography of Elizabeth Taylor from Donald Westlake, figuring Taylor was not long for the world. Then he asked Block for a similar book about Castro, figuring to capitalize on Castro's inevitable and imminent ouster.

"I never met" the publisher, Block said, "and I've always been grateful for that. ... alav ha-shalom, he's been dead for years, Elizabeth Taylor hung on until recently, and Castro, God love him, is still alive."

***

Kent Harrington, making it through his Sunday morning Noircon session in shape no better or worse than most of his audience, said he wanted his new novel, The Rat Machine, “to be a big novel but in the High Pulp style.”

The novel takes its title from ratlines, the escape routes set up for Nazis fleeing Europe at the end of World War II. Harrington described the book as a thriller about the importation of Nazis into the United States, the role allocated to the Sicilian Mafia in the international heroin trade in return for its cooperation in stamping out Communists and socialists, and the reverberations to this day of those decisions.

Stuart Neville’s next novel will be called Ratlines, and its story includes the Irish government’s embrace of Nazis after the war and its ripple effect in the present day. Asked if he thought more crime writers might take up the theme, Harrington, who called himself a moral if not a political crime novelist, said, “I hope so.”

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Lawrence Block's joyous Noircon elegy

I had about a month's worth of experiences yesterday alone at Noircon 2012, which has just ended, but I'll need some sleep, a good meal, and some fresh air before I can post comprehensively on this eccentric, variegated, highly enjoyable yet intellectually intense conference.

For now, a bit about the convention's highlight: Duane Swierczynski's keynote interview with Lawrence Block. Block was a fount of entertaining and instructive stories from a writing career that has spanned at least fifty-four years, and Swierczynski combined a fan boy’s enthusiasm, an archivist’s knowledge, and a Borscht Belt comic's flair for showing off.

I’ll likely have more to say about the interview in future posts, but what I found most moving was Block’s recognition that the end of his writing career may be near, that it will likely come on his own terms, and that he seems to look back with great satisfaction on his prolific and highly accomplished output. I’d call what he had to say a joyous elegy, if there’s such a thing.

He did say once, “I’m tired,” but mainly he said things like this, in reply to a question about whether he had more novels planned beyond the hundred or so he’s already written:

”Anything I’ve wanted to share with the world, I’ve long since committed, so, while I wouldn’t rule [it] out…

and

”If I’d had stellar success early on, I’m sure I would have written a lot less. I’m happy with the way things turned out”

So, I’m sure, are crime readers everywhere.

***

Cullen Gallagher offers a chronicle in words and pictures of Friday's Noircon panels.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Noircon 2012, Evening I

I was second on the bill at the kick-off for Noircon 2012 at the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art Thursday evening, after the German artist Heide Hatry and before short films and commentary by filmmakers Oren Shai and Ed Holub and a set of music by Philadelphia's Scovilles.

My talk was short, sweet, and simple: ten minutes on noir music people might not think of as noir music, with examples from Brazil, Peru, Ireland, from jazz, country, symphony, opera, and flamenco, and a smashing conclusion with a recording of this song, from right here in America.

The presentation went well, I think, with a couple of hosanas and a huzzah flung my way afterward, including one from Robert Polito, editor of the Library of America's volumes of David Goodis and of American noir from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.

Two highlights of the evening were contrasting views of Quentin Tarantino from the two filmmakers, and a surprising remark from Hatry about her choice of Wagner's Tannhäuser as a soundtrack for part of her presentation.

If I understood him correctly, Oren Shai cited Tarantino's self-referential genre storytelling as a vital response to exhausted genre conventions. Ed Holub, on the other hand, said it was fine for "Mr. Quentin Tarantino" to engage in "revisionist history, making sure all the parts line up, but there's more than that. I think he's missing the core." For Holub, the core of the original noir was postwar angst. Today, in neo-noir, he said, that emotional core has to be personal. 

The remarks on Tarantino caught my ear because I'd said in my talk that Nick Cave's music struck me as mannered and too aware of itself, "a musical equivalent of the Coen brothers or Quentin Tarantino."

And Heide Hatry, whose work is intensely political, surely chose Wagner as an acid commentary on Germany and the hellish dangers of a nation gone wild? Nah, she said, she just liked Tannhäuser. Sometimes a piece of music is just a piece of music.

(Read Cullen Gallagher's behind-the-scenes account of Noircon, Day I at Pulp Serenade.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

A little noir music

Noir and Crime Songs – Noircon 2012

presented by

 Peter Rozovsky/Detectives Beyond Borders http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com

===================

 1. “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”-Richard Thompson

2. “A Pair of Brown Eyes”-The Pogues
3. “A Thing Well Made”-The Mutton Birds
4. “Alabama”-John Coltrane
5. “Alice’s Restaurant”-Arlo Guthrie
6. “Alto Songo”-Afro-Cuban All Stars, many others
7. “Angelina”-Bob Dylan
8. “Atlantic City”-Bruce Springsteen
9. “B-Movie Boxcar Blues”-Delbert McClinton
10. “Bad As Me”-Tom Waits
11. “Bad News From Home”-Randy Newman
12. “Ballad of a Lonely Man”-Mike Ness
13. “Bang Bang”-Cher
14. “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
15. “Black-eyed Susan”-The Triffids
16. “Blues in the Night”-Rosemary Clooney, Louis Armstrong, many others
17. “Only the Lonely”
18. “Bonnie and Clyde”
19. “Boston”
20. “Bright Lights, Big City”-Jimmy Reed
21. “Bright Lights, Big City”-The Triffids
22. “Burn”
23. “Calling Out to Carol”-Stan Ridgway
24. “Carmelita”-Warren Zevon
25.   Carmen-Georges Bizet (composer)
26. “Charlie’s Medicine”-Warren Zevon
27. “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”-Tom Waits
28. “Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice”-Hamish Imlach
29. “Cold Kisses”
30. “Criminal Mind”
31. “Deep in the Woods”-Nick Cave
32. “Delia’s Gone”-Johnny Cash
33. “Delilah”-Tom Jones
34. “Diggin' Up Bones”-Randy Travis
35. “Dominion Road”-The Mutton Birds
36. “Douce dame jolie”- Guillaume de Machaut composer (France, 14th century)
37. “Down by the River”-Neil Young
38. “Down in the Willow Garden”
39. “Down Into Mexico”-Delbert McClinton
40. “Every Breath You Take”-The Police
41. “Excitable Boy”-Warren Zevon
42. “Face to the Highway”-Tom Waits
43.  Field of Glass-The Triffids
44. "Film Noir Love”-Jukebox Zeroes



Luke Kelly

45. “Frankie Teardrop”-Suicide
46. “Galveston Bay”-Bruce Springsteen
47. “Germany Before the War”-Randy Newman
48. “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry”
49. “Hazard”-Richard Marx
50. “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)”-The Crystals
51. “Heartbreak Hotel”-Elvis Presley
52. “Hell Broke Luce”-Tom Waits
53. “Hey Joe”-Jimi Hendrix, many others
54. “Hometown Farewell Kiss”
55. “How High the Moon”-many versions
56. “Hurricane”-Bob Dylan
57. “I Don’t Like Mondays”-The Boomtown Rats
58. “I Feel So Good”-Richard Thompson
59. “I Fought the Law”-The Bobby Fuller Four, the Clash, et al.
60. “I Hung My Head”-Johnny Cash
61. “I’m Dyin’ As Fast as I Can”
62. “It’s a Fine Day for a Reunion”
63. “Jacob Green”-Johnny Cash
64. “Jailbreak”
65. “Jeannie Needs a Shooter”-Warren Zevon
66. “Kelly’s Blues”
67.   Kindertotenlieder-Gustav Mahler (composer)
68. “L’affaire DuMoutier (Say to Me)”-The Box
69. “Life of Crime”
70. “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts”-Bob Dylan
71. “Lone Star Blues”
72. “Long Black Veil”-The Band, others
73. “Love in a Faithless Country”-Richard Thompson
74. “Love Me Tender”-Elvis Presley
75. “Love You) Till the End of the World”
76. “Mack the Knife”-Brecht/Weill; Bobby Darin, many others
77. “MacPherson’s Lament”-traditional, fine version by Hamish Imlach
78. “Maria Lando”-Susana Baca
79. “Matty Groves”-Fairport Convention


Camarón de la Isla

80. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”-The Beatles
81. “Mercy Seat”-Nick Cave
82. “Merritville”-Dream Syndicate
83. “Mi Sangre Grita”- Camarón de la Isla
84. “Miriam”-Norah Jones
85. “Miss Otis Regrets”-by Cole Porter, many versions
86. “Murder Tonight in the Trailer Park”-The Cowboy Junkies
87. “Nancy Whiskey”-traditional
88. “Ocultei”-Elizeth Cardoso 
89. “Ode to Billy Joe”-Bobbie Gentry
90. “Oh, Darlin’, What Have I Done?”
91. “One For My Baby (and One More For the Road)”-Frank Sinatra, many others
92. “One Mechanic Town”-The Triffids
93. “Paint It, Black”-The Rolling Stones
94. “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”
95. “Pay Me”-Tom Waits
96. “Peg and Pete and Me”-Stan Ridgway
97. “Philby”-Rory Gallagher
98. “Psycho”-Puddle of Mudd
99. “Psycho Killer”-Talking Heads
100. “Rain Street”-The Pogues
101. “Red Right Hand”-Nick Cave
102. “Robbery, Assault and Battery”-Genesis
103. “Rocky Road to Dublin”-1976 live version by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners  
104. “Sam Hall”-Johnny Cash, others
105. “Seminole Bingo”-Warren Zevon
106. “She’s Hit”-The Birthday Party
107. “She’s Not There”-The Zombies
108. “Stagger Lee”/”Stack-O’Lee,” etc.-Lloyd Price, many others http://www.staggerlee.com
109. “Stan”-Eminem
110. “Strange Fruit”-Billie Holiday
111. “Stranger Than Kindness”-Nick Cave
112. “Sunny Came Home”-Shawn Colvin
113. “Swamplands”
114.  Symphonie Fantastique-Hector Berlioz (composer)
115. “Teen Angel”-Mark Dinning
116. “That Georgia Sun Was Blood Red And Goin' Down"-Tanya Tucker
117. “The Ballad of Robert Moore and Betty Coltrane”-Nick Cave
118. “The Carny”-Nick Cave
119. “The Continental Op”-Rory Gallagher
120. “The Curse of Millhaven”-Nick Cave
121. “The Friend Catcher”-The Birthday Party
122. “The Heater”-The Mutton Birds
123. “The Loading”-Tom Cochrane
124. “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia-Vicki Lawrence
125. “The Perfect Crime #2”-The Decembrists
126. “The Road Goes on Forever”-Robert Earl Keen
127. “The Rub”-Delbert McClinton
128. “The Shape I’m In”-The Band
129. “The Theme to Chinatown”
130. “Tom and Annie”-Deric Ruttan
131. “Tom Dooley”-traditional
132. “Too Much of Nothing”-Bob Dylan and the Band
133. “Trick of the Light”-The Who
134. “Unmade Love”-The Triffids
135. “Vagabond Holes”-The Triffids
136. “Walkin’ After Midnight”-Patsy Cline
137. “Watching the Detectives”-Elvis Costello
138. “Weila, Weila, Weila”-The Dubliners
139. “What’s Her Name Today?”-Elvis Costello
140. “Whiskey in the Jar”-The Dubliners, Thin Lizzy, others
141. “White City”-The Pogues
142. “Woods of Darney”-Richard Thompson
143. “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”-Patty Loveless
144. “Zoo-Music Girl”-The Birthday Party

==============

145. "Killing Floor"-Howlin' Wolf

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

In the tweet of the night

Wallace Stroby ‏Just realized this is the first presidential election night since 1986 I haven't spent in a newsroom. Miss it. Sort of.

DBeyondBorders @wallacestroby Nah, who needs all that congealed pizza?

Wallace Stroby @DBeyondBorders: Stale newsroom pizza = the smell of democracy in action.

DBeyondBorders @wallacestroby: Hunks of that democracy rancidifying in the pit of my digestive system now. You coming to Noircon? I can save you a slice.

Wallace Stroby @DBeyondBorders I'll be there. Enjoy that pizza. It's what makes America great.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Sour on Swedes plus more on NoirCon

The wise and discerning keeper of the Crime Scraps Review blog, long a champion of Scandinavian crime fiction, asks after reading Autumn Killing by Mons Kallentoft: "Are we now getting the average Swedish crime novel translated simply because it is Swedish?"

*

Back in Philadelphia, Jeremiah Healy is the latest NoirCon 2012 attendee to weigh in with his thoughts on the conference: 

"This will be my third NoirCon, and I attended the first two. I think my favorite story from the conference/convention was learning that David Goodis didn't just write noir: He also lived it, and probably more from desperation than enjoyment. ...

"NoirCon is different from most other conferences/conventions in that it is dedicated to a sub-genre of crime writing, something like the EyeCons (focusing on private-investigator fiction) sponsored by Gary Niebuhr and Ted Hertel in Milwaukee and Robert Randisi and Christine Matthews in St. Louis. As a result, it's like a wine-tasting dedicated to one varietal, say Pinot Noir (sorry), and therefore an event in which all the attendees have a common, if narrower, interest."

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Why they're coming to NoirCon, part II

It's a commonplace at crime conventions that the darker the writing, the more generous and gregarious the writer. Or maybe that's just the good vibes at NoirCon, the crime conference I'm proud to say takes place in Philadelphia every two years. NoirCon 2012 begins Thursday, and here's what a few more NoirCon panelists have to say about the event and its director. (Read previous huzzahs for NoirCon here.)

=============

"Favorite NoirCon story — 2 a.m., some bar in Philly, drinking beers with Ken Bruen. And if I could remember it, I'm sure the conversation was brilliant.

"What's so different — Nobody's there to sell anything, nobody's slugging their latest book or their new series. We're there to talk about what we love to read.

"How's that?"

— Charles Benoit

"Noircon 2012 is my second Noircon. From my experience at Noircon 2010, I can say that Lou Boxer is one of the great and most generous of conference organizers and hosts. When I first contacted him in 2010, it was too late for me to be on a panel or to write something for the Noircon 2010 program book. In the end Lou said, `Send me a one-page ad for your book (Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem).'

"I did, and it appeared at no charge in the back of the Noircon 2010 program book, notwithstanding that I was a new, unknown writer. Neato!

"The Noircon 2010 program book was a thing of beauty in and of itself, designed to look like a used 1950's pulp paperback collector's item. It even came in a plastic sleeve with a sticker showing the condition and price: VG 100--. It was intended to look like the paperback editions of the pulp novels of Jim Thompson, David Goodis and others of that period, with faux creases, rubbings, dirt stains, etc. on the cover.

"Unlike the hugeness of Bouchercon (which is fun in its own right), Noircon is a very intimate gathering of crime-story writers and fans, held in a vibrant inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood where there are great restaurants and bars for the overflow from the conference. Overall the quality of the presentations and panels in 2010 was excellent and more intellectually focused than Bouchercon.

"Without a doubt, Noircon is THE crime fiction writers' and fans' conference to attend."

— Jonathan Woods

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Why they're coming to NoirCon

NoirCon 2012 happens in Philadelphia next week. Here's what some of the panelists and honorees have to say about previous NoirCons and about why they'll be at this one. (Read more hosannas for NoirCon here.)

==========================

“My favorite moment was [2010], when Christa Faust ran into the theater a few minutes late for her panel, Butch — her dog — scampering beside her on his leash. She was wearing a red skirt that matched his jacket and had gone to dark hair with a stripe of white to match Butch's coloring. It was the best entrance I've ever seen.

“There were several hilarious moments involving goat fornication, but I'll let someone else tell that story.

“This is my third Noircon. The intimacy of the venue and closeness of the group are what mainly bring me back, as well as the strict focus on noir and quality panels. Also, this year I came to pay my respect to two of my favorite writers, Harry Crews and Larry Brown.”

— Vicki Hendricks

“At the last, lovely NoirCon, I was the Keynote Speaker. The keynote speech, for reasons which only people who love Noir could forgive, was scheduled at an unusually early morning hour. The audience and I had been up late the night before imbibing freely at the sumptuous banquet. In the morning, we were all enveloped in that atmospheric swirl of dislocation and loss of identity by which the art of Noir lives, breathes and propagates. I scarcely had to lift my voice.

“This year, I am stranded in my apartment in Paris (no hardship at all, by the way) by Hurricane Sandy, and will fly in Saturday night to a Greenwich Village which is without electricity, heat, water or phone service. Once again, Noir form is following Noir function. And my four days in New York will be a fine preparation for this year's NoirCon.

“What makes NoirCon different from all other conferences is the genius, enthusiasm, the solid sweat equity, and the real love of Noir its wonderful director and co-founder Lou Boxer has exhibited for the genre, the conference, and all of NoirCon's participants. Our native American art form of Noir – it's the black backside of the American Dream – owes a great deal to this conference.”

— Joan Schenkar

“This is my first Noircon. What attracted me is that I was asked to be the Guest of Honor, and no one could resist that.”

— Otto Penzler

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

What, besides the words, makes a noir song a noir song?

Previous posts about noir and crime songs (click the link, then scroll down) elicited suggestions based mostly on what a song says — its lyrics.

But what about how it says what it says — its vocal inflections, its instrumental breaks, its production, its orchestration if you've chosen a piece of classical music? (Yes, classical, perhaps opera especially, can be noir. Think of Carmen.)

What does Shane MacGowan add when he drops his voice on the line "There ain't much else for kids to do" on "Rain Street"? What about the ghostly refrain of "Maria Lando," at first a chorus, separate from Susana Baca's lead voice, joining with her on the words solo trabaja ... Maria only works and never has time to raise her eyes toward the sky?

Think of those noir and crime songs that make you shiver, and tell me what, besides the words, makes you feel the way you do: the arrangement? A chilling flatness or an emotional catch in the singer's voice? Just to make things difficult, what are the literary equivalents of those tools? How does an author produce the effect in a reader that Billie Holiday's voice does in a listener?

***

I'll be talking about crime and noir songs next week at NoirCon 2012 in Philadelphia. If you don't come to hear my Project Noir Songs, come and meet Lawrence Block, Joyce Carol Oates, Megan Abbott, Duane Swierczynski, Otto Penzler, Vicki Hendricks, and many more. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Project Noir Songs to go live at NoirCon 2012

I've been talking about noir and crime songs for years at Detectives Beyond Borders, and next week I'll do it in front of an audience at NoirCon 2012 here in hurricane-ravaged Philadelphia.

My bit of the program is called Project Noir Songs, and it happens next Thursday. I'm not sure yet of PNS' final form, but Tom Waits will be a part of the festivities (in recorded form, alas. In person he'd make a fine MC), as will Shane MacGowan, the Band, Elizeth Cardoso, Luke Kelly and the Dubliners, Susana Baca, Fairport Convention, the Bobby Fuller Four, and, as usual, more.

That list includes Peruvian, Brazilian, English, Irish, American, and Canadian musicians; this is Detectives Beyond Borders, after all. If you can't make the scene at the Society Hill Playhouse, the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art and other NoirCon venues in person next week, be part of NoirCon in spirit and tell me what songs you think should be part of Project Noir Songs.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

NoirCon 2012, Nov. 8-11 in Philadelphia

NoirCon 2012 is coming up in Philadelphia, Nov. 8-11. I hope you'll be there with distinguished folks like Lawrence Block, Otto Penzler, Vicki Hendricks, Joyce Carol Oates, Megan Abbott, and Duane Swierczynski, and not so distinguished folks, like me.

Click on the NoirCon link for more information and a registration form. In the meantime, I'll count down the days until the convention with a few special posts including this one from the first NoirCon, in 2008.

==========

If you'll indulge me for one more post before I send NoirCon 2008 fondly into the sunset, I'd like to share a few remarks that Ken Bruen, one of the event's two guests of honor, made over the course of the convention's four days.

Most pertinent to this blog was his statement, and I don't remember the context, that Irish readers seem to lack pride in the country's wonderful crime writers. This was a surprise to me on my side of the Atlantic, considering the wealth of Irish talent about which one can read on Crime Always Pays, Critical Mick, Crime Scene NI and elsewhere.

Bruen also said that "All my influences are American. That's how I learned to read. That's how I learned to write. For an Irish person to say that is a heresy." Perhaps this accounts for his stated love for the U.S.

Finally, thanks to Bruen, I fulfilled a long-held dream of hearing an Irishman say "shite."

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Hard-boiled at the beach

I'm bursting with enthusiasm for my adopted country, for its misfits, its losers, its hard cases, and its beaches.

I've continued my project, announced here, of reading classic American hard-boiled and noir, and I'll likely continue to do so over the next few days at an undisclosed location on the Atlantic coast. And that means blogging may be light here at Detectives Beyond Borders until next week, lest I get sun screen and beach sand all over my keyboard. In the meantime, a few notes:

1) I like Jim Thompson's The Getaway better than Edward Anderson's Thieves Like Us. Each is saturated with sympathy for its characters, each occasionally lapses into speechifying, but Thompson, perhaps more in this novel than in his others, has considerable fun on the way to his hellish destination.

2) Why isn't Dan J. Marlowe better known? He did his best writing in the know-it-all, smirk-at-everything, over-the-top 1960s, yet his heist novels avoid both nostalgia and jokiness. And The Vengeance Man combines Ross Thomas' eye for political shenanigans with Jim Thompson's fatalism.

Happily, readers will soon be able to learn more about Marlowe and his interesting life (He was a professional gambler, a Rotarian, a Republican city councilman, and a friend of a notorious bank robber.) Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe is scheduled for publication this fall. In the meantime, here's an appreciation of Marlowe from the biography's author, Charles Kelly.

3) Why is Paul Cain's Fast One not included in the Library of America's American Noir of the 1930s and 40s collection? It's the best, toughest, hardest-hitting American crime novel whose author is not named Chandler or Hammett. I'll be sure to ask the LofA volume's editor, Robert Polito, the reason for the omission when we meet in good fellowship at Noircon 2012 in November.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

I don't like Nick Cave

I have a confession to make: I don't like Nick Cave.

Maybe you don't either, but I'm the one who's going to play and maybe talk about noir and crime songs at Noircon 2012, and Cave is the guy who recorded an album called Murder Ballads, his nod to murder ballads.

On first listen, I found the album noirish, all right, but too mannered, too studied, too aware of and pleased with itself. Indeed, one review had this to say (the courtesy title is a clue to the newspaper in which the review appeared:

"...Murder Ballads is about more than storytelling. In each song, Mr. Cave meticulously creates a macabre fable and then distills it to a single image of death in much the way a photographer arranges a studio shoot..."

Fair enough, but I like my ballads to sound more like ballads and less like carefully posed daguerreotype death portraits. And it's not that I'm a musical stick in the mud, either. I've got a song by Jack White on my list, and Tom Waits' album Bad As Me is even more eclectic and musically daring than Cave's, and I like it just fine.

So talk me into liking Murder Ballads better. If I picked one Nick Cave song from the record for my Project Noir songs list, which should it be?

Here's one that has some good lines: "The Curse of Millhaven." Fans of noir and crime songs might notice its melodic similarity to the Pogues' "The Boys From the County Hell." And here's an "Irish Ballad" of quite another kind from Tom Lehrer.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Project Noir Songs goes to Brazil

I knew Elizeth Cardoso’s “Ocultei” was a great melodramatic noir song before I understood the words. (Cardoso and the song are Brazilian, and she sings it in Portuguese.)

Atmosphere was everything: the languid, matter-of-fact singing of the opening verse giving way to vocal tremor, then building to intensity a good deal stronger than that of your average torch song. The jacket photo of Cardoso, eyes closed in concentration as she sings, a bead of sweat (or a tear) below her left eye.

Then I learned what she was singing (Lyrics translated freely if not downright ineptly by your humble blogkeeper):

  Ocultei
  Um sofrimento de morte
  Temendo a sorte
  Do grande amor que te dei

 (I blocked out
  A torment of death
  Fearing the fate
  Of the great love I gave you – and this is the matter-of-fact part!)

  Procurei
  Não perturbar nossa vida
  Que era florida
  Como, a princípio, sonhei

 (I tried
  Not to disturb our life,
  Which was going so well
  As I, at first, dreamed – A note of foreboding as sure any in a good '40s or '50s melodrama, the pause between third and fourth line adding to the effect.)

  Hoje, porem,
 Abri as portas do destino

(Today, however,
  I open the doors of destiny – and we skip to …)

  O meu ardente desejo
  Que Deus me perdoe o pecado
  É que outra mulher ao teu lado
  Te mate na hora de um beijo

  (My most ardent desire
– May God forgive me the sin! –
   Is that another woman, by your side,
   Kill you during a kiss.)

She loves him, she hates him, she begs forgiveness, she fantasizes another woman into his arms even as she dreams of his death. That's enough seething emotion to burn holes in the page or on the screen, I'd say.

And now I'm happy to be able to say you can listen for yourself. Though written by Ary Barroso, one of Brazil's best-loved popular composers, "Ocultei" is one of his less-recorded songs. I bought my copy in Brazil twelve years ago, and I'd never been able to find another recording or clip of Elizeth's version — until yesterday. Ladies and gentlemen, Elizeth Cardoso.

***

I'll be presenting Project Noir Songs at Noircon 2012 in Philadelphia in November, a preliminary act for a Newport Folk Festival 1965's worth of crime-fiction talent including Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, and Joyce Carol Oates. Yes, I'm excited!

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Goodis the great

Some of the borders I've crossed recently have been ones of time, into American crime writing of the 1940s and '50s.

Based on my first readings of all three authors, I like Bruno Fischer and Fletcher Flora a little better than I like Day Keene. But none was as good as David Goodis.

I'd read some Goodis before, the short story "Black Pudding" and the 1951 best-seller Cassidy's Girl, and I'd been impressed, notably by the heart-breaking compassion he mustered for his characters. But Dark Passage (1946) is, in its opening chapters, even better, a knockout of a book.

I'll likely have more to say later, but for now it's interesting to view the novel as an argument for the old proposition that the way to become a good writer is to write, and write, and write. Dark Passage was Goodis' second novel, and it appeared seven years after his first. In between, Goodis wrote prodigiously for pulp magazines, more than five million words in five years in the early 1940s, according to his own estimate. (See Robert Polito's notes to David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 1950s.)

The result may not tug at the heartstrings quite as hard as some of Goodis' later works do, but it is self-consciously stylish without going over the top, a difficult feat for any writer, much less one not yet thirty years old. The book's first chapters are full of words repeated to amusing effect. And if you like how Ken Bruen and Allan Guthrie use humor at dark moments and somehow make it seem right, you'll find the roots of the practice in protagonist Vincent Parry's conversation with the taxi driver in Chapter Seven.

But first, my favorite line of the book so far, tough, naive, funny and touching at the same time:

"Being good to people sounds nice but it's hard work."

***

Mingle with Goodis-heads and noir fans this Nov. 8-11 at Noircon 2012 in Philadelphia.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

"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