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.)

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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.

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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 2008 podcasts

Or is that NoirCast 2008 podcons?

Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards, whose cyber-noir panel at NoirCon explored exciting new ways to think about, publish and broadcast noir, have begun posting their podcasts of the convention at Out of the Past and Behind the Black Mask. So far, they've posted on-the-street and in-the-theater interviews, including Ken Bruen and Gary Phillips, and talks with members of the George Lippard, Philly noir and editors and publishers panels.

Their format is simple but effective: After each panel discussion, Clute and Edwards snatched a member or two for an interview about the panel. The segments are no mere TV-style sound bites. The interview subjects go into considerable depth about the issues the panels had raised.

I was there for the discussions, and I still enjoyed Clute and Edwards with panelists William Lashner and Jon McGoran on why Philadelphia is a great city for crime writers. Civic boosters might not like what the interviewees had to say, though, which buttresses another notion floating about the conference: that noir is and should be a subversive genre.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008