What is Noir fiction?

What is Noir fiction?

            Anyone walking into a bookshop, anywhere in the world now days, will soon find themselves lost in the book market typology, duly printed by the publisher on the cover or back cover of the book.

A rather hermetic and often misleading classification: crime, thriller, mystery, hardboiled, detective, noir, etc.

To complicate it further, the bookshop owner mix quite candidly all the above in the same shelf or section labelled Crime in the UK & Ireland, Mystery in the U.S.

Let’s not blame him too quickly (after all he might come handy with suggestions and advice at times), whose only interest is to help the prospective buyer to find a book quickly (and buy it!), rather than ponder about a strict literary classification of his stock.

The future reader then, when they pick a crime novel, can choose between Agatha Christie and Charles Willeford for example. They usually follow some recommendation or the taste they have developed on their previous experience of the writer and their plots, rather than a conscious choice of literary genre.

            Except for the thriller fiction, all the above labels are intended to classify specific genres that ultimately fall into two categories: the detection novel, and the noir novel. Despite their labeling differences, both categories share a common denominator though: the transgression.

Although detection fiction appears as early as the 6^th c. A.D. in China, and is often seen from 12^th c. AD on in many middle-eastern tales (Persia); in the Western Written World, the detection novel is really the youngest of the two categories, and is a literary consequence of the passage to modern thought in the 18th c. AD; The Age of Sciences- the starting point of modern rational thinking.

Actually we could say that the forefather of the later detective fictional genre, in its pioneer display of the modern problem-solving techniques, is Voltaire’s Zadig (inspired by Persian tales), whose main character suffer rather than profit from his logical mind. Instead of following prejudices, superstitions or rumours, Zadig analyses the data, and solves the incognitae by elimination.

With the passage from the Age of Sciences & Discoveries to The Industrial Era & Imperialism, systematisation of the analytic process develops: the detective novel historically starts in the Western World in 1841 with the publication of E. A. Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ short story.

There appear for the first time some essential plot-devices of the detection or mystery fiction: the resolution of a problem through careful analysis of the clues -verbal or physical- its final explanation through reconstruction by the solver, and features the first locked-room mystery.

More narrative canons and plot-devices will follow with the passage of time, but the essentials of a good detection novel were born in the 19^th c. U.S.

The starting hook of a detection or mystery fiction is a puzzle to be solve that is offered to the reader. He will follow the main character(s) on his way to problem-solving and final resolution and explanation of the problem. Transgression there is the starting point of the book, and the goal is the understanding the whys and whos out of the whats and whens.

The transgression is always a criminal act, no matter its degree (murder, theft, blackmail, etc.); which usually sets the detective and mystery fiction in a law-abiding if not moral context. After all, the final goal is the correction of the initial wrong.

The reader gets his pleasure trying to solve the problem through the elements the writer drops here and there to be collected by the protagonist. The latter is usually a cop, a detective, a journalist, a living family member of the corpse (or with Enid Blyton, a group of thrill-seekers smart alecks in their early teens, with a pet dog.); any job or function that explains them nosing around. There’s plenty of dialogues and minute descriptions of the surroundings or characters; both elements provide the data the reader feeds on to solve the mystery along with the hero. The psychological portrait of the characters is very limited, if at all; some psychological characteristics might be offered for the problem-solver, but usually as external quirks or behaviours as perceived by the beholders.

. The dialogues and visuals give the reader the illusion of interacting with the plot and narrative through the detective (which is therefore, merely a tool, a shape the reader is supposed to fit in while keeping their separate minds); evidences, suspects, probable motives are constantly thrown at him lie bucket of water over a fire. But rarely will one be given a first row seat in the investigator’s mind, even in a 1^st person novel.

The investigator finds out the elements, he is the eyes, voice, hands of the reader who processes on his side of the page the findings as he reads along.

A good detection novel has to keep the reader with the delusion he has all the clues to solve the problem; but its final resolution has to come from the investigator (who thus ultimately claim back his ownership to the active role), with the reader unable to completely ascertain on the whos and whys. An example of extremely confusing detection novel on that matter are any Christie’s novels; there is absolutely no way the reader can find out anything unless he does as I did as a teenager, i.e. a bloody fig with it and straight on to the last ten pages after reaching the middle of the book. Then you read the second half and feel comforted that indeed, there’s no way you could have found the culprits or their motives (the bloody chandelier or the cup of tea filled with a deadly dose of arsenic do appear too early in the book to be considered as a riddle).

 If you are able to find out whodunit (and why) before the last fourth of the novel, you are reading a very bad Detective fiction.

Although the term was coined as early as the late 18^th century (Romans Noirs were to the French what the Gothic Novel was to the British), the genre exist nearly since literature does, and in the Western Civilization as early as the Bible (people who believe the world was created 5,000 years ago in no more than six days by an Omnipotent, White-Bearded Force, and that Darwin is an heathen retard should be happy to read this); to quote Thomas De Quincey: ‘The first murder is familiar to you all. As the inventor of murder, and the father of the Art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius. All the Cains were men of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes I think, or some such thing’ (On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, 1^st paper, 1827.)

Genesis on how Man was kicked out of Eden (never to return till Kingdom Comes) is no less than the minute description of Adam path to transgression (Eva doesn’t count really; she’s just a Femme Fatale tarty sidekick.)

This is important to note since despite being misused as a literary genre, and consequently labelling its works as crime novels, the Noir fiction genre has existed since the beginning of western literature.

Modern day Noir label was coined as such in the late 1940s movie industry as Film Noir to describe a cinematic genre of 1940-1950s Hollywood films, rooted in the 1930s German expressionist film-making and the U.S. Hardboiled written fiction.

Because at the time the Hardboiled School embraced such diverse genres as the P.I. (Maltese Falcon, The Long Good Bye), crime (The Asphalt Jungle) or strictly social transgression (Cassidy’s Girl, The Postman Always Rings Twice), this led to the misuse and misconception of the term in the literary genre, to the day. Film Noir does deal with all the genres above, as long as it depicts as background a morally corrupt society, powerful sexual symbolism, brutality and realism, with a dash of cynicism; all in bleak realistic B&W shaded urban settings.

But as far as the literary genre is concerned, only the transgression plot-driven style should be considered strictly as Noir Literature; the other two belong either to the hardboiled detective genre, or the thriller.

Many Noir novels involve policemen, thugs or hard-core criminals, but doesn’t deal with the resolution and correction of an initial wrongdoing, but rather follow the path to doing a transgression act. Noir can not either be considered strictly as Transgression Literature (such as modern-days Palahniuk or Easton Ellis), as the transgression(s) is not a narrative element of the plot, but rather the culmination of the plot.

In the Noir novel, the reader identifies himself to a character in their way to the ultimate transgression. Thus the starting point of the novel is to understand the conditions (social pressure, personal feud, greed, etc.) that will force the protagonist in ultimately commit a transgressing act. Contrary to popular belief, this act is not necessarily a criminal one; it can also be acting against one’s moral values, social circle, or human condition etc.

            Where the mystery novel appeals on the reader’s taste to solve problems, the noir acts on their morbidity and dark pleasure for bad behaviour or evil acts.

The characters of a Noir novel are usually average joes or janes (most oftenly from a working-class background and flawed with vices), petty criminals, corrupt cops, drug-addicts, scumbags you name it, all usually unable to control their impulses.

The psychological description of at least the main character is generally extremely detailed (the narrative objective is to have the reader commit the transgression through the main protagonist, but with a keen understanding of his motivation to do so).

The dialogues are tools to unclose the characters personalities. The visual elements are employed to offer a bleak, a perverted and pessimistic vision of the surrounding world.

A good Noir novel enables the reader to project himself into the character’s mind in his ineluctable journey to a doomed outcome; and the reader has to empathise if not sympathise with the protagonist in his ultimate choice to commit his transgression act, no matter how heinous it can be.

If you are just finished reading a story and still clutch on the idea that Good and Evil are truly two opposite poles as Black and White, you just have read a very bad Noir novel.

            Despites sharing the use of the Transgression as the key-element of the plot, the two categories couldn’t be more opposed in the morale perspectives they offer to its reader.

            The detective fiction comforts us in the rightfulness of the law and justice being done through rational problem-solving; it entertains in making us believe that justice is done when a wrongdoing is corrected by a rightfully entitled representative. The detective fiction does not question the morality of society, it condones it. Even if the hardboiled genre is characterized by a morally corrupt society, the P.I. carries on the tradition of the individual rightfulness when all else fails around him.

            Noir fiction, on the contrary allows us to question the moral principles or social order around. Inevitably the reader will question the standards through the character’s eyes, and agree on the morally incorrect or socially subversive choices he will make.

            Keeping in mind those minute definitions, now reader you should be able to select quickly according to the kicks you get, and agree with me that the Noir novel still suffers of belonging to the despising terminology of the Crime or Mystery novel, at large.

Make no mistake, several authors have crossed the genres, for instance, Chester Himes’ Harlem Cycle featuring Coffin Ed Johnson & Grave Diggers Jones, are detective novels, despite its black humour and the absurdity so proper to its author. But the same Himes’ The Primitive, Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry, are definitely Noir fiction.

Dashiel Hammett’s and Raymond Chandler have been abusively classified as Noir authors, they are not. They are the champions of the U.S. Hardboiled School (Chandler used to call it ‘realistic’), which is the correction of a wrong by a law officer or representative; the difference with more classic detective fiction genre it belongs too being the depiction of the corrupt surroundings or social environment that heightens the rightfulness of the hero, despite his flaws.

Paul McCain, David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Gill Brewer are strictly Noir writers; their works try to explain the transgression acts because of uncontrolled impulsions that do not fit in a morally uptight society (sex, greed, personal revenge), and its ultimate consequences for the perpetrator.

The Noir literary genre, although considered as having started in the U.S. literature of the first half of the 20^th century, should then encompass, following this strict definition, such precursor authors as the Scottish James Hogg (The Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner), R. L. Stevenson (Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde); Russian Dostoievsky (Crime & Punishment, The Demons), French Barbey d’Aurevilly (The She-Devils), Gustave Flaubert (Mme Bovary); in the last century, American William Faulkner (Sanctuary), French Camus (l’Etranger) are also representative of the same intents one finds in Thompson, Willeford, Himes, McCain, etc.

Hopefully someday, readers will have the pleasure to know they are reading milestones in the Human Condition Drama Literary Genre when they do read Willeford or Woolrich, and not some puzzle-solving delusional fiction in waxed moustaches or deer-hunter’s cap like Christie or Conan Doyle