It’s Not Happening

I enjoy the noir from time to time, but somehow I’ve never read any Hammett. It’s easy to see how he got the ball rolling with his layering of Hemingway’s spare, weary style on top of the still relatively new genre of detective fiction. Adding the pulp necessities of mayhem and sexual tension nets some high-quality diversion.

The basic myth of noir, that we’re all basically venal and weak, that there are no heroes among us, that the best we can hope for is to zero out the suffering we cause, has informed pretty much everything worth mentioning since, and I don’t see a new myth rising to take its place any time soon. It’s well worth picking up some Hammett or Ellroy or Chandler now and then to remind yourself what everyone else is thinking.