Whizz-bangs

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I learned a new word and some history.

In the days before NOIRE became a writing category such stories were called WHIZZ-BANGS because theyre packed with action and move quickly. I like the word. Good noire should be quick.

Next I learned where the term NOIRE came from.

Back in the 1940s a writer named Cornell Woolrich published several whizzbangs with BLACK part of the titles.....BLACK RENDESVOUS, BLACK ANGEL, THE BRIDE IN BLACK, etc. Readers called them The Blacks, and Bob's your uncle.

 

[JackLuis]

Perhaps, 'Wham-Bams!' for Lit Quickies?

 

[SamScribble]

Here's another possible source, JBJ.

Many of the early stories we now know as noir were written by authors who were part of the 'hardboiled' school. Their stories were taken up by European film directors (who had moved to Hollywood) influenced by the German Expressionist cinematography movement. The French critic Nino Frank (probably) first used the term 'film noir' (black film), and the books inherited the term from the films.

Well, that's what I was taught anyway.

 

[49greg]

Here's another possible source, JBJ.

Many of the early stories we now know as noir were written by authors who were part of the 'hardboiled' school. Their stories were taken up by European film directors (who had moved to Hollywood) influenced by the German Expressionist cinematography movement. The French critic Nino Frank (probably) first used the term 'film noir' (black film), and the books inherited the term from the films.

Well, that's what I was taught anyway.

That's the one I heard.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

That's the one I heard.

same here.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Look guys, I'm actually not going to say what I think about the origins of 'noir' or 'noire' as the term/s apply to fiction.

And the reason is because it is something of a real high-brow secret...

However, culturally, everyone pretty much will accept that the French had been doing music and dance in little late night cafes since just after the turn of the century (early 1900's) and before and after WWI. Some of the cultural idiom used had its origins in German subversive music and dance theatre that drew on folkloric fairytales about a fairly sinister cat that dressed as a human.

Sad to say, but if you take any of Cornell Woolrich's book titles, and translate them into a few European languages, you're going to end up with a lot of other, and earlier writers, as the potential source.

I have personal reasons why I don't want to expand on this too much, and I wasn't going to post anything in this thread except I have too much respect for you guys and wasn't really feeling satisfied to allow a pretty good 'possible' source mislead people, even or especially JBJ into resting on Woolrich as the ultimate best choice of source. And this is not to say blatantly that Woolrich was a plagiarist mind you, because I personally have not ever made a close comparison of his work versus certain French writers in particular who date well before him.

However, noir IS after all a French word, and I would suggest the true source lies closer in that actual direction, whether it was adopted into the English or American at least, speaking/writing/reading world, or simply, as I would suggest, appropriated.

I realise there are critics of the foreign cinema who believe constantly that 'noir' means film noir, but I think that is definitely another loose appropriation by people not familiar with the large body of French literary fiction - most of which had huge followings in the francophone world, but are virtually unknown by the anglophone world.

...I mean it's hard to say, for example, that Alfred Hitchcock was a 'literary thief,' but he was. That doesn't mean to say he wasn't a stupendously good film director because he was.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

The other thing you've got to remember is that there is a kind of a cultural hubris within American literary circles - no one there credits that there are (and there REALLY ARE) French writers, for instance, with huge, vastly greater numbers of book sales and readers than certain similar, popular American writers, but who have remained largely unknown to English or American readers up till now.

And I am speaking of people whose names you definitely will not have heard of, not people like Simenon and so on.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

True. I collect the noire I know of. My familiarity of French writing is little and none. But people suggest things, and I try them.

Like, I've studied the American Civil War since 1961 and believe I know a lot about it, but last night I read from an old book about the causes of the war, and am stunned how the writer documented the South's appetite for protective tariff's from Independence to the War. I still cant fathom it. The proposition defies sense when its certain the South imported many of its manufactured needs.