What is 'Noir Fiction'? [Illustrated]

A dimly lit bar, a troubled detective drinking scotch straight from the bottle, and a lone saxophone playing in the background. These are the kind of images we associate with noir, although our concept of the genre - for many - comes exclusively from cinema. However, there’s a whole body of fiction that can rightly be described as ‘noir’ as well. It is difficult to describe, but equally engaging and distinctive in style. This video aims to explore what is meant by ‘noir fiction!’
Here are the links for the texts used in the video:
Maltese Falcon (Hammett)
www.amazon.co.uk/Maltese-Falc...
The Thin Man (Hammett)
www.amazon.co.uk/Thin-Man-Pen...
Best of American Noir (Penzler + Ellroy)
www.amazon.co.uk/Best-America...
Dirty Money (Stark)
www.amazon.co.uk/Dirty-Money-...
The Big Sleep (Marlowe)
www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Sleep-Ph...
The Long Goodbye (Marlowe)
www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Good-by...
Boston Noir 2
www.amazon.co.uk/Boston-Noir-...
Miles
[MUSIC: Night on the Docks
Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 Unported- CC BY 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Music provided by FreeMusic109 / freemusic109 ]

[@GuitarWithBrett]

You could say anything with those graphics and I’d believe it

[@deteo9520]

This channel deserves more recognition.

[@PulkitKamal]

Very true

[@aurionc2468]

A spectacular dissection of film noir; in fact, the most richly informed video essay on the genre I’ve ever seen.

[@KalKratos]

I've been looking for more videos that go into analyzing what makes noir, noir. Thank you. I only wish there were more videos like this one out there.

[@hankworden3850]

Why don't you just read the books, watch the movies , and make up your own mind? Or would that be too much for you?

[@KalKratos]

@hankworden3850 I do watch the movies, I read the books. I enjoy noir. I just like seeing KZbin videos talking about my favorite things. Why do you gotta be an asshole and try and put that down?

[@dragonchr15]

I read The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson and fell in love with the genre.... And for the record, i love the "man in fedora" and sexy femme fatale cliches!

[@pageonenoir9020]

I really love your video. You explained the Noir aesthetic so well and I learned much from you. I think I am back on track with that bleakness that makes noir special in our hearts.

[@putrimunaparenti8312]

i had a great time watching it. thank you very much!

[@laurenmiller9143]

EXCELLENT video!! Thank you so much for making this. Nothing beats noir in my book, and you covered it beautifully. Great work! Cheers!

[@MichaelHaneline]

Best attempt at defining the noir genre I've seen. I often enjoy discussions about whether or not a particular work is Noir. I consider works like Blade Runner and Cowboy Bebop to be Noir, and they both meet the three primary characteristics you describe. On the flip side, though many (including this video) will call the Thin Man stuff noir, because it has a fedora-wearing detective in the 1930's / 1940's, I'd argue it isn't noir because of how lighthearted it is.

[@quin7et494]

Clearly explained and well summorized. You deserve more sub

[@arkham666]

Really good analysis. Very well presented. Thanks for making this it helped me a lot.

[@ysabelledelacuesta7533]

newly subbed here, was planning to make a short blurb in noir but now you got me thinking that i make it longer. thank you so much for this very informative video! :D

[@chicopjota]

Very interesting, thank you! Well, I want to write my own game story, and I've chosen noir. My idea is a character getting out of the big city and going back to their hometown, only to find the same problems, if not worse. I want to add factions and a personal goal to clear the family's reputation in the city because there was a crime involving the family when the protagonist was too young. But i know nothing, so its a gem when i find content about writing, films and games here on yt, so thank you for this video, it helped a bit. Any advice on storytelling? my first stories sucked lol

[@user-sw2lv3zp6o]

Excellent video. Well explained.

[@paulschumacher4308]

This is excellent

[@juliak1615]

Such a helpful video, thank you!

[@cappybenton]

Wunderbar

[@matthewjury4385]

I found this video because of a puzzle book that requires me to decode “noir authors”

[@tawniwinns2157]

Great breakdown 👌🏾

[@lalrammuanasailo8702]

Very helpful, thank you

[@imbeingjudgemental644]

I've known noir by definition as a sub-genre of crime fiction which has an imperfect protagonist and a negative ending

[@z.a.7846]

Short video for such a great content

[@paulcoleman3081]

Yes. Very interesting and you're right, of course, the concept of 'Noir' is in need of updating. I am such a big fan of Hammet and Chandler I repeatedly referred to the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe as "Philip" in a Seminar once. Until the puzzled looks on my students' faces told me something was wrong... I was wondering if it might be worth thinking about what Noir Fiction emerged from...the grit in the oyster as it were. The pretty much universal Liberal Humanist approach to literature which saw fiction as a moral exemplar with 'bad' characters getting their comeuppance and the innocent being rewarded (as illustrated by every word Dickens ever wrote, for instance) held sway for a very long time. What was it about our changing culture which so promoted the idea of the anti-hero?

[@ThePolymathsParadise]

Thank you! That’s a very interesting thought. Perhaps the anti-hero zeitgeist (as it were) is in part owed to the increasing influence of existentialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Dostoevsky, to my memory, was mildly fond of the idea (I say this due to the protagonist of his ‘Notes from Underground’ exhibiting anti-hero esque qualities); prompting others, like Sartre and Camus, to follow suit in their respective works. I suppose, with existentialism’s critique of conventional moral values, moral paradigms were being called into question and scrutinised, and consequently the ‘Liberal Humanist’ school too (an approach which admittedly I don’t know as near enough about as I would like, and will look into further). This perhaps encouraged a break from conventional narratives and thus promoted the authorship of anti-hero stories. That being said, Diderot’s character of ‘Rameau's nephew’ comes to mind as a good anti-hero, and that predates the prevalence of the existentialist movement - so my theory is plausibly mistaken. As for the comical Philip/Christopher switch, it has made me realise that a Raymond Chandler noir version of “Doctor Faustus” would certainly be a most intriguing read; with (Philip) Marlowe standing in for the doomed (?) titular character...

[@paulcoleman3081]

@@ThePolymathsParadise "Take my soul? Yeah and you might hit a home run with a breadstick!" Modernism has a lot to answer for, probably...but your response has given me nearly as much food for thought as your original video did! You're making a little gem of a channel on KZbin.

[@dantean]

Noir fiction requires characters unable to escape enslavement to their desires to the very outer reaches of acceptable social behavior, namely murder or something considered nearly as horrific. Without that, what you have is "hardboiled" or simply "crime," but not necessarily "noir." There.

[@user-sw2lv3zp6o]

I'd agree with that. But we're only talking labels.

[@prof.sachingadhire6971]

I am doing phd on the noir fiction. It's very important informative for me. I want to purchase books about the theoretical framework of the noir fiction. Please sir help me to how collect books about noir theory or about noir fiction. Sir help me

[@mattlien5844]

Noir involves what Richard Slotkin called "The man who knows indians." That is a hero who is one of the bad guys. He has lived as one and knows how to defeat them, but makes the choice to help the innocent rather than prey on them. At least in this one case. I tend to think of Hammett as noir but Chandler as not. I think of the scene in The Big Sleep where Marlowe throws the drug addled psychopath out of his apartment because while he mignt have to work for her father he doesn't have to put up with her in his home. Compared to The Maltese Falcon where the desk Seargant politely asks Spade if he knows where Archer's wife might be. Because he knows that she is lying next to Spade in his bed. Chandler's Marlowe is a good guy in a bad world, while Hammett's Spade is a bad guy, somewhat reluctantly doing the right thing. I always think of the end of Karl Edward Wagner's fantasy short At First Just Ghostly where the victim/ protagonist asks the hero Kane; "Now that I've met the bad guys, when do I get to meet the good guys?" Kane responds "There are no good guys, there is just us."

[@Question2055]

Hey, I’m currently writing a vampire noir short story. I am glad that I stumbled upon this channel. This video is super helpful. Thanks!

[@natsumiyumiko9644]

2:54, 5:15, 6:23

[@johnstrawb3521]

It's one syllable: "nwah". Not new-arr, not nwar: "Nwah."