Is Noir Depressing? Expanded and Revised

[Steven Torres]

This year, I'll have two major publications to add to my credit (Yes. I am keeping score.) and they're both noir. For the novel, The Concrete Maze, I think I may have hedged my bets. It's not quite as bleak as it could have been though it is plenty bleak I think.
With the short story, "Early Fall" coming out in late summer in the antho Bronx Noir, I've written a truly noir story. There's no light at the end of the tunnel. There's not even a tunnel (which might suggest a way out).

Some of my favorite novels of the past few years, certainly some of my favorite mysteries, have been noir in nature. I think of Moony's Road to Hell by Manuel Ramos and Dope by Sara Gran and Megan Abbott's books. There are others. In any event, one has to wonder what could possibly draw anyone to such a book. After all, if it is mere verisimilitude (the world is such, let us read books that show that) we could get the same effects from simply living, no?

And in fact, the world is not such. After all, there may be noir parts of the world, there are child soldiers, child prostitutes and evil people to exploit them, for instance. But there are also good people. Overall, there is more good than bad. Evidence, you say? We're still here. We've had the power to destroy ourselves for a long time now. There is a noir side to the world to be sure, but it's not everything.

Then is it for the thrill of violence and the vicarious pleasure of inhabiting a world filled with bad people? Or is it to watch a hero struggle against odds we know are impossible (it says so on the back of the book) and which even the hero realizes are impossible. To watch someone fight the good fight we don't have the courage to fight ourselves? As Jimmy Stewart said in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: "You fight hardest for the lost causes. Those are the only ones worth fighting for." (Okay, that was a paraphrase.)

Or what? What could draw a reader to a story that is so dark?

Because, after all, many readers, probably most, buy fiction to escape from the real world. For many in this world, however, noir and hardboiled isn't escape, it's same old, same old. Is Noir, then, the playground and escape of the bourgeoisie? That doesn't sound good. I think I'll go with the need for a hero. Can't have a hero without a scenario in which the hero can be heroic. That's a much more comforting thought. But am I right?

[I. J. Parker]

Well, if the novel is very self-consciously noir, it does depress me. It would probably also irritate me. I have to say, however, that I have gradually turned away from the puzzle-solving plots to much darker events. This happened naturally as I stopped trying to write the old-fashioned mystery and looked for more realistic scenarios. People suffer in my books, not because I want to write noir, but because crimes quite often cause extreme suffering to those affected by it.

[Christa M. Miller]

I'll put it this way. If it's going to be a noir ending, it had better be damn good. For example, the movie "Se7en" made me want to take a shower, but the ending was so powerful and effective - more so than its alternative would have been, I think.

I keep an open mind, but my litmus test is whether the bleakness is gratuitous (=pointless) or whether it makes the whole story (=makes you think, broadens your mind).

[Steven Torres]

So then you like your noir with a hint of blanc?

Of course, for the realistic side of the argument, sometimes life is bleak and the bleakness ends only with death. Noir all the way. So if a reader is reading or a realistic portrayal of life, then the occassional utterly bleak book is a good thing.

[Christa M. Miller]

I think the appeal of noir is that it's about people with worse backgrounds who screw up worse than most of us do. It's like singing the blues when you feel blue: puts a perspective on life. Gives the reader an underdog to root for - antihero rather than hero.

As for dark endings - not sure. I've read some that do contain a modicum of hope, which is gratifying. And others that at least resolve the story, to an extent that I felt the characters are better off in some odd way. Endings that are nothing but dark? I have to ask what's the point, and I probably won't reread the book.