Brief Essays on Genre, Part 15: On Noir

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On Noir

 

The great noir writers—Hammett, Chandler, Cain, et al.—didn’t write noir but gritty realistic stories set in their present day.

 

Their imitators typically write not about the grit or the reality but about the stylistic tics of their heroes, set safely in the past.

 

--Michael Swanwick

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