Hard Case Crime discussion
Noir or Pulp?
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I've always thought of noir as straining a bit more to be "literary"--that is, to have a moral theme coming out of all that betrayal. Pulp seems to wink self-consciously at its own conventions---when in DEAD STREET there's a line about somebody's "melon" exploding, that to me takes the action out of the plane of drama into comedy. I also wonder if the author's intentions don't play into it. I had to teach Hammett stories last week, and I was really struck at how in the pulpier moments he seemed to be reaching for a larger meaning.
I guess following from Kirk a little, there is a real difference of approach to the work. To me pulp is more Paul Cain's Fast One, and the Spider or the Shadow with the emphasis on action and a sharply drawn emotion. Watch the sense of dread that runs through you as you read a Spider novel. And I also think of a pacing issue; with pulp, you look down and realize you've burned through 120 pages in an hour. You don't savor per se, you experience. Which lends pulp to really be unrestrained by genre - RE Howard is all pulp, but you get boxing, westerns, fantasy, horror.
I tend to think of noir as being more introspective, less laconic. Read Cain's Fast One and watch the total lack of self-awareness in the narrator. Versus Chandler's extremely erudite and overly-aware Marlowe. They may be face paced (like Lady of the Lake), but they aren't concerned with the action, with your emotions, they're more concerned with what makes people tick. On one level, I would think of them as "cooler" than pulp, in that they are less emotionally driven. As a modern example, I would look at Andrew Vachss who delves in extreme situations, dark situations, but Burke the narrator himself is highly introspective and, even in his anger, removes that high level of emotion from the narrative...
Obviously, you are going to have contentious authors - Cornell Woolrich hits all my criteria for pulp: fast paced, lack of introspection, concentation on a single sustained mood (generally hysteria), but probably most people would lump him in the noir field...
So, the simple answer is ... I don't know. When I first saw the question, my first thought was I think of pulp like film noir, as being very tied to a specific time period and a specific group, something no longer practiced. Imitated perhaps (neo-pulp? ha!) but not necessarily a way to describe active work...
I tend to think of noir as being more introspective, less laconic. Read Cain's Fast One and watch the total lack of self-awareness in the narrator. Versus Chandler's extremely erudite and overly-aware Marlowe. They may be face paced (like Lady of the Lake), but they aren't concerned with the action, with your emotions, they're more concerned with what makes people tick. On one level, I would think of them as "cooler" than pulp, in that they are less emotionally driven. As a modern example, I would look at Andrew Vachss who delves in extreme situations, dark situations, but Burke the narrator himself is highly introspective and, even in his anger, removes that high level of emotion from the narrative...
Obviously, you are going to have contentious authors - Cornell Woolrich hits all my criteria for pulp: fast paced, lack of introspection, concentation on a single sustained mood (generally hysteria), but probably most people would lump him in the noir field...
So, the simple answer is ... I don't know. When I first saw the question, my first thought was I think of pulp like film noir, as being very tied to a specific time period and a specific group, something no longer practiced. Imitated perhaps (neo-pulp? ha!) but not necessarily a way to describe active work...
I think noir is darker. It's most common theme seems to be betrayal.
Pulp seems like noir with a sense of humor, or maybe a sense of adventure. What do you all think?