When Noir Film & Noir Fiction Worlds Collide —————– Interview with the author of The Dark Page

Posted on 2010/08/12 by jpickle">jpickle

The Dark Page volumes I & II delve into the history and origins of noir film and fiction. An indispensable resource, the books are for film and fiction fans alike and offer tantalizing tidbits and a wealth of information.

The Dark Page -Books that Inspired American Film Noir [1940-1949]

The Dark Page II – Books That Inspired American Film Noir [1950-1965]

There is no way, although I would like, to own all of the books displayed between the pages. But you can view many books of noir fiction and books that inspired film noir in wonderful full-color pictures. The layout and  research is all top-notch.

Among many things about every book, each book section contains a discussion about the book and/or its author along with detailed information about the resulting film or film adaptation.

For example regarding one of my personal favorites, the Out of the Past section for Build My Gallows High contains this interesting quote from author/screen writer Daniel Mainwaring who said,”The book and the film are entirely different. The film is better, a lot less confused.”

Author of the Dark Page, Kevin Johnson, was willing to answer a few of my questions about the books.

Question:
How long did it take for you to complete your research on The Dark Page
volumes?

Answer:
The initial research was pretty intense, and took about 5 years. Writing the book and assembling the photographs was accomplish in the last 2 of those years. The initial research covered the content for both the first and second volume.

Question:
Did you find a particular valuable source of information for your research?

Answer:
There were many valuable sources, all listed in the book’s bibliography, but I would say the best was Patrick McGilligan‘s series of interviews with screenwriters. Alain Silver edited another volume, Film Noir Reader 2, that was nothing but interviews with screenwriters from the classic noir era. My copies of these books are threadbare–it’s easy enough to find biographies of producers, actors, and actresses, but directors are more difficult, and information on screenwriters is the the most difficult of all.

Question:
The Dark Page I&II is such an invaluable resource for noir lit and film noir fans. The wonderful pictures would suit very well with Apple’s iPad. Any plans for publishing the volumes at Apple’s iBookstore?

Answer:
I would be open to that, and I’m sure my publisher, Oak Knoll Press, would be as well. It’s something we should look into.

[source: Johnson, Kevin. "Re: The Dark Page." Email to the author. 9 Aug 2010.]

Thanks to Kevin Johnson for the interview and kudos to him for providing hours of “doom fun” while reading these excellent books.

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Why the hullabaloo about Noir Fiction?

Posted on 2010/08/11 by jpickle">jpickle

Otto Penzler wrote an article in the Huffington Post titled Noir Fiction Is About Losers, Not Private Eyes. In the article, Penzler states that noir fiction is a separate genre from private detective story, and that the “private eye story is optimistic, even if the detective is not.”

Why is it so important to define “Noir” fiction?

The definition of “Noir” has long been debated. The term has often been used in various ways to define a novel, short story, or film when in many cases the term does not fit the content.

Paul Duncan states:

“Since it came into the English language in the mid-1980′s, the word Noir has been used and abused. During the 1990′s, it became a buzzword, a designer label of a peculiar type of fiction that has black comedy apparel but rarely a heart of darkness.”

He goes on reaffirming what Otto is trying to convey:

“Noir is not a kind of macho hard-boiled fiction where Tough Guys pass moral judgement on an immoral society. Noir is about the weak-minded, the losers, the bottom-feeders, the obsessives, the compulsives and the psychopaths.”

Some of the confusion lies with the belief that the definition of film noir is the same as noir lit and vice versa. But film noir is in a category all in its own and crossing wires only creates befuddlement.

The best definition of film noir I have seen comes from Kevin Johnson who states that “The first and foremost misconception is that film noir is a genre, when in fact it is a style.”

Film can bring forth so many noir elements through the use of film techniques such  as lighting and cinematography that books just cannot do. The film Sweet Smell of Success is considered a classic of film noir mainly due to the contribution of James Wong Howe.

A narrower focus is needed.  Professor David Rachels is working towards constructing  a “useful definition of noir” that fits the genre and sub-genres of noir fiction “with an eye toward an historical understanding of noir.”

Why now?

We are on the verge of book revolution. Many of these long lost works of noir fiction  are about to make an appearance in the digital realm and will dust off their striking pulp covers.

In our digital world, it has become much easier to find a genre or sub-genre and to make distinctions to suit individual tastes. Identifying the content of body of work has become easier and discovering how it is related to other literary and film works has lead to a richness of media consumption unprecedented in any time in history.

Genres and sub-genres need to be made clear and the lines need to be drawn. In the online world of today, people looking for particular aspects of noir could find things getting messy. Search engines define entities by the key words associated with them. If you have the wrong definition, confusion results with entities like books and films.

The music industry has figured this out since going digital several years ago. Lyrics, songwriters, music categories are already categorized and labeled so that music lovers can find their musical niche, buy music, participate in sub-group forums, or contribute a recommendation about the music that they love for its unique qualities.

Book publishing is going digital. Publishers of noir fiction (and search engines) need a road map to create the associations and distinctions that make reading and discovering of noir fiction so much “doom fun“. Fans of noir fiction want to learn and be able to find the best and the most meaningful explanations of what they want to know.

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The Remarkable Story of Bodies are Dust

Posted on 2010/08/02 by jpickle">jpickle

P.J. Wolfson’s son, Michael, was gracious enough to fill in gaps in my research and help make corrections in my previous post The P.J. Wolfson Story- Bodies are Dust.

P.J. Wolfson circa 1934

Michael was also willing to share and has provided the story behind the publication of  Bodies are Dust:

“Now to the remarkable story of how Bodies Are Dust got published.

When he finally finished writing the book, he put the manuscript away in a drawer and began writing a second book. Some months later, my Mother asked him when he was going to finish the book he’d been working on for the longest time, He told her he’d finished it, but had put it away because he wasn’t satisfied with the result. She became angry with him for working for so long on something and then not showing it to someone or sending it to a publisher to see what they thought. She became such a pest on the subject that, in frustration, he opened the phone book, looked under publishers, picked a publishing house whose name appealed to him (Vanguard Press), wrapped up the manuscript and sent it off in the mail. He thus satisfied and silenced my Mother. Naturally, when the unsolicited manuscript arrived at Vanguard Press it was immediately thrown onto the slush pile. What he only learned later on was that the head of Vanguard Press, Jim Henle, had a habit of scooping up several manuscripts from the slush pile whenever he had to go on a trip as a way of passing the time on the train. By sheer happenstance, my father’s manuscript arrived shortly before Henle had to take the train to Washington D.C. and Bodies Are Dust was scooped up along with other manuscripts to pass the time on the journey. When Henle arrived in D.C. he sent my father a telegram telling him to be in his office the next Monday morning because Vanguard Press wanted to publish his book. A moment of serendipity indeed.

My father was of the generation of writers that was heavily influenced by the emerging work of Hemingway – muscular, sparse and filled with dialogue. The advertising campaign developed by Vanguard Press for the book used the hook in many ads “Wolfson Isn’t Hemingway. Wolfson Is Wolfson.” (If you research the archives of major New York newspapers in 1931, you might find these ads.) The fact the book was heavy on dialogue and the gritty side of life was one of the many reasons Universal bought the movie rights. In the early 30′s, the studios were looking for writers and properties that could quickly adapt to the introduction of sound that occurred only a few years before. The reason Universal never made a movie of Bodies Are Dust was because shortly after they purchased the rights, another studio made a movie of Elmer Rice‘s work “Detective Story” and Universal felt that another movie on the same subject wasn’t a good idea at the time.

As part of purchasing the rights to Bodies Are Dust – the studio paid $500 which was a significant sum in the depression year of 1931 – Universal also gave my father a 10 week contract to come out to Los Angeles and possibly write screenplays. This apparently was a standard procedure for many properties the studios purchased right up into the 1950′s. My father said that what he was paid per week was a significant sum for the period and well worth the adventure of going out to California even if things didn’t work out after ten weeks. And so my father, mother and sister (age 3), drove out to Los Angeles to seek their fortune.

My parents enjoyed the first weeks of their adventure in movieland. But as the weeks went by, my father noticed that, even though he was required to be at the studio in the writers’ building each day, he wasn’t getting much in the way of assignments. By the fifth week of his contract it seemed clear that the studio wasn’t going to make use of him and would let his contact end after the full ten weeks. During the fifth week of his stint at Universal he met a fellow in the commisary at lunch and they quickly became friendly. The fellow was Allen Rivkin. Rivkin had been in Hollywood for a number of years as a publicist, but very much wanted to be a screenwriter. After meeting my father, he read Bodies Are Dust and made my father a proposal. He said that he thought my father was a terrific writer and that he, Rivkin, had been around the movie business long enough to know what the studios were looking for in stories and scripts. He proposed that they team up and in their off hours (evenings and weekends) they write a script. Then, when my father’s contract ran out and Universal let him go, he (Rivkin) would go out and sell the script to one of several studios he knew would be interested. And that’s exactly what happened. A few weeks after my father’s Universal contract ended and he was bid goodbye, Rivkin went out and sold the script and the two of them became a writing team that wrote a number of movies over the next few years. An unexpected meeting in the commisary at Universal led to a long career in Hollywood.” – Michael Wolfson

[source: Wolfson, Michael. "Re: P.J. Wolfson." Email to the author. 30 July 2010.]


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Black Glasses Like Clark Kent

Posted on 2010/07/30 by jpickle">jpickle

As part of the Spotlight Series for Graywolf Press, the following is a review of Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, A GI’s Secret from Postwar Japan by Terese Svoboda.

War stories. Most people want to hear stories of death defying heroic deeds and patriotic sacrifice. But many true war stories do not offer escapism or a heroic figure to save the day. War and its aftermath is full of atrocities and human cruelty.

We usually only hear of the triumphs and glory. We turn a blind eye to the ugliness and shut it out. But in order to see things as they truly are, we must look straight into mirror. We may not like what we see, but to improve ourselves as human beings we have to acknowledge our wrong doings and make others aware of what is right and what is wrong.

Black Glasses Like Clark Kent  is not just about a person’s experiences during the occupation of Japan immediately after WWII.  There are two stories intertwined here.

Terese Svoboda’s uncle was a military policeman (MP) who served at the Eighth Army stockade outside Tokyo. Coming from all-american midwestern roots, he is “my uncle, Clark Kent, the bespectacled man with a secret.” But more like Drew Carey, he wears the black thick official military issue “basic corrective glasses”.

Late in his life, her uncle enters a deep depression as news of Abu Gharaib torture and prison abuse brings back memories of Japan. Family secrets are revealed to his niece as the uncle transcribes his recollections onto taped recordings he mails to her.

What memories were triggered from the sordid images of an Iraqi prison? What makes this kryptonite so powerful?

Over the course of the book, Terese shares her uncle’s taped recollections. Excerpts from the tapes are intercut between the pages as Terese attempts to fill in gaps and give her uncle’s story a backbone to support the situation he was in and the events that unfolded.

Terese travels to Japan for research and to further source and back up her uncle’s story. Untold secrets come out in the open and we catch glimpses of what was hidden behind walls of shame, guilt, and horror. She builds her research into a suspenseful rush to discover the skeletons in the closet before the closet door closes and the keys held only in the minds of a diminishing few.

Once in Japan conducting interviews with eye-witnesses of the time of U.S. occupation, Terese slowly cashes out small prizes of war-time recollections. A small history is weaved from the threads and snippets of memories sometimes vivid and almost forgotten. The small payouts keep her going while waiting for the wheels of fortune to spit out the ever-elusive jackpot of answers.

Here are some quotes from the book:

-page 6 – “My dad calls around then and mentions that his brother has fallen into a deep depression.”

-page 7 – “He has a secret.”

-page 70 – “The returning vets of the Greatest Generation kept quiet about the horror they witnessed, they internalized it.”

- page 98 – “Fordham, where I have a two-year contract as the writer-residence, has awarded me a research grant. I am in Tokyo to search for the Japanese elderly who might have worked in the stockade’s kitchen, or as children might have played around its walls.”

I enjoyed the book. No spoilers here, you’ll have to find out the secrets of the uncle and what occurred in the stockade yourself. As you read the story, you get a real sense of desperation as each word means that time is slipping by and you must come to terms along with the author that the whole truth may never be known.

I’ve done some family research myself and I certainly sympathized with Terese about the frustrations over missing records and the lack of time available to root out a new thread of information in a mountain of minutiae.

As she gets further into her research , we see the author’s growing obsession with her uncle’s story. The uncle’s taped recollections serve as an undercurrent.  The author’s technique of  interspersing tape excerpts throughout the book serve to heighten the sense of guilt that drive her to seek answers to the many questions the tapes bring up.

Terese Svoboda’s story into finding out what happened at the stockade also parallels her uncle’s story by following a pattern similar to the human reaction to grief.  She too experiences stages such as shock, denial, bargaining, and acceptance. At the end of the book, she accepts that she will never put all the puzzle pieces together. We may have not have all the hows, whens, and whys but what we have may be the most important and thats enough.

“But I won’t stand for my uncle’s ghost teasing me, hovering over my shoulder where I’m hunched over some huge piles of documents at the National Archives. I declare the job finished.”

In her uncle’s  case, I’m glad he shared his life experiences. It was a reminder of our humanity. Its a personal book. There are certainly parallels with today’s vets and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I wished that her uncle could have looked in the mirror and realized that the power of change comes from recognition and not to despair. Like his niece at the end, we must learn and break free from frustration and guilt.  Although we can’t change the past, we can certainly learn from it.

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The JAZZ Age – Two free online books

Posted on 2010/06/22 by jpickle">jpickle

Two great free online books from the Jazz Age.
You can view these two books on your iPad or iPhone using the free Kindle App, download them through the Stanza app, or use the Barnes&Noble ereader app and get them for free via Google Books.

Ben Hecht’s A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago:

David Graham Phillip’s Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise:

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