I’m back from NoirCon where I spent the weekend among the beautiful people. Have you ever stepped into a room full of humans obviously smarter and savvier than yourself? Okay, it happens to me a fair amount, but this was one of the only times that I liked it. Really, really liked it. So intimidated by the sheer size of the frontal lobes collected there, I’m just relieved they’re on our side.
Some of my favorite panels? Let’s start with Christa Faust and Jay Gertzman’s discussion of Pornography in Noir Fiction. Gertzman, the author of Bookleggers and Smuthounds had a scholarly and articulate approach to the subject that I found (ahem) stimulating. Faust’s take was dissimilarly matter of fact and moderator Reed Farrel Coleman posed some juicy questions. In the end, the common ground everybody could agree on was that Vicki Hendricks, (who was present), writes it – the balanced porno/noir - better than anybody.
Laura Lippman interviewed George Pelecanos, this year’s recipient of the David L. Goodis Award, and for anybody concerned that he’s turning too many cheeks in his books these days, he’s promised plenty of ‘righteous violence’ in his next one. I can’t wait.
There were back to back lectures on Patricia Highsmith, the first biographical and the second a study of filmed adaptations of her work. Anybody catch John Malkovich in Ripley’s Game? I rather liked that one. Wim Wenders’ American Friend is another favorite, though admittedly weirder than most.
There were two anthology-contributor’s panels – the first on Philadelphia Noir featuring Dennis Tafoya, Meredith Anthony, Duane Swierczynski, Jeff Zervanos and Carlin Romano filled in a lot of local color and history. The second for Damn Near Dead 2 with Christa Faust, Scott Cupp, S.J. Rozan, Scott Phillips, Patricia Abbott and Reed Farrel Coleman quickly changed course and became a fond appreciation and memorial for Busted Flush Press’s David Thompson.
My favorite piece of the Con had to be Megan Abbott and Anthony Neil Smith’s discussion Through a Rearview Darkly: A Revisionist History of Noir. What can I say? Those two are blessed with an excess of knowledge and wit and their incisive deconstruction of history according to fiction was fascinating. But this goes back to my opening. Everybody in the room had me outclassed in the analytical insight and encyclopedic knowledge of that stubbornly indefinable thing we were congregating around. Think I’m kidding? Go listen/read to Robert Polito, Ed Petit, David Corbett, Culled Gallagher, Sarah Weinman, Richard Edwards or Thomas Kaufman talk/write about this stuff sometime. It’s heady and gutsy simultaneously.
Overshadowed perhaps by intellects, I truly believe that no one enjoyed themselves more than I did, and aside from heroes I already knew from afar, I met some rich new blood your gonna be hearing from soon. That means you, Nick Korpon, Libby Cudmore, Matthew Quinn Martin, Steve Weddle, Roger Petersen, William Boyle, Joe Samuel Starnes, Owen Laukkanen – you guys make my dark heart go pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat.
What did I miss?
Jihad Ares writes fiction and keeps the blob Hardboiled Wonderland.
