Al,
I certainly didn't mean to imply that Goodis's characters do
not confront death, just that there aren't always murders in
the books. In previous posts, confrontation with death had
been used, first, as confrontation with one's own death (as I
think Dave meant it) and confrontation with someone else's
death, often by murder (as you added). I was just pointing
out that causing someone else's death was not necessary for
someone to be in hell, as evidenced by Goodis's work.
Although, it retrospect, Goodis's character are sometimes in
hell due to havng caused death (feeling responsible for death
in a crash, for instance), though not always through
murder.
That said, I think an important distinction is to be drawn
between confronting your own death and someone else's. I'm
certainly not saying one is noir and the other isn't, or even
that one is more noir than the other, but the two have
different consequences/trajectories -- for instance, causing
someone else's death can lead to having to confront your own
-- and can imply different levels of engagement in an active
vs. passive kind of way.
Kind of related, the more I think about it, the more I like
my offhand comment that noir is about a person coming up
against his or her moral limits and finding out who he or she
really is. I'm not saying it's an absolute requirement of
noir, but I am saying that most of the noirs I like best seem
to have that quality.
Mark
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