tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post3861460832279027355..comments2024-02-05T10:41:31.777-05:00Comments on I Saw Lightning Fall: An Offer We Must RefuseLoren Eatonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-8532516807042291112009-08-27T22:09:14.493-04:002009-08-27T22:09:14.493-04:00That could be true about Frye. I certainly don'...That could be true about Frye. I certainly don't claim to be any sort of expert on Archetypal theory. Or any literary theory, really. But if noir is (as Peter Rozovsky says) a story in which the protagonist goes willingly to his doom, that doesn't necessarily mean that he has some fatal flaw that undoes him like in classical tragedy. It certainly <i>can</i>. (See <i><a href="http://isawlightningfall.blogspot.com/2009/02/thief-and-dogs-reads-like-bullet.html" rel="nofollow">The Thief and the Dogs</a></i>, for example.) But quite a few of such stories seem to feature a poor schmoe being undone by a fatalistic universe. Ditto for horror, at least a lot of it. And while I tend to prefer the sorts of stories that show up on the monomyth, I can't say the ones that don't are immediate failures.<br /><br />Dunno if that makes any sense at all. But I'm tired, and bed is calling.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-64972994722632999412009-08-27T20:58:48.585-04:002009-08-27T20:58:48.585-04:00Interesting point, though I'm not sure you'...Interesting point, though I'm not sure you're being entirely fair to Frye.<br /><br />After all, one of the guys Frye studied most closely, Joseph Conrad, shared a lot of affinities with Noir. It's hard to say that his Marlowe, who constantly searches to stare humanely into the heart of darkness, is all that different from the later Phillip Marlowe. <br /><br />At the same time, the distinction may break down when one gets to horror. I've been reading some C.L. Moore lately, and came to a realization. Her protagonists, Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith, invariably survive their encounters. The stories, therefore, follow the archetypical path of Romance, not tragedy; the protagonist decends (often literally), goes through an ordeal, and returns triumphant. Yet the pleasure I get from the stories is quite akin to the pleasure of reading, say, Lovecraft, whose stories almost invariably end in total slaughter. <br /><br />Which is to say, perhaps, that the horror genre is determined much more by the atmosphere and imaginative recapitualtion of psychological dreads than on any narrative pattern. (Unlike, say, the Heroic Fantasy or noirish private eye story.)Chestertonian Ramblerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01550643992523840950noreply@blogger.com