{"id":3510,"date":"2014-11-15T07:15:23","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T12:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3510"},"modified":"2014-12-13T07:38:43","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T12:38:43","slug":"new-jersey-noir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3510","title":{"rendered":"*** New Jersey Noir"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"New<\/a>Edited by Joyce Carol Oates<\/strong>. It isn\u2019t a coincidence that I\u2019m reviewing this 2011 book of noir short stories in the middle of two weeks of Sunday blog posts about a celebration of JCO\u2019s teaching. When I knew I was going to the event, I grabbed this book from the \u201cto read\u201d pile.<\/p>\n

Noir is distinguished from other types of mystery and suspense fiction by having a protagonist who\u2019s a suspect, a perpetrator, or even a victim\u2014an insider to the situation. Pretty much anyone but a detective\/investigator. Often the main characters have a boatload of problems, usually of their own making. My favorite definition of these protagonists is crime writer Dennis Lehane\u2019s: \u201cIn Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been an \u201cin principle\u201d admirer of Akashic Books\u2019 now lengthy series of place-based noir anthologies, and picked up New Jersey Noir<\/em> at a local bookstore event, where Oates spoke about it and introduced (I think) one or two of the contributors. Now I\u2019ve finally read it and am disappointed to say many of the 19 stories and poems felt as if they could have happened anywhere.<\/p>\n

Sheila Kohler\u2019s creepy \u201cWunderlich,\u201d for example, is about the bleak territory of aging, not the peculiar dynamic of New Jersey. Various other tales have no more than a whiff of Garden State verisimilitude, which violates the underlying rationale of the series, I\u2019d think. Collectively, these stories hardly scratch the surface of the state\u2019s noir potential, as a glance at any of our daily newspapers would reveal. People in New Jersey fall from curbs like lemmings.<\/p>\n

Too many of the stories (for my taste) lean heavily on substance abuse problems, which it won\u2019t surprise the reader to learn cause all kinds of heartache. I rather liked the Bradford Morrow story set in Grover\u2019s Mill, perhaps because I\u2019d just spent considerable creative time there, myself. \u201cGlass Eels\u201d by Jeffrey Ford captures the loneliness of New Jersey\u2019s Pine Barrens, but is too similar in action to Robert Arellano\u2019s \u201cKettle Run.\u201d A story by Oates, \u201cRun Kiss Daddy,\u201d delivers a sufficiently oppressive atmosphere and dark underbelly to be the setup for a longer piece of writing. To me, the most interesting story is Jonathan Safran Foer\u2019s \u201cToo Near Real,\u201d in which the protagonist follows the Google street view vehicle around Princeton, then watches himself \u201con the map.\u201d Fresh and entertaining.
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