This is noir, dark, evil, sexual and cruel, with the story
being read in first person, through the protagonist, this time not being a male
but female, Holly. She shows the cynical, obsessive, frightened and insecure
loner struggling to survive when ultimately she loses. In the end it almost as
she works as the femme fatale as well, in a way with her manipulative ways by
tricking him into having sex when she slips the poison he had given her to
poison Mariah and then she ends up using it on him. As he slowly dies she
whispers to him "Am I good enough now, Richard? (121)”. This shows the immoral
and cruel side to noir. This short story without doubt gave me chills.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Blog #7 Option 3
As I start to read Los Angeles Noir I realize that this is
definitely not a pg13 book that anyone can read. This book is an R rated book
for sure. With the weird, sexual and dark stories it tells, gets your
imagination on another level. As I start to read the first story "The
Method" by Janet Fitch I can almost imagine myself in the story. I
definitely recommend this short story over Patt Morrison's Morocco Junction.
I say this because the whole time you are left with wanting to know more about what
is happening and you would have never expected the result; at least I didn't. The
Method also fits more into the Noir genre as it tells about a girl who
moved to Los Feliz, California
from Kearny, Nebraska to pursue a career in acting. She
meets a man at her job in which they become boyfriend and girlfriend or should
I say more of rather sexual partners. He uses her to try and commit a murder
for him to an old famous actress Mariah McKay. Well turns out she finds out
that he doesn't love her and is using her and she turns the table on him and
poisons him. As she watches him die she tells him how she was onto him and
wasn't going to be made to look like a fool.
On the other hand Morocco Junction did not. I
was very bored for most of the story and had to stop reading and come back to
it several times, although the end was very intriguing, but it did not remind
me at all of noir. Except for the fact that maybe there being a detective which
is who you are reading under the whole time. The whole thing had me very
confused at times until the very end where I was able to understand more and finally
caught my attention. But I would not recommend this short story; it was very
bland and if you’re looking for something more towards the noir style this is
not it. Overall I recommend The Method, it gives you a better insight to what noir
is and shows you the gloomy yet immoral side of what a true noir story is all
about.
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I agree with you on this subject. Morocco Junction was very bland and did not catch my attention whatsoever. The Method made me want to keep reading and kept me interested the entire time. I loved the element of knowing that a murder was going to happen but not knowing who was going to die and who was going to kill. I also like when there is a story about an old movie star that has a dead career because the descriptions of the people are always so weird and interesting.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your blog I agree with you that "The Method" is more of a film noir. It was an interesting story, but it was really obvious since the beginning when Richard walked in that he wanted to use Molly for revenge. That's just me though, we've been reading and talking about film noir and they all seem to be the same, but "Morocco Junction" was a bit different than all the other noir we talked about. Maybe that's why I liked and thought it that one was a bit better, but "The Method" was interesting as well, it was hard for me to choose one to write on between the both. Good blog though :).
ReplyDeleteYes, it was kind of difficult to read "Morocco Junction". I was not sure what was going on, just like you but until the end i understood what was going on. "The Method" even though was very straight forward and down right crazy still kept me interested. It did show more of noir side than "Morocco Junction". It was "dark, evil, sexual, and cruel" like you mentioned and thats what you expect from noir, and that what I like about noir. Even though sometimes you know whats going to happen. It makes you want to keep reading. I can see now how Holly was in a way the femme fatale, because in the end she loses and how she manipulates him. I like how you changed your font when you started to talk about "Morocco Junction" haha very clever. :)
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree with you more on the book being rated R it definitely is something different then we are used to seeing. I think it honestly makes the reads more interesting. So far I have like most of the stories we have read. They are good short stories, and I really liked reading the method. I thought that it was very good. I really enjoyed you're post. Good job
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