Category Archives: Hardboiled

The Talented Mr. Ripley

I’ve been trying to catch up on my reading list this summer. Like with all things for me (expect for maybe watching films), reading is often all or nothing. I tend to read most when preparing a course. In fact, I have come … Continue reading

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Dirty Snow Hardboiled

More than six months ago I finished reading Georges Simenon‘s novel Dirty Snow. It still haunts me regularly. There’s only one other book that I’ve read over the last decade that has had the same, harrowing effect on me: Cormac … Continue reading

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Milan Caliber 9: Italian Hardboiled

A few weeks ago I watched Fernando Di Leo’s Milan caliber 9 (1972) and loved it. Unfortunately I’ve been too crazy to write about it sooner, so not all the details are fresh with me. That said, there are a … Continue reading

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Homeboiled: Touchez pas au grisbi

Thanks to my special lady friend, our focus on French noir continues, this time with a quiet mediation on growing old in the 1954 film Touchez pas au grisbi (“Don’t touch the loot”) by Jacques Becker starring Jean Gabin. The Criterion Collection’s synopsis for the film … Continue reading

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Damnable Bestialities: a Hardboiled Discussion with David Kernohan

Thanks to David Kernohan I finally got the opportunity to talk about some of the fallout of the Hardboiled class I taught last semester. It was a really fun class, and like ds106, the first time through a relatively new … Continue reading

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Ellroy on Hammett: a Hardboiled War on Labor

I was searching the UMW library database for a James Ellroy novel I wanted to re-read this break (The Big Nowhere), when I stumbled across his introduction to an Everyman’s Library Edition of some of Dashiell Hammett’s stories and novels. … Continue reading

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Why so serious?

This is my last word on James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia because I need to write about the re-emergence of black capitalism in Walter Mosely’s Devil in a Blue Dress. At the beginning of Tuesday’s discussion about Devil in a … Continue reading

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Hardboiled Week 14: Black Dahlia, Alternative History, and the Rise of Smut and Gore

Audio of Hardboiled discussion of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia 11-29-2012 Tonight’s class was a bit low energy given how late we are in the semester and how much reading I have thrown at the #emoboilers—but as they say what … Continue reading

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Hardboiled Week 14: James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia, and Other Twisted Obsessions

I can remember the exact moment I heard about James Ellroy for the first time. It was the Fall of 1994 and I was working at UCLA’s Audio Visual Services scheduling AV needs for the campus community when my co-worker … Continue reading

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Indemnity Only and Hardboiled Feminism

I couldn’t get this post up sooner because I went offline for a long Thanksgiving weekend, but I feel compelled to share out the class discussion of Sara Paretsky’s Indemnity Only before I started talking about James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia. … Continue reading

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