DizioNoir*
Ouvrage collectif
(Edited by Mauro Smocivich)
Delosbooks • 2006 • 320
pages
Vittore Baroni
Translated and with footnotes by Karen
Vincent-Jones
The
pun was too tempting not to use it as a title, but the new offering
from the hyperactive Mauro Smocivich (author, collection editor and
creator of the thrillermagazine.it website) is
not just a dictionary and does not deal with noir fiction
in the strict sense as it includes “thrillers, spy novels
and other writing at the far limits of the genre”.
The term “noir”, which is constantly
expanding, and has for years been toppling science fiction and
the detective novel from the throne of genre, is being used increasingly,
and the definition has become more and more vague. Trying to bring
order to a galaxy of writers that includes Giorgio Faletti1 and
James Ellroy, “Gioventù Cannibale”2 and
Dan Brown, Patricia Cornwell and Sub-Comandante Marcos3,
is precisely the goal of this “in progress” manual.
As Jean-François Vilar wrote, “the
Agatha Christie style detective novel is based on order, while
the noir novel
is based on disorder ”: this is not so much due to the narrative
logic of the plot but more to a particular tone, which amplifies
personal disquiet and social unease. The first part of the book contains
a hundred or so author entries, beginning with the precursors (Poe),
by way of the masters of the genre (Hammett, Chandler), and finishing
with contemporary representatives from around the world, a global
panorama in which Italy occupies a not insignificant space.
The authors take the liberty of panning straight
from Inspector Clouseau to an entire chapter on bandes dessinées (comics,
graphic novels) by Smocovich and Elio Marracci. Furthermore, a third
of the book is given over to a series of essays in which a number
of specialists analyse thematic (horror/ noir/ crime) and structural
aspects of the genre, illustrated by a wide selection of essential
films and books. So this is an excellent introduction for those who
want to know more about the “literature of anxiety” . It is also,
as Carlo Lucarelli writes in his preface, a guide “as intriguing
as a spy novel” , thanks to the myriad artistic and personal histories
revealed and put into perspective within it. We only have to look
at the emblematic histories of Cesare Battisti4 and
Massimo Carlotto5, two fish
from a vast and teeming fishpond.
The birth of the Dictionoiry: By
Mauro Smocovich, the editor
One day I was flicking through a book from
my personal library, an essay on crime films divided into two parts.
The first part listed a hundred or so films, in alphabetical order,
with a brief synopsis and a few details ; the second part was a roundup
of the main novels that had been given a movie treatment (thrillers
and films noirs),
as well as notes on the main actors. One chapter drew up a typology
of characters and ambiance. At the time, I found myself thinking
it was a shame that there was no similar publication in Italy covering noir fiction
and the thriller
Then the idea turned into an absolute conviction
that it would be impossible to find anything like this in bookshops
or libraries, and that there was no book in existence that covered
the thriller or the roman noir in the same depth as this
one on movies. Not the most modest directory or essay that analysed
this type of writing. On film noir, yes, a lot of things,
on noir literature,
nothing ! And even if there were anything, it would be out of
print, and therefore limited to the golden age of crime writing.
So I sent an e-mail to Franco Forte, the
editorial director of Delos Network who, with myself, edits the collection
called I libri
di thrillermagazine (books
on thrillermagazine) and, sharing my thoughts with him, I put
to him the idea of publishing such a work ourselves. Of course, I
did not realise what I was getting into.
As fate would have it, the very next day there was a meeting of
the main Delos partners that decided the fate of the Dictionoiry.
They left it up to me to organise, giving me total freedom to choose
my collaborators.
The title came to me as I was trying
to get to sleep. I was turning the word “dictionary” around in my head when I suddenly leapt out
of bed shouting: “Dictionoiry!” The title was adopted unanimously.
In order to face up to the amount of work this new project needed
I had to agree to reduce my contribution to the webzine, where I
was competently replaced by Lorenzo Trenti and Chiara Bertazzoni
who were already used to helping me out.
So then I worked all-out: there was a lot of research involved,
in books and on the net, followed by the rapid production of concise
and, I hope, high-quality texts which I tried to make as comprehensive
as possible while still being brief. My biggest thrill was receiving
the mock-up cover design. The book was beginning to exist in reality.
There was another exiting moment when Lucarelli agreed to write the
foreword. It was proof of recognition of the completed work.
This book is a trial run, a first step.
We called the book “Dizionnoir” because
of the pun, because it incorporated the term “noir” which we liked,
because this genre is evolving rapidly and we are currently trying
to understand it better. But the book also touches on many other
genres. We explore hitherto neglected pathways. We study a number
of genres, including noir, horror, adventure, spy and action
novels, thrillers and novels dealing with criminal psychology. We
dissect the concept of “noir novel” with surgical precision, we analyse,
expand, restrict, and liberate it … We have tried to give a more
international perspective on what constitutes noir fiction , the
spy novel, the thriller, both in writing and in the graphic novel,
and also with a long chapter devoted to cinema. We cast our net for
authors as widely as possible, going from well-known major writers
to more local authors.
We have talked about authors and books that
have never been translated in Italy, in order to give a more panoramic
view of what the noir novel is throughout the world but also to define
more precisely what it means in Italy . We therefore devote a lot
of space to these two aspects.
We knowingly avoided the “classics”. Agatha Christie is absent,
as is “The Black Room Mystery ” . We start off mainly with the 30s
and 40s, the years of hardboiled fiction, but we also look back to
the 19th century, with the police serials and adventure stories that
were the precursers of the genre, in order to understand where hardboiled
fiction and then the crime novel and the thriller came from. We devote
a lot of space to African and Asian writing, but also to French and
American writing, important books that have never been translated
in Italy. There are a lot of these.
And there are also our homegrown Italian authors. We have tried
to namecheck as many as possible, in order to give a snapshot of
a rapidly evolving movement. You will also find authors who have
published only a single book.
It's up to them to
succeed in featuring in future editions of the “Dictionoiry” with
their latest works.
1 Giorgio Faletti (born
Asti, 1950) is an Italian singer, songwriter, composer, writer, film
and TV actor and comic. He is the author of several noir thrillers,
of which the best-known is Io uccido ( I Kill )
published by Baldini Castoldi Dalai in 2002.
2 “Cannibal
Youth ”-
the name of a collection of ‘extreme horror' stories by authors including
Niccolò Ammaniti, Matteo Galliazi, Stefano Massaron and Aldo
Nove, (Einaudi, 1996). [Translator's note].
3 Subcommander
Marcos is
the mysterious (his face always veiled, his real name unknown) leader
of the EZLN, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, an insurgent
group of indigenous people from Chiapas, Mexico, who have been fighting
for self-determination and an end to repression by the Federal Government
for more than a decade.
4 Cesare
Battisti (born
in 1954) is an Italian thriller writer and former member of the Proletari
Armati per il Comunismo - PAC), a far
left group which supported armed
struggle during the 1970s. He was suspected of having carried
out several murders during this period.
5 Massimo
Carlotto was
a political activist wrongly accused of a murder for which he was
convicted and spent many years in prison before eventually receiving
a State pardon. He is now a legal consultant on criminal cases and
a successful author. See here.
* Dictionoiry
