A Twisted World

     The novel sits in perfectly with the film noir genre. Such twisted individuals almost makes you want to jump into the book and bring in justice yourself. Audacity, as the novel says it, is truly what someone has to do in order to take another’s life. The novel emphasizes the cynical attitude and the sexual motivation that plays along with that cynicism. The two go hand in hand the film is more Hollywood mastic as the novel focuses primarily on what film noir is although the film is very much so part of the noir genre. Now the film is a noir based motion picture but unlike the novel the audience to needed to see the hero win in his endeavors. The reason why we have both a screen and paper, is so we can look at both pieces with open minds. The more options we have the more ideas emerge and it increases the attractiveness it can be to people who like the movies compared to people who would rather read a book. There is a lesser, being the book, one who reaches the few of the broad area of entertainment. It’s for people who want accuracy, who don’t mind a lot of evil. The novel has corruption with every corner you turn, from murder, blackmail, betrayal, all sorts of evil. It’s a very dark place when entering the world of film noir, the novel doesn’t waste any time with twisted events. The novel is very dark and everything that goes wrong happens in the shadows. It portrays a sense of lost innocence, doomed romanticism, hard edged cynicism, desperate desire, and shadowy sexuality. Ultimate despair in the lives of noir characters, “The qualities of film noir: nightmarish, weird, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel” (Paul Shrader, “Notes on Film Noir”). I believe one of the most cynical parts of the novel is the fact that Mrs. Nirdlinger is so corrupt and sick inside she actually thinks that killing her husband, in a way is doing him a favor. It goes down to the core of how truly evil noir characters are. They seem to have little to no remorse. And Walter Huff is so cunning in constructing this murder. Thinking of every way possible so they don’t get caught. One thing that caught my attention was his way of breaking Mr. Nirdlinger’s neck. From the readings of it, Mr. Huff definitely knew how to break a man’s neck, and that probably wasn’t his first time doing it. Because of the dangerous romances the ambiguous male gets himself into, this case being Mr. Huff, in the film and novel, he is unable to drive his obsession with the femme fatale thus doing so, entangling himself in a very complex situation in which he is merely a clueless grunt in the femme fatales game of dominance, power and lust. He will either solve the case he has found himself in or it will lead him and sometimes his dangerously sexy companion to their doom. The novel is a perfect example of human nature running away from its moral understandings, pursuing only vanity in a world full of vanity. The film noir genre is reflected with this novel, but the only difference is that the novel is more truthful in a way, to how these situations play out in our real world.