Image Credit: whatindienight
I can’t believe it’s already week 6 of the hardboiled class—where has the semester gone? Tonight we’ll be watching the noir classic Double Indemnity (1944) based on James M. Caine’s novel of the same name and co-written by Raymond Chandler. It will provide a formal introduction to the noir, and accompanied with the first chapter of James Naremore’s More than Night will prepare us for a larger discussion about what exactly noir is. Is it a genre? A zeitgeist? A mood? An idea? What? It’s also a nice way to start complicating and building on the assumptions surrounding hardboiled and noir fiction and film. You can find the first 30 pages of Naremore’s Chapter 1 “The History of an Idea” on Google Books. The final nine pages of the chapter left off of Google Books can be downloaded here. Read this entire chapter and be prepared to talk about it in relationship to Double Indemnity this Thursday, October 4th.
Also on Thursday UMW librarian Peter Catlin will be talking to us about our Wikipedia Research project. He has already prepared a libguide for our hardboiled class, be sure to look at this resource before Thursday’s meeting. Also, I’ll be finalizing the next two Wikipedia research projects tomorrow and selecting groups accordingly.
