VLVL2 (9): YakMaf and the Noir Style

[Tim Strzechowski]

132.6  "[Wayvone'd] heard about her in fact years before on the YakMaf grapevine"  Yakuza/Mafia  (according to "Babies of Wackiness website)
 
http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/chapter9.htm


Unrelated to YakMaf, but pertaining to the same paragraph:

"So he'd driven across the Mojave all night one night to see her in action.  From a dank cement arena her hair had blazed at him like the halo of an angel of mischief.  In the Rolodex of Ralph's memory, young DL would be flagged that brightly.  He was actually then to follow her for a time, meet to meet through the South and West, along a circuit of grim, early ex-Nam faces, motels always miles from the venue and down the wrong freeway, shoptalk, drinking, possession of weapons, T-shirts featuring skulls, snakes, and dangerous transportation [...]"

This paragraph has a certain "noir" style to it, almost as if it had been ripped from the pages of Raymond Chandler.

http://noirfiction.tripod.com/whatisnoir/Noir.htm

http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/marling/hardboiled/


I recall reading Lolita for the first time many years ago and being struck by the ways in which Nabokov incorporated mini-parodies of various styles into Humbert Humbert's narrative.  Passages throughout the novel functioned as parodies of detective fiction, erotic fiction, travelogues, spaghetti westerns, etc.  I never really noticed such literary parodies in Pynchon's work before; if anything, the scenes that always struck me had more of a film style parodic quality -- like both the Busby Berkley mice scene or the hot-air balloon pie throwing scene in GR.  Nevertheless, I wonder if this is a brief glimpse at noir fiction and, as such, owes something to a Nabokovian influence.

Tim


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