{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2811",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2811,
    "subject": "There Is No Hope Road",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-08-27T09:40:31+00:00",
    "last": "2001-08-27T09:40:31+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0675@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-27T09:40:31+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) There Is No Hope Road",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Tony Ellis (no, really!) wrote:\nThere you have it: solving the mystery in detective fiction brings order,\nsolving it in film noir brings the discovery that there -is- no order."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, yes, but before film noir was Dashiell Hammett, (whose THE MALTESE\nFALCON is, in essence, the ur-text of film noir: but it was a novel before\nit was a film). In Hammett's world, and especially that of his unnamed\nhero, the Continental Op, we have precisely the world of the Norse sagas\n-- there is ultimately no order, no justice, but honor demands that we\nact as if there were and, bring them to pass where we can."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Broadly speaking I would agree with what I take to be the general\nconsensus: that this is precisely the sort of mystery Gene Wolfe\ndoes not write. But at least one important exception springs\nimmediately to mind: The Fifth Head of Cerberus. In both the first\nand the final novellas, the 'detective' far from solving a mystery\nbecomes ensnared in one. The universe remains corrupt and unsolved."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "But then, 5HC is almost exactly a portrait of an fallen but unsaved\nworld; it is precisely in such a world that the hardboiled detective\nstory and the feelm nwah take place. (And there is no hope, as near\nas I can tell, for the redemption of Number Five Wolf(e)* and/or \n\"Dr Mars(c)h,\" leaving 5HC one of the most unbearably depressing books \nI have ever read.)\n\n-----\n* (Any relation to Number Ten Ox?)\n-----"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "In fact it's just hit me: the seedy underworlds of St Anne and St\nCroix are pure film noir, complete with criminal kingpin, bent\ncops, and femmes fatales. Does anyone else think \"Mean Streets:\nThe Fifth Head of Cerberus Considered as Film Noir\" sounds like \na good title for a Wolfe essay?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "How about \"The Detective of Nightmares?\" <g> -- yes, it's a workable\ntitle.\n\n--Dan'l"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}