Noircon 2014

W.C. Fields's smart-alecky remarks* to the contrary notwithstanding, I love Philadelphia.  It has what all great cities have: great architecture and history, world-class museums, music, and sports teams.  Many lovely restaurants.  And easy connections by air and rail to the rest of the world. 

I went there this past weekend to attend the Saturday session of Noircon—the most headily intellectual of any crime writing conference I have ever been to.  Except for the really intelligent literary critics and professors, most of their confreres write off crime novels with a sneer, a backhanded wave of the hand, and sniffy, “Genre fiction,” as if they were talking about dog poo.  Noir stories are the exception.  Many in academe take very seriously movies and novels that fit into this category.  There were more PhD’s per square foot at Noircon than on the campus of Harvard.  Admittedly the space in the Society Hill Playhouse was small, but you get the idea.

A couple of the presenters were awfully filled up with themselves, one flamingly so—very intent on proving that though he was college professor and the editor of several literary periodicals, he distained everything highbrow, including but not confined to—WASPs, Harvard, wealth, not smoking, and not getting drunk.  But that was just one out of the presenters.  Most were focused on the work as art, not on themselves as artifacts of Noir culture.

I learned a lot about the best of noir fiction and came home with a list of books, some of which I have already bought.

Here are some photos of Philly and of my favorite panels:

 The United States Bank on Chestnut Street, one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the country.

One of Philly’s many beautiful squares,

Tom Nolan interviews Fuminori Nakamura, a brilliant young Japanese writer of noir stories.  That is Sam Bett, his interpreter holding the mike. Learn more about Nakamura here.  His book are at the top of the list I brought back.

Ken Wishnia led a panel on Jewish Noir that included Dr. Michael Cooper, Alan Gordon, and Marshal Stein.

The panel of Existential Noir:  where else could you find a writer (William Lashner), a philosophy professor (K.A. Laity), an editor (Paul Oliver), an ex-lover of Norman Mailer (Carole Mallory), and writer battling constant intense physical pain (Fox Dunham) all at the same table?

Noircon is small, but intense.  I am glad I made the trip. 

Annamaria Alfieri

* I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday. - W. C. Fields

“First prize was a week in Philadelphia. Second prize was two weeks.” - W. C. Fields

Reportedly Fields wanted his epitaph to be: “All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia”