(James Goodwin)
Three to see
Notions of noir
(James Goodwin)
When we think of noir, we think of the femme fatale - Rita Hayworth with her cigarette held ever so delicately between two fingers, poised in the shadows of a black and white film - or of Humphrey Bogart cloaked in a trench coat as quintessential private eye Sam Spade.
But in his introduction to the best-selling short story collection “Boston Noir,’’ editor Dennis Lehane says there’s more to the genre. Forget the Hollywood prototype; Lehane calls noir “working-class tragedy.’’ The hero doesn’t die, but might have preferred to.
Each story in “Boston Noir’’ is set in a different neighborhood, from Southie to the North End, Dorchester to Cambridge, tracing the gritty and sometimes violent lives of the city’s inhabitants.
“I like the idea of not romanticizing the past,’’ says Dana Cameron (pictured above), a contributing author. “I was once an archeologist, so my idea of the past is very different from what you see in popular books or movies. I like portraying some of the grittiness we associate with the modern age and putting it 300 years back.’’
And that’s precisely what she did in “Femme Sole.’’ Set in 18th-century Boston, the story follows Anna Hoyt, a tavern owner in the North End. When her husband and some swindlers take a whack at her independence (and her delicate frame), she has to take matters into her own hands to keep her business.
Cameron explains: “I wanted to take a number of conventions that you think of as typical in the noir story, like a woman alone looking for a man to save her - and in this case, I wanted to take those options away from her and see how she would survive on her own.’’
Hoyt’s struggle for independence in a world of gender inequality is one Cameron knows all too well.
When she worked as an archeologist, she says it was often assumed that she wasn’t in charge of a project, or wasn’t strong enough to do field work.
“There’s generally this idea that women have to find a different way of doing things than men do,’’ Cameron said. “So I wanted to show what it would be like living as a woman in that time. She was educated enough to run her own tavern but not educated enough to make all her decisions. The question is whether she can learn enough fast enough.’’
Cameron and other contributors will read at Brookline Booksmith on Thursday at 7 p.m.
EVEN AFTER THE HOLOCAUST
It’s 1945 and European Jews are evacuating their homelands. The lucky get to Palestine, the rest are imprisoned in detention camps. Anita Diamant examines the lives of four Jewish women living the same struggle from different countries. Diamant will read from “Day After Night,’’ tonight at 7 p.m. at Porter Square Books.THE NOODLE IN ITS GUISES
The noodle. It’s a humble culinary staple, and the central character of cookbook “Momofuku’’ by David Chang, a chef, and Peter Meehan, a food writer for The New York Times. Whether you prefer scallion, alkaline, or the classic Ramen, there are noodley recipes for all. Chang will read from “Momofuku’’ on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Harvard Book Store, Cambridge.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
