Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics

by Tim McLoughlin

Book Overview

"An assortment of the borough's crime-fiction masterminds get down to the gritty details in this entertaining collection of chilling stories." --BKLYN

"Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin, is the perfect companion to McLoughlin's successful all-original anthology." --Publishers Weekly

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1888451769
• ISBN13: 9781888451764
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Brooklyn Noir 2: the Classics

Interesting concept...a follow-up to the excellent Brooklyn Noir 1 with a collection of "classic" short stories ranging in tone from H.P. Lovecraft's stately "Horror at Red Hook" to Hubert Selby's torrid "Talala" (an excerpt from "Last Exit to Brooklyn"). Something here to please everyone, but not everything to everyone's taste. Not quite as entertaining as the original BN1 but the stories are well chosen and varied in style, a worthy addition to the Noir collections.

Dear, dirty Brooklyn

Superior to Manhattan Noir and Bklyn Noir 1. Ranges from the elegant (and enraged) H. P. Lovecraft (originally from Rhode Island, so what can you expect?) to Selby's dreamy, slick brutalities (a prose style halfway between Henry Miller's and William Burroughs's). Brooklyn (being Brooklyn) allows for the fine-tuning of realism in the canon of American prose styles. Wolfe's attempt to reproduce Brooklyn speech fails pitifully (just as do Hollywood's attempts to suggest Southern speech), but Selby's waterfront Brooklyn of WW 2 succeeds (see the German film production of LAST EXIT: is that Jennifer Jason Leigh as the perky, scrofulous siren of the Bklyn waterfront?). Unfortunately, Flatbush is totally absent (as it is in Bklyn Noir 1). During WW 1, Flatbush was the epitome of middle-class American aspirations ("When it's nesting time in Flatbush..."). Miller's Death of a Salesman comes out of Flatbush, as do portions of Malamud and Edmund Wilson ("Princess with the Golden Hair"). And don't forget Woody Allen. Somehow, both vols of Bklyn Noir omit this fertile enclave. Essential reading for students of American literature.