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.

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.