Jerry Thompson (4)

I think one of the core ingredients of noir is the feel and flavor of its settings. In movies, the black and white film, the nighttime street scenes, the nightclubs and bars, are themselves characters in the stories. That’s what makes this series of books, set in iconic (and maybe some not so iconic) locations so interesting.

Oakland has a ton of feel. All the “no there there”, “murder capital”, etc. talk kind of misses the point with Oakland. The stories in this book do it justice, show more I thought.

Having lived in Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda, I knew the stories’ settings, sometimes from direct experience and sometimes just from hearsay, but all give me a strong, familiar feel. Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the United States, ethnically, economically, and racially. The stories reflect it — it’s not so much that the themes are ethnic, racial, or economic, but the environment flows through like a thick blend of flavors.

Characters are drawn from all over the place — homeless drug addicts, aspiring middle-classers, troubled and untroubled gays and lesbians, kids, wealthier types with their own problems. Some of the landmarks — the White Horse Inn, the Fruitvale Bridge, Mills College, McClymonds High School, Hegenberger Road — qualify as characters in their own right.

Noir is a fuzzy category. Some of the stories here are just plain stories of down and out life. Phil Canalin’s story, The Three Stooges, focuses on one night with three homeless friends, Maurice, Champ, and Lawrence. It’s typical of many of the stories in the book — people living hard lives with tragedy heaped on top, almost like something you take in stride.

And then there are stories like Eddie Muller’s The Handyman, where upwardly mobile slams into downwardly tragic. The story is set in Alameda, in one of its old, grand houses. You can feel it.

Then there are portraits of the modern, urban “life of crime”. Joe Loya’s Waiting for Gordo is told through court transcripts of police surveillance recordings. That one is set on Hegenberger Road, in the parking lot near Francesco’s restaurant. If you have lived in Oakland, you’ve probably driven by Francesco’s (it’s closed now) with no idea that things like what happens here were going on. I know I did. I have to admit I got a little Pulp Fiction diner flashback reading this one.

Another poignant story is Katie Gilmartin’s White Horse, set at the White Horse Inn. Despite having lived just a few blocks from the White Horse Inn, I never knew that it was the oldest, continuously operating “Queer bar” in the United States. The story is set at a time when being gay or lesbian was very risky business, not that it can’t be now, and what happens in the story shows the collision between that risk, how you react to it, and any attempt to just pursue the relationships the characters are drawn to.

Really what I loved about the book was how it gave me the feel and taste of Oakland, for better and worse. I admit some of it might be slumming, for someone who never experienced the hardest sides of Oakland life. Oakland, for all its bad reputation as the city that isn’t San Francisco, is a great setting for a book in this series. show less

As the Introduction to this recent collection from Akashic Books' noir series notes: “Can a Bay Area college town be a breeding ground for noir? On the surface the alleys don’t seem that dark, until we look a little closer.” Fans of noir recognize what the 16 tales in this book make plain: Shadows and darkness that mark the genre are not found in the alleys or the wharfs, or in city streets and the dusky hills they give way to. Shadows and darkness live in the heart and mind—even our show more own (if we are brave enough to admit it).

In these stories, dark impulses—what Poe called “the imp of the perverse,” are like rafts carried on dark currents. Among the not-quite-human tech moguls, free range environmentalists, left-behind revolutionaries, and bitcoin barkers, rises the tide of recognize-you-anywhere dark hearted, ill-fated losers that cast their shadows on it all. Many of the people in these stories are seekers. But rather than enlightenment or venture capital, they seek the expected—a home, love, somewhere to belong, escape. And because it’s noir we’re dealing with, we know the only way to those things is to get out, and the only way out is down.

As in the best noir tales, there is redemption here. The secret promise of an ocean burial, the hollow histories of idolized personalities, the double-cross that is its own hopeless reward. The stories, each by a different author, mix easily, with haunted academe and black night sailing taking up residence among fables and the hapless inevitability of surrender.

Berkeley Noir is a strong addition to Akashic’s catalogue. Strong not only because of its faith in the noir genre, but because of the way its stories uncover the wanting in the land of plenty. Hollywood and Los Angeles have their rich veins of noir familiar to many readers. Now the Bay Area claims its own.

Peter Scisco show less

Berkeley Noir is an anthology of noir short stories that take place in Berkeley, that famous next-door neighbor of San Francisco known for its protests and activism. In many ways, this anthology fulfills all the stereotypes of Berkeley while challenging them and subverting them with other stories. I think the editors, Jerry Thompson and Owen Hill, did a superb job of selecting stories.

Rather than organizing their stories by some emotional theme, they went for simple geography. The different show more sections of the anthology are grouped by locale and yet that creates a sort of emotional geography of its own as different neighborhoods have different vibes.

I loved “Hill House” the housesitting nightmare and the self-sacrificing love and grief of “The Tangy Brine of Dark Night.” One of my favorite stories is “Lucky Day” about a relatively new employee of the Berkeley Public Library. “Eat Your Pheasant, Drink Your Wine” has a truly original narrative voice. That’s true of “Every Man and Every Woman Is a Star” as well and now I have got to read more by Nick Mamatas. Susan Dunlap’s “The Law of Local Karma” will feel familiar and solid to fans of Dunlap which I am. “Dear Fellow Graduates” is one of those short stories with a punch line and I loved it. I thought “Frederick Douglass Elementary” was thought-provoking and all-too-real. “Righteous Kill” feels very topical as it has a unique solution to gentrification.

There were only two stories I did not care for. “Identity Theft” was simply too horrific for me despite being well-written. I admire the skill and shrink from the subject. However, nothing can save “Boy Toy” which felt like nothing more than the taxonomy of sailing. Here’s the thing, some people do research and it informs their writing. Others do research and it becomes their writing. It seems as though the author took an illustrated diagram of a sailboat and decided to use every specialized word in it. It did not contribute to the story, it detracted.

I liked Berkeley Noir a lot. I love the Akashic Noir series and my favorites in the series are those where the authors feel no need to show off by stretching the boundaries of noir and instead seek deeply into noir fiction. In my opinion, going deep into traditional noir shows more understanding than stretching noir out of its traditional space. This Thompson and Hill did very well. It’s no blemish on this that I did not like every story. Liking every story in a multi-author anthology would be weird and indicate the editors didn’t do a good job of including diverse points of view and stories. I expect to dislike at least one story in every anthology with multiple authors. As usual, this newest addition to the Noir series is excellent.

I received an e-galley of Berkeley Noir from the publisher through Edelweiss

Berkeley Noir at Akashic Books
Akashic Noir series
Jerry Thompson author bio
Owen Hill author bio

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2020/09/10/9781617757976/ show less

This is the sixth Noir collection by Aksahic Books that I have reviewed for Library Thing. They have been consistently good with a variety of stories. Berkeley Noir, covering a town I've never been to, continues the trend. I tend to read the stories out of order based on length, author, and how I'm feeling at the time. So I was a little worried when the first few that I read didn't leave a last marIk on me. Then I hit "Eat Your Pheasant, Drink Your Wine" by Shanthi Sekaran, which had such a show more unique twist for this series that I ultimately ended up on the positive side. "Wifebeater Tank Top" and "The Tangy Brine of Dark Night" were also highlights for me. show less