The William H. Hannon Library is nearly complete with its Fall Semester author series “The Dark Angel: Los Angeles Noir in Fact and Fiction.”
The series has brought several authors and alumni to the library to discuss and explore literature, history, and art connected to the noir genre. Richard Rayner, author of A Bright and Guilty Place, will be the final author to speak, on Nov. 16.
Previous authors include LMU alumna Denise Hamilton, author of the Eve Diamond mystery series and editor of the anthologies Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics. Hamilton credited her career as a Los Angeles Times reporter covering crime and the city’s suburbs as an inspiration to work.
“It’s a very noir world out there,” she said. “The things that happen are way more bizarre than anything you can make up.”
John Buntin, author of L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City, spoke on Oct. 14, along with LMU alumni Mitch & Brittany, whose series of photographs depict imagined scenes from mid-20th Century noir films. The pair scripts scenes, hires actors, and shoots on 35mm black-and-white film to create their evocative images.
Noir film experts Alain Silver and James Ursini discussed style as the key element defining the genre of film noir, then guided the audience through a series of film clips from the genre. Novelist and critic Judith Freeman read from and discussed her non-fiction work The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved.
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