I Cleaned Up. I Quit Drinking, I

Noir Is Dead For Me Because Historically, I Think It's A Simple View. I've Taken It As Far As It Can Go. I Think I've Expanded On It A Great Deal, Taken It Further Than Any Other American Novelist.

L.a. Ispolluted. It's Overpopulated. But It Is Very Much Home. It Was Inevitable For Me, The Moving Back. I Was Living In San Francisco, And Joan Broke It Off With Me, And I Needed A Place To Live. I'd Been Divorced. And I Needed To Write Movies And Tv Shows To Earn A Living. Alimony. All That. So I Figured What The Hell, I'll Go Back To L.a.

I Think The Great Unspoken Theme In Noir Fiction Is Male Self-pity. It Pervades Noir Movies.

Other People, Some Other Writers, Will Win Certain Accolades Or Sell In Far Greater Numbers Than Me - And I'm A Legitimate Best-selling Author - But I Live And Die For The Work. That's Thrilling To Me. It's Thrilling That I Do For Others What Certain Writers Did For Me When I Was A Kid.

I Always Cringe When A Male Friend Of Mine, Who's Very Fixated On Women, Puts "compatibility" At The Top Of His List Of Attributes That He Would Be Looking For In A Woman. I Would Replace Compatibility With Dialectic.