BACK in the day, there were no "letters from the editor" in the NC e-zine; the writing and the topics spoke for themselves. When that "day" came to an end, a protracted era of "the best edition yet" came into play, which lingered over the publisher's introductions as a humorous miasma until the pandemic.

The e-zine has careened about since then, still hamstrung by the publisher's imposition of topics ("noir or not," "book vs. film") that have long since proven to be leaden and repetitive. Vince Keenan, seemingly getting restless with the process of assemblage that was leading the e-zine more and more into picture book territory, began to publish his more interesting articles elsewhere (and there is still a mysterious "new career opportunity" that may be related to the mystery series that he and his wife have been producing that features Edith Head as a vampire hunter--sorry, that should read "amateur sleuth"). His most recent essay for NC is a limp examination of Walter Matthau as a "neo-noir personage"--something that it's safe to say would have had a rough road to publication had it been written by anyone else.

Imogen Smith, recruited to replace Keenan, begins with a letter that contains some of the most uncharacteristically frothy prose she has ever penned. The most revelatory moment in her chirpy intro indicates that the many of the essays in the latest edition (#37, a number that consigns about the same number of pre-2013 issues of the NC's "writing about noir" efforts to a liminal space between limbo and oblivion...) were commissioned under Keenan's watch.

And that's very apparent, as there is a not inconsiderable amount of clutter to be found here that might have been best left on the shelf, mingled in with several strong pieces that make for a bewilderingly ungainly "debut" for Smith. (We await the next issues for signs of something resembling editorial personality.)

STRONG work is here in the form of Rachel Walther's look at Welles' THE TRIAL, and the usual solid work from Steve Kronenberg as he chronicles the life and time of noir's most estimable loony Tim Carey. (Steve now has a partner in the "managing editor" role, the energetic Danilo Castro, who contributes two essays of variable quality--the somewhat strained look at "stoner noir" and a more tightly constructed look at "Marlowe the elder" that's clearly inspired by the recent Neil Jordan film featuring senior citizen Liam Neeson as Chandler's knight of the mean streets. These two efforts indicate that Castro is better suited for topics that cover less territory, though he has some engaging moments in each essay.)

Jake Hinkson is very proud of his "Art Directors in Noir" contribution, as a look at his Twitter feed will demonstrate (but do so, however, only if you dare go to the increasingly benighted "Muskland"). And the 4,000 words he's been given is a good bit beyond what's been granted to authors for quite some time at NC: but the problem is that Jake really needed another 4,000 words to really do the topic justice.

What becomes clear to a more experienced reader is that Jake found a series of reference books that laid out the principals involved in art direction for the Hollywood studios and cribbed together an essay that provides a masterful illusion of depth that's analogous to what's often seen in noir--where the work of the cinematographer adds the noir flavor and tone to the film's physical surroundings. Simply listing the subsidiary art directors for specific studios and a portion of the noirs on which they worked does not provide the reader with any sense of what those individuals actually contributed to the look and feel of the individual films.

The essay ends with the individual it should have featured at the beginning--James Cameron Menzies, who cast a shadow over art direction in Hollywood that could link the concealing ironies of noir aesthetics with the underlying elements of set design and art direction that are laid out in Charles Affron's compelling survey of the subject, SETS IN MOTION--a book that also compares Hollywood art direction to its parallel manifestations in Great Britain and Europe, an area that should have been covered in Jake's essay (but wasn't). As noted, it's a topic that deserved a longer leash.

WHAT you have in #37, then, is a freewheeling mish-mash that labors to cover too much ground and continues to be bogged down by the increasingly stultifying "departments" apparently still mandated by the publisher. It clearly doesn't represent the sensibility of its new editor--who, by the way, remains the journal's central writerly voice, and whose absence in the article lineup for many of the e-zine's most recent issues is palpable. Perhaps the next issue will remedy that, while clarifying and cleaning up some of the matters that bogged things down this time around...