Lone Figures Wandered

        Fitzgerald's valley of ashes tips it's hat to TS Eliot's The Waste Land, but it was also a feature of New York at the time. The Ash Dumps were mountainous piles of ash up to 90ft high, a malodorous stretch of swampland in which coal ash, cinders, garbage, and human waste had been dumped. Lone figures wandered the desolate heaps searching for treasure or anything they could sell - a perfect image of a nation squandering it's promise in search of a buck.

Sarah Churchwell
How We Misread The Great Gatsby
New Statesman
2025

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Jack Hughes

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2025/01/how-we-misread-the-great-gatsby

Even Bad Luck is Some Kind of Luck #154

Satan in High Heels

Light Sleeper

Odds Against Tomorrow

Killer Inside Me (2010)

Third Man

Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

Damned Don't Cry

Blue Collar

Asphalt Jungle

Mob City

Sudden Fear

Millers Crossing

Cry of the City

Plein Soleil

The Killers (1946)

Bad Day at Black Rock

Fallen Angel

Ghost Writer

Man Who Wasn't There

https://fragmentsofnoirblog.tumblr.com/archive

Mark Smith

Need a Drink

Millers Crossing
Coen Brothers
1990

Didn't Even Have

         A couple of cars roared by, fanning the road slop clear up to my knees. I didn't even have a cigarette. I figured this was as broke and low-down as i'd ever be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

         That money. I had to keep it. Somehow. It beat like a very small drum at the back of my head. A small and very distant drum ......

The Red Scarf
Gil Brewer
1958

               https://yellowedandcreased.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/the-red-scarf-gil-brewer/

Downpour of Shadows #28

Street with No Name

Bad Times at the El Royale

Rebecca

Zodiac

Laura

The Conformist

Pushover

Prisoners

Une Si jolie Petite Plage

Glengarry Glen Ross

Sorry Wrong Number

Kalifornia

Pale Flower

Road to Perdition

Follow Me Quietly

Blade Runner

They Drive By Night

Eastern Promises

Stray Dog

To Despair

        Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity.

Albert Camus

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Last Seduction
1994