Noir for breakfast…or for insomnia

I’ve been working on a long story for an ebook about this fella named Klein, and I thought I’d introduce him here by discussing his very special preference in music…film noir soundtrack scores! 

Klein’s reading habits: a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks will stop at nothing to improve her life in this extremely wild novel written under a pseudonym in the 1950s by later notorious Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt, who was also a prolific fictioneer…

THE ENDLESS SOUNDTRACKS thrummed in Klein’s mind, as usual, and he decided to give himself a break this morning and go outside for coffee and breakfast. Working at home alone was hard sometimes, in his apartment which was more like an office than a home; filled with boxes of his books, magazines, videos, and files. He’d never learned to live as a regular person, but instead was always just gathering more books and mags, videocassettes and then DVDs; working on his computer writing for porn publications and websites for many years. 

Porn was definitely one of Klein’s big interests but he was obsessed with film noir and novels as well, and ominous movie soundtracks of that era by such greats as Miklos Rosza and Bernard Herrmann. So obsessed was Klein, in fact, that he could hum their grim melodies by heart all day, while he was shaving or straightening up his apartment a little and trying to get rid of the excess newspapers which he still bought. Before tossing the papers he’d save clips of articles that caught his interest, such as obits about favorite actresses from the ‘50s and ‘60s, or reviews about contemporary books or movies he might check out someday when he took a break from all the vintage stuff he watched on YouTube or the nostalgia tv channels.

A big problem for Klein was his solitude. He liked being alone but it was hard too sometimes. Although he had friends to talk to, it could be tough now and then to sit alone with his fears and frustrations about politics, or about growing old (he was past seventy), or just about the damn constant noise outside his apartment windows on a busy street not far from Times Square. Just trying to process in his head the craziness of the world situation particularly made the solitude all the trickier to bear.

He did try to lighten his mood with music, and not just noirish melodies. Classical works by Prokofiev were a favorite. Or ragtime or big band music. Or military marches by Souza and others. Or the lovely waltz #2 by Shostakovich, in its sweet melancholy… 

Still, when alone, it was mostly the noir soundtracks that would start pulsing in his mind and he would feel he was in one of the noir movies and had better watch his step; things could get dangerous out there if he got involved with the wrong screwballs. He had indeed tangled with such types, years in the past…and so he stayed on the alert now, keeping his distance.

His perception was that while many other people enjoyed noir films and fiction, it was similar to how some folks savored chocolate: as a pleasurable taste sensation, in this case a cultural one. Instead of chocolates in the form of caramels or nougats or truffles, they enjoyed noir in its tropes of femmes fatale, tough guys, urban angst, and moody black and white cinematography. But for Klein noir was a real, breathing thing too, not a dessert. It was life in all its uncertainty and risks, and you didn’t have to be a Robert Mitchum character to fall into a trap. Klein really believed this, and it was one of the things that kept him wary, and kept him alone.

So here he was now, in a spacious midtown atrium where he could sit at a table and enjoy a coffee and a croissant for breakfast and read a vintage paperback (noir, of course) and where the light peppy European instrumental music from the nearby French restaurant there drowned out the improvised noir soundtracks in his head. Klein knew Rosza’s and Herrmann’s works so well he could hum his own variations, as if he were a human A.I. program into which had been fed all of their immortal melodies of deceit, deception, romanticism and sudden violence, which then emerged and transformed into his own versions.

As he sipped his coffee, people walked by and he read his book. For a while the grim music in his head was put on hold. But then a passing person or a sound or a shaft of shadow could get the soundtracks pulsing again in his mind, telling him to beware; to trust the noir music, the melancholy endless sounds, which alerted him to the pitfalls around him–always enticing, but always to be judged and avoided when necessary.

He would’ve found his paranoia pretty funny, even ridiculous, if he didn’t always feel so boxed in, so caged, so trapped too…

Klein finished his coffee and stood up to head back to his apartment. By the time he left the atrium, the soundtracks were loud again in his head, and on his lips. They told him authoritatively: beware the creatures of the city! It was much safer to nest at home. So until some gorgeous dame irresistibly beckoned and made him ignore all his fears (if he should be so lucky!) there he would stay.

But would it be his luck to meet such a dame, then, or his misfortune?

He hoped he wouldn’t lose any sleep over these worries tonight. But if he did, he had another noir novel ready to get him through the insomnia…

On top of Klein’s to-be-read list: another tale of a desperate girl escaping poverty and degradation, in an excellent novel by Fan Nichols, a prolific female paperback writer of the ’50s…

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Story and photos © 2025 Irv O. Neil

This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and locations are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character, living or dead, to actual persons is entirely coincidental.