Part 4 Chapter 21 The Evolution of a Character in Portland Noir

The Evolution of a Character in Portland Noir1

By Thomas McClure2

Couch Park is not far from Our Hiro's office in downtown Portland. He goes to a clandestine meeting there, on his way to Powell's Books. He runs into trouble with a gang and fights his way out of it with the help of another skateboarder. She is dressed like him. Both are in togs with hats to the side. They asked themselves if they hit or missed the bully.3

She goes to a McDonald's to change into her dress costume for home. She is pristine, untouched, a beauty with hat, veil and gloves, heels. 4

Yours Truly the DOLL is everyman's everywoman, a vision of lovliness, but hard.5

His heart is touched by the change in this fifteen-year-old girl. He is older, a young man, not balding, athletic, gym-trained, ambitious.6

So begins this sequel to Paranoid Park: Portland Noir: She could not look herself in the mirror. Here is Scout from To Kill a Mocking Bird passing from puberty and adolescence into young womanhood: Peaches and cream complexion, southern drawling words and accent.7

Somewhere between Brigid in The Maltese Falcon, and Patsy Kelly.8

Our Hiro the PRO is the young detective from whom Sam Spade evolves. Tough, hard, not-boyish, more big brother to little sister, not yet a smoker or hard drinker. We see young Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman. It is before their downward demise in death and drink. We see how he cuts away every extra word in the dialogue; how she learns from his cuts.9

If there ever was a morality play, this sequel achieves the dilemma of how the Garden of Eden became Paranoid Park where love is lost. It is a lost paradise because she was tempted by evil and he was redeemed by good; he chooses to give her up to the police; she chooses to stay jailed. She could not look herself in the mirror for what she saw there.10

Burnside Skatepark is a skatepark located in Portland, Oregon, United States. Located under the east end of the Burnside Bridge, the skatepark was originally built by the skating community without permission and eventually the city approved the area as a public skatepark.11

[1] The skatepark was also featured in videogames such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Grind Session, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.[2] Burnside was also featured in the 2007 film Paranoid Park, as a setting for the eponymous skate park.12

-Scout, what in the world has got into you? 13

- I'm not going back. 14

- Now, now. Atticus, I'm not going back to school anymore. 15

-Now, Scout, it's just the first day. 16

-I don't care. Everything went wrong. The teacher got mad as the devil at me... and said you were teaching me to read all wrong and to stop it, then acted like a fool and tried to give Walter Cunningham a quarter... when everybody knows Cunninghams won't take nothin' from nobody. Any fool could have told her that. Well... maybe she's just nervous. After all, it's her first day teaching school and being new here. 17

- Oh, Atticus... 18

-Now, wait a minute. If you learn this single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person... until you consider things from his point of view.19

-Sir? 20

-Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. 21

-But if I keep going to school, we can't ever read anymore. 22

-Scout... do you know what a compromise is? Bending the law? 23

-Uh... no. 24

-It's an agreement reached by mutual consent. Now... here's the way it works. You concede the necessity of going to school, we'll keep right on reading the same every night... just as we always have. That a bargain? 25

There just didn't seem to be... anyone or anything Atticus couldn't explain. Though it wasn't a talent that would arouse the admiration of any of our friends, Jem and I had to admit he was very good at that. - But that was all he was good at... we thought. 26

The Noir Trilogy is an unlikely To kill a mockingbird, Paranoid Park and The Maltese Falcon. 27

Here is the child-narrator Scout growing up to the skateboard girl to the femme fatalle. 28

Yours Truly is the fifteen-year-old girl between Scout and Brigid. What happened to her? This parody of Snow Crash seeks to cast Scout-Brigid as she changes girl-woman.29

Changing her dress from overalls to blouse-dress in a McDonald's rest room, hiding her dress change in the ceiling. We like to think the changeling child is in her mind and body as well. When does she find that her body, her image, her sex can affect boys and then men?30

Making the boy-man a 22 year-old skateboarder makes a seven-year difference between the girl-woman of 15 years old. He is an oldster.31

When did they both resonant two strings moving as one? Can she look herself in the mirror after each encounter? Is deceit habitual?32

The development of a character here comes twice in the growth of a child SCOUT into YOURS TRULY, in embryo, BRIGID. And in the change in OUR HIRO when he meets her and he becomes him, himself, ruined beyond return.33