Below is a David Goodis review that ran in the L.A. Times on
Saturday, October 28, 2006.
Bye. Randy Krbechek Fresno, CA
NOIR TALE IS VIVID AGAINST BLEAK LANDSCAPE
By DAVID L. ULIN Times Staff Writer
Black Friday And Selected Stories David Goodis Serpent's
Tail; 434 pp., $13.95 paper
DAVID GOODIS is the quintessential hard-boiled writer,
someone for whom noir was not just an aesthetic but a way of
life. He was born in Philadelphia in 1917, graduated from
Temple University with literary aspirations and published his
first novel, "Retreat From Oblivion," when he was 32. From
there, however, his career was a series of setbacks and
disappointments, near-misses and never-weres.
His biggest success came in 1946 with the thriller "Dark
Passage," which was made into a movie starring Humphrey
Bogart and Lauren Bacall. This led to a screenwriting
contract at Warner Bros., but Goodis never did1 much in
Hollywood, returning to Philadelphia in 1950. With the
release of "Cassidy's Girl" the following fall, he became
king of the paperback originals, publishing 11 novels in the
next six years. These books are remarkable for the
consistency of their vision, the loneliness and
disappointment with which they frame the world.
Again and again, Goodis writes of artists or professionals
who have betrayed themselves, ruined by whiskey, women or
their own character flaws. In many ways, the story is his.
Although he enjoyed periodic flashes of recognition - his
1956 novel "Down There" inspired Francois Truffaut's film
"Shoot the Piano Player" - Goodis essentially remained
anonymous, churning out pulp fiction that sold quickly and
just as quickly went out of print. Depressed and alienated,
he died in 1967, of complications from cirrhosis, at age 49.
He remains a cult figure, his books sporadically available
and not widely read.
Newly reissued, "Black Friday" is Goodis' 12th novel,
originally published in 1954. To be honest, it's not his best
book; that honor probably belongs to either of the two novels
that preceded it, "The Moon in the Gutter" and "The Blonde on
the Street Corner," or the bleak and unrelenting "Down
There." Still, it is a vivid effort, not least because of its
compact vision and the way that Goodis touches on nearly
every theme that marks his work.
The main character is Hart, a painter on the run from family
tragedy, who returns to Philadelphia
(he's a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania) only to
fall in with a criminal gang. To survive, he must pretend
that he is one of them; his life depends on not being found
out.
Complicating matters are two women, the tough and domineering
Frieda, with whom he sleeps, and the quiet Myrna, whom he
loves. This is a typical Goodis triangle - the male
protagonist caught between two very different women - but
here it is exacerbated by the claustrophobic nature of the
book. Virtually all the action unfolds in a row house, during
a freezing week in January, as the gang grows edgy in such
tight quarters and in anticipation of a score.
The tension is so overt that it's almost physical, especially
for Hart. "He wondered why he wasn't sick," Goodis writes.
"He thought maybe he was beginning to get tough. He told
himself it didn't really make any difference, because he
didn't give a hang, but underneath he knew he did give a hang
and it made a lot of difference and no matter what he kept
telling himself he was really afraid of what was happening
inside him." The idea of a character watching himself harden
and yet unable to stop it is classic Goodis; for him,
existence is not so much something to be directed as to be
endured. Events come upon us and we yield to them; the only
choices are bad ones, and no one ever wins.
There's a temptation to see this as a reaction to his life,
which, if his work is any indication, was a source of
disenchantment and despair. But his fiction speaks to a
deeper existential desperation, an essential disconnection
from the world. It's no coincidence that Goodis' novels take
place almost entirely in Philadelphia, an old city, a cold
city, a city of crumbling streets and broken promises, where
the past encircles his characters like a noose. "If we gotta
blame something," gang leader Charlie tells Hart and Frieda,
'let's blame it on the climate. We got a weird climate here
in Philadelphia."
Here we have a definitive territory of alienation, in which
there are no codes, no larger community and everyone is on
his or her own. Even when we find a place - a home, a family
- it's a matter of convenience, or worse, another trap. This
is what the gang represents: a strange kind of family, in
which the price Hart pays for shelter is the subjugation of
himself. And yet, the self always emerges, although when it
does, we're not necessarily better off "So this is the way it
usually happens," Hart reflects. "It doesn't need a Frieda to
spill the beans. Sooner or later we do it ourselves, we give
ourselves away."
"Black Friday" has been in and out of print over the years,
but in this edition it is accompanied by 12 stories Goodis
wrote for such pulp magazines as Manhunt and New Detective in
the 1940s and 1950s. That's significant because, although
Goodis produced millions of words for the pulps (under his
own name and a variety of pseudonyms), almost none of this
work has been reprinted before.
There is, to be sure, a reason for that: If Goodis' paperback
novels were regarded as disposable, many of these stories are
even more so, quickie toss-offs done for money, with little
of the dimension necessary to explore his larger themes. This
is especially true of the earliest material, which is almost
entirely formulaic, shoot-'em-ups and murder mysteries, in
which noir is little more than a pose.
The later stories, from the same period as "Black Friday,"
are much better - taut, neatly constructed, somewhat more
nuanced, the efforts of a craftsman at the top of his game.
Still, with the exception of "Black Pudding," a neat tale of
revenge and redemption, they don't rise to the level of his
novels, which remain among the finest hard-boiled fiction
ever produced.
Perhaps the fundamental difference is that even at their
best, these stories illustrate the limitations of the genre,
whereas Goodis' novels transcend the form. They represent
noir at its purest, a cry of desolation in the face of an
apathetic universe, a tarnished elegy for the soul. Such a
vision defines "Black Friday," the idea that there is nothing
that can save us in the end. Or, as Goodis puts it: "He was
walking very slowly, not feeling the bite of the cold wind,
not feeling anything. And later, turning the street corners,
he didn't bother to look at the street signs. He had no idea
where he was going and he didn't care."
David L. Ulin is the book editor of the L.A. Times.
david.ulin@latimes.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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