There's a lot of opinion in this that I disagree with, along
with some odd observations, but it's always good to see
exposure for Goodis. There's a factual error in the opening
paragraph: "Retreat From Oblivion" was published when Goodis
was 22.
Al
----- Original Message -----
From: Randy Krbechek
To:
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 5:56 PM
Subject: RARA-AVIS: David Goodis review
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
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