David wrote:
"which Goodis book, would y'all say, has a second half as
satifyingly unsatisfying as the first?"
I've found that Goodis can be a pretty horrible plotter. Look
at Dark Passage. An escaped convict gets into a cab. The
driver immediately recognizes him. He tells the escapee that
he always believed he got a bum rap and, oh, by the way, I
happen to know a plastic surgeon if you happen to need one.
Come on! And that's far from the only plot convenience in the
book. Have no idea why I went on to a second Goodis novel
(perhaps because there were three more in that Black Box
Thriller anthology), but I'm very glad I did.
I went on to read all of the Goodis I could get hold of. It's
been a while since I've read him (should correct that), but
here's what I remember in general: None of his other plots
was quite as contrived as Dark Passage, but the plots never
really seemed to be the point of his books, simply vehicles
to explore his characters. And he seems to reuse basic set
ups and relationships (the protag is often torn between two
women, one small, the other large), offering variations on
themes more than completely discrete works.
However, there is one that seemed to me to strike a perfect
balance between plot and character, The Street of No Return.
It features another of his fallen men, another musician. It
starts with him sharing a bottle with two other alkies on a
street corner. He sees a woman he thinks he recognizes from
his past and follows her, from a distance. She sparks
rememberances of things past he has been trying to remember
to forget. I was particularly impressed by the construction
of the novel, how where he ends up relates to where he began.
An awful movie was made from this great book.
Mark
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