David Goodis Outside The Library Of America
At the time of his death, David Goodis' (1917 -- 1967) novels all were out of print, and the author seemed destined for oblivion. But Goodis had a small following as some of his works gradually drifted in and out of print. (His works always were highly-regarded in France.) The Library of America included Goodis' novel "Down There" in a 1997 anthology of American Crime Fiction of the 1950s; and in 20012 the LOA published an anthology devoted to Goodis which included five novels from the 1940s and 1950s. With the publication of Goodis in the LOA, he received well-deserved recognition, and some of his characteristic writings became preserved and accessible.
With all the value of the LOA volumes, there is much to read in Goodis that didn't get included. Some of Goodis' less familiar writing is included in this book, "Black Friday & Selected Stories", edited and introduced by Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive of Film London. Published in 2006, this volume is itself now unfortunately out-of-print. The compilation includes Goodis' 1953 novel "Black Friday" which had been reissued on its own in 1990 in a volume which also is out-of-print, together with a collection of twelve difficult to find Goodis short stories.
The center of this compilation is the novel. Written and set in Goodis' native Philadelphia, "Black Friday" is Goodis at his darkest. The book tells the story of a group of low-life losers and criminals who live in a home in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. The main character, Al Hart, is introduced as a thief and wanderer in Philadelphia's streets until he happens upon the group by chance and is reluctantly accepted by the group's leader, Charley, when he is persuaded of Hart's ruthlessness and "professional" attitude to a life of crime. The novel recounts the tension between Hart and Charlie and the underlying tensions of the group holed up in the small house to evade attention from the police. In addition to violence and distrust, the gang of thieves has a great degree of sexual tension, as Goodis explores the two women in the group, Frieda and Myrna, and their relationships to Hart. The novel is extreme even for Goodis' work in its pessimism, in its raw violence, and in its portrayal of lonely, lost individuals. The book lives through the sad, lyrical beauty of Goodis' writing. It is a book worth getting to know by admirers of Goodis, and it deserves preservation.
Beginning in the early 1940s, Goodis supported himself and learned the writer's craft by writing innumerable stories for cheap, pulp magazines. He continued to write stories even while writing the novels for which he is now remembered. The stories number in the hundreds and are difficult to trace. The magazines for which Goodis wrote have disappeared and their contents were not catalogued. In addition, Goodis wrote under a variety of pseudonyms making his work difficult to identify.
It is not worth tracking down and preserving Goodis' many pulp stories. His achievement lies in his novels. Still, it is valuable to read some of Goodis' stories for their own worth and to learn how Goodis developed as a writer. This anthology includes a selection of twelve pulp crime stories that Goodis wrote between 1942 and 1958 and published in magazines such as "New Detective", "Manhunt" "Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine", and even "Colliers". Some of the stories appeared under Goodis' own name while others were published under a variety of pseudonyms.
The stories are often dark and violent. They are set in a variety of locations including New York City, Philadelphia, Arabia, and Ceylon. Most of the stories are formulaic, but some show Goodis' writing style and his unique portray of loners and outcasts. Of the stories written in the 1940s, I enjoyed "Never Too Late to Burn" published in 1949 under a pseudonym in "New Detective".
The four stories from the 1950s are valuable to read for their relationship to the novels Goodis was writing at the time while living in the family home in Philadelphia. The best of these stories is "The Professional Man", written at the time Goodis wrote "Black Friday" and sharing its focus on the "professional" criminal. The work tells the story of Freddie Lamb who works meekly as an elevator operator during the day while serving as a hardened, yet vulnerable killer for the mob during the night shift. The story is included in a subsequent anthology, "The Best American Noir of the Century" edited by James Elroy and Otto Penzler. The three other 1950s stories also are worth knowing.
"Black Friday and Other Stories" also includes a large, partial, bibliography of Goodis' many stories and pseudonyms which will be of interest to devoted readers of his work. Adrian Wootton's introduction to the collection discusses how the "emotional depth of his work, the rendering of complicated philosophical and psychological ideas into simplified pulp idiom and the atmospheric readability, with its laconic, edgy prose, all combine to make Goodis one of the great crime novelists. 'Black Friday' exemplifies all of these skills and shows Goodis as a writer who mined the deep, rich and magnificently realized landscape of tortured emotion."
This anthology is for admirers of David Goodis interested in exploring his writings beyond the Library of America. Many of his works outside the LOA canon also deserve to be read and remembered.
Robin Friedman
