Somebody's Done for

David Goodis' Last Novel

"Somebody's Done For" (1967) is a little-known paperback novel published after the death of its author, David Goodis (1917 -- 1967). Born in Philadelphia, Goodis worked in Hollywood and wrote several novels. He returned to Philadelphia in 1950 and spent the remainder of his life living in his parents' home and writing a series of cheap pulp paperback novels. Although forgotten at the time of his death, there has been a resurgence of interest in Goodis with the Library of America publishing a volume of five of his novels and including his most famous novel, "Down There" in another volume devoted to 1950s crime fiction.

"Somebody's Done For" tells the story of the failed relationship between Calvin Jander, single at 32, a graduate of the Wharton School, with a humdrum job in advertising, and a femme fatale, Vera, in her 20s who dances at a club, the "Amethyst", in out-of-the way south Jersey. Vera lives with a criminal gang in a hidden location in an old house in the marshes of south Jersey near the Delaware Bay. The gang consists of the leader, Vera's father together with his heavily-drinking wife, and two other men.

The action of the story occurs over a short time but is extended by several detailed backstories. It begins when Jander, on a fishing trip to get away from his stultifying life, nearly drowns in the Delaware Bay, and is rescued when Vera finds him unconscious in the marshes. Jander spurns several opportunities to escape and soon finds himself in the clutches of the gang. The gang's past is only revealed in a lengthy backstory that Jander learns from a sympathetic figure in the group who also tries to help him. As the story unfolds, a subsequent backstory shows contact between Jander and Vera about a year earlier at the Amethyst, further details about Jander's life, including his relationship to his mother and his shrewish sister, and the story of Vera's past.

The book is replete with the violence, murders, and beatings that befits its genre. It is also replete with largely repressed and unhappy sexuality involving Vera and Jander, Vera and the gang members, Vera and many of the patrons of the Amethyst, and several other relationships of secondary characters in the novel. Still, there is much more to the book than sex and violence. Goodis gets inside his characters to show their loneliness and failed dreams. Jander is sometimes described by the gang as a spineless jellyfish but more often he appears in the book as a failed hero with his attempt to rescue Vera from the clutches of the gang and of the Amethyst. Both Vera and Jander are doomed by lovelessness and by their inability to escape their pasts and their families.

Readers of Goodis have mixed opinions about "Somebody's Done For". Goodis' final novel appeared six years after the last work in a series of paperbacks, and for many readers shows signs of fatigue and of the author repeating himself. Other readers view the work more favorably. In his recent book, "Pulp According to David Goodis", Jay Gertzman devotes his last chapter to a lengthy analysis of "Somebody's Done For", including its relationship to Goodis' earlier writings and themes and to works by other authors, including Kafka and Arthur Miller, displaying similar preoccupations. Gertzman concludes that "Somebody's Done For" is a "tragedy of the common man"-- the apparently commonplace Jander who in his failure has nobility and romance. The novel is bleak and fatalistic with a faint glimmer of hope and possible redemption.

I was glad to have the opportunity to read "Somebody's Done For". I found it a sad, moving work that ranks with Goodis' better writings. Goodis had the gift of writing from the inside, and this book, as do his other works, tells the story of a lonely, tormented individual whose inner life might not be apparent to the casual observer. Goodis's works explore a small number of related themes and characters, but each work manages to be original and poignant.

Readers should be grateful that much of Goodis is accessible in the LOA and in various paperbacks of some of his other novels. It would be worthwhile to have a new paperback edition of Goodis' last book, "Somebody's Done For".

Robin Friedman