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Five Noir Novels Of The 1940s And 50s (2012)

by David Goodis(Favorite Author)

4.31 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1598531484 (ISBN13: 9781598531480)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Library of America

review 1: My favorites are the three strong novels at the end ("The Burglar," "The Moon in the Gutter" and the especially great "Street of No Return"). I liked "Dark Passage" but the plot and resolution are weak. Goodis writes vivid scenes, and even his bad moments are interesting, but his plotting is often based on coincidences and it seems he sometimes just gets lost. Didn't particularly like "Nightfall" that seemed too close to "Dark Passage's" innocent-on-the-run story. I do strongly recommend this collection. Even "Nightfall," which seemed muddled and full of rough patches, had its moments. Goodis is lyrical, poetic and also hard-boiled, very unique.
review 2: I read the first two books in this collection, Dark Passage and Nightfall, and was very impressed with the... more way Goodis translates traumatic experience into visual hallucination/memory that recalls the paintings of Max Beckmann and other Expressionists, Thomas Hart Benton being the American that springs to mind. Peripeties are abundant in these books, and every sentence advances the action and simultaneously deepens the characters. You can see why the French were the first to catch on to how good these books are, as they tend to focus on form first rather than surface "content." less

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