Rating: 
Summary: Goodis does good...
Review: Shoot the Piano Player is certainly a depressing yet fascinating read. The story is about, not surprisingly, a piano player. This poor fellow has a most bizarre background, and an equally bizarre family. Nothing works for him, his prospects are bleak. Then in walks (or rather, crawls) his long absent brother who is escaping from some nasty criminals ... and our piano player's world is turned on its head. No happy ending (, or beginning or middle). The story oozes despair and loneliness. Yet this is its strength.David Goodis does an superb job in capturing the emotional turmoil of our piano player. His prose is very good, and the characterizations in general are well-drawn. The story itself, while original enough, is not outstanding. However upon reading the book I felt as if I brought into 1950s Philadelphia, living with our piano player and his low-life "friends" and family. Bottom line: definitely not a dose of sunshine. But wonderful nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: AWW, SHOOT!
Review: This was my first Goodis book, and it absolutely blew me away. If this is any indicator of what to expect from the man, I'm in love. In this noir novel, things get messed up, then get even messier, and messier still, until it's just one big mess and Eddie has got to keep hiding and runnning and fighting for survival. And the unbearable nature of it all wakes Eddie up out of the complacency of his life. That's what this book is about. Not to mention that Goodis' writing is like reading hard-boiled poetry. The words flow together beautifully and have an air of mystery and profundity about them. The last two pages alone will stay with me forever as a fond memory. Like a previous reveiwer, _ Of Human Bondage_ is my favourite book-- and still is, but now it shares 1st place with _Shoot The Piano Player_.
Rating: 
Summary: Crazy, Man, Crazy
Review: Within noir, there are many flavors, some more outlandish than others: Goodis might be butterscotch bubblegum. It's not as if DOWN THERE/SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER is an unreadable mess; I liked it, and would recommend it. It's got its moments, but it's like a cross between Cornell Woolrich and grand opera. All the elements are there - doomed hero, pitiless fate, melancholy philosopher/lowlifes peopling the joyless street - but they all seem keyed up to an overly-melodramatic pitch. Where most thrillers of this stripe would angle for, if not understatement, at least a sotto voce neorealism, SHOOT pumps up the ambience and detail work, trying for (and acieving) a hyper-realism. After reading this, it's no wonder it translated so well to film. It's ALREADY set in a foreign country, so to speak. This is a pulp novel mined from the deepest recesses of the writer's psyche and even its conventional aspects seem reflected in a funhouse mirror. All that said, it's not entirely successful - Woolrich did this kind of 'no-escaping-your-destiny' narrative with a lot more skill. What David Goodis DOES have going for him here is a kind of authentic neurotic obsessiveness that might've precluded more restraint in his storytelling; this reads like the work of a man who flinched at sunlight. A novel best read after midnight, in a messy apartment, with a pot of coffee brewing.
| 
