Noir collection highlights the bleak world of David Goodis

Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s?By David Goodis?Edited by Robert Polito?Library of America, 848 pp. $35

Reviewed by Edward Pettit

When David Goodis died in 1967, very few of his 18 novels were still in print. A decade later, if you wanted to read Goodis you needed either to track down an old, tattered paperback or be able to read French. I'm not sure Goodis' works have ever been out of print in France, but in America, the Philadelphia novelist had ceased to have a publisher.

Over the last couple of decades, there has been a resurgence of interest in Goodis. In the 1980s, Black Lizard Books began republishing Goodis' novels, as well as many other noir and crime classics. The crime-writing community, along with their hard-core readers, continued to tout the merits of Goodis' works at conventions and in online forums and blogs. Soon, several small publishers reissued some of the novels and short stories. In 1997 the Library of America included Goodis' Down There in the anthology Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s. Now, Goodis is not only in print, but five more of his novels have joined the canon of American literature with the new Library of America edition of Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s.

Dark Passage opens the new collection. Vincent Parry, the protagonist, has been wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and escapes from San Quentin prison. Goodis describes Parry as an everyman, "the little guy who wasn't important and wanted nothing more than a daily job to do and someone to open the door for him at night and give him a smile." Instead, Parry is hounded by a society that doesn't want him to be innocent. Nor does his conscience provide any solace. Goodis places Parry, and all of his protagonists, in a world where "there's only fear. A fear of getting hurt and a fear of dying." That's the dilemma of all classic noir: the choice of pain or a painful death. Not much choice.

The four remaining novels of this collection — Nightfall, The Burglar, The Moon in the Gutter, and Street of No Return — continue to explore this bleak universe of hopelessness. Often, Goodis' protagonists are painters, artists, or musicians who once led respectable lives creating their art and now, through circumstances out of their control, are on the run or in hiding.

In Nightfall, Jim Vanning is a painter who, after stopping to help the victims of a car accident, becomes enmeshed in the pursuit of a gang of bank robbers. In Street of No Return, Whitey is a former popular singer now reduced to searching for cigarette butts in the skid-row gutters while his friends argue over how to score another bottle of cheap wine. These characters are not only innocent, they have been dealt the kind of hands that would have felled Job. They have no hope for their futures, and to make it worse, they are pursued by criminals, the police, or former companions.

In a Goodis novel, it's rarely the plot that keeps a reader interested. Instead it's the fascination with the merciless vagaries of a God who no longer cares about, or even acknowledges, the inhabitants of a broken-down universe. The Goodis characters of these novels are trapped in bleak circumstances, in compulsive relationships, in rundown neighborhoods, in dead-end jobs, in speeding cars.

Street of No Return, my favorite in this collection, reads like an allegory of the lost, in which characters are forced to pace their lives, one miserable step at a time, through dark alleys rife with violence and grime, a world like one of Dante's Circles of Hell. But in Goodis' novels, all his characters are Virgils — the best they can hope for after witnessing the horrors of humanity is a trip back to limbo. Paradise will never be theirs.

The titles alone of this collection make for a kind of hard-boiled poem to be recited alone at night — dark passage, nightfall, the burglar, the moon in the gutter, street of no return — to the cold stars that shine but provide no warmth, to the empty expanse of a Goodis universe that shows no mercy.

While readers and critics can debate whether Goodis should share shelf space with Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Henry James, the Library of America increasingly has begun to honor genre writers for their contributions to American literature. H.P. Lovecraft has a volume. Philip K. Dick has three volumes. This may be in part due to Geoffrey O'Brien, editor in chief since 1998, who has long recognized the literary merit of the pulp paperback writers of America. O'Brien, along with Robert Polito, who edited Five Noir Novels, and Goodis superfan Lou Boxer, will discuss Goodis' work Thursday night at the Free Library of Philadelphia as part of the 2012 Philadelphia Book Festival.

There has also been a considerable push by the Philadelphia community of crime writers and readers, led by Boxer, who have honored Goodis with a GoodisCon in 2007 and the succeeding NoirCon conventions. There has also been a yearly visit to Goodis' grave and a tour of his Philadelphia haunts every January since 2007. Goodis has long held a place of honor in his hometown; now the Library of America has given him a place for all time. For fans of noir and hard-boiled works, this collection will be gratefully read.

Edward Pettit, an Edgar Allan Poe expert known as the Philly Poe Guy, is a National Book Critics Circle member and writes the Bibliothecary blog, http://bibliothecary.squarespace.com.