BEWARE SPOILER DO NOT READ IF YOU MIGHT WANT TO PICK UP PICK
UP Which I think you should if you like David Goodis and
Derek Raymond or even Charles Bukowski.
Hellooooo Doomed Losers on the edge of Society!
I read this as part of the No Exit Press' Charles
Willeford Omnibus, which also features the Burnt Orange
Heresy (what a magnificent title that is) and Cockfighter and
is flippin' good value.
This was my first Willeford and I shall probably
contine through the omnibus
(after a rest in lighter climes) as a result.
I enjoyed this - I enjoy doomed outsider novels (I
have pretentions in that direction myself). Willeford writes
of the dregs of society and alcoholism convincingly with
crisp prose and the (genuinely shocking) twists are well
placed in the narrative to keep you turning pages. It's a
first person narrative and pretty damned dark - there's lots
of talk of suicide, failure and the futlity of life, which
could have become relentless drudgery without the well-timed
plot turns. I like this sort of thing but I can imagine it
becoming wearing pretty quickly if you're turned off by the
innebriate life and its livers
(ahem). Jordan's prison/hospital/court experience is a little
Kafkaesque (I guess very intentionally, there's a definite
existentialist feel to the whole book fun fans). Here's a
nice line, Jordan is asked by his lover Helen if he has a
headache: he replies "No, I was just thinking what a rotten
stinking world this is we live in. This isn't our kind of
world, Helen. And we don't have the answer to it either. We
aren't going to beat it by drinking and, yet, the only way we
can possibly face it is by drinking!"
SPOILER
I don't know what other Avians think of the final
twist, the revelation that Jordan is black - it certainly
made me put the book down a little stunned and suddenly view
it all in a different light and then, bizarrely feel a little
tricked by and annoyed at the author. I guess it's of its
time, 1955, and place - racial politics haven't yet been such
an issue in the UK as they have in the USA - but would the
book have been any less satisfying without it? I don't think
so, our hero is a classic outsider as it is, but, hey, it's
certainly an interesting device - I think I have come across
this device somewhere else, possibly in a Ray Bradbury story
but I'm not at all sure.
Cheers all,
Colin
Join my Church:
www.myspace.com/thereverendspadgedooley
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