[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

RARA-AVIS: Neon Jungle: Great Urban Fairy Tale 

Dear hard-boiled fans:

This is a noir novel by an author who seems to have experimented in
perhaps all genres throughout his career. I read The Neon Jungle (mainly
because I could not resist the title) about a year ago and made some
notes on it. Thought this might continue that focus on good
noir/hard-boiled books someone started with that excellent essay (better
than my notes below) on one of Charles Willeford's books several weeks
ago. How do you all like the two quotes I begin with? Talk about fiction
with an edge, as someone mentioned a few weeks ago.I'm very interested
in seeking out this type of what I call Lost Literature (such as the
crumbling old Gold Medals, somewhere in that cardboard box in the
attic). Anyone have any others?


MacDonald, John D. The Neon Jungle. New York: Fawcett Gold Medal Book,
1953.

quotes:
p 112:
"Monday-night business was slow. A bar-stool couple sat with their
thighs touching, murmuring, their noses an inch apart, their eyes
looking drowned. Two loners watched the fish. A habitue of the place,
Rita, fed coins to the jukebox and jiggled slowly in front of it,
snapping her fingers. She had the puffled, forgotten face of the
alcoholic."

p 113
     "Vern took another sip of his drink. He turned and looked through
the glass of the door. The street gleamed wet in the night rain, and
green neon across the street was reflected against the shiny black. It
was a night to nurse a drink. It was a night to sit and feel a funny
knot in your middle. This thing had, all at once, got out of hand."

Something is about to happen in the poor side of town. This novel is
about driven people at the end of their ropes. Some of the people are
caught in various traps the 20th century society has laid for them. This
novel finds itself covering several concerns of the mid-20th century.
This is a noir novel with a juvenile delinquent focus, with high school
dropouts, heroin users, a tough mean cop who says once a crook, always a
crook. There is crime; there is a social worker do-gooder, a decent man
who believes the opposite of the policeman. He helps people. There is an
immigrant family that once was robust and happy but has slipped into a
disfunctional phase and doesn't even realize it. There are gangsters at
work selling drugs that warp society beneath its surface; possibly there
are Fifties communist menace undertones here, with gangsters acting the
role of Reds destroying society as we know it. However, there are
problems with the forces of good, too. A girl on drugs is virtually
kidnapped and thrown in a hospital to dry out. The policeman will
violate people's rights, wanting conformity.

This book has violence always on the horizon, ready to happen sometime
soon. This is a tight, compelling little urban fairy tale about sad
losers and the difference a few kindnesses can make upon their lives.
There are some good people here. There is a strange little litany when
another woman urges a henpecked husband to use his fists on his wife so
she will respect him again, that this will be a good thing and he should
be a man.

There seems to be quite a bit of atmosphere in the book. Overall an
excellent example of noir.

-- 
Richard L. King
rlking@marsh.vinu.edu
http://rking.vinu.edu
-
# RARA-AVIS:  To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis"
# to majordomo@icomm.ca

[Archives] | [RARA-AVIS]