I am a strong supporter of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. I agree
that They Shoot
Horse is tighter, a more intensely concentrated experience
(didn't Poe say
the best writing had to be read in one sitting), but I like
KTG more.
McCoy's prose seems quite fresh (holds up better than
Woolrich, I think, whom
I also struggle to get through--but I still make the attempt
occasionally),
and I like the rambling nature of the plot (I think I like
what Mario
dislikes, though I am usually down on melodrama)--one doesn't
generically
know what comes next. One part that still sticks with me a
few years after
reading it is the heist of the bag men [quasi-spoiler to the
end of this
paragraph], the unseen murders, then one of the accomplices
vomiting as the
bodies are disposed of (do I remember this correctly?).
The first paragraph of the novel is startling, and I have one
question;
here's the last sentence of the paragraph: "This was a prison
barracks where
seventy-two unwashed men slept chained to their bunks, and
when the
individual odors of seventy-two unwashed men finally gather
into one pillar
of stink you have got a pillar of stink the like of which you
cannot
conceive; majestic, nonpareil, transcendental, K."
The question: What does "K" mean?
Doug Levin
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