I just finished my second Harry Fannin book by David Markson,
Epitaph for a Dead Beat. I liked it just as much as the
first, Epitaph for a Tramp. I can see why Bill C was reminded
of Ross Macdonald by these books (Markson even gives a shout
out to RM by mentioning in passing that a bartender was
reading a book called The Way Some People Die). Like
Macdonald, the writing is very literate (both books have
numerous literary allusions), with a sense of gloom hanging
over it all. And childhood and family trauma figure heavily
in the first. However, Markson leavens it all with
Chandleresque wisecracks.
The second book features a somewhat demented sense of humor.
It is set amidst the Greenwich Village beat scene, circa
1960. Fannin is a clear outsider, but Markson knows his
stuff. He throws out hilarious overheard dialog snippets,
references to beat writers, even small excerpts of writings.
Fannin internalizes all of it to such a degree that he begins
to ramble in a like stream-of-consciousness flow for almost a
third of the book, while sleep deprived and suffering from a
concussion, which, being a hardboiled PI, he treats with
booze. The whodunnit of the two books, and the way Fannin
discovers it, are very similar, but Markson manages to put an
interesting new spin on the same trick in the second. I
highly recommend these books.
I see Markson wrote a third mystery before going all literary
on our asses. Has anyone read Miss Doll, Go Home. Does it
feature Fannin? Is it good? What about his literary works,
are they also good?
Mark
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