It is fitting that Sallis would choose to write this account
of three authors whose lives and literature tread the same
dark street. His own fiction, grounded in violence and
alcoholism, failure and desperation, reflects the same motifs
and themes as the authors he discusses. Indeed, he is often
compelled to interject his own personal experience into the
book.
Sallis traces the roots of the authors back to the hardboiled
tradition established by Hammett and shaped by Chandler, and
further back to the foundation of American literature in
Cooper and Twain. He notes that although the works of Hammett
and Chandler involved crime-solving and detective work, their
real focus was the harsh nature of the world the characters
moved in. He states:
"...much of their power derived from a recognition that there
is no moral order save that which a man creates for himself.
Like high art, these stories worked hard to unfold the lies
society tells us and the lies we tell ourselves."
He also establishes the three authors within the context of
the paperback boom of the Fifties, declaring that the high
demand for material allowed their deviant literature to slip
through editorial cracks, and that authors who met deadlines
were often granted literary license to write as they pleased.
Further, he notes that these writers "turned from simply
telling stories to pursuing personal demons, to an
exploration of evil and states of mind generally considered
more properly the domain of 'serious' literature."
Sallis extrapolates the personal nightmare of Thompson's
protagonists into a damning commentary on society. He quotes
Geoffrey O'Brien's belief that Thompson was "Always well
aware that the horrors of the individual psyche are rooted in
the formal horrors of state..." He further supports his
argument by pointing to biographer McCauley's comment that
the self-deceit and confusion of Thompson's protagonist are a
mirror to the same characteristics in a society where image
and appearance is more important than substance.
It's difficult to argue with such a strong quorum, and the
idea of criminal as victim is a popular one, lending an
appealing social relevance to Thompson's works beyond a mere
story of a loser on his way down. Nevertheless, it's equally
difficult to imagine Lou Ford's salvation in a kinder,
gentler world, and it's doubtful that Doc would have
abandoned his bank robbing career in a world where the worker
controls the means of production. Although meliorism is an
understandable by-product of a brutal evironment, passing
judgement on an immoral society is not the essence of noir.
Noir, instead, is an examination of lives locked into a dire
fate resulting from limited choices and bad decisions.
By 1952, when Thompson wrote KILLER INSIDE ME, paperback
publishers were waging a full-blown war of sensationalism.
Sallis declares that Thompson was breaking loose from the
genre by subverting and destroying the conventions, and maybe
this was true, but so were a host of other writers. In 1952
Vin Packer's SPRING FIRE took a bold look at female
homosexuality, Flannery O'Connor's WISE BLOOD explored a
twisted religious inversion, and Mickey Spillane's KISS ME,
DEADLY revelled in violence and hatred. Every one of these
books stretched the limits. Rather than destroying
conventions, it would be more accurate to say that Thompson
was one of many authors who were redefining the borders of
the hardboiled and noir genres.
The phrase "genre literature" is considered an oxymoron by
most literati, and many writers of noir and hardboiled, such
as James Cain and Horace McCoy, despised the label. Even
Chester Himes struggled for a reputation outside the genre
label. Not so for David Goodis. Goodis embraced the genre in
such a way as to compel a critic to state: "Goodis did not
choose the pulps. They chose him." Sallis states:
"There's no evidence that Goodis had high, or any, artistic
goals in mind; he seems simply to have adopted a kind of
fiction that would at the same time support him and guarantee
anonymity."
Sallis also notes that Goodis essentially rewrote the same
book over and over. A talented man has fallen far and is more
or less resigned to his defeat. Something happens which
triggers him into action, perhaps igniting the faintest
glimmer of hope in his life, but by the end he has come full
circle back to the hopelessness that is his life. He quotes
O'Brien as stating that Goodis's best books create a "unique
poetry of solitude and fear."
Sallis credits Goodis with sound mechanical
skills:
"At his best Goodis could make a few careful sentences, a key
image or figure of speech, the colors of a room, do a
prodigious amount of work." According to him, his writing
skills are sometimes the redeeming characteristic in a morass
of "aberrant psychology and obsession." Goodis' concentration
on the psychological side and lack of concern for the almost
obligatory twist of irony at the end prompted his Gold Medal
editor to declare him second rate because his plots weren't
complex enough to generate suspense and surprise.
As mentioned earlier, Sallis identifies with all these
writers, but his closest affinity is with Chester Himes.
Sallis's LONG-LEGGED FLY, about a troubled black detective,
evinces a strong influence from Himes' novels. It parallels
the violence, the seedy locales, racial issues, and the
ambiguous, unresolved plots that characterize Himes' works.
Sallis is ambivalent concerning Himes' basic themes. In one
passage he denies Himes as a protest writer because this
implies a chance for societal improvement, and he declares
that such hope is not evident in his work. Yet, on another
page, he reneges on this with: "Again and again, I wrote
then, he has held a mirror to this country, hoping the
monster would see itself and feel shame, know what it
is."
When Himes wrote the Harlem series with Coffin Ed and
Gravedigger it appeared as an anomaly compared to his earlier
work which featured mostly passive and powerless
protagonists. Sallis suggests that rather than a digression,
the Harlem series is a natural progression of his work after
purging himself from autobiography and social
commentary:
"Released from the twin burdens of autobiography and social
significance (at least in any purely programmatic sense),
Himes found the ideal vehicle for his particular gifts. The
climate of suspicion, fear and violence so much at the heart
of the detective story mirrored Himes' own feelings about the
black in American society and allowed him a kind of
privileged expression. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, men of
ruthless action, supplanted the passivity of earlier
protagonists, and Himes fully embraced life's fundamental
absurdity."
The Harlem series got started by a suggestion from Marcel
Duhamel, the translator for the French edition of IF HE
HOLLERS LET HIM GO and present director of Gallimard's famous
La Serie Noire. Duhamel asked him to write a detective story.
Himes said that he wouldn't have any idea how to go about it,
and Duhamel told him about Hammett and how he plotted and
populated his novels. Interestingly, Sallis notes:
"It was not to Hammett that Himes turned, however, but to
Faulkner, reading SANCTUARY again and again in what became a
virtual rite of preparation for the detective novels." Of the
Harlem detective series, Sallis writes: "He had moved from
finding to making, from the purely representational to a kind
of epic poetry."
Sallis deserves the last word and the final judgement on the
works of Goodis, Thompson, and Himes: "These books, I insist,
are rare and wonderful things - commercial diamonds, but
diamonds nonetheless. Meant for use, not beauty, all are
flawed deep within themselves. Yet, held to light, they fold
a world we thought we knew into strange new forms. And all
cut deeply into the glass of the windows that world happens
behind."
miker
__________________________________________________ Do You
Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:
rara-avis-l-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:
rara-avis-l-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 09 Sep 2006 EDT