[EG4]≫ PDF The Moon in the Gutter Midnight Classics David Goodis Adrian Wootton 9781852424497 Books

The Moon in the Gutter Midnight Classics David Goodis Adrian Wootton 9781852424497 Books

Download As PDF : The Moon in the Gutter Midnight Classics David Goodis Adrian Wootton 9781852424497 Books

The Moon in the Gutter Midnight Classics David Goodis Adrian Wootton 9781852424497 Books

This is was my second Goodis novel (see Blonde on Street Corner). I'm really attracted to this genre (which I don't consider noir as much as working class fiction). And being a Philly kinda guy, I realize that Goodis' books are set in a fictional Philadelphia. The street names have been changed but this book probably takes place down in the Southwark and Two Street section (now more & more gentrified) when it was the home of dockworkers and poor working class. Praise for the working class existentialism of the anti-heros who endure their fate (freedom that Sartre might question as authentic freedom, yet his notion that we are "condemned to be free" is the essential notion even for our guy Kerrigan who always seems to be on the edge of escaping his environs). I think this book was much more literary than "Blonde" in its reach for descriptive symbolism. Goodis is always dealing with stock characters and their cliches, but then, do we really expect any other kind of realism from pulp fiction?


Tags : The Moon in the Gutter (Midnight Classics) [David Goodis, Adrian Wootton] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV>The Goodis revival goes on--many of his titles are back in print including <I>The Blond on the Street Corner<I> from Serpent's Tail.</DIV>,David Goodis, Adrian Wootton,The Moon in the Gutter (Midnight Classics),Serpent's Tail,1852424494,Classics,20TH CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL AND SHORT STORY,Classic fiction,Crime & mystery,FICTION Classics,FICTION General,FICTION Literary,FICTION Mystery & Detective General,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction-Coming of Age,GENERAL,General Adult,Great BritainBritish Isles,Modern fiction

The Moon in the Gutter Midnight Classics David Goodis Adrian Wootton 9781852424497 Books Reviews

Now this is the David Goodis we've all come to know and love. Not only is there no happy ending, Goodis doesn't even acknowledge the possibility that anything approaching happiness could ever be achieved. The Moon in the Gutter is thoroughly and unapologetically gritty and depressingly hopeless. In other words, it accurately reflects the way the author viewed life.

The third person narrative starts off with protagonist Bill Kerrigan, a poor dockworker, visiting the rat infested alley where his kid sister, Catherine, died. Catherine committed suicide by slitting her own throat with a rusty knife. Now, seven months later, the bloodstains on the ground are still visible. That opening scene sets the stage for the depressing story that is about to unfold.

Kerrigan's world consists of overcrowded tenements, rundown shacks and two-bit bars populated by has beens, never will bes, winos, hookers and derelicts of every description. This is a world completely bereft of hope, a world from which there can be no escape. Kerrigan catches a glimpse of the outside when an uptown girl named Lorretta Channing doing a bit of slumming takes a liking to him. But who are we kidding? That relationship is doomed before it even begins.

The Moon in the Gutter is a fantastic read if you don't mind fiction where there isn't a single character who is any better off at the end than they were at the beginning. It's a short book and the plotting is a little thin. But Goodis does not flinch once in setting forth a narrative that drips with despair and utter hopelessness. Recommended to readers ready to embrace the unremitting darkness David Goodis saw as part and parcel of being alive.
David Goodis (1917 -- 1967) lived and worked in Hollywood before returning to his hometown of Philadelphia in 1950. When he returned, he lived in a room in his parents' home and published pulp novels as inexpensive paperback originals. Among these novels is "The Moon in the Gutter" written in 1953 and set in a poor decaying section of Philadelphia. The book is included in a collection of five Goodis novels recently published by the Library of America. David Goodis Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s (Library of America) Each of the five books deserves individual attention. In 1983, Goodis' novel was loosely adapted for a French film, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix and shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The film changes the setting from Philadelphia to Marseille.

Goodis wrote in a genre which tends to become formulaic, but each of his novels that I have read has its own character. This evocatively titled novel is about lonely and lost people-- categories which, the book suggests, are found widely across social classes. The book reminded me of the Victorian novelist George Gissing, particularly of his early books "The Nether World". Nether World (09) by Gissing, George [Paperback (2009)]. Gissing wrote of the London poor and of their relationship to the more economically fortunate classes. Goodis explores similar themes in "The Moon in the Gutter" with a pessimistic sensitivity similar to Gissing's Among other writers with related tone and themes, I thought of Charles Bukowski and of Jack Kerouac.

The main character of the book is William Kerrigan,35, who lives unmarried in a squalid home on Vernon street with relatives. Kerrigan works as a stevedore in the tough world of the Philadelphia wharfs and is the only member of his household with a steady job. Seven months before the book begins, Kerrigan's beloved sister, Catherine, had killed herself in an alley due to depression resulting from rape. Kerrigan wants to find the perpetrator. Plot is less important in this book than character, place, and mood.

The settings of the book include the alley and the streets of the neighborhood, Kerrigan's home, the wharf where he works, and a shabby neighboorhood bar called Dugan's Den. A character from a wealthier portion of the city, Channing, is a patron and a slummer at Dugan's Den. Early in the novel when he meets Kerrigan, Channing describes himself in terms that essentially apply to the other figures in the book. "Im lonesome all the time.... I've been everywhere. I've done everything, and I've known everybody. And what it amounts to, I'm lonesome."

As he leaves Dugan's Den, Kerrigan reflects that "he was riding though life on a fourth-class ticket" before offering one of the many passages of description of the neighborhood in the book

"He stared at the splintered front doors and unwashed windows and the endless obscene phrases inscribed with chalk on the tenement walls. For a momenthe stopped and looked at the ageless two-word phrase, printed in yellow chalk by some nameless expert who put it there in precise Gothic lettering. It was Vernon Street's favorite message to the world. And now, in Gothic print, its harsh and ugly meaning was tempered with a strange solemnity."

As the book progresses, their are violent scenes on the docks, in the streets, and in the homes. Besides Kerrigan's search for the man who ruined his sister, the plot turns on Kerrigan's relationship with Loretta Channing, the sister of the man that slums in Dugan's Den. Loneliness and isolation have no class boundaries in this novel. The tone of the book is of loss and poignant sadness.

"The Moon in the Gutter" offers a bleak yet lyrical vision of poverty and of what Goodis sees as the loneliness of the human condition. It is a work of literature that gets beyond the categories of pulp or noir.

Robin Friedman
This is was my second Goodis novel (see Blonde on Street Corner). I'm really attracted to this genre (which I don't consider noir as much as working class fiction). And being a Philly kinda guy, I realize that Goodis' books are set in a fictional Philadelphia. The street names have been changed but this book probably takes place down in the Southwark and Two Street section (now more & more gentrified) when it was the home of dockworkers and poor working class. Praise for the working class existentialism of the anti-heros who endure their fate (freedom that Sartre might question as authentic freedom, yet his notion that we are "condemned to be free" is the essential notion even for our guy Kerrigan who always seems to be on the edge of escaping his environs). I think this book was much more literary than "Blonde" in its reach for descriptive symbolism. Goodis is always dealing with stock characters and their cliches, but then, do we really expect any other kind of realism from pulp fiction?