David Goodis' novel, "Cassidy's Girl" offers a portrayal of lost people in forgotten streets of Philadelphia in the years following WW II. The characters in the story are tormented and fallen. They struggle with alcohol and with their own demons. Goodis portrays them with rawness yet with sympathy. The book is as much about atmosphere as about character. The story is set in the bars, tenements, narrow streets of the old Delaware River harbor and waterfront. I am familiar with parts of the Philadelphia that Goodis describes from the time I lived in the city years ago. But many of the places and scenes described in the book had already been lost.The primary character of the book Jim Cassidy, 36, drives a bus between Philadelphia and Easton for a cut-rate company with headquarters on Arch Street. Here is how Goodis introduces Cassidy and the theme of the book at the outset of the novel."The bus made a turn of Market Street, went up through the slashing rain to Arch, went into the depot. Cassidy climbed out, opened the door, stood there to help them down from the bus. He had the habit of studying their faces as they emerged, wondering what their thoughts were, and what their lives were made of. The old women and the girls, the frowning stout men with loose flesh hanging from their jaws, and the young men who gazed dully ahead as though seeing nothing. Cassidy looked at their faces and had an idea he could see the root of their trouble. It was the fact that they were ordinary people and they didn't know what real trouble was. He could tell them. He could damn well tell them."Cassidy spends his evening fighting with his voluptuous but shrewish wife Mildred and drinking at a cheap establishment called Lundy's Place. Earlier in his life, Cassidy had flown planes in WW II and then commercially. When he was blamed falsely for a plane accident, Cassidy's life deteriorated. He squandered his money and ultimately found himself in the Philadelphia tenderloin. When he secures the job as a bus driver, Cassidy gains a small sense of purpose and control that he does not feel otherwise.After a particularly harsh fight with his Mildred, Cassidy learns that she is interested in another patron of Lundy's Place, Haney Kendick. In his turn, Cassidy becomes involved with a young woman, Doris, 27, who is slender and withdrawn and an irredemable alcoholic. As the story develops, Goodis explores which of these women, Mildred or Doris, consitutes "Cassidy's Girl".The book includes many scenes of violence, heavy drinking, sex, and tragedy. It is also highly introspective as each of the down and out characters has his or her own story. Cassidy is forced to flee when he is accused of causing an accident in driving the bus eerily similar to the accident years earlier with the plane. For all the rage and hopelessness of the characters and the setting, the book comes to a resolution that is slightly less hopeless than is the case in some of Goodis' later novels.Beginning in 1951, Goodis (1917 -- 1967) published a number of paperback noir novels most of which are set in his native Philadelphia. The novels offer a noir portrayal of the city and of the loneliness of urban life. "Cassidy's Girl" sold over a million copies when it was published in 1951 but was soon forgotten. With the Library of America's recent publications of "Down There" (Shoot the Piano Player) Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s: The Killer Inside Me / The Talented Mr. Ripley / Pick-up / Down There / The Real Cool Killers (Library of America) (Vol 2) followed by its publication of a volume of five Goodis novels,David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s (Library of America), Goodis dark world has achieved a place in American literature. Readers who come to Goodis through the Library of America volumes will enjoy exploring his other novels, including "Cassidy's Girl".David Goodis' novel, "Cassidy's Girl" offers a portrayal of lost people in forgotten streets of Philadelphia in the years following WW II. The characters in the story are tormented and fallen. They struggle with alcohol and with their own demons. Goodis portrays them rawly yet with sympathy. The book is as much about atmosphere as about character. The story is set in the bars, tenements, narrow streets of the old Delaware River harbor and waterfront. I am familiar with parts of the Philadelphia that Goodis describes from the time I lived in the city years ago. But many of the places and scenes described in the book had already been lost.The primary character of the book Jim Cassidy, 36, drives a bus between Philadelphia and Easton for a cut-rate company with headquarters on Arch Street. Here is how Goodis introduces Cassidy and the theme of the book at the outset of the novel."The bus made a turn of Market Street, went up through the slashing rain to Arch, went into the depot. Cassidy climbed out, opened the door,stood there to help them down from the bus. He had the habit of studying their faces as they emerged, wondering what their thoughts were, and what their lives were made of. The old women and the girls, the frowning stout men with loose flesh hanging from their jaws, and the young men who gazed dully ahead as though seeing nothing. Cassidy looked at their faces and had an idea he could see the root of their trouble. It was the fact that they were ordinary people and they didn't know what real trouble was. He could tell them. He could damn well tell them."Cassidy spends his evening fighting with his voluptuous but shrewish wife Mildred and drinking at a cheap establishment called Lundy's Place. Earlier in his life, Cassidy had flown planes in WW II and then commercially. When he was blamed falsely for a plane accident, Cassidy's life deteriorated. He squandered his money and ultimately found himself in the Philadelphia tenderloin. When he secures the job as a bus driver, Cassidy gains a small sense of purpose and control that he does not feel otherwise.After a particularly harsh fight with his Mildred, Cassidy learns that she is interested in another patron of Lundy's Place, Haney Kendick. In his turn, Cassidy becomes involved with a young woman, Doris, 27, who is slender and withdrawn and an irredemable alcoholic. As the story develops, Goodis explores which of these women, Mildred or Doris, consitutes "Cassidy's Girl".The book includes many scenes of violence, heavy drinking, sex, and tragedy. It is also highly introspective as each of the down and out characters has his or her own story. Cassidy is forced to flee when he is accused of causing an accident in driving the bus eerily similar to the accident years earlier with the plane. For all the rage and hopelessness of the characters and the setting, the book comes to a resolution that is slightly less hopeless than is the case in some of Goodis' later novels.Beginning in 1951, Goodis (1917 -- 1967) published a number of paperback noir novels most of which are set in his native Philadelphia. The novels offer a noir portrayal of the city and of the loneliness of urban life. "Cassidy's Girl" sold over a million copies when it was published in 1951 but was soon forgotten. With the Library of America's recent publications of "Down There" followed by its publication of a volume of five Goodis novels, Goodis' dark world has achieved a place in American literature. Readers who come to Goodis through the Library of America volumes will enjoy exploring his other novels, including "Cassidy's Girl".
I regret having to report that David Goodis continues to disappoint me. Cassidy's Girl is the best of the three Goodis novels I have read this year. Indeed, it could have been the noir masterpiece that it strives to be (as could have The Moon in the Gutter), but in my reading Goodis simply does not have the writerly chops to pull it off.Of course, one should not expect polished prose from any writer of paperback originals--writers like Goodis cranked out novels and stories as fast as they could roll blank sheets into their typewriters, and readers should expect and accept that their writing will not always be deathless. But Goodis is less deathless than most, and the problems with his sometimes fumbling prose are brought into sharp relief by the modesty of his plots. To his credit, Goodis strives to build his books around nuanced characters, but to do this successfully requires a precision that he cannot muster. In Cassidy's Girl, he is more or less in control of his material until the final chapter, and then the wheels fall off. His halting attempts to describe moments of epiphanic discovery result in such nightmarish sentences as this: "The next thing in his mind was the start of another discovery, but before he could concentrate on it, his attention was drawn to Haney Kenrick." Egad. And I would argue that the novel's plotting collapses in its final chapter as well, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I will keep that rant to myself.In the end, Goodis' failures might be seen as the result of unusually high ambition in an author of noir PBOs. Few authors of paperback originals attempted to portray their characters with the same emotional depth. By comparison, Jim Thompson is also not much of a prose stylist, but the wild depravity of his plots hardly gives readers a chance to notice. Goodis, however, in attempting more subtle effects, leaves his writing too naked for observation.
What do You think about Cassidy's Girl (1987)?
This book delivers what I believe is the quintessential David Goodis experience. I'd only read DOWN THERE (aka Shoot the Piano Player) many years ago; CASSIDY'S GIRL is, I think, more intense, more drunken, more violent, more lyrical. Or at least it made more of an impression on me. Goodis is just straight down-and-out -- no humor, no irony really. Scenes and characters are way over-the-top (especially Cassidy's wife, Mildred), but you go along with them to indulge Goodis's seedy, seamy, dissolute, feverish noir world.
—Doug
Jim Cassidy has been down on his luck for some time as Goodis continues his story. Cassidy is married to Mildred in a very stormy relationship, but decides he really wants Doris. All 3 of these characters are lost souls, but Goodis really makes you pull for Cassidy's character even as he spins even more out of control. This book is about Cassidy's continuing story.David Goodis was a noir fiction writer and screen writer. Most of his work was published between the 40's and 60's. He died in 1967 at the age of 50. He had just filed a lawsuit against the popular TV series, The Fugitive, claiming it was based on his work, Dark Passage, a serialized novel that first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. I can remember being hooked into the Fugitive, so learning about this was very interesting. I think I'm going to have to find a copy of Dark Passage now.If you like your fiction dark, I think you will like Goodis. Evidently he was a big influence on Ken Gruen, my new favorite author. This book did make me wish I had a dog I could kick around, though. For more on Goodis, refer to thiswebsite.
—John
My first Goodis novel did not disappoint my expectations. I knew that there were be drastic differences in writing styles because of the decades when Goodis was finding success compared to the type of writing one gets by today's contemporaries. He wrote the way Hollywood movies had dialog. Short staccatos frequently repeating the same thing from one line to the next and then again in the next paragraph.Apparently this is a typical Goodis novel and actually typical of most noir. The characters are absolutely beyond miserable. Their level of misery is barely measurable. They have shitty jobs, if any; they only ingest booze and occasional meaty stews; the women are never average - they're either scrawny and pathetic or zaftig and brutish. I had gotten halfway through the book and still found myself questioning what it was about. When would something happen? Which woman in the book was the title character "Cassidy's Girl?" It wasn't clear until the final scene. There's a difference between a character like Jim Cassidy versus someone like DIE HARD'S John McClean. When bad things happen to McClean, he get's lucky and things eventually have a happy ending. When bad things happen to Cassidy it only means something even worse is going to happen to him four chapters from then.
—Elizabeth Amber Love
