Since embarking upon a marathon read of David Goodis (with the occasional interruption of reading lesser novels by more contemporary authors), I have been completely stunned by his unique narrative voice.But this one- oh, my sweet banana!NIGHTFALL might be my favorite Goodis so far. It would make a terrific film noir and was in fact made into one directed by the immortal film director Jacques Tourneur in 1957 starring the great Aldo Ray as protagonist-in-a-jam and on-the-lam "James (Jim) Vanning" and Vanning's dogged villainous pursuer, "John" as portrayed by one of my favortites: Brian Keith.This was such a terrific reading experience that I'm tempted to encourage any Goodis new-comers to start with this one but if you do you'll only wind up expecting this kind of action-driven thrill-packed suspenseful noir with every Goodis novel you encounter.Most of Goodis' novels are character driven. Studies of men from upper middle-class backgrounds who have descended into the grim slime of poverty and associations with petty criminals. These guys also usually have a craving for bad, bad, bad, mostly overly voluptuous and almost always sexually dominant femme fatales. The cause of this is usually due to some basic flaw in the protagonist's personality or circumstances that led him to make foolish moves that greased the tracks for his slide down into life's "other side" or else oblivion."Jim Vanning" in NIGHTFALL is not such a man. He's just another schmuck like you or me who gets involved with a deadly gang of double-crossing bank robbing pros who set him up to be their fall guy in an ill-fated heist.I can't say more about this novel. It's too easy to let a spoiler or two slip out.You read this and you just want to rhapsodize the praises of David Goodis.David Goodis is the patron saint of the hard-luck loser.He's better than any two of your favorite noirists. I thought nobody could beat Charles Willeford at this game. I thought Jim Thompson was as tough as they come. I thought no character ever cracked wiser than Phillip Marlowe when he's run out of luck.I was wrong.David Goodis is a writer of breath-taking prose and a creator of a hopelessness no genre character ever had to claw his way out of.'...the hard gray turning into black, the black of the revolver, the black remaining as more colors moved in. The green of the hotel room, the orange carpet, or maybe it wasn't orange - it could have been purple, a lot of those colors could have been other colors - but the one color about which there was no mistake was black. Because black was the color of a gun...'
Nightfall was Goodis’ third novel, after Dark Passage and before Of Missing Persons, and it comes across as an amalgamation of the two. It concerns two characters. One, Vanning, is a perennial Goodis hero: a lonely, dejected war veteran who by chance and contrived circumstance winds up a fugitive from both the law and a den of thieves. The other, Fraser, is a happily married but stressed out cop, who is very much a forerunner for the hero in Of Missing Persons. Vanning’s fugitive status is simply a means for Goodis to revel in the misery derived from his intense loneliness. His self-pity is so overwhelming that his own safety is of little to no importance to him; being 33, unmarried, and unable to get on with his life is the true cause of his despair. Everywhere he looks, hearing men gloat about their wives, amplifies his own tormented bitterness; he is a great example of what led one critic to perceptively observe that Goodis wrote “emotional autobiography disguised as lurid melodrama.” It’s that sense of infusing his own experiences and emotions into his work that gives Goodis’ novels such a feeling of authenticity, despite their often contrived plots. He appeals to me for much the same reason that Bergman appeals to me, as in their work I see the working out of their own personal demons and failures, and this in turn imbues their work with such emotional vitality. In any event, Nightfall isn’t one of Goodis’ best works. Still in his early period, he hasn’t quite found his groove; there’s a willed sense of happiness and redemption here, along with a distancing created through the oscillating viewpoints that prevents this book from reaching the depths of his greatest works. Still, it’s interesting to see how the road to those most despairing novels was reached.
What do You think about Nightfall (2007)?
I read that after finding some success writing for magazines and Hollywood, David Goodis drank himself to death in the dockside bars of Philadelphia. So it's no surprise that he's at his best describing lowlifes in cheap haunts and heisters looking for one last score. He draws those characters credibly, and though they sometimes lapse into 1940s tough-guy talk when they speak, there's something genuinely flawed and tragic and moving about them. What he's not great at is plotting: even in the best light, this novel (which is said to be his finest), is just one step above dime-store pulp, complete with the double-crossing femme fatal and the seemingly doomed hero with a heart of gold and strong right hook. What sets it apart from the rest is its fine treatment of one man's existential crisis, and all the big questions that go along with it: what is good, what is evil, and what exactly happened to a satchel filled with $300K in hundred-dollar bills?
—Jake
Vanning – a victim of circumstance is placed in the perfect and unforgiving wrong man scenario. Touted as a murderer, thief, and artist (yep there is some legitimacy to the protagonist), Vanning is the classic case of a man stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the run from the law and a gang of bank robbers, Vanning lives a life filled with paranoia and mistrust. In his mind, he’s innocent of the crimes he’s accused - his actions vindicated by circumstance yet there’s a subtle cloudiness to the believability of his mantra. Like many other Goodis novels, ‘Nightfall’ questions the lead characters sincerity and state of mind. You never quite know if they are honest or are feigning innocence to mask sinister motives. This stems true for Vanning, the comely Martha, and Fraser – the man with whom Vanning shares a cat and mouse relationship.The overtly insecure and semi-obsessive cop, Fraser is grounded only by his wife who seems to be the backbone of his sanity and manhood for that matter. With one eye on Vanning and another on the reward, Fraser acts as a lone wolf resembling more conventional PI than police (minus the hard-boiled persona). It takes a good writer to evoke reader emotion, and Goodis is a great writer - I really disliked Fraser while I was genuinely concerned for the health and wellbeing of Vanning. That said; the characters alone weren’t quite enough to champion the story. The plot was good enough and the overall sense of chasing reality was executed well, however the dialogue fuelled by unbelievable character emotions (Vanning falling too easily in love for instance) spoiled what was a solid premise. In ‘Nightfall’ the criminal element is secondary with human interaction the primary driver – had the dialogue and believability been a little more polished this would’ve worked well, however it just failed to hit the right notes but was still enjoyable to read. 3 stars. This review is from 'Nightfall' which appears in David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
—Josh
A fast-paced noir detective story, this one boils along nicely with a confused and haunted narrator who's trying to escape a murder that he is unable to prove was self-defense. Maybe not the most classic of noir stories, as both the narrator and the love interest are less jaded and more innocent than one would expect of the genre, but it also includes a wonderful character in the form of the detective trailing the narrator. He's trained in psychology and is thus a sort of early version of a profiler--the relationship between him and the narrator is tense and interesting.
—Jennifer
