David Goodis' 1956 novel "Down There" inspired Francois Truffaut's 1960 film "Shoot the Piano Player" which in turn inspired this 1990 reissue of the book under the name of the movie. Goodis' (1917 -- 1967) reputation has grown with the years. His many noir novels were published in cheap paperback editions which quickly went out of print. With the Library of America's publication of "Down There" (under its proper name) in a volume devoted to 1950s noir, and LOA's recent publication of a volume devoted entirely to Goodis, his place in American literature has been recognized.Goodis' novel has all the earmarks of noir: the hardboiled writing style, scenes of violence and murder, a seedy bar called "Harriet's Hut" after its tough proprietor, thugs and gangsters, a femme fatale, and treacherous lonely streets and alleys. But there is nothing formulaic about "Down There". The book is deeply introspective and sad as it explores the lives of its characters and their shattered dreams. Although written in the third person, the book probes deeply into the inner worlds of its characters. The book also has strong themes about the need to accept and make the most of life and about loyalty in its many forms.Goodis' novel has all the earmarks of noir: the hardboiled writing style, scenes of violence and murder, a seedy bar called "Harriet's Hut" after its tough proprietor, thugs and gangsters, a femme fatale, and treacherous lonely streets and alleys. But there is nothing formulaic about "Down There". The book is deeply introspective and sad as it explores the lives of its characters and their shattered dreams. Although written in the third person, the book probes deeply into the inner worlds of its characters. The book also has strong themes about the need to accept and make the most of life and about loyalty in its many forms.The novel and the characters unfold slowly and with substantial indirection. Set in a cold,snowy Philadelphia winter in 1956, the main character is Eddie Lynn. In his early 30's Eddie has for three years been eking out a subsistence existence playing the piano at Harriet's Hut. He is quiet, content, disengaged, and asks little of life beyond the piano.Eddie's life is disrupted when his brother Turley, whom he has not seen for seven years, enters the Hut beaten and bruised. Although he does not want to get involved, Eddie saves his brother from the two thugs who enter the bar in pursuit. The two thugs, Feather and Morris, are now on Eddie's trail, ending his peace. A young standoffish waitress at the Hut, Lena, senses Eddie's danger. The two become emotionally involved, thus further ending Eddie's self-imposed loneliness and isolation.Eddie carries a tumultuous past which Goodis skillfully reveals as the novel proceeds. From poor origins on a rural New Jersey farm, Eddie married his sweetheart and rose to become a concert pianist who performed at Carnegie Hall. With the suicide of his wife, Eddie's own life and musical career collapsed, as he fought in the mean areas of New York City and Philadelphia before finding a different life with his music at Harriet's Hut. The novel bares Eddie's heart as well as the feelings and scars of several other characters.As the novel develops, Goodis also shows Eddie's relationship to Turley and to their older brother, Clifton. Turley and Clinton are involved in criminal activity, smuggling, and double-crossing; and Eddie gets involved against his will. While he is deeply attracted to Lena, Eddie also struggles to keep her from the danger that surrounds him. Lena, for all her toughness, shows her own devotion to Eddie, in a manner as strong as the devotion shown years earlier by Eddie's wife. The book shows Eddie struggling with the changes foisted upon him, coming to terms with feelings that he thought he had cast aside, and arriving at acceptance.Many of the secondary characters, including Harriet, the bouncer at Harriet's, a former wrestler named Wally, and a prostitute named Clarice who works the bar also receive insightful portrayals as their tortured lives intersect with Eddie's. Even the lengthy and brutal fight scenes in the novel focus upon the feelings and motivations of the characters."Down There" is an intense book about lonely streets, shattered people and music. It shows how the noir genre can become literature in its own right. I have enjoyed exploring the works of Goodis over the past few years.Robin Friedman
This gritty, hard-boiled novel by David Goodis opens with an action scene where a bloody-faced Turley Linn is running for his life through the alleys of a Philadelphia slum, fleeing from two professional hit-men. Turley ducks into a run-down neighborhood bar called Harriet's Hut and finds his brother Eddie (the novel's main character) who he hasn't seen in over six years. Eddie acknowledges his brother but remains cool and doesn't stop playing his sweet honky-tonk music on the joint's piano. Indeed, remaining cool, detached and emotionally uninvolved is the key note (no pun intended) of Eddie's thread-bare, solitary life.In the first few pages we also come to know there is another side to cool Eddie, that is, some years ago Edward Webster Lynn, a concert pianist trained at the Curtis Institute, toured Europe and performed at Carnegie Hall, captivating and mesmerizing audiences with musical talent bordering on genius. Then why, we may ask, is one of the world's greatest pianists tickling the eighty-eight at a rundown bar? It isn't until midway through the novel that we are given Eddie's backstory. Turns out, Edward was once deeply in love and married to a beautiful Puerto Rican woman named Teresa. One evening at a mid-town Manhattan party, Teresa confesses to Edward she had an affair with his high-class concert manager. Then, as soon as Edward stomps out of the room, completely unhinged, seeing herself as unclean trash, Teresa jumps out a window.Thus, we are given yet again another side of Eddie the piano player, the cool guy with his soft-easy smile, when, after the funeral, Edward goes ballistic. Late at night in Hell's Kitchen NYC, he gets himself mugged, robbed and beaten up, enjoying every minute of the violence. He then seeks out more violence again and again and gives as good as he gets, including mauling two policemen. So violent is Eddie that a strong-arm specialist in the Bowery tells his buddies the next time he fights with the guy he'll need an automatic rifle. The author conveys Eddie's reflections on this period in his life, "Now, looking back on it, he saw the wild man of seven years ago, and thought, What it amounted to, you were crazy, I mean really crazy. Call it horror-crazy."With this background and insight into Eddie's character, we have a more complete overview of the violence taking place one afternoon at Harriet's Hut. The bar's bouncer, Wally Plyne aka the Harleyville Hugger, admits to taking money for giving Eddie's address to the two hit-men. This causes Lena, the young, attractive waitress and friend of Eddie, to erupt with a torrent of verbal barbs and insults aimed at Plyne. Plyne tells her to shut her mouth but Lena keeps it up. Plyne explodes, smacking Lena in the face. Lena keeps up the insults. Plyne smacks her again. Lena spits out more insults. More slaps and punches from Plyne. At this point Eddie steps in. Eddie and Plyne exchange punches. Plyne picks up a chair leg to use as a club and then, in response, Eddie grabbing a long, sharp bread knife. Fearing for his life, Plyne races out the back door. Eddie follows, knife in hand. Several minutes later, squeezed in one of the Harleyville Hugger's lethal bear-hugs, Eddie goes for Plyne's arm with the knife but Plyne suddenly shifts position and the knife sinks into Plyne's chest. Plyne slumps over, dead.I focus on this scene because, to my mind, what happens underscores the author's view of human nature: people are capable of extreme violence; it is only a matter of the flash point. Doesn't matter if a person is an accomplished classical musician or an attractive 27 year old waitress, push the buttons in a certain way and people will erupt like volcanos. Ah, the horror-crazy buried deep within us all.David Goodis made it a practice to routinely visit the bars and hangouts and hotspots in Philadelphia's rat-infested, poverty-stricken slums. As a writer and artist, he opened himself to life as it was lived in the urban underbelly of the 1940s and 1950s -- desperate, dark and dangerous - and sat at his typewriter and wrote all about it.
What do You think about Shoot The Piano Player (1990)?
not a review but a overwhelming yes! it's been hard for me to review shoot the piano player aka down there because i so ardently and unequivocally adore it. suffice to say, i have read it many times, and i will read it again and again and again, simply because it is one of the most visceral reading experiences i've ever had. and it just goes to show how one never knows what chord will be struck, how a character might resonate, no matter how different in experience, until you meet and absorb them as a reader. in this book, i am running down a street, and clocking my head, and coming finally to the bar, and then i meet my brother there, and then i become my brother, and i am with him in the alley, there with the hat pin, and i am entirely immersed in this life, this sequence that winds its way to the end. what a marvelous bit of music, this book.
—Maureen
June 5, 2013: Little book, I don't do you justice. I will finish you (hopefully this week), but I owe you a rereadJune 6, 2013: Seems fitting that the last thirty pages of this were read in a state somewhere between consciousness and sleep. Because that's how it read. Like some kind of nightmare you wish someone would wake you from. Goodis' material is usually dark (that's why he's up there with the big boys in the noir field) but this one felt especially so. Goodis is capable of creating characters you would swear he pulled from real life. But he outdid himself here. I wanted to cradle the two main characters in my arms and invite them into my tree-house and tell them, Hey, you guys, it's not so bad. Look: cookies. Milk. Soda, if you want it. We'll live that mean ole world behind and just hang out here for a while. Eh? Eh? But these characters, these people know better than that. They could hide with me in the tree-house and still the world would be waiting for them when they climbed down again. Even if they waited forever, it would still be waiting. So, fuck it, they said, we'll meet you head on. Oh, they did some running, their own version of it. And I cringed and cowered and said, No, no, no, don't do that, that's not gonna go well at all. But this is noir, and a lot like real life noir doesn't pull any punches. So you walk blindly - well, not so blindly; you have your eyes wide open to catch a glimpse, if only a fleeting one - you walk not-so-blindly in and take your licks and hope you come out on the other side. But what if you have someone tagging along behind? Someone you were unready to give yourself to but somehow they managed to whittle a hole in that block of wood you called a heart, the one that turned into a block after the last time something bad happened and in order to prevent it from ever happening again you simply said, Alright, that's enough, I'm out, I'm not doing this anymore. But then this new one came along and you said you wouldn't get involved and you wouldn't let the person in but somehow they kindled a little fire around that block of wood and it began to spit and his and without your being aware of it the other person was adding stick and twigs and the fire was getting bigger and you wanted to put it out but the more you wanted to put it out the bigger it got and the harder it got and by then it was too late anyway. You were in too far. But life's always creeping up behind, maybe just a step or two or maybe it's two or three blocks away, but it's always following and it's waiting on the chance to cut in. And when it does, you'll dance. And you'll dance. And you'll dance. You'll get seasick and you'll swoon and if you're lucky before it really gets rough you'll be thrown free, thrown overboard; or you could be lucky and hang on for the entire ride and what a ride it'll be. There's music somewhere. It may be music you yourself are playing or it may be piping in from that gaping rent in the sky, the one where all the darkness is coming form and maybe someone's just turned out the lights for a while, that's all it is, someone's turned out the lights. Say, would you mind turning the lights back on? But the one who turned on the lights may no longer be there to turn them on for you and you have to figure out how to turn them on again yourself. Click. Click. Click.
—Mark
This was the first Goodis I've read and I intend to read more of his work. I loved this book for the simplicity and depth of its protagonist, Eddie, and its intense, fast paced action. Goodis doesn't waste the reader's time with a single superfluous word as he zips us through three tumultuous, tragic days in Eddie's life, a life he'd taken pains to keep simple, unattached in recent years after a previous existence ended in devastation, his life and dreams destroyed. It all comes full circle.To me, the book is a study in instinct. The way Eddie reacts to situations without thinking, sometimes without realizing what he's doing, as if he watches scenes from his own life replayed after they've already happened, unconscious during the action. Goodis puts his characters in situations where they can't think, they can only do or not do, and their actions are determined by their morals, their emotions, whether or not their brains would agree.
—Richard Bon
