Bard Of The Downtrodden

Title: Dark Passage

Rating: 4 Stars

David Goodis is an author that has been, to a large extent, regrettably lost to time. When talking fiction noir, I think he belongs in the same conversation as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. 

As a young man, he got into writing for pulp magazines. In the 1930s and 1940s, these were the unquenchable content monsters of their day. In a 5 1/2 year period, writing sometimes 10,000 words a day, he cranked out an estimated five million words under many pseudonyms. That’s an insane pace. The only other author that I know that maintained a pace like that was L Ron Hubbard during his pulp days. Hubbard would be working so hard at his typewriter that sweat would pour off of him.

Ultimately, Goodis got out of the pulp grind by writing novels. Dark Passage was the novel that made him most famous. It led to the classic film noir starring Bogart and Bacall. This successful film led to a six year movie deal with Warner Brothers. For murky reasons, Goodis only lasted for three years.

That was his career highlight. In 1950, at the age of 33, he moved back to Philadelphia to live with his parents and his schizophrenic brother. From there he labored in relative obscurity. He continued to regularly publish novels. In the mid 1960s, interest in his work was renewed when Truffaut made Shoot the Piano Player. In 1967, shortly after being beaten in a robbery, he died of a stroke at the age of 49.

Another interesting fact about Goodis concerns the television series The Fugitive. For those that never saw the series (or the Harrison Ford film), it’s about Richard Kimble, a doctor wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. Sentenced to death, he’s on the way to prison when the train derails. This allows Kimble to escape. The series consists of his dogged pursuit of the real killer of his wife, the ‘one-armed man’, as the authorities try to capture Kimble.

Why am I telling you all about this? Well, Dark Passage is about Vince Parry, a investment clerk, who is falsely accused of killing his wife, is convicted, and is sentenced to life at San Quentin. Desperate to get out, one day he seizes an opportunity to climb into a barrel and escape in the back of a truck. The novel is about his attempts to escape re-capture. At first, he pretty much just wants to get away, but through a series of adventures he almost inadvertently discovers that his wife’s murderer (WARNING: 70 year old spoiler alert) was a woman named Madge that had become obsessed with Parry. The woman, after confessing to Parry, throws herself out her window, making it look like Parry murdered her. Thus, at the end of the novel, even though he’s solved the murder of his wife, he has no proof and has to continue to live life on the run.

Written in 1946, it predates The Fugitive by many years. Goodis, claiming that The Fugitive copied his premise, sued United Artists. Just as an aside, yeah there are similarities but still, is escaping from prison after being false convicted really all that unique of a premise? Be that as it may, after a protracted battle that ended after his death, it was found in his favor and his estate was awarded a grand total of $12,000. Regardless, it actually is an important copyright legal case.

I read a forward to Dark Passages that posited that Goodis’ relative lack of success informed the novels of his later period in the 1950s. In all cases, the protagonist is not really in any form a heroic figure. In Dark Passages, Parry is a nonentity. He’s a nameless clerk married to a woman that does not respect him or even particularly like him. He’s not particularly tall. He’s not particularly handsome. Even after he escapes from prison, he usually ends up swept by events. At times, he’s literally shaking in fear. People take advantage of him. Even the people that help him appear to help not because of any particular sympathy for him but because of issues of their own. His one act of violence only occurs as he is on the verge of being choked out.

These character traits seem to be hallmarks of Goodis’ protagonists. Perhaps once successful, they have fallen far. They live in obscurity. They live in poverty. They live in fear. They are driven by circumstance. They seems to exert relatively little control over their own affairs.

Featuring a protagonist from such a position of weakness is a refreshing change from traditional noir. Instead of a world weary, world wise, wise cracking private eye, Goodis’ characters react to their situations with shock and fear. You can almost see the gears turning in their minds as they desperately try to calculate their next small move to make it to the next moment’s crisis.

Writing from that perspective makes for a taut, suspenseful read.