Sun 10 Nov 2024
Reviewed by Tony Baer: DAVID GOODIS – Somebody’s Done For.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
DAVID GOODIS – Somebody’s Done For. Banner B60-111, paperback original, 1967. Reprinted several times, including Stark House Press, softcover, 2023.
Jander’s an ad man. For fun, he takes a dingy out the New Jersey coast.
Only it capsizes. And he just about drowns.
Ends up on some forgotten stretch of beach.
And a girl. A strange and beautiful creature, pulls him up the shore, to save him from drowning in the tide.
She takes him to a shack, warms him and feeds him.
But don’t follow me and don’t ask questions.
But he can’t help it. Like Orpheus descending.
So he finds out where she’s from. And where she’s going.
Thing is, her daddy is an escaped convict. Who lives in an abandoned house, with a couple of buddies from the clink. And his wife.
And daddy’s crazy as a moon. I would say loon, but it’s overused. So moon. Crazy as a moon. And gun crazy.
And Vera, the daughter. She brings home the bread. (Almost said bacon. All we’re missing is a tomato and some lettuce.) She’s the featured attraction at a gentleman’s club. Only she ain’t available. Which doubles her attraction. She’s belongs to one man and one man alone.
Her daddy.
Odd little book. And Goodis’s last.
As unfulfilling as life itself.
November 10th, 2024 at 8:45 pm
Reads as if Goodis didn’t have time to do a rewrite.
November 11th, 2024 at 6:20 pm
I don’t know how I missed knowing about this one until now, but I have. (It sounds as though I haven’t missed a lot.)
November 12th, 2024 at 5:38 am
I enjoyed this quite a lot myself. The fugitive Daddy is crazy as a loon, and the book itself is sad as a gypsy serenading the moon.
As for Goodis not having time for a re-write, I believe this was published 2 years after his death.
November 13th, 2024 at 10:59 am
Interesting swan song by Goodis: a very ambitious novel: quite complex and not a traditional linear mystery with beginning, middle and end. The story circles back on itself thematically as we find the three main characters pretty much back where they started from. No one can really escape who they are, but the story shows them fighting the good fight. So, it may seem depressing for that reason, but self-awareness and the efforts to break out are redeeming to some extent.
Has a dance of death feel to it in the cabin scenes, but there really is no central devil character (Gathridge is just dirt level nasty and totally unable to exert any influence on anyone), but for the others, it’s a devil within vs. the angel who tries to break away. Renziger and Jander are almost mirror images as far as their internal conflicts are concerned, which is interesting, with one late bloomer, Thelma, and Hebden, who from beginning to end remains unchanged. Goodis uses the Gathridge character as kind of a catalyst for much of the action and his death eliminates an irritant for the Hebden family, while Renziger is in a sense, a mercy killing and remarked as such by Vera, I think. Everyone else is doomed to go on — eternally “done for”. Vera is a bit of a cipher, with her enthrallment of all men really a mystery as it is unintended by her and we view it only through the eyes of others. An accidental femme fatale. Jander is better off spiritually, for having tried and wise enough not erase Vera’s identity (Father’s little girl) with the knowledge he has. But, in typical Goodis fashion, the protagonist is in an eternal circumstantial purgatory. This book also differs from a typical crime fiction story, in that exciting well-paced action is stopped dead for two lengthy passages of exposition, but the expositions, particularly the one for Hebden, have their own internal tensions. William Faulkner was very good at this type of storytelling, and I would love to have heard a conversation between these two guys. They were both in Hollywood at the same time, so it could have happened!
November 13th, 2024 at 7:41 pm
“But, in typical Goodis fashion, the protagonist is in an eternal circumstantial purgatory.” Thanks, Bill. This may be far from Goodis’s best work, but you’ve made a really good case for it.