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4.09 AVERAGE
4.09 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
For a good while this book felt like subpar noir and a poor substitute for Herman Cain. But. The writing got less and less sporadically awesome and the plot got more and more interesting and the finale was truly affecting. Too bad this was published posthumously.
A John Garfield-lookalike con and a blonde call-girl "with skin the color of pearls melted in honey" embark on a sexy, perverse joyride into hell. Despite not trusting each other and frequently abusing each other, they painstakingly plan an armored car robbery and hide their money-hungry schemes behind a facade of respectability and domestic bliss. Exquisitely written, overflowing with enough quips and steamy romps to please the most hard-boiled sadist.
"Most of living is waiting to live. And you spend a great deal of time worrying about things that don't matter and about people that don't matter and all this is clear to you when you know the very day you're going to die."
"The shop, except for the noise and the rust in the air, was a lot like a barracks. Too many men under one roof."
" ... and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice."
"Because you can't own anybody by shielding them and bullying them and spying on them. It's just the other way 'round."
"The shop, except for the noise and the rust in the air, was a lot like a barracks. Too many men under one roof."
" ... and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice."
"Because you can't own anybody by shielding them and bullying them and spying on them. It's just the other way 'round."
"Most of living is waiting to live. And you spend a great deal of time worrying about things that don't matter and about people that don't matter and all this is clear to you when you know the very day you're going to die."
"The shop, except for the noise and the rust in the air, was a lot like a barracks. Too many men under one roof."
" ... and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice."
"Because you can't own anybody by shielding them and bullying them and spying on them. It's just the other way 'round."
"The shop, except for the noise and the rust in the air, was a lot like a barracks. Too many men under one roof."
" ... and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice."
"Because you can't own anybody by shielding them and bullying them and spying on them. It's just the other way 'round."
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
While I live and work in Florence, Italy, I usually spend my summers in San Francisco. This summer, due to the global pandemic, however, here I am sitting on my Florentine balcony sipping ice coffee and enjoying the limpid blue sky and the 90 degree heat. Imagine my surprise and nostalgia when I pick up Black Wings Has my Angel and discover it to be one of the most American novels I've ever read, maybe even the American novel par excellence.
It's all here, folks, the best, most biting noir evocation of our ridiculously empty materialist culture, the one that drives us to make life an endless back-biting scramble to make (or steal--same thing) a million and then the inevitable disillusion when those of us who succeed realize that there's no good way to spend such wealth, that it only breeds moral sickness and utter aimless decadence. America is an idea equally destroyed by the horrors of pursuing wealth or obtaining wealth and this little old pulp novel from a Southern journalist is the best, most tragic narrative I have yet read regarding that fact. Pure gold.
Ok, it's not as brilliant or pithy or literary as William Gaddis's JR, but the very fact of its trashiness actually makes it even more American, and maybe even more satisfying to read than that much more obviously brilliant paean to the stars and stripes. There are some great metaphors and motifs here for the literary-minded as well--gold mining, bathing and cleanliness vs. the stain of guilt and murder à la Lady MacBeth, as well as the classic dichotomy in the American imagination regarding the decadent city vs. the humble hometown. Damn, it's good. True and perspicacious.
It even--in this time of protest and unmarked militarized Gestapo-esque presidential cops on the streets of Portland--presents our police for what they are, thuggish psychopaths. If you want to know why we should defund the police, all you have to do is read a noir, any noir, for the police are always portrayed this way in them. Even in the ones in which the cops are the protagonists--like a Mickey Spillane--they are shown to be the sadistic bastards that they so often are. At least the crooks are driven by the American dream, all of the cops' violence comes from a place of pure joy in inflicting pain: they're always bad guys in streetwise American fiction, even when they are the good guys.
And, best of all here, are the characters. "The Pure products of America," wrote poet William Carlos Williams, "go mad." These people are mad alternately with the lust for wealth and the effects of wealth. They have completely internalized this sorrow; they hate both themselves and each other for the pursuit and consumption of money. I guess this is why Selby uses drug addiction as his metaphor for the American Dream in Requiem for a Dream, for the junkie is similarly afflict with self-loathing.
So, I'm enjoying my summer in Florence, I guess, but this novel made me homesick--accent on the sick part.
It's all here, folks, the best, most biting noir evocation of our ridiculously empty materialist culture, the one that drives us to make life an endless back-biting scramble to make (or steal--same thing) a million and then the inevitable disillusion when those of us who succeed realize that there's no good way to spend such wealth, that it only breeds moral sickness and utter aimless decadence. America is an idea equally destroyed by the horrors of pursuing wealth or obtaining wealth and this little old pulp novel from a Southern journalist is the best, most tragic narrative I have yet read regarding that fact. Pure gold.
Ok, it's not as brilliant or pithy or literary as William Gaddis's JR, but the very fact of its trashiness actually makes it even more American, and maybe even more satisfying to read than that much more obviously brilliant paean to the stars and stripes. There are some great metaphors and motifs here for the literary-minded as well--gold mining, bathing and cleanliness vs. the stain of guilt and murder à la Lady MacBeth, as well as the classic dichotomy in the American imagination regarding the decadent city vs. the humble hometown. Damn, it's good. True and perspicacious.
It even--in this time of protest and unmarked militarized Gestapo-esque presidential cops on the streets of Portland--presents our police for what they are, thuggish psychopaths. If you want to know why we should defund the police, all you have to do is read a noir, any noir, for the police are always portrayed this way in them. Even in the ones in which the cops are the protagonists--like a Mickey Spillane--they are shown to be the sadistic bastards that they so often are. At least the crooks are driven by the American dream, all of the cops' violence comes from a place of pure joy in inflicting pain: they're always bad guys in streetwise American fiction, even when they are the good guys.
And, best of all here, are the characters. "The Pure products of America," wrote poet William Carlos Williams, "go mad." These people are mad alternately with the lust for wealth and the effects of wealth. They have completely internalized this sorrow; they hate both themselves and each other for the pursuit and consumption of money. I guess this is why Selby uses drug addiction as his metaphor for the American Dream in Requiem for a Dream, for the junkie is similarly afflict with self-loathing.
So, I'm enjoying my summer in Florence, I guess, but this novel made me homesick--accent on the sick part.
Incredibly enjoyable despite (because of?) the absolutely ludicrous caper at the centre of it.