What it all amounts to, he told himself, is you’re not in shape for a deal like this. You get involved in this sort of thing, you should be properly prepared. I mean mentally, too. It’s a cinch you’re not prepared mentally, because now I’d say you’re just about ready to give up.
Stark House Press has brought David Goodis’s final 1967 novel back to print after 30 years, with a new introduction by Retreats from Oblivion editor Matthew Sorrento.
From the INTRODUCTION
The story begins in what feels like a netherworld and at first in the perspective of a Delaware Bay seagull ready to snatch prey on the water. Readers soon recognizes the “prey” to be a Goodis protagonist: Calvin Jander, cast off a fishing boat during a storm, has become a victim to harsh nature. As in his other gritty opening scenes, including Dark Passage (1946) and Black Friday (1954), humanity exists at the mercy of nature, in the spirit of Jack London. Having shown affinity to Ernest Hemingway in his debut 1939 novel, Retreat from Oblivion (before he embraced crime fiction in novel form), in his swansong Goodis undercuts idealism associated to the lone adventurer. The ordeal parallels Jander’s life in Philadelphia, as an overworked statistician for an advertising firm living with and supporting his mother and sister. The escape via weekend fishing turns into a survivalist ordeal.
Jander’s survival plays like a resurrection, one recalling the opening of the transformative combat film, The Steel Helmet (1951), written and directed by Goodis’s friend from his time in Hollywood, Samuel Fuller (who would adapt the author’s 1954 novel Street of No Return in 1989). Somebody’s also picks up from the closing of Goodis’s The Burglar (1953), which leaves Nat Harbin and Gladden, a woman in his gang, off an Atlantic City pier sinking into the waters, embracing each other at their moment of death and yearning for a connection beyond it (a surprising finish for readers coming to the novel after having seen the 1957 film adaption, directed by Paul Wendkos, the only Goodis novel that the author adapted himself for the screen)….
From CHAPTER ONE
There was no land in sight.
Some seventy feet above the water a famished seagull circled slowly, somewhat warily. It had spotted this thing that seemed to be bobbing listlessly on the surface and was evidently too weary to resist assault. The thing looked like meat, and the bird’s empty belly sent an urgent directive to the white wings, something along the lines of let’s go down there and grab a fast bite. But the gull’s brain counseled in terms of caution. The only feasible move was to take a closer look.
The bird descended to less than sixty feet. It still wasn’t sure, and it made another wide circle and leveled off at thirty. For a few moments it gazed down intently; then it let out a screech of negative decision and disappointment. The thing in the water was much too large to be handled and obviously it was the kind of animal that had teeth. Telling itself to get a move on, the gull climbed to a little more than forty feet and flew off to seek lunch in another area.
In the water the man was using an awkward breaststroke. Ordinarily he was a fairly good swimmer, but he’d been in the water for more than three hours and he was terribly tired. It was difficult to move his legs because his thigh muscles were painfully cramped, and he could feel the lancing torment working its way along his ribs and across his chest, getting in deep and starting to cut at his lungs.
He knew he couldn’t hold out much longer.
What it all amounts to, he told himself, is you’re not in shape for a deal like this. You get involved in this sort of thing, you should be properly prepared. I mean mentally, too. It’s a cinch you’re not prepared mentally, because now I’d say you’re just about ready to give up.
He raised his head and looked around and all he could see was water. It was calm water, a dull gray-green, ribboned here and there in a shadowed topaz, the faint light seeping down through a curtain of dark gray clouds. The man looked up and grimaced unpleasantly at the unfriendly sky. Go ahead and storm again if you want to. You won’t hear me asking for any breaks.
But you need a break. He tried to pierce some logic through his resentment at losing his life. It hasn’t been much of a life, and lately it’s been mostly a damn nuisance, but you got to consider it’s the only life you have. You let go of it, you’re in for oblivion. I don’t think you want oblivion. It’s very restful, of course, but there’s no future in it.
Again he looked around. There was no land in sight. And then he looked up. There was some fiery yellow showing at the edge of an immense dark cloud very high in the sky. For only an instant he rooted for the sun to get through. In the next instant his head was under the surface and he was going down.
He went down wondering what had happened. His brain was numb from exhaustion, and he couldn’t understand why he was sinking. Then, as his lungs pleaded for air, he realized that he’d simply become too lazy to use his arms and legs.
This is no time to clown, he scolded himself, and kicked from his knees, flailed his arms at the water, his eyes tightly shut, his lips securely locked as he begged himself to stay alive.
Because maybe it can be worthwhile, his mind spoke to his body. Because even though you’ve never been one of the lucky ones, even though the dividends never came in, there were always certain compensations—an occasional laugh or two, an occasional Sunday in the park, and you’d see all the children running around and they had no worries and they kind of made you forget yours. And there was the compensation of every once in a while getting a decent night’s sleep, knowing that when you woke up in the morning you’d have eyes to see with and ears to hear with and arms and legs and all the other equipment that certain others aren’t blessed with. So come to think of it, you weren’t so unlucky after all, and maybe if you keep working …
He worked very hard, feeling the agony of the effort that sent streams of fire cascading through his limbs. The water was a horde of demons trying to pull him down, teasing him with soundless cries of mockery. And maybe they were right. It was taking such a long time to reach the surface, to find air. While the demons kept saying, Quit kidding yourself, he battled the urge to let them take over. He kept working to get his head above the water.
But then he had the feeling that he wasn’t going to make it. He told himself to have a last look at something, anything. He opened his eyes.
He saw the gray-green liquid that covered him and assured him there was nothing else. Just water, the vast cemetery of salt water. But still he wouldn’t accept it, and he kept his lips clamped and went on pumping his legs and pushing with his arms. His eyes stayed open and the water now appeared to be a darker gray-green. Then it was getting black. He saw the blackness and heard the demons say, This is what you see when all the lights go out. That’s probably correct, he thought. And he gave in to them and his body became inert.
In that same moment he saw the sky.
Then his mouth was opened wide, and he was gulping air and feeding it to his lungs. For several minutes he went on treading water, concentrating on keeping his mouth above the surface. You feel a lot better now, he told himself; maybe you’ll be getting that break, after all. Maybe now you’ll see something pleasant.
He looked around and there was no land in sight.
It just isn’t possible, he tried to argue against the fact. I mean, this isn’t the ocean. It can’t be the ocean because it’s Delaware Bay. You’re somewhere off the coast of southern New Jersey. But how far off the coast?
I don’t have any idea. Tell you honestly, I’m not even sure it’s Delaware Bay. I’m not sure of anything now. I’m so damn tired.
Now look, get off that track. You ride that line, you’ll go under again. Only way to handle this is try to keep it technical. Try to think in terms of numbers and names.
All light: You’re thirty-two years old and your name is Calvin Jander. How’s that for a start? You stand five feet nine and weigh 170. That’s twenty pounds too much, but let’s not worry about it now; maybe it’s the extra bulk that gives you what’s needed here—the buoyancy. Anything more? Sure, there’s the color of your hair; it’s yellow. And your eyes—gray. See what I mean? You’re doing fine. There’s a long list of items you know for sure.
There’s the city where you live—Philadelphia. And the place where you work is downtown in the Wentworth Building, seventeenth floor. Cottersby and Heggert, Advertising. You’re in the Research Department and the pay is $6500 a year. Did you see any of it this year? Well, I guess you saw a little—very little. Barely enough for some cigarettes and a beer now and then. And every once in a great while you’d do a little wagering in a game of straight-rail billiards. Never more than a dollar a game….
Order Somebody’s Done For from Stark House Press here.
David Loeb Goodis was born March 2, 1917, in Philadelphia. After working for an advertising agency, he published his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion, in 1939. He then moved to New York City where he wrote for the pulps, sometimes turning out 10,000 words a day. By 1942, Goodis relocated to Hollywood, where he began scripting radio adventure serials. After the success of his novel Dark Passage and its subsequent filming with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, he signed a six-year contract with Warner Bros. Discouraged by the experience, Goodis returned to Philadelphia in 1950, living with his parents and prowling the seedier streets at night. Here he wrote his only solely authored screenplay—for The Burglar—and the majority of his paperback original noir classics. Goodis died at age 49 in Philadelphia on January 7, 1967, from a cerebral vascular accident caused in part by a previous beating he received while resisting a robbery.
Matthew Sorrento is Editor-in-chief of Retreats from Oblivion and Film International. A critic and poet, he teaches film and media studies at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ and Temple University. His latest book is David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation (co-edited with David Ryan; FDU Press).
Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon 