David Goodis - Of Tender Sin

by David Goodis

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:00--102 189

A complete catalogue record for this bookcan be obtained from the British Library on request

The right of David Goodis to be identifiedas the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordancewith the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Copyright David Goodis 1952

Introduction copyright Adrian Wootton2001

The characters and events in this book arefictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, iscoincidental and not intended by the author.

First published by Fawcett Publications,Inc., New York in 1952

First published in this edition in 2001 bySerpent's Tail, 4 Blackstock Mews, London N4 2BT

website: www.serpentstail.com

Printed in Great Britain by Mackays ofChatham, plc

Introduction by Adrian Wootton

American crime scribe, David Goodis(1917-1967), was the author of some of the most powerful pulpfiction novels to be published in the late 1940s/early 1950s. Hiswork has also been adapted for several classic movies. Yet, as heonce said -- in typically self-deprecating terms, "I am no RaymondChandler" and despite the efforts of fans, critics and filmmakers,his work has stubbornly remained a cult treat, resisting everyattempt for wider recognition.

The man himself was also a shadowy figure,his relatively short life shrouded in mystery. The known facts, allrounded up in a solitary, still untranslated, French biography, arefew and far between. Born in Philadelphia, he had a good,unspectacular education and, after university, plied his trade asan ad agency copywriter, whilst literally producing millions ofwords for pulp short story magazines and contributing scripts toradio serials. His big break and brief glimmer of fame came whenhis first crime novel, _Dark Passage_, was serialised in _TheSaturday Evening Post_, a big American newspaper and, as a result,was bought by Warner Brothers to make into a Bogart and Bacallstarring movie. Goodis also got a fat contract as a screenwriterout of the deal but, after a short-lived, unhappy marriage and avery few unsuccessful years in Tinseltown, he rapidly retreatedback to his home town of Philadelphia. Living in the family home,almost entirely out of the public eye, David Goodis churned out onemodestly successful paperback novel after another until adebilitating lawsuit against the producers of the TV show, _TheFugitive_ (for allegedly plagiarising _Dark Passage_) precipitatedhis death in 1967.

In fact, aside from his relativelysedentary lifestyle, David Goodis's career followed a fairlytypical path for a crimewriter of that era. There are similaritiesbetween himself and other notable writers, such as Jim Thompson.But, unlike Thompson, the Goodis revival has never really happened.Perhaps his work is too dark, too depressing or just too plain sadto attract more than a small coterie of readers.

To be absolutely fair, if it wasn't forFrench publishers and French directors, Goodis's name may well havedisappeared altogether in the 1960s and '70s. The importance of theFrench Serie Noire crime imprint cannot be underestimated for manycrime writers but particularly for Goodis. It was through this thatseveral of the greatest French filmmakers of the last twenty-fiveyears, including Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, becameaware of Goodis and decided to adapt his work for the cinema.Undoubtedly, the most famous of these was Truffaut's classic filmversion of _Down There_, entitled _Tirez sur le Pianiste_ (_Shootthe Pianist_, 1960).

More recently, Jean-Jacques Beineix (theDirector of such international successes as _Diva_ and _BettyBlue_) made his own very expensive and controversial adaptation in1983 of _Moon in the Gutter_, starring Gerard Depardieu andNastassia Kinski. Criminally under-rated at the time of release,Beineix's film was not a box office success and so once more Goodisfailed to get the attention he deserved.

Whatever the whys and wherefores ofGoodis's obscurity, he is, undoubtedly, a damn fine writer; aunique and distinctive talent whose best work stands alongsideanything else produced in the crime fiction genre. Goodis does nottend to write about cops and robbers and he never created a seriescharacter or detective that grew from one book to the next.Instead, he mined a more individual -- albeit limited -- seam ofstories set in the back streets, dumps and dives of urban any townin the USA (although all his cities were really Philadelphia thinlydisguised).

David Goodis's characters occasionally arecriminals but this is not terribly important to him. The main thingfor Goodis is the emotional turmoil of life and people who, forwhatever reason, are losers -- romantic, twisted, sometimesexciting, but losers nonetheless, mired in circumstances from whichthere is no escape. The titles of his novels say it all -- _DarkPassage_, _Of Missing Persons_, _Street of the Lost_, _Down There_,_Nightfall_ and _The Moon in the Gutter_. His men are lonely,melancholic individuals, often artists who have cracked up or beenin some way irreparably damaged. His women, on the other hand, veerfrom the plain, almost saintly sister/good girlfriend through tothe sexually rapacious lover/whore. Whilst undoubtedly stereotypes,he invests them with such fierce life that you cannot help but gethooked. Goodis's world view may be despairing and depressing buthis writing, replete with hardboiled dialogue and black humour, has-- dare one say it -- a poetic, almost frightening intensity thatmakes his stories compulsive page turners.

_Of Tender Sin_ was published in March1952, during David Goodis's most prolific and consistentlysuccessful publishing period. In fact, he generated no less thaneight novels between 1951 and 1954. This novel followed thepublication of _Cassidy 's Girl_, the most popular book DavidGoodis ever wrote for the paperback market. Surprisingly,considering this, _Of Tender Sin_ was not, as far as one can tell,a notable commercial hit and, as a result, it has remained one ofhis most obscure and least read novels. This, of itself, makes _OfTender Sin_ a fascinating curio but it is the content of the novelthat singles it out in the Goodis canon and makes it particularlyinteresting for this re-publication.

On the face of it, _Of Tender Sin_ has allthe characteristics of a typical Goodis novel: Philadelphia set, amain character in the depths of psychological despair, brought onby sexual jealousy, a destructive/masochistic love affair, acriminal/low life milieu and the usual references to jazz andboxing. Admittedly, because of its focus on a particularindividual, the novel lacks some of the depth of characterisationfound in some of Goodis's very best work. Nevertheless, the book isunusually ambitious for Goodis because it is the only one of hisnovels that deals with drug abuse. Alcoholism features heavily inthe Goodis oeuvre, probably because the author had his own problemswith the demon drink. _Of Tender Sin_ still has drunks in it butGoodis seems most concerned to explore the low-rent drug dens ofPhiladelphia and there are very good -- if lurid -- evocations ofcharacters engaging in heroin and cocaine abuse. In this way, _OfTender Sin_ is reminiscent of -- and possibly influenced by --Nelson Aigren's 1949 classic, _The Man with the Golden Arm_, andindeed, could easily be described as Goodis's drug novel. Perhapsthis subject matter, very controversial for the time, together withthe distinct absence of a conventional thriller plot goes some wayto explaining its obscurity. It is, therefore, even more welcomethat we are now able to re-read and re-appraise _Of Tender Sin_ andsee it for the, maybe minor, but still challenging experiment itwas in Goodis's work.

_Of Tender Sin_ was never adapted for thestage, cinema or small screen. The last -- and again, French --film adaptation of David Goodis's work, was nearly a decade agoand, until the Serpent's Tail re-issue programme (also including_The Moon in the Gutter_ and _The Blonde on the Street Corner_),there has been little or no publishing interest in Goodis for overten years. So, maybe this will finally spark that long-lost revivalor, at least, introduce him to a new coterie of cult admirers toexperience the particular pleasures of Goodisville.