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Fair. May contain writing notes highlighting bends or folds. Text is readable book is clean and pages and cover mostly intact. May show normal wear and tear. Item may be missing CD. May include library marks.
"It began with a shattered dream." The opening sentence of David Goodis' novel "Of Tender Sin" (1952) introduces a noir story of sin, guilt, jealousy, and rage. The book is one of the pulp paperback originals that Goodis (1937 -- 1967) wrote between 1951 -- 1961 about his native Philadelphia. The Library of America has recognized Goodis' value as a writer by including six of his books in its volumes devoted to the best of American writing. David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s (Library of America); Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s: The Killer Inside Me / The Talented Mr. Ripley / Pick-up / Down There / The Real Cool Killers (Library of America) (Vol 2) Much of Goodis' work, including "Of Tender Sin". remains to be discovered outside the LOA.
"Of Tender Sin" is a dark, brutally shocking novel that tells the story of a person haunted by demons. The major character, Alvin Barby, 29, has a stable job with an insurance company and has been married for six years to a lovely, devoted woman, Vivian. As the book opens, Barby has been unable to have sexual relations with Vivian, hears disquieting noises in the house, and leaps to the conclusion that his wife has been having an affair. He is obsessed with a woman from his adolescent life with platinum blonde hair.
He is also haunted by memories of a near-disastrous relationship he had before his marriage with Geraldine, a beautiful but sadistically controlling woman.
Most of the book describes Barby's deterioration and near-destruction following his suspicion of Vivian's unfaithfulness. Barby wanders the tenderloin area of early 1950's Philadelphia. In the process, Goodis describes tormented people and scenes, bars, tenements, cut-rate stores, pawn shops, and flophouses. Barby encounters derelicts, prostitutes, drug users, thieves, and killers. It is a places of devastation that mirrors and virtually captures the state of Barby's mind.
The novel is highly internalized focusing on the mind and emotions of its protagonist. It shows the heavy influence of the Freudian psychology of its day. Goodis is a master at capturing feelings of loneliness and isolation amid the ice and chill of a Philadelphia winter. The writing is both lyrical and tough. The portrayal of tormented individuals and squalid scenes more than compensate for the awkwardness of the plotting.
Following its 1952 publication, the book was reissued in 2001 in this edition from Serpents Tail with an introduction by Adrian Wooton, Chief Executive of Film London. Unfortunately, "Of Tender Sin" currently is out-of-print. The book deserves to be reissued. It is an evocative, lyrical, almost painfully bleak novel with a sense of feeling, passion and a hint of the possibility of resilience and redemption.
