Nobody Care
After I saw the movie of "Jesus' Son" I was impressed enough by its heart that I read the stories it was based on, and then started looking for more by the author. I was also confident that I could enjoy this book because I love film noir, but it falls into a trap that ruins a lot of crime fiction: it understands The Streets.
Every loser in the criminal underworld, and many an aspiring writer, is seeking or applying what they believe to be the secret of The Streets. It is not only the source of ultimate savvy, but bestows indisputable authenticity upon anyone who has survived a visit to the dark realm and returned to tell about it. If an artist is out of the life but still making use of the routines or gimmicky mindset of it, then he is still of The Streets instead of fictionalizing it. As Roger Ebert once noted, this became a dilemma in the flood of indie pics following Tarantino's appearance. The most egregious example I can name offhand is a story in the movie "Training Day" which one of the characters actually claims can explain The Streets.
The problem is that the existence of crooks is not definable. It is a nebulous, in a sense invented, reflection of real society and as such has no stability or amenities. It is a junkyard filled with scavengers and its patterns are mirages. The first offnote in "Nobody Move" is the dropping into it of the main character Jimmy from a barber shop quartet practice, the sum total of his characterization being the outfit he wears for that activity, leaving him a James Bond sort of cipher. Later we discover that the female lead has a low opinion of clothes she's forced to wear from a certain store, not for any explained reason, such as a degrading reduction of social status, but because that's just how it is; such is the nature of The Streets. In the climax, the arch villain employs a psychological device to verify information from our hero, thereby demonstrating the know-how that elevated him to his supreme low, not in any way that accords with or improves the drama, but maybe so a literary tourist could feel they'd gotten their money's worth from an exotic story.
I don't know what inspired "Jesus' Son" but based on my own experience it feels genuine to me, and I find it very beautiful. This one however I cannot recommend. It doesn't seem to exist for the reader, nor for art's sake, but comes off as the front for a racket.
