I loved "Stoner" so much, I read it twice. "Butcher's Crossing" I only read once, but it was so different, and yet the language was so disciplined and specific to the Western genre being explored. It was almost a kind of foreshadowing of Cormac McCarthy, and I would not be surprised if McCarthy has read "Butcher's Crossing."
"Nothing But The Night," I had never heard of, but, when I came across it in Three Lives, I expected a supernatural, psychological horror story. That story is as disturbing as anything, but it comes from the realm of reality--the diseased mind of a young, college drop-out who hangs out in bars, with homosexuals, punishing himself and his father for a hatred he feels over something he inadvertently witnessed between his parents. And, no, darlings, it was not them having sex! That would have been the least of it!
The narration is there, but the emphasis is more on mood and feeling. One can visualize the entire work as a black-and-white noir done by either David Lynch, John Parker (very much like his 1950's classic, "Daughter Of Horror"/"Dementia," or Maya Deren. I kept visualizing images these filmmakers might have created out of scenes when I read them.
As a hero, Arthur Maxley is one of the most disturbed characters a reader could meet. There seems no cure for him, or he is not interested in one, so the novel ends on a note of ambiguity that will have one wondering.
I would never have expected this from writer John Williams. Now, I am curious to explore some of his lesser known works--these are the Big Three,
The man obviously had a far wider range than I ever realized!
And he wrote it in 1948!!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteVictoria,
I should have mentioned that.
It is part of why the novel has
such a noir quality--because it
was written in the noir era.