Hard Rain Falling

by Don Carpenter

A cult hardboiled noir classic of crime, punishment and the search for a meaningful life, with an Introduction by Stuart Evers

‘Tough and vital … Hard Rain Falling roars through dim Western streets like an articulate Hells Angel looking for a fight’ The New York Times

When small-time teenage criminal Jack Levitt becomes friends with Billy Lancing, a young Black pool hustler, neither imagines they will meet again years later in St Quentin Prison – or that only one of them will make it out. But what does freedom really mean if you can’t escape the hand life has always dealt you? Don Carpenter’s shocking, poignant novel is a story of crime, punishment and trying to make sense of it all; of being down, but never quite out.

‘Explosive … Tarmac-tough dialogue and road-novel delinquent action is customised with a tender intensity … Carpenter brings gold to the grit’ Boyd Tonkin, Independent

‘A unique read; violent, tender, inexorable, and melancholic … The small lives contained herein are indelible’ Richard Price

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Crime, Noir, Novels, Literary Fiction, Literature

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Don Carpenter was an American writer, best known as the author of Hard Rain Falling. He wrote numerous novels, novellas, short stories and screenplays over the course of a 22-year career that took him from a childhood in Berkeley and the Pacific Northwest to the corridors of power and ego in Hollywood. A close observer of human frailty, his writing depicted marginal characters like pool sharks, prisoners and drug dealers, as well as movie moguls and struggling actors. Although lauded by critics and fellow writers alike, Carpenter's novels and stories never reached a mass audience and he supported himself with extensive work for Hollywood. Facing a mounting series of debilitating illnesses, Don Carpenter committed suicide in 1995.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”He was legally a fugitive from the orphanage, and in that sense he was ‘wanted’. He did not feel ‘wanted’---he felt very unwanted. He had desires, and nobody was going to drop out of the sky to satisfy them. He tried to milk a little self-pity out of this thought, but it did not work: he had to recognize that he preferred his singularity, his freedom. All right. He knew what he wanted. He wanted money. He wanted a piece of ass. He wanted a big dinner, with all the trimmings. He wanted a bottle of whiskey. He wanted a car, in which he could drive a hundred miles an hour. He wanted some new clothes and thirty-dollar shoes. He wanted a .45 automatic. He wanted a record player in the big hotel room he wanted, so he could lie in bed with the whiskey and the piece of ass and listen to….That was what he wanted. So it was up to him to get those things.”

Those are not big dreams, right? I mean a guy should expect to have a slutty girlfriend, a gun (it is America after all; there are more guns than people), decent clothes, good music, a fast car, a big meal once in awhile, and be able to spin the cap off a fresh bottle of whiskey when he needs to forget how shitty his life is, even when he is walking around in his thirty dollar shoes. For Jack Levitt, who has never had anything, those dreams are so big they seem like millionaire dreams.

His parents came to violent ends at very young ages. Jack was not cute; in fact, even when he was little, he was kind of tough looking. It is hard to find adoptive parents when you look like a future felon at eight. He is in the system so long he becomes part of the system.

Jack meets a pool shark by the name of Billy Lancing, and though they only intersect for a few hours, before Jack is hauled back to juvie, that meeting will prove fateful. They don’t meet again for decades. Jack might be white, and Billy might be black, but there is no color barrier for poverty, desperation, and the feeling that there has to be more than this. ”But I don’t want to be a negro; I don’t want to be a white man; I don’t want to be a married man; I don’t want to be a businessman; I don’t want to be lonely. Life seemed to be a figure eight. It terrified him, sitting on the bus, as if time had opened black jaws and swallowed him.”

Jack has a similar epiphany about his life. He meets up with an old friend, Denny. ”Lived in half a hundred arid furnished rooms, pretended the vacuum was freedom, wakened almost daily to the fear that time was a dry wind brushing away his youth and his strength, and slept through as many nightmares as there were nights to dream. He just sat and smiled at Denny and saw what time had done to him and wondered, now comfortably, why he was so bothered by time. It happens to everybody this way, he thought, we sit here and get older and die and nothing happens.”

Anybody who has ever been to a high school reunion knows about the ravages of time. I’ve never been to one, but someone always sends me pictures from the latest reunion as enticements, I’m sure, to come to the next one. I’m getting old enough now where people have warped, melted, and expanded to such an extent that they are becoming unrecognizable. Little Tommy has become BIG Tommy, and there is barely a glimmer left of the beauty that made the prom queen the lead actress in a series of pornographic dreams.

I find myself having to agree with Jack and Billy...this is it? This is where we strive to arrive? I’ve had a much better start, middle, and hopefully, finish to my life than what Jack and Billy experienced. Regardless, life is a heartless, cold blooded witch, and no one gets through life unscathed. The scale is constantly tilting back and forth between bitter experiences and sweet experiences. I try to focus on the good memories and blur the bad memories, but the older we get, the battle scars start to show.

We become unrecognizable at high school reunions.

Billy and Jack end up incarcerated in the same prison and, in fact, the same cell. They have both failed at almost everything in life. Jack spent some time boxing but discovered he is too thin skinned and bleeds too easily, but he can take care of himself physically. Billy made it briefly into the middle class, but he felt trapped by the responsibility that proved too heavy, and all he could think about was running away from... the weight. He is smaller and gets the wrong kind of attention in prison. (Never die protecting a virgin asshole.) They forge an alliance that becomes built on more than friendship.

This book is hardboiled with a capital H. Once institutionalized, it is hard for people to ever not be institutionalized. They don’t teach you how to survive outside the system. Is it any wonder that too many orphans of the state end up being wards of the state in prison or halfway houses? They have no blueprint to achieve their dreams. They struggle, and when they fail, there is always some judge willing to put them back into the system. They understand life inside. They don’t understand the real world. After all, isn’t it just as hopeless with more responsibility on the outside? Well written, clipped, hard prose with philosophical musings that will have you nodding your head as you realize that the difference between us and Jack and Billy is the fickleness of fate.

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[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The trouble was, [power] was intangible. It was not in the hands of anyone. While Jack had been there, most of the boys had blamed the man who was in charge of the orphanage as the center of power; they had believed that all that happened to them and all that did not happen to them originated with this one tall, heavy white-haired man. But then one day, during the middle of Jack’s wing’s play period, they saw the man walking across the yard, his hands behind his back, his head tilted forward…saw him suddenly stop and look straight up in the sky and give a grunt and fall backward, saw him fall with a thump onto the frozen ground…and learned the next day that what they had seen was the death of this man, taken by a heart attack and dead before they got him indoors and got his clothes off. And that night all the boys in Jack’s wing nourished a secret joy at the man’s death and many of them thought in their hearts that they would be set free now that the center of power was gone…But they learned. Very quickly there was another administrative head to the orphanage and he was different in appearance only. So it was an intangible; not a man, a set of rules…”
- Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling

Writing is a tough and unfair business. Hard work will only take you so far. Innate skill will only take you so far. You need just the right alchemy. You need a bit of luck. For every book that becomes a bestseller, there are countless others that go unread.

Don Carpenter was one of those authors who had all the ability, but got none of the breaks.

When Carpenter published Hard Rain Falling – his first of ten novels – in 1966, it was apparently well-received, but never found a mass audience. He ended up going to Hollywood when his books stopped selling. At one point, most were out of print. But then, in 2009, that great literary resuscitator known as the New York Review of Books republished Hard Rain Falling, reintroducing Carpenter to readers who might never have heard his name.

Unfortunately, by then, Carpenter had been dead for some fourteen years. Broke, living in a small apartment, distraught over the death of a friend, he took his own life in 1995.

***

Perhaps the reason Hard Rain Falling initially failed to launch is that it’s so hard to classify. Because it features criminals, it has been called a crime novel. Because some of its most harrowing scenes are set behind bars, it has been called a prison novel. It is both of these things, to be sure, but also a whole lot more. Not just crimes and prisons but disaffection, loneliness, powerlessness, impersonal systems, sexuality, marriage, parenthood, friendship, and love.

Genre-spanning titles are a tougher-sell in the world of publishing than those with high concepts that can be reduced to a two-sentence tagline. Hard Rain Falling is elusive, difficult to pin, tricky to explain without giving the whole thing away. This opacity makes it challenging to convince potential readers to give it a shot.

***

Plotwise, Hard Rain Falling is a diminutive epic that starts with a 1929 prologue and concludes with a 1963 epilogue, all those decades covered in just 308 pages. Told in the third-person, the main character is Jack Levitt, abandoned by his parents, consigned to an orphanage, and ultimately ending up on the streets of Portland, Oregon, where he hangs out at pool halls and dreams of all the things he’d buy if he had money.

While Jack holds center stage, we are also introduced to Billy Lancing, who plays an important supporting role. Billy is a young black pool prodigy, navigating northern racism while carefully adding to his bankroll. Over the course of the novel, Billy weaves in and out of Jack’s life, and their relationship takes on surprising dimensions.

***

Carpenter’s style is sharp and unflinching. Hard Rain Falling is filled with scenes of incredibly graphic violence, only somewhat-less graphic sex, and relentless cursing. One is tempted to fall back on cliches, to call the writing hard-boiled. And there are times when the sentences fit that definition, landing like hammer blows, creating a bit of emotional distance.

With that said, Carpenter goes to some profound places, and those moments are more resonant because they are delivered with an unsentimental matter-of-factness, rather than with lachrymose prose.

***

Hard Rain Falling nicely finds the balance between a critique of faceless institutions, and the people who inhabit them. Carpenter’s portrayal of the justice system is scathing, but he doesn’t simplify things by making Jack an innocent. At one point, Jack breaks into a “rich” person’s house, and pretty much lays it to waste, while Carpenter dryly notes that the owner wasn’t really rich, just a guy who opened a shoe store. In another scene, Jack is roughly transported from county jail to San Quentin prison, and finds himself thinking about the guard, not as an implacable enemy, but as a man:

A puffy, tired face. Even in his summer uniform the guard looked hot and tired. There were some patches of sweat under his arms. Jack saw that his fingers on the riot gun were pressed white; so the man was tense. He had probably been tense all morning. In fact, Jack thought, the man was probably tense all the time he was at work. Probably every time he came to work a piece of whatever held him together disintegrated, vanished, and he would go home that much less than he had been. He would go home from work at night, the tension still stiff in his muscles, and have a drink of beer. Chino was hot; maybe the guard had a little patio out back of his house, where he had a canvas chair. He would take his can of beer out there…and begin to drink, waiting. Maybe his wife would be out under the late sun, gardening. He would speak to her. She would straighten up, turn, smile. The glare would make it hard for him to see her smile, but he would know, and a little of it would slip away…

The descriptions here are just marvelous. Portland is a refreshing setting – not every book has to occur in New York City or Los Angeles – and is painstakingly detailed. The pool halls, bars, and seedy hotels are given a tactility, and Carpenter’s ability to narrate a game of eight-ball or one-pocket or snooker is simply exceptional. More harrowing are his evocations of incarceration, which have the ring of truth about them.

***

Hard Rain Falling is more a study of human behavior than anything else. The crimes (which are garden variety) and the punishments (which are harsh) are tangential to the inner journeys of our protagonists, Jack and Billy. Both are often thorny, erratic, and hard to entirely like. Jack, in particular, is a careening vessel of rage and impulse and ego, all of it masking his vulnerabilities. Yet Jack also shows flashes of a potential redemption, even if he would not label it as such. Carpenter’s generous empathy allows you to root for his creations, even if you wouldn’t necessarily want to meet them.

***

This is not a perfect book. There are moments when it got a little preachy, the themes delivered in pedantic monologues. I also thought that the endgame strayed too far off course, so that Carpenter’s classic ends with a fizzle instead of a bang. The best parts, however, are so good that the flat parts barely register. For a book that was almost forgotten, Hard Rain Falling is filled with scenes that are impossible to forget.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIVELAZIONE



He was still trying to absorb the sights and sounds of the prison; it was his new home, and he expected it to be, almost wanted it to be, his home for the rest of his life. Because to think any other way was to hope, and he hoped he had given up hope.

La prima volta che ho sentito parlare di Don Carpenter è stato un paio di settimane fa leggendo un’intervista a George Pelecanos, che raccontava di averlo scoperto decenni dopo la prima pubblicazione grazie a una segnalazione di Chris Offutt.
Qualcosa mi si è acceso immediatamente: se Offutt consiglia a Pelecanos, e sono entrambi scrittori che apprezzo e leggo volentieri, mi sa tanto che ‘sto Don Carpenter fa per me.


Copertina dell’edizione della New York Review of Books del 2009.

Hard Rain Falling è uscito nel 1966.
Mai tradotto in italiano. Anche a casa sua, negli US, è stato fuori catalogo e fuori dalle librerie per decenni. Fino al 2009, anno in cui è tornato disponibile in una nuova edizione arricchita da una prefazione per l’appunto di George Pelacanos. Questa:
https://therumpus.net/2009/11/an-impo...

Don Carpenter debuttò con questo romanzo.
Poi ne pubblicò circa un’altra decina, un po’ di racconti, qualche sceneggiatura a Hollywood: lasciò l’ultimo romanzo incompiuto perché si suicidò (nel 1995).
In Italia è stato tradotto solo il romanzo incompiuto, I venerdì da Enrico’s, che tale non è più, nel senso che Jonatham Lethem ha scelto di concluderlo e curarne la redazione (e magari senza la sponsorizzazione di Lethem non sarebbe arrivato neppure questo) più, sull’onda di quello, è uscito anche Turnaround – La sceneggiatura.


The Rock, alias Alcatraz, carcere di massima sicurezza attivo dal 1934 al 1963, adattato da un fortezza militare della Guerra Civile, isolotto nella baia mezzo miglio al largo di San Francisco.

Carpenter era molto amico di Brautigan, e secondo me si assomigliavano fisicamente: me li immagino un po’ hippie, a parlare di letteratura e massimi sistemi, bevendo caffè senza disdegnare una birra, come nella foto che segue.
Abitavano vicini, a nord di San Francisco, Brautigan sull’oceano, Carpenter tra le sequoie.
Brautigan si suicidò nel 1984.
Carpenter accusò il colpo: e negli anni, il sommarsi di malattie e patologie (tra le altre: tubercolosi, diabete, glaucoma) lo hanno forse, o probabilmente, spinto a ripetere quel gesto.



Dopo questa lunga introduzione voglio dire che Hard Rain Falling è una bomba: magnifico, splendido, una rivelazione.
Non è una crime story, anche se credo venga catalogata come tale, anche se parla di gente che commette crimini, ma non è gente con una carriera criminale, sono crimini per la sopravvivenza.
È una storia dura, forte, profonda, devastante: l’ultimo capitolo mi ha fatto provare fremiti e sentori di Gatsby, che per me se non è il massimo, ci va molto vicino.

Ma l’approccio letterario di Carpenter è lontanissimo da quello di FSF: Carpenter adotta una lingua semplice, piana, accessibile, il suo lettore ideale non ha bisogno di titoli universitari o accademia.
Solo che nella sua semplicità, nel suo essere quasi disadorno, è di rara profondità, tocca corde che è difficile raggiungere: riesce a far vedere, e non basta, porta il lettore a toccare, come se le sue parole scolpissero personaggi scene e situazioni.



C’è tanto in queste magnifiche pagine che m’è rimasto dentro: il protagonista Jack, al quale sono riferite le citazioni, sia quella in alto che quella che segue; Billy, nero ma non tanto, però quanto basta per essere definito nigger o nigga; la storia tra loro in carcere; tutto quello che riguarda la vita in prigione, l’orfanotrofio e il riformatorio; le partite a biliardo, e tutto il mondo che ruota intorno al tavolo ricoperto dal feltro verde; le descrizioni di San Francisco più di mezzo secolo fa, che riconosco benissimo…
L’entrata in scena di Sally, il suo personaggio, così diverso e distante da Jack: la si vorrebbe detestare, e invece ci si innamora anche di lei, ci si sente prossimi a lei, come a Jack, a Billy, a Danny, a Myron Bronson…



Ma sopra tutti e tutto a me è penetrata dentro l’ineluttabilità del confronto del singolo uomo rispetto al meccanismo… Jack che cerca una libertà dalla società degli uomini, ma senza perdere l’umanità… la solitudine connaturata all’essere vivi…

The enemy here was even more intangible than in reform school or the orphanage, and his fear that he would become accustomed to the life and even learn to ‘like’ it was outweighed by the need to survive each day. For this it was necessary for him to become a ‘con’, to join the club; at least on the surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zwBH...
La versione che preferisco, di un artista che amo molto.

[D. Pow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is the best novel I’ve read this year. Originally published in 1966, and long out of print, it has been brought back to readers in a handsome trade paperback edition by the New York Review Books Classics imprint, with a thoughtful introduction by current crime writing doyen George Pelecanos.

The book is epic in scope, covering over three decades of eventful action, from late 1920’s subsistence horse ranches to the San Francisco of the early ‘60’s, on the cusp of the sexual revolution, but still in thrall to more repressive mores. The book is mainly set in the Pacific Northwest and in Frisco. Its main protagonist is Jack Levitt- who when we first meet him, is a hard-bitten reform school thug with no talent other than fighting and a capacity to endure physical pain. Levitt’s parents are the subject of a heartbreaking opening chapter where they meet, mate and part, in a collision as ultimately as destructive for its principals as two asteroids colliding in the silent abyss of space, one that leaves you little hope for little Jack’s life trajectory.
The book follows Jack through low-end working class postwar America, the pool halls of Portland and flop houses of Frisco, thorough tortuous episodes in reform school and an arc of ascending criminal activity until Levitt finds himself in San Quentin doing hard time.

Jack’s life intertwines with Billy Lancing, whom we first meet as a young, talented pool hustler in Portland when both Jack and Billy are teenagers. Billy is black and a runaway. One of the unique strengths of Hard Rain Falling, especially in comparison to its ostensible genre and other major novels published in the same era, is the clear eye and lucid prose it casts on race in America, post WWII. Carpenter poignantly captures Billy’s hurt core of being, when he recognizes his skin color makes him outcast among outcasts. There is none of the hipster jive Mailer tossed out at blacks, nor the muddled glorification some of the beats viewed blacks with.

Sexuality too is displayed in a mature, thought-provoking manner. Levitt begins his life in an orphanage because of an `itch’ his parents couldn’t help but scratch. And that same itch hounds Jack and befuddles him throughout the book, makes him feel one moment gloriously alive, one moment less than human. Carpenter’s compassion and empathy in this arena of life extends to homosexual love when it is encountered in San Quentin. It is neither viewed with contempt like latter-day tough guy scribes like Tarentino or Guillermo Arriaga nor fetishized into absurdity as in Genet. It merely is.

When Jack and Billy meet again in San Quentin, after equally heartbreaking paths, Jack further into crime and violence, Billy with an aborted attempt to maintain a family, the relationship takes on a searing intimacy and naked vulnerability that is found nowhere else in the book and that is unlike anything else I’ve read in 1960’s American Literature.

If Hard Rain Falling was merely a prison/coming of age novel it would be a wonderful success-it is a model of clarity, brevity and precise observation. But what sets it apart is the wonderful interior ramblings of Jack Levitt as he tries to make sense of the brutally senseless world he lives in, of his own rabid dog impulses, the nature of power and powerlessness, and the labyrinth and often self-lacerating ways of the human heart.It is not merely about prisons made of concrete and steel, but of the prisons of failed relationships, the odious lock-ups of diminished and dying expectations, the unforgiving solitary confinement of our own screaming skulls. NYRB on the back cover has dared to compare the novel to Dostoevsky. I don’t think it’s hyperbole. Levitt’s journey from violent thug, through the bowels of the prison system and out the other side with something like wisdom and grace touching him, easily echoes Raskolnikov or the narrator of Memoirs from the House of The Dead in its capacity to evoke redemption in the face of brutality.

Hard Rain Falling is a great American novel that NYRB deserves lasting credit for pulling from the bonfire of oblivion, even if for a short time. Carpenter deserves to be read into posterity for his technique and for his genuinely wise and empathic take on the marginals of this society, the society that marginalizes them thoughtlessly, and the tenderness, sacrifice and love that can blossom in the most heartless places imaginable.

[brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

eighth grade i had an economics teacher called dr. cole.
first day of class he gave us a list of qualities we'd potentially possess as adults & asked us to rank them 1 - 20 in order of importance.
some of the stuff on the list:

rich
healthy
happy
married
employed
famous
intelligent
powerful

cole watched as we scored the rankings and held them up to be collected. he didn't want them. rather, he stood up front and asked how many people put 'happy' as number one. a bunch of us raised our hands. he looked out at the class and said 'anyone who didn't raise their hand is an idiot'. and that was that. he handed out the syllabus and went into all the class requirement bullshit. most of the kids thought he was a typical teacher asshole but all that 'happy' and 'idiot' palaver stuck with some of us.

i love love love lerve luff looooooove hard rain falling. let's make it the next goodreads cause célèbre, yeah? let's resist the temptation to be mannered and reasonable and not shout our heads off so as not to feel like an asshole later, ok? let's just belt it all out and have a few extra slugs and get all giddy and excited and dance around a little and get behind this one. it's a ten-ton truck of existential dread. and we love it.

donald wrote a review i can't top, won't even try, lays out all that is great about this book:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

carpenter should've been a bestseller and acknowledged great-writer-of-our-time. instead he fell between the cracks and his book came back into print sixteen years after he blew his brains out.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don Carpenter (1931–1995) - American author who grew up in Berkeley, California and lived most of his life in the Pacific Northwest. Hard Rain Falliing was his first novel, published in 1966.

Hard Rain Falling - A clear, honest story of Jack Levitt, a young man abused and brutalized in his years growing up in an orphanage and, after running away to Portland, Oregon at age sixteen, living his hardscrabble life among his buddies and cheap whores, in and out of sleazy pool halls, dilapidated boarding houses and hotels, reform school and prison, lots of prison, all the while drinking whiskey and fist fighting his way through seething anger and rage.

Author Don Carpenter’s prose is so sharp and vibrant, I had the feeling of standing next to Jack every step of the way. I also got to know, up close and personal, a few other men and women in Jack’s life, like Billy, a teenage pool shark with yellow skin and kinky reddish-brown hair, young tough Denny who loves any kind of dangerous, illegal action and, last but hardly least, wild woman Sally. This is such a powerful novel, other than my own brief comments, I’ll stand aside and let the author’s words speak for themselves.

Although he had clear blue eyes and curly blonde hair, even at age seven Jack looked like a seasoned boxer. Here’s Jack on his experience at the orphanage – and no wonder he ran away as soon as he could:

“Because the children of the orphanage were taught, all week long every week of their lives, that the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, was purely a question of feeling: if it felt good, it was bad, if it felt bad, it was good. . . . And work, they were taught that work was good, especially hard work, and the harder the work the better it was, their bodies screaming to them that this was a lie, it was all a terrible, God-originated, filthy lie, a monstrous attempt to keep them from screaming out their rage and anguish and murdering the authorities.”

One night a reform school guard lines the boys up and accuses them of unnatural sex practices, then grabs one of the frightened kids around the neck. Jack lashes out at this injustice, fists first, nearly killing the guard, an action that lands him in a dark, isolated cell for over four months. And that’s dark as in completely black; no light for 126 days:

“The punishment cell was about seven feet long, four feet wide, and six feet high. The floor and walls were concrete, and there were no windows. In the iron door near the bottom was a slot through which he passed his slop can, and through which his food and water were delivered to him. They did not feed him every day, and because of that he had no way of knowing how much time had passed. . . . At times, all his senses deserted him, and he could not feel the coldness of the concrete or smell his excrement, and the small sounds he made and the sounds that filtered in through the door gradually dimmed, and he was left along inside his mind, without a past to envision, since his inner vision was gone, too, and without a future to dream, because there was nothing but this emptiness and himself.”

When Jack is in his early 20s, after stealing a car and breaking into a house of rich people away on vacation and being caught drunk in bed, he is sent to a county jail:

“The boredom of it all, the sameness, the constant noise and smell of the tank, were driving him crazy. The fact that he was in was driving him crazy. . . . They had no right to do this to me, or to anybody else. He hated them all. But was crazy to hate them. So he decided he was going crazy. It was a relief for him to go berserk at last: it was an act of pure rationality that had nothing to do with McHenry or the poor fool Mac was taking over the bumps. It was an expression of sanity, a howl of rage at a world that put men in county jails. Everything finally got to be too much and he let go of his passion.”

Jack in San Quentin prison, on his bunk, looking up at the stark white ceiling, reflecting on our constant itch for sexual pleasure and the reason he was born in the first place:

“It struck him with horrible force. His parents, whoever they were, had probably made love out of just such an itch. For fun, for this momentary satisfaction, they had conceived him, and because he was obviously inconvenient, dumped him in the orphanage, because he, the life they had created while they were being careless and thoughtless, was not part of the fun of it all; he was just a harmful side effect of the scratching of the itch; he was the snot in the handkerchief after the nose had been blown, just something disgusting to be gotten rid of in secret and forgotten. Cold rage filled him, rage at his unknown parents, rage at the life he had been given, and for such trivial, stupid reasons!"

There's a lot of scenes where Jack Levitt talks, drinks, smokes and takes action with Billy, Denny, Sally and others, even reaching a point in his life where he reads Joyce and Faulkner, but day and night, and that's ever day and every night, Jack has to deal with his rage. Again, as honest and as clear a novel as you will ever read.

Special thanks to Goodreads friend Jeffrey Keeten for writing his penetrating review of this American classic thus prompting me to read Hard Rain Falling and write my own review.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 2025 reread, my first Goodreads review.

"Look, all I'm good for is fighting"- Jack Levitt from "Hard Rain Falling".

I originally read this book in 2010.

I do not recall how I discovered it. All I know is that having read it, it was a gut-wrenching, emotional read. I was truly haunted by what Don Carpenter had achieved.

Now that over a decade has passed since having first read "Hard Rain Falling", I was startled to find myself emotionally drawn to this gorgeous, gritty novel of unrequited queer love between petty criminals: Jack Levitt and Billy Lancing.

Jack is cynical handsome, rough, impenetrable.

Billy Lancing, is also tough, a pool player who's a great shot, plucky and biracial.

According to George Pelecanos’ introduction, this novel is one of the greatest underrated products of 60s American fiction. I definitely agree.

Well crafted, and somber, their gorgeously executed tale begins when they meet as youths in Portland, Oregon only to reunite some years later as adults in the San Quentin penitentiary.

Before imprisoned, in San Francisco, Jack finds himself hanging out with the wrong crowd: Denny Mellon, and two underaged girls, Mona and Sue.

Jack is arrested after an attempt to a rob a bank goes awry, and tricked into confessing that he molested Mona. Though the sex between Mona and Sue is consensual, he should’ve known better. Billy is imprisoned for passing bad checks.

The point is both men are so numb from their bleak outlook on life that it seems that they don’t care about anything else but the next drink, or any way out of a feeling of constant boredom and loneliness.

Finding themselves in terrifying depths of despair, it’s one of the loneliest portraits I’ve ever read of rage, and being othered, "this was more important than reading all those books about the white world that were such lies even he could see through them" (Carpenter 39).

Their relationship and unlikely love story has been one of the most haunting, sad, and bittersweet relationships I have read in fiction in a very long time.

Billy's loneliness is moving and incredibly palpable through Carpenter's seamless and matter of fact prose, "he was alone, unwanted, un-searched for" (Carpenter 60).

As for Jack, it is identical in his desire to find something bigger in the world, someone to love him, though he won't admit it, "you move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change" (Carpenter 78).

When Billy tells Jack he loves him, "you and me, we're the connection. You live and I live, and we love each other. Do you know that?" (Carpenter 209), Jack acknowledges this, but is too afraid to admit it in an unforgiving society, "it was awful because he did love Billy, and so he could not speak" (Carpenter 210).

After this declaration of love happens, one of the most haunting moments I have ever read in literature happens, and it has stayed with me.

As Jack muddles on through life after prison- he marries the mercurial Sally, the ex wife of a Hollywood actor in San Francisco. Carpenter then weaves the setting from San Francisco to Las Vegas, and finally Paris and San Tropez where Jack wants to do the right thing: stay off liquor, hold down a job parking cars, and to be honest with his parole officer.

He is not the hedonist he once was. He's come of age, and his character and turnaround complete.

Haunted by Billy's love for him, he and Sally have a son that he names after his lost love, trying to keep his name and memory alive, "he was too busy trying to draw the world into himself" (Carpenter 154).

Carpenter coldly brings the reader back into harsh reality by clinically reminding the reader that love seems to be fleeting, "a penis squirts, and I am doomed to a life of death" (Carpenter 184).

Later when Sally marries her friend Bronson and is now raising little Billy Levitt, it is up to Bronson to try and bring father and son back together- if it were ever to happen.

Ultimately, Jack and Billy's love story has stayed with me. The clean, nonchalant prose is deceptively effective in capturing our attention and in drawing us in a world of bleak motels, poolhalls, and even San Francisco seems bleaker than usual.

The hardness of grey and rain falling pervades each page as if it were both life and blood struggling against the odds, trying to find a way for both these boys to find true happiness. Carpenter's book shows that you can only keep trying.

[Guille · Rating 2 out of 5]

No sé si achacarlo a que he leído la novela a trompicones, a ratitos perdidos, el caso es que junto a partes que me han gustado mucho, he encontrado otras, como la carcelaria, que me han aburrido, siendo la impresión final la de un relato un tanto deslavazado.

Me encantó este párrafo (aunque la reflexión esté muy por encima de las capacidades de su personaje):

“¿Cómo se despierta uno? Una cosa es saber que llevas toda la vida durmiendo, y otra muy distinta, despertar de ese sueño, descubrir que estabas bien vivo y que la culpa no era de nadie que no fueras tú mismo. Evidentemente, ahí estaba el problema. De acuerdo. Todo es una ensoñación. Nada funciona. Pasas de un sueño a otro y no hay ningún motivo para el cambio. Tus ojos ven y tus oídos oyen, pero nada de lo que ves y oyes tiene la menor lógica. Todo sería más fácil si creyeras en Dios. En ese caso, podrías despertarte y bostezar y estirarte y hacer muecas en un mundo construido basándose en la compasión y la muerte, el castigo del mal y la alegría del bien, y aunque el juego fuese una chaladura, por lo menos tendría unas reglas. Pero no se entendía nada. Nunca se había entendido nada. El problema, ahora que estaba dormido y no despierto, era que lo que veía y oía tampoco tenía el menor sentido. Un lío, se dijo. Sabes lo suficiente para saber que lo que sientes es absurdo, pero no tanto como para averiguar por qué.”

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanting is not the same as having; having is not the same as making.

You can love and love, never saying the word, never getting eye-to-eye with the core of your need and gift, and be no closer to the beloved than bodies can get. Only children can be utterly consuming love objects, though far too often they aren't. And lovers? Far too scary to love unguardedly, I think, but most don't even get near to the guardrails before swerving back to the middle of the road.

It's the carnage from their fear-driven lurches that takes out the innocent bystanders. That's what this story is: The record of Jack's fear-driven, rage-fueled lurchings back and forth as love ungiven, ungivable, rots him from within, taking an agonizingly slow time to finish its dreadful work.

A dark and terrible story about a life unlived, only sweated out.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay. You can go ahead and believe the hype. This thing is pretty great. Initially, based on a few hot steaming barely-legal facials this book has been given on this very website, I was all ready to step up on Hard Rain Falling, throw my hands up in the air, and say, 'What you got, bitch? I di'n't think so.' Or, alternately, serve up the ever-effective 'You ain't bad! You ain't nothin'! You ain't nothin'!' -- in which scenario Hard Rain Falling is played by Wesley Snipes, and my black combat jumpsuit is really, really zippery and buckly. In other words, I served this book a challenge, and it answered accordingly.

I usually don't have high hopes for novels about angry young toughguys because, c'mon, hasn't the angry young toughguy schtick been done to death? When you read another one of these authors going on about another drunken or drugged-out lout who's 'livin' the life' (that's my code-phrase for an authentic®, antibourgeois, antisocial, antiauthoritarian life), you are really tempted -- if you're me -- to fiddle with your hangnail, sigh fortissimo, and let fly something semi-snide like: 'Oh goodie. I'm glad the grossly underrepresented angry young white male demographic finally gets its say in the vagicentric world of 20th-century American literary.' But then, if you read (or don't read) on the basis of these prejudices, the terrorists have won. And you, more importantly, have lost.

Hard Rain Falling is about this kid named Jack Levitt who's really mean and despicable, mostly. Sometimes he just gets a craving to go out and beat the shit out of some random stranger, so he hopes a passerby looks at him funny or brushes up against him on the street so he'll have a reason to unleash the beast. It's really horrifying in a way because it reminds you that there really are Jack Levitts out there in the world, and the only thing that's really protecting you from them is the statistical probability that you probably won't run into one of them.

As a prologue, Carpenter includes a short chapter, set in the 1920s, about Jack's parents who -- if we wanted to be flippant and elitist (which, of course, we do) -- would be described in contemporary culture as paragons of Wal-Mart Culture. I almost think it would have been better if Carpenter would have left out this seedy little prelude because it seems to want to provide some justification or impetus for Jack's later delinquency. But since both his parents died young and Jack grew up in an orphanage, it either appears to suggest (intentionally or not) a biological basis for his badassness or to point at some kind of degenerative contagion infecting and spreading through society in general. At any rate, the prologue (six-and-a-half pages) is not nearly as unfortunate as the epilogue (three-and-a-half pages), which makes an awkward, unsatisfying leap from gritty toughmindedness to a gauzy, sun-dappled coda borrowed from Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night. I really, really despised the epilogue to this book, but because I loved the rest of it so much, I am willing to selectively forget that it ever existed, just as I refuse to believe that the Star Wars prequels were anything but the product of a fever-dream. They were never in fact made. I have to believe that. The religion of my youth depends upon it.

What is truly remarkable about Hard Rain Falling is that it feels refreshingly honest. So many midcentury contenders for 'the great American novel' seem so artificial and burnished to me. It's like when you watch one of those Merchant-Ivory adaptations of an E.M. Forster novel... Life was never really like that. I'm sorry. It just wasn't. This is reality refracted through Forster's concept of 'polite literature' and Merchant-Ivory's concept of 'tasteful filmmaking.' A double refraction, my friends. But yes, even in the rarified halls of Howards End, life was never quite so neat and tidy. How do I know this? I'm a human being, that's how. Ruth Wilcox farted. And Margaret Schlegel queefed. And when people 'only connected' sometimes it was just for a second-rate blowjob. (But -- to rephrase Woody Allen -- even a second-rate blowjob is a-okay in my book.) What I am saying is that there is a messiness in life that literature and art (necessarily) tidies up. We would be frustrated by a novel that was as pointless, random, unstructured, meandering, and unintelligible as real life.

But I think Hard Rain Falling contends with this messiness to a greater extent than do most novels of its era. You won't find anything approaching ethical simplicity in this novel, so if you crave high-contrast moralism, avoid this. Don Carpenter does something fairly noteworthy here. He creates a character (Jack Levitt) who is reasonably unlikeable in an abstract sense; if I listed off his traits, attitudes, and behaviors from most of the novel, you'd be left with a mental image of the bastard offspring of Courtney Love and Dick Cheney. In a word, unsympathetic. And yet... and yet... Carpenter does not trick you into condoning Jack's behavior by providing cheap rationalizations, but he nevertheless creates a real, complex character whom you, the reader, wants to see better himself, on many levels. Carpenter makes you care. And let me tell you... that's hard work! It's hard to make people care about (mostly) uncaring characters.

Carpenter's treatment of race and homosexuality is also worthy of mention here. We can not, with any degree of sincerity, deny that racism and homophobia were significant components of mainstream American culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Hell, we can't deny that they're still fucking things up in a major way even today... not just in America, of course, but everywhere; perhaps the categories of 'otherness' are different in other cultures, but they're almost always there. But when an average black man lives his life, I feel confident saying that racism is a 'mere' fact; now it may be a fact to be combatted or acquiesced to, but there are always other facts. An average black man's life isn't structured like a novel about racism (as an issue to be foregrounded), and Carpenter recognizes that. Ditto for homosexuality. These realities may be more significant and influential to the individual's life, but they never express the totality of experience. I think that many authors tend to fetishize social injustice. It might seem as though I am saying that they overstate it -- which is far from the case; I actually believe that by rendering it so extraordinary, they understate it. I mean, racism is depressing, yes, but racism standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the banal miseries of everyday life is almost unbearable. But this is real life, and I think Don Carpenter does an admirable job of approaching it in a way no author of his generation did.

[Garima · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a book starts with a line which is immediately reminiscent of Infinite Jest, then it’s alright to have some unrestrained expectations from it.

They can kill you, but they can’t eat you.

But with Hard Rain Falling I had to keep a lot many things in mind before letting my expectations go out of hand and to eventually give what I may immodestly pronounce as a fair reaction. The fact that this book was written in 1960’s was something I constantly reminded myself. It helped when I came across lines like: Nobody ever escaped from The Rock. Sean Connery? I digressed and I had to Focus. This went on for almost halfway through the novel because I was coming across one thing or the other I have either read or seen before. So what kept me going? Don Carpenter’s writing is one of the most honest narrative voices I have ever come across. There’s almost a childlike innocence in his account of some of the events that I even let out a corny awww on certain occasions.

This book is all Americana and a little more. It has orphanages, reform homes and Jack Levitt. It has pool-halls, runaway children and Billy Lancing. It has petty crimes, prisons, paroling and philosophy. And since it’s so huge in scope, the elements within are described in moderation. Nothing is over the top, nothing is under the bottom. Everything is there and that’s it. Except one or two instances, this novel failed to excite me as a reader. It takes a long straight road stretching over a period of three decades, hardly takes any interesting turns and the episodic stops at the road side joints a.k.a philosophizing usually serves the same old existential food. It’s like watching a documentary where the chronicles of a lonely person moves you in some inexplicable way but the same when written on a piece of paper doesn’t deliver the same kind of impact. But I better give this book its due where it deserves. The scenes dealing with homosexuality are handled beautifully and if nothing else this book can be read for that part only. The internal monologues are good, again thanks to the honesty of Don’s writing but at times most of the things read like the paraphrasing of the same ideas.

So what was his life? Look out there at all the ten million things life can be, and tell yourself which are yours, and which you will never do. And there was the agony of it; so much he wanted to do, and so little he could do.

The above sentence sums the whole book pretty well. Just replace few words with freedom, sex and money. Considering it was Don’s debut novel evoked some sensitivity in me but I’m afraid it doesn’t seem to have the power to leave an ever lasting impression.

3 Stars averaging out on I really liked it, I liked it and It was Ok because the rain must be falling hard but all I felt was a mild drizzle.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1966, Don Carpenter's hard-hitting existential tale of young hustlers follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. Both young men were destined for different paths after a heist goes tragically wrong. Jack gets sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle classes: married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, seeking redemption when they meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end. Richard Price and George Pelecanos both praised the novel as one of the most important American novels of the 60's generation. Although it had elements of a crime novel, there is far more to it than that. Often savage but never cynical, and infused with a tender intensity that is open and frank on both friendship and sexual passion, Carpenter's novel is a multi-layered and deeply meaningful piece of fiction. It is not, however, the masterpiece that some think it is. But still, it's very good.

[kohey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though it is hard to categorize this novel(it might not be necessary),I'd say it is more of a human tragedy than a noir or a crime.Prologue is superb and I’d go so far as to say that this part strongly influences the entire story and the way of life the protagonist tries to lead or avoid.
The story line is simple yet somewhat destined so that readers can leisurely stop to consider why the charcters think and act in the way they do in certain situations and relationships.It seems like they try to get out of a life of spider web in which they go elsewhere at some points,but always end up where they started.Fate plays a nasty part there.The ending is not so clear as I expected,but me being a reader who favors strong characters and good passages rather than plots,it is for me a great read.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

He had not fought the evil side of society; he was not even sure what it was. He had merely fought. It left him with an awful sense of frustration, because in his case society, too, had been fighting blindly and helplessly.

Jack Levitt is a rebel without a cause, unless freedom can be considered to be a cause. Jack grew up in an orphanage, unaware of his roots, although the author shows us in the prologue of Jack’s story that he inherited his existential angst from his parents – two runaway teenagers from the Depression Era, both counter-culture icons of the wild streak that refuses to settle down in the roles prepared for them by their peers.
Don Carpenter’s debut novel is usually shelved among crime stories, but for me it is closer to the French interpretation of ‘noir’ as exploration of existential questions through the eyes of people rejected by society

Maybe what he wanted was freedom. Maybe he looked around and saw that everybody was imprisoned by Oakland, by their own small neighborhoods; everybody was breathing the same air, inheriting the same seats in schools, taking the same stale jobs as their fathers and living in the same shabby stucco homes. Maybe it all looked to him like a prison or a trap, the way everybody expected him to do certain things because they had always been done a certain way, and they expected him to be good at doing these strange, meaningless, lonely things, and maybe he was afraid – of the buildings, the smoke, the stink of the bay, the gray look everybody had.

Like his unknown father, Jack rejects the narrow path of conformism and runs away from the orphanage to the street life of Portland among pool sharks, petty criminals, bawdy houses, betting shops and wild saloons. His path intersects with that of Billy Lancing, a black teenager who is already a wizard of the pool cue. Billy, unlike the other street thugs, hopes his talent will help him escape from the slums and from racial profiling. [ His hopes were vague and even childish, but they were at least hopes, and their vagueness was a blessing; for many of the others, the future was all too clear.]
After a wild party in a house they broke in uninvited, Jack’s street buddies leave him for the police to catch and send to a juvenile detention center, where Jack’s temper and his rebellious streak land him in solitary confinement.
Back on the streets, Jack Levitt tries to stay out of trouble and tries a variety of jobs without much success or higher purpose. After a promising boxing career is cut short in a fit of anger, Jack drifts back to the criminal underworld, where he meets one of his old buddies from the Portland days.

“Hey, no kidding? A fighter?
Jack nodded and drank some of his beer. He did not add that he had also bucked logs, worked in a cannery and a furniture factory, robbed gas stations, rolled drunks, and lived in half a hundred arid furnished rooms, pretended the vacuum was freedom, wakened almost daily to the fear that time was a dry wind brushing away his youth and his strength, and slept through as many nightmares as there were nights to dream.

He is too young to be this bitter about life, but then life has not treated Jack kindly and his so-called friend Benny is setting him up for a fall again, as he introduces Jack to a couple of underage prostitutes that land him again in deep trouble with the police and eventually send him to prison.

... it all seemed so endlessly dull; an infinite series of holdups, parties, girls, bad dinners, and worse hotel rooms – he could not see any difference between this and working for a living, and with working there was not that nagging anxiety about being braced by the police.

Prison life, with its unwritten rules about dominance and aggression, its open conflict with authority figures, exacerbates Jack’s frustration with life. His salvation comes from his cellmate, the same Billy Lancing he met years earlier in the pool halls.
Billy the dreamer offers Jack the escape through dreams, the possibility to imagine a different future that he can work towards. Billy also tells of his own journey that ended somehow in the same cell as Jack: his talent for pool serving as both his escape from poverty and his doom, as his addiction to gambling makes Billy abandon his family and a small business as a pool hall manager to ger back on the road among the lowlifes who betray him to the police

... one night I get real scared and can’t sleep and can’t think an lay there in my bed feelin the horrors come down and sit on my chest an I’m thinkin about all that shit, you know, there ain’t no God and the world is the worse fuckin place there is an we’re all out to eat each other up and everything goes, an I’m just a speck in a universe full of specks an one of these days there’s gonna be one less speck an nobody will know;

Billy’s existential nightmares and restlessness are not much different from Jack’s, with the added stress of growing up as a coloured person in a mostly white neighborhood. But Billy has something that Jack is still struggling to find: a sense of purpose, a direction he can set his sights on that will help him break out of his self-destructive path. For Billy, it is his college education and his love for his wife and children that provided the path to freedom, but also served him with new anxieties about the future and new anger at the cards he was dealt to play with.

“His children were beautiful; how could anybody be so cruel? They were so affectionate and full of joy, so eager and innocent; why did somebody have to come along and with one stiff, ugly word, cut the innocence out of them? From the moment they understood that word they would proceed through life half-murdered of their ability to love; the moment their eyes became wary they would cease to be children ...”

Don Carpenter, with his keen description of counter-culture and street life, with his existential despair and condemnation of bigotry and racism, reminds me strongly of James Herlihy whose 'Midnight Cowboy' novel was published only one year earlier than this present story, prompting me to compare East Coast and West Coast urban and moral landscapes in the 1960’s.
Another parallel can be drawn to the same sex subtext present in both books. In the case of Billy and Jack the question is not one of nature versus nurture but one of true friendship and opportunity, with both men clearly interested in heterosexual marriage and in children, yet brought together by circumstance and spiritual affinity.
One particular passage caught my attention, one where Jack Levitt’s bitterness explodes in a rant against the outdated social norms that requires marriage to a girl as the only solution to a man’s natural sexual urges, with the hilarious yet pertinent observation that love is like a skin disease. The rant should be quoted in full , but I only have space here for the opening salvo:

What a joke! Imagine a man horribly afflicted with psoriasis, great itching scabs covering his entire body, who got it into his head that no one but a certain girl’s fingers could relieve him;

Ultimately, Jack realizes that he must adapt to society, both in prison and outside, or be destroyed. Billy’s history, resilience and imagination can provide him with a path forward for his own life.

Everythin is connected. You know, it’s your turn to shoot. It starts then. You come up to the table, sightin the shot, lookin over the layout, and you can already feel how all the balls, just sitting there on the table, are connected, an you’re connected to them, an your cue is part of your arm, and you chalk up and feel the connection there, and it gets good, man, and I mean good, cause you’re buildin up all that good stuff, you know you can make any shot in the world and the shot is there –

The perfect convict, the man who lived entirely by the rules set down for him, was not a man but a vegetable. And the constant troublemaker, no matter how sick he was inside, was actually doing just what the State expected of him, therefore justifying the existence of the prison. So it was a matter of delicate balance between defiance and obedience.

The prison system in the US is designed more for punishment than for redemption or reintegration of rejects into society. Jack’s experiences there told him he must control his temper and he must help himself because nobody else would. At only 26 years of age when he is released from Chino, Jack Levitt is still young in years if not in bitterness. He tries to live according to the rule book of the regular people, gets a job, sees his parole officer, stays away from drinking places and pool halls, but he still gets knocked down by rich snobs.

“Look at all the goddam squares,”

One of these young people is Sally, a posh woman attracted by his dark history and by his rough temper. Eventually they get married and she helps Jack educate himself through books, music, art shows. Still, good jobs for ex-convicts are hard to find, and lack of money drives the marriage onto rocky shores, even after a son, Billy, is born.

Will the sins of the fathers be visited on the new generation? Or will Jack find a way to save Billy from the self-destructive path he was set on by his unknown father? Jack’s journey of self-discovery turns him into a sort of parking-valet philosopher, unable to save his marriage from a restless and luxury-obsessed wife, but capable of seeing his history in a larger social perspective that transcends anger and seeks for answers.
Such answers as Jack finds in the new books he reads. The author makes sure to mention James Jones and the excellent ‘From Here to Eternity’ , whose protagonist is a former boxer like Jack and whose unfocused rebellion against society mirrors his own. Nelson Algren is also mentioned among the seminal works that awakened Jack’s conscience.

“Don’t you think this is the answer to the whole goddam thing? I mean, society is just made up of people, and lots of them are rotten, so society’s partly rotten. So what we do is raise our kid to be good; and the more people who do that, the better the world gets.”

Philosophy is no cure for loneliness and despair and society is still the sledgehammer that crushes the dissidents and the wild spirits. Don Carpenter’s own biography is no bed of roses, the promise of this excellent debut not recognized by the larger public.
In my own pulp fiction Hall of Fame, this book deserves one of the top spots, and I might be interested to check out his later published Hollywood stories.
I have also added Nelson Algren as an author to pursue at a later date.

[Hanneke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fortunately, it is pretty rare to read such a seriously depressing and sad novel. Jack Levitt, orphan, raised in an orphanage, from which he is being sent to a reform school and from where he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. Jack never had anything, no personal possessions and, what is worse, nor any affection at all. The lack of affection has shaped him to the person he is. In his life, one depressing event is followed up by the next one and that never lets up. A quote that says it all: ‘Cold rage filled him, rage at his unknown parents, rage at the life he had been given, and for such trivial, stupid reasons! For one wild second of ejaculation! For that, he had been born.’ However, Jack is not in the habit to utter many lamentations.

The novel’s title is ‘Hard Rain Falling’, but it should have been ‘Icecold Hard Hail Stones Falling’. It is educational because you feel that you get a true peek into the lives of abandoned children raised in ice cold conditions. In sober yet clear and unsentimental language, it sets out very clearly what it means to have nobody who cares about you.

The author, Don Carpenter, committed suicide later in life. I am not surprised as you can feel the vibes already in between the lines in this novel. It is clear that I can only recommend this novel to those who do not mind feeling pretty depressed for a while.

[Φώτης Καραμπεσίνης · Rating 3 out of 5]

Η noir λογοτεχνία (ιδιαίτερα από Αμερικανούς, οι άλλοι ήρθαν μετά για να παρασιτίσουν) με ενδιαφέρει ιδιαίτερα, μολονότι στο συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο το αγαπημένο αυτό genre "νοθεύεται" από τις Beatnik επιρροές της εποχής.
Ούτε αυτό είναι εξ ορισμού κακό, αν και το συγκεκριμένο "λογοτεχνικό" ρεύμα παρήγαγε περισσότερα "βεγγαλικά" (επαναστατικές διακηρύξεις και άλλα τέτοια αδιάφορα και ασήμαντα - πάντα όσον αφορά την τέχνη) παρά έργο που διήρκεσε.

Ο Carpenter έγραψε ένα ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο που σε κρατά από την αρκτική έως την καταληκτική παράγραφο, με δυνατές εικόνες, έντονη δράση, βίαιο όπου χρειάζεται, αποφεύγοντας διδακτισμούς και λογίδρια.
Θα το βαθμολογούσα υψηλότερα αν δεν διέκρινα ανισορροπία στην ανάπτυξη, ιδίως από τη μέση και κάτω, αστάθεια στον βηματισμό, μάλλον ένδειξη συγγραφικής ανωριμότητας (κάποιοι ήρωες απλά φεύγουν από τη μέση σαν να μην ξέρει τι να τους κάνει στη συνέχεια).
Σίγουρα δεν είναι Thompson, Chandler, Macdonald κλπ., αλλά δεν έχει νόημα να τον κατηγορήσουμε γι' αυτό. Σε τελική ανάλυση η "Σκληρή βροχή" είναι ένα βιβλίο που δεν υποτιμά τον αναγνώστη του (τα περί Μεγάλου Αμερικανικού μυθιστορήματος δεν δέχομαι να τα σχολιάσω...)

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

It made him grind his teeth together to keep from shouting out his self-hatred, from beating himself against the concrete wall of his cell; the thought kept ballooning up in his mind that they had no right to treat him like an animal, no matter what he had done or not done. All night long, in his cell, with the muttering noises of the tank around him, he felt like murdering the universe.

Carpenter's book, originally published in 1964, presents a dark, sad portrait of a man who never gets what he wants, perhaps because he's not sure what it is he wants until it's too late. Highly recommended, though you'll probably want to read something upbeat upon finishing this.

The NYRB 2009 rerelease contains an introduction by George Pelicanos, which closes with this revealing quote by the author:

"I'm an atheist," said Carpenter, in a 1975 interview. "I don't see any moral superstructure to the universe at all. I consider my work optimistic, in that the people, during the period I'm writing about them, are experiencing intense emotion. It is my belief that this is all there is to it. There is nothing beyond this."

[To-The-Point Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straight fella does some gay stuff in prison.

But he's not gay.

Maybe a little bit gay.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve exhausted John Williams’ small body of work, this is for you. Christ. Fucking masterpiece of restraint, all told with the objectivity of reportage (classical, not modern). The timbre makes the MANY blows antiseptic, and all the better for it.

This is how real lives are led. Invisibly. Puffs of smoke that take human form briefly and dissolve. It’s why you see people appearing to hug themselves—it’s an optical illusion. You just can’t see their ghosts. Nor can I. Nor they ours. And by my age, I am choking on smoke.

[Dave Marsland · Rating 5 out of 5]

As for the true crime of his life, the crime of being born without parents, the crime of being physically strong and quick, the crime of not having a puritan conscience, the crime of existing in a society in which he and everybody else permitted crime without rising up un outrage: well, he was purely and perfectly guilty here, too, as was everybody else

Apart from being highly praised by Chris Offutt and George Pelecanos, being reprinted as a classic by the NYBR and having a stunning cover, what did I like about Hard Rain Falling? In short, pretty much everything. Easy to love but difficult to define, it’s been labelled as hard-boiled /crime, but that is misleading. It’s a book about the dispossessed.
Set in the West coast in the 50’s, Jack Levitt is raised in an orphanage and drifts and hustles his way through a life of petty crime, pool halls and dosshouses.
Jack nodded and drank some of his beer. He did not add that he had also bucked logs, worked in a cannery and a furniture factory, robbed gas stations, rolled drunks, and lived in half a hundred arid rooms, pretended the vacuum was freedom, wakened almost daily to the fear that time was a dry wind brushing away his youth and his strength, and slept through as many nightmares as there were nights to dream.

Intelligent and philosophical, it takes on some pithy tropes – race relations, crime, homosexuality, the penal system.
The idea of prison is punishment, any reforming done is strictly incidental. Society don’t give a fuck what happens to you, and you know it. Society is an animal, just like the rest of us

Jack’s attempts to be accepted invariably fail on every level. Written in cinematic prose, its unpretentious and unpredictable. I was in bits at the end, not because it’s a sentimental story, far from it, but because Jack’s destiny is truly devastating.

[Kiekiat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don Carpenter's HARD RAIN FALLING is one of the best first novels I've read in quite a while. It is by no means a perfect work but demonstrates a tremendous talent and has made me want to read more of his books. Before I continue, please be advised my review contains spoilers--so if you want to wait and experience the book without knowing any details, I suggest you stop while you can. If you're comfortable dealing with spoilers, or have read the book, read on at your peril.

Hard Rain Falling is the story of Jack Levitt, offspring of an outlaw cowboy and a mysterious girl in Eastern Oregon who gets pregnant by the cowboy after riding into town with him on his motorcycle and then goes to live with local Native Americans in 1930's Oregon and gives Jack to an orphanage shortly after his birth. Jack endures the usual hardships and loveless existence of an orphanage upbringing and grows to be a big, tough young man much as his father was. We first meet him in a Portland, Oregon pool hall where he is hanging with a fellow hoodlum named Denny Mellon and has run away from the orphanage and joined a loosely-connected gang of Portland misfits engaged in petty criminality, fighting and drinking. He meets a young black runaway from Seattle in the pool hall who will, in later times, have a significant impact on his life. The black youth, Billy Lancing, is a wannabe pool hustler and Carpenter clearly has knowledge of pool hall life and the various types of games played there, both literally and psychologically.

Jack's rough and tumble life on the streets of Portland is interrupted when he is apprehended at the unoccupied home of an acquaintance where he and other wild youth have lodged while the family who lives in the home is vacationing. A great party is thrown, the house left in shambles and Jack is awakened by the police to begin his life in a reform school. His bad temper and propensity to fight and resist authority wins him 126 days in solitary confinement to finish out his sentence. This horrific experience of being naked in a bare, dark room for so long has a lifelong impact on the young man. For despite his impulsivity and quick temper, he also has a deep, contemplative side which begins to emerge from his time in isolation.

Upon release, Jack drifts around working hard-labor jobs in Oregon and California and ends up in San Francisco where he trains as a boxer and seems to have talent and a promising career that, unfortunately, is sidelined by his tendency to cut easily. He continues his rather aimless life and hooks up with his old hoodlum friend Denny Mellon who has also come to San Francisco to pursue greater criminal opportunities. He tries to enlist Jack in these capers but Jack has memories of "the hole" and tries to live marginally within the law.

Jack continues to become more contemplative and often has stirring insights into the deep mysteries of life. He finds no answers, but he is at least asking the hard questions. His judgment is poor, though, and when Denny introduces him to a couple of young girls he quickly becomes involved with them and pairs off with one of the girls he doesn't even like very well. This turns out to be a disaster, as both girls are runaways from a county north of San Francisco and they are apprehended and returned home by the police and concoct a story that Jack kidnapped them. Carpenter's writing of this scenario is superb! He captures the absurdity of Jack's situation in a way that makes it extremely believable. The local prosecutor knows the girls are lying about the kidnapping but jack is also facing statutory rape charges in San Francisco that he is guilty of. The local DA offers him a deal where if he pleads guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, he will get maybe a year of county jail time. If he refuses to plead, he'll be sent back to San Francisco to be tried on the charges which he's actually guilty of and no doubt be sent to state prison.

Jack's luck continues to dwindle because when he is tried in court the judge refuses to go along with the easy county jail sentence and Jack ends up doing a 1-3 year stint in San Quentin, one of California's roughest prisons. In an ironic twist, his old pool hall acquaintance Billy Lancing is also in San Quentin. Lancing has married and had a couple children but has continued supporting his family by being a traveling pool shark. He ends up in prison during a rough time when he is caught passing phony payroll checks in a desperate attempt to make money for his family. Billy and Jack become cellmates because Billy is light-skinned with red hair and has convinced prison authorities he is white. He and Jack have a bond from the beginning and Jack's stay in the "Q" becomes a time of even greater contemplation of life's mysteries. Don Carpenter is a writer who is not afraid to plumb the depths of human souls and chronicles the wide range of Jack's thoughts and his growth as a person. This growth is not defined by human ambition to "get ahead," but by Jack's desire to understand things and sort out what is possible for him to understand and what is not.

Jack and Billy grow closer because Billy also likes to talk about life and his experiences and they end up becoming lovers and developing a relationship where Billy freely professes his love for Jack while Jack cannot come out and say how he feels, though it is clear that he feels the same way. It is made clear that though both men are, of course, getting their sexual needs met, the bond they share is a spiritual one. Carpenter handles this relationship deftly and writes in a way that makes the relationship seem entirely natural and sacred. It appears that San Quentin is filled with romance, along with the requisite violence and corrupt prison officials. As Jack nears his first parole hearing he has led an uneventful prison life, avoiding conflicts and working his job in the prison kitchen.

But, at least in Jack's world, all good things must come to an end and he somehow runs afoul of the prison's roughest character, a tough black man who has vowed to gang rape him within a week. Billy is aware of the situation and does what he can to protect Jack, which results in the death of two men--Jack is not one of them. He is surprised when the parole board grants his parole and he returns to San Francisco to a job in a bakery and the restricted life of the parolee. In one day Jack's life changes again and this section after his release from San Quentin probably contains the strongest and weakest parts of Carpenter's book. It is strong because Carpenter gives us a vivid look at Jack's inner life and thoughts. They are the inner lives of us all and they are filled with the sort of wretched stuff that all of us think but, thankfully, usually do not act upon. Jack also continues his education by reading many great writers and contemplating the vagaries of existence and the senselessness of it all.

This section is weak because Jack meets a woman while working at the bakery and gets fired for cursing a patron and ends up in bed with the woman and goes from there to Las Vegas where they hurriedly marry. The woman is rich when Jack meets her but informs him after the wedding that the marriage has caused her alimony checks to stop and she is now broke. She had been married to a famous actor who became rich working in Hollywood. Jack and his new wife set up a life and it soon becomes clear that the new wife is unstable to say the least and often disappears without notice. A child is born to the couple, filling Jack with all sorts of emotions and concerns, especially since his own neglected childhood at the orphanage. I felt this part of the book was one of the weaker sections because the character of Jack's wife is not well fleshed-out and the relationship seems to have much less feeling than his prison relationship with Billy. As with most events in Jack's woebegone life, the marriage finally falters after many rocky times and the wife takes their son, Billy, and leaves to divorce Jack in Reno and marry a rich man who was also at the bakery when Jack got fired and whom Jack likes and respects.

This is pretty much it for Jack's role in the book and he handles his sorrow stoically. The ex. and her millionaire husband move to France and live the lives of spoiled rich expats.

As many others have commented, it is criminal that a book this good went out of print and was largely forgotten till the New York Review of Books republished it. Its strengths are many and Carpenter's seemingly effortless prose is probably the book's most distinctive feature. He writes like a man who's written millions of words. He is a writer not afraid to discuss ideas and a writer with the courage to create a main character who is not an especially likable person and yet Carpenter makes us care about Jack in spite of Jack's rather stultified personality and existence.

The weak parts of the book are the linking points between Jack's release from reform school, his unlikely reunion with his old hoodlum friend and an even unlikelier reunion as the cellmate of pool hustler Billy Lancing. These incidents do not ring as "true" as some of the other events in the book and seem more like conveniences to drive the story rather than events likely to happen in Jack's life. Regardless, the story is gripping and this is a novel worth your time and effort.

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literatura norteamericana clásica, sobria, de una calidad que rápidamente asimilas a esos grandes escritores como Updike, Mailer o el mismo Capote, que además de escribir grandes obras llenas de calidad, también llegaban al gran público y en muchos casos no estaban regañados con las ventas, a veces hacían bestsellers (eso sí, superventas de enorme calidad): la prosa era buena, trabajada y bien pulida, y las historias eran también buenas y apartadas de complejas construcciones o artificios. Parece fácil, pero ni mucho menos creo que lo sea eso de compaginar ambas cosas. El resultado aquí magnífico.

También hay que hacer matices. No todo es tan simple como parece. Aquí toda la narración va trufada de una finísima capa filosófica en cuanto a las expectativas vitales del protagonista desde la infancia, lo absurdo de la vida, el engaño que siempre busca la religión, máxime en orfanatos, centros de adolescentes y correccionales donde se trata de imponer la presencia de Dios para dar una simplona solución a todas las carencias: ausencia de padres, ausencia de futuro, entorno, carencia de proyecto vital, etc, tratando de remediar la inevitable caída en la delincuencia, como digo de forma simplista.

“(…) has dejado todo eso una vez que has descubierto que es absurdo, que todo lo que creías de niño no eran más que excusas autocompasivas ¿con que las reemplazabas? Tenías una vida con la que no estabas satisfecho: ¿hacia qué dirección apuntabas? Toda esa idea de una buena vida era de lo más tonta. Porque no existían ni el bien ni el mal, ni lo bueno ni lo malo. A nada conducía la manera de hacer del orfanato, donde lo bueno equivalía a lo aburrido, lo doloroso y lo estúpido, y lo malo a lo alegre, lo delicioso y lo explosivo (…)”

Se perciben claros tintes existencialistas en la obra, da repelús pensar como terminó sus días Don Carpenter, mientras a un tiempo estás leyendo algunos pasajes de esta obra:

“Por un instante se apoderó de él una nausea difusa mientras su mente se acercaba indefensa a la idea del suicidio. Se preparaba para afrontarlo como si siempre hubiera sabido que eso era lo que le correspondía: voy a morir ¿Por qué no ahora? Tenía frío y estaba mareado. Vamos a ver ¿Por qué no? ¿Por qué tengo que seguir viviendo?”

Clarísimo ataque al sistema penitenciario americano, aunque no lo hace de forma amarillista, o como haría un mal escritor cargando las tintas frente a funcionarios corruptos, alcaides dictadores y policías vagos y dominantes. No. Critica el sistema discutiendo los medios, los métodos de reinserción, los poderes fácticos y la forma. No va frente a las personas que ejercen su oficio, en su mayoría de forma honrada.
Otro punto que me ha parecido muy muy bueno y que casi siempre encuentras en estos grandes escritores: la sensación de ruina. La sensación de que aun en los mejores momentos de los protagonistas, algo malo está por ocurrir; esas vidas piensas que van a acabar de forma dramática, que es complicado que esto acabe bien. No sé como explicarlo mejor, creo que esos personajes luchan contra un futuro que parecen tener asignado como desastroso teniendo en cuenta sus orígenes, juegan con unas cartas marcadas en su contra y resulta casi imposible salir del carril y de las circunstancias que les ha tocado en suerte.

[George K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Πριν κάτι χρόνια είχα φτιάξει λίστες με αμετάφραστα βιβλία που θα ήθελα πάρα, μα πάρα πολύ να διαβάσω κάποια στιγμή στα ελληνικά (αστυνομικά, τρόμου, επιστημονικής φαντασίας κλπ). Στη λίστα με τα αστυνομικά/νουάρ/μυστηρίου είχα και το βιβλίο του Ντον Κάρπεντερ, και μάλιστα πολύ ψηλά. Όμως δεν είχα και πολλές ελπίδες ότι θα έβλεπα το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο στα ελληνικά και είχα αποδεχθεί το γεγονός ότι ή θα έπρεπε να το διαβάσω στα αγγλικά, ή δεν θα το διάβαζα ποτέ. Έλα όμως που οι εκδόσεις Κλειδάριθμος έκαναν την έκπληξη και το έβγαλαν στα ελληνικά! Και, ειλικρινά, δεν μπορείτε να φανταστείτε πόσο ξετρελάθηκα όταν το έμαθα, αλλά και όταν το είδα στο βιβλιοπωλείο και το έπιασα για πρώτη φορά στα χέρια μου...

Λοιπόν, πριν το πιάσω στα χέρια μου κρατούσα πολύ μεγάλο καλάθι, τόσο λόγω του είδους της ιστορίας που είναι ακριβώς του γούστου μου, όσο και λόγω συγκεκριμένων πολύ εγκωμιαστικών κριτικών που διάβασα αριστερά και δεξιά. Γενικά, ήμουν σίγουρος ότι το βιβλίο θα με ξετρέλαινε. Ε, το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι οι προσδοκίες μου εκπληρώθηκαν στον απόλυτο βαθμό. Το βιβλίο πραγματικά με ενθουσίασε, το βρήκα ακριβώς όπως το περίμενα, και ακόμα παραπάνω! Ουσιαστικά πρόκειται για ένα κοινωνικό δράμα, για ένα ωμό και ρεαλιστικό χρονικό ανθρώπων του περιθωρίου, για μια σκληρή αποτύπωση της χαμοζωής, για ένα νουάρ με στοιχεία εγκλήματος που συγκινεί και προβληματίζει. Δεν είναι αστυνομικό, δεν είναι μυστηρίου.

Βασικός πρωταγωνιστής της ιστορίας είναι ο Τζακ Λέβιτ, ένας νέος που μεγάλωσε σε ορφανοτροφείο χωρίς να γνωρίσει ποτέ τους γονείς του, τον οποίο αρχικά γνωρίζουμε σαν έναν έφηβο χωρίς προοπτικές που περιφέρεται στα μπιλιαρδάδικα και τα μπαρ του Πόρτλαντ του Όρεγκον, μπλέκοντας σε ασήμαντες κομπίνες, και στη συνέχεια σαν νέο που μπλέκει σε διάφορες ιστορίες, που τον οδηγούν για λίγα χρόνια στη φυλακή. Ταυτόχρονα, γνωρίζουμε και έναν νεαρό μαύρο, τον Μπίλι, που κάνει παρόμοια ζωή, και που συνδέεται με μια ιδιαίτερη σχέση με τον Τζακ. Φυσικά, οι αναγνώστες γίνονται μάρτυρες διαφόρων χαρακτηριστικών σκηνών και στιγμών από τον κόσμο της νύχτας, του περιθωρίου, του μικροεγκλήματος, των αναμορφωτηρίων και των φυλακών, γνωρίζοντας κάθε είδους και φυράματος ανθρώπους, βλέποντας πώς μπορεί να χαραμιστεί μια ζωή.

Το βιβλίο είναι σκληρό, αλλά συνάμα τρυφερό, είναι ωμό και αφόρητα ρεαλιστικό, αλλά ταυτόχρονα ανθρώπινο και συγκινητικό. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που λέει κάποιες μεγάλες αλήθειες για τους ανθρώπους που ατύχησαν, ή που απέτυχαν, για ανθρώπους που ουσιαστικά δεν είχαν ποτέ την ευκαιρία να ζήσουν αξιοπρεπώς, όντας βέβαια υπεύθυνοι των πράξεων τους και οπωσδήποτε όχι άμοιροι ευθυνών. Η γραφή είναι εξαιρετική, οξυδερκής και κοφτερή, σε σημεία υποβλητική και συνολικά χειμαρρώδης και απίστευτα εθιστική, με φοβερές περιγραφές σκηνικών και καταστάσεων, καθώς επίσης και με σκληρούς και ρεαλιστικούς διαλόγους. Τέλος, η ατμόσφαιρα είναι εξαιρετική, κάπως μελαγχολική και μαύρη, με νουάρ αποχρώσεις. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που προτείνω με κλειστά μάτια.

Υ.Γ. Η έκδοση του Κλειδάριθμου θα έλεγα ότι είναι αψεγάδιαστη, με φοβερή μετάφραση (Κατερίνα Σχινά είναι αυτή!), προσεγμένη επιμέλεια και πολύ ωραίο εξώφυλλο.

[James Thane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was initially published in 1966, but was resurrected by George Pelecanos and published anew in 2009 by New York Review Books as part of its Classics series. In his introduction, Pelecanos suggests that it "might be the most unheralded important American novel of the 1960s."

I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but it is a very good book with brilliantly drawn characters. The main protagonist is Jack Levitt, an orphan whom we first meet on the streets of Portland, Oregon, in 1947. Jack is 17 at the time and has fallen in with a gang of rough boys who live by their wits on the margins of society.

The book follows Jack's life until 1960, and it's not a pretty picture. Jack is in and out of trouble and, as a consequence, is also in and out of jail through most of this time. Some of the prison scenes are harrowing but, for that matter, so are many of the scenes when Jack is out on the streets, technically a "free" man.

Early on, Jack meets Billy Lancing, a young black pool hustler from Seattle. Jack, who has no special skills or talents, envies Billy who has a great natural gift as a pool player. Initially, Jack targets Billy as a mark, but the two form a bond that will carry them as they cross paths through the years.

Jack and Billy both spend a great deal of time contemplating their own lives and the nature of life in general, and there are times when Carpenter extends these ruminations for a bit longer than he should. But that is really the only flaw in this book whose principal strength lies in its characters, even the most minor of whom are fully realized and unforgettable.

There is not a single phony or contrived moment in "Hard Rain Falling," and from start to finish, the reader is immersed into a universe that seems completely real and that is totally compelling. This is not a pretty world, but once Carpenter has grabbed hold of you, you can't turn away from watching it.

This is very much a book of the early 1960s, and the universe that Carpenter has recreated here is long since gone. He serves up a slice of American life that few of us would want to experience first hand. But readers will be grateful to George Pelecanos and New York Review Books for giving them the opportunity to visit it from a safe distance.

[Brady Billiot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hell yeah. Felt very similar in style to a John Williams novel. Things happen and the characters experience and think about these things. There is something very special in these pages. Balances a engaging plot with emotional, philosophical, and sexual depth without overdoing any aspect of itself.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where has THIS oddity been hiding since its inception in the 60's? NYRB is certainly to be commended for doing all the hard work and finding gold chips in the salsa for us. Not that I found it Nirvana. Just nervy for its day. It's a pool (billiards, I mean) book, a prison book, and an echoes-of-Hemingway book all in one. Let's start with the hustling.

Carpenter has done some time in a pool hall or two. With the character of Billy Lancing, he captures the thrill of the kill (as in, killing suckers and separating them from their money) as well as the edgy sass and mind games that go into a hustler's talk. This being the 60s and Billy being black (albeit a light-skinned one), race is in the hall, too. Billy utilizes his "handicap" to perfection, using it to gall and taunt his white challengers. End result of these color games? Green. For Billy.

But the main character is Jack Levitt, an orphan from practically the get-go. A 20-something tough guy without a job, he's to fistfights what Billy is to pool -- only fistfights pay considerably less. He also likes booze and women (until he hits prison -- more on that later). This book HAD to do time not just in prison but on Bukowski's night stand. Meaning? If riding shotgun with the lowlifes is your thrill, HARD RAIN FALLING might be your book.

Eventually Jack lands in San Quentin. Oh, he's in a few other prisons beforehand and it looks like Carpenter did time in the Big House, too -- or so the precise description of Jack's time in the complete darkness of solitary would indicate. It's uncannily real, or what passes for real, given that few readers can compare notes. Billy winds up in prison, too, where he becomes Jack's cellmate. Here Carpenter takes on homosexuality about as frankly as a 60s writer could be expected to. It's three choices, according to him: celibacy, secret masturbation in a place with little privacy, or another guy. The way it's described here, Billy and Jack take a long time to come to it, but they're both in their 20s and feeling the heat, so Door Number 3 it is!

Carpenter describes it like so: "It was an arrangement, coldly conceived for sexual satisfaction, without even words that first time, but limited by coldly precise and rational language from there on out. The terms were that they would use each other's bodies for that ornate form of masturbation called Making Love, but there was to be no question of emotional involvement, or prying into one another's soul. This, they decided coldly, would keep them from going crazy or queer." I loved that bit: "an ornate form of masturbation." I don't think the word "ornate" has ever carried such an onerous weight! And note how "cold" that love sex is! "Coldly" has three cameos in one paragraph!

After they get out of prison comes the part of the book I like best. On parole, Jack gets a job in a bakery and one day a bunch of rich drunks straight out of Fitzgerald come in, running into this ex-con straight out of Hemingway (well, if Hem's homophobia were unleashed). Jack falls for Sally, a rich girl with a penchant for sex and money (now THERE'S a familiar combo). They try to make a go of it, and the mismatch of this educated spoiled girl and this trying-to-learn ne'er do well (she has him reading ULYSSES, for chrissakes!) is reminiscent of some of the Hemingway mismatched couples we've read in the past. (Note: Jack finds Joyce to be horse crap and prefers FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. Jim Jones fans, take a rare victory!). Anyway, they wed. No kidding. And you get a front row scene to the train wreck. Choo-choo interrupted, and all that!

Interesting writing. Not consistent, but certainly good more often than not. This is for the minimalists among us. If you like fancy Henry James and Wee Willie Faulkner sentences longer than a boa before it constricts her, take a pass. Otherwise, get your rain gear and give HARD RAIN FALLING a rip. It may just be the anti-chick lit pill you've been looking for.

[Hux · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might be the most romantic book I've ever read which is strange given that it's a love story between two men, neither of which are gay. But they connect, albeit under unique circumstances, and in way that is deeper than a mere sexual convenience.

The story focuses on Jack Levitt, an orphan hoodlum who, as a 17-year-old, hangs out at pool halls and engages in pretty crime. As the novel progresses, it jumps ahead in time and we follow Jack as he bumps into one of his old friends, Denny, and hangs out with (what turn out to be) two underaged girls. Next thing he knows, he is in prison for rape and dealing with the ongoing hardship of a life without any power. In San Quentin Prison, he meets Billy Lancing, a black kid he briefly knew from the old days and they share a cell. They become good friends and, after wrestling with the implications for a while, eventually agree to provide each other with sexual release. The arrangement is a purely logical one and neither men feel any particular sense of shame or regret. Once Jack gets back into the real world, he meets Sally and they get married and eventually have a kid.

Like I said, romantic. Jack accepts and acknowledges that he and Billy had a meaningful connection. He doesn't regard himself as a homosexual and this isn't a story about latent desires or a suppressed sexuality. Two men just happened, via circumstance, to connect in a way that, ultimately, one would have to describe as involving love. The book isn't about that so much as it is offering us a window into a genuine moment of happiness amid an unhealthy norm that is being culturally undermined. There is still beauty to be found in the relentless nihilism. Because, if anything, I felt like the book was more about female sexual liberation and its terrible consequences than anything else. Sally has NO desire to be a mother and finds it to be a tedious chore. But what else could she view it as when raised by a world that reiterates this? Jack has naive notions of a world getting better by one generation raising its kids better than the last and so on but how can that happen when raising children is increasingly sold to us as a prison. Raising a child was to Sally what San Quentin was to Jack and, at his more lucid moments, he knows and even sympathises with this. So what chance did either of them have?

"You have to understand," Bronson said, "she's not really to blame. She couldn't live like that. It's not your fault either."

"Nobody's fault again," Jack said. "Nobody's ever at fault."

[RandomAnthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

How much emotional strength does a man have, and does it matter?

Hard Rain Falling might be as stark and uncompromising a novel as I’ve ever read. The story focuses on Jack, raised in an orphanage and proficient in petty crime and bad decisions, and Billy, a pool hustler who starts losing his touch at the tables and makes his own harrowing mistakes. The two meet in Portland as teenagers and reconnect years later in a California prison. Jack’s post-incarceration search for meaning comprise the novel’s last third.

Carpenter’s talents lie in his psychological analysis of desperate, dead-end characters; his reference to Jack reading classic Russian novels is no accident. Both Jack and Billy are too smart to engage in self-pity, but when they face the world without it, their clear-eyed perceptions don’t leave much on which to hang meaning. Physical and emotional hunger can be sated but not for long, and neither hold much substance. And while a man with a very slim margin of error and no status can stay out of trouble for a stretch, under duress, one mistake and he’s totally fucked. No one is inviting Jack or Billy up the social ladder. There is no relative to bail them out. They find a small measure love and significance in both their own relationship and, later, Jack’s relationship with his son. Still, the terror of losing both, along with the fear of the effect they’ll have on each other and their children, leads to sacrifice of the saddest nature.

Holy hell, if I’m going to be straight, Hard Rain Falling is 99% fucking depressing, but I felt like if I didn’t finish I would be A) missing out on some deep, honest writing, and B) I would be a big wuss. Some passages are mesmerizing. Carpenter’s description, for example, of Jack helplessness when his son is sick, is brilliant. This is a brave book, and you better be in damn good mental health to tackle this sucker. Joy Division has nothing on Don Carpenter. I’m not surprised this novel is respected but not popular. Read Hard Rain Falling when you’re ready to explore the darkness of prison, isolation, and the unfairness of existence.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone in Britain the name Baby P is well known. A constantly referenced case when talking of the inefficiencies of social workers, the failure of council services and the inhuman brutality of some parents. It recently reawakened when the mother, who had partaken in and allowed her boyfriend and his brother to batter and torture this toddler to death, was released from prison. I remember at the time, where every newspaper, every discussion talked of the dead child as an angel, as an innocent one commentator had the temerity to suggest that had he lived, in a decade those same papers would be referring to him as a thug, a yob, a symptom of our broken society with an ASBO and an ankle tag worn with pride. Why, because of the hand of cards he was dealt in life. Born to a mother with a low IQ, a succession of his mother’s boyfriends in the house, no one in his sphere possessing a job with drug using and violence being the norm, how could he be anything else.
This is the premise of Hard Rain Falling. It is not an easy read but the challenge does make it worthwhile. The prologue introduces the protagonist’s parents and is the explanation for the life Jack Levitt leads. It deals with what happens when people have a bad start in life? What happens when you institutionalise people in children’s homes, in prisons, in low paid monotonous jobs? It asks the big questions: Are we the product of our parents? Can we win when life gives us a duff hand? Can sex and love be separated? What is the purpose of prison?
It is the story of people who have nothing and no one to fall back on trying to make their way in a world who’s only answer to dealing with the brutalised is to brutalise them further – the chapter describing Jack’s stint in solitary is so painful as to be almost unreadable. Of people who believe they deserve nothing and so self-sabotage any good in their life, of being unable to live the dream of a simple family life because you have no blueprint to refer to as to how it is made.
Jack has outgrown the angel period, he has matured into a violent, nihilistic adult who does things that it is near impossible to condone, but the reader empathises with him because we know the start in life he had (or didn’t have). We recognise the struggle within him that wants a stable family life replete with the tedium of everyday life but does not know how to get it and more pertinently doesn’t believe he deserves it. And so to return to Baby P. If he had lived to adolescence would we be as empathic when he stole our catalytic converter, kept us awake at night playing music and shouting with his mates in the street, sold drugs? I’d like to think so but like the commentator I don’t think we would.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard Rain Falling covers vast and desolate territory. Reading it required a degree of commitment that I was unprepared for and it took a beat to adjust to the relentless cycle of desire> action>consequence which enacts quietly, intently. It’s like everything transpires within a tight fist, fists flyin and all.

Out of the wild action, truth is delivered with clear-eyed lucidity and although the characters talk of self-pity quite a bit, the truth is clean of it. Clean of regret.

There is something amazing about this novel. I’m a little awed. I've always been fascinated with the concept of personal freedom and what that entails and although the novel explores societal, sexual and moral territory - there is an undefinable emphasis on a truer form of freedom.

You know enough to know how you feel is senseless, but you don’t know enough to know why. Sitting in another lousy hotel room waiting for a couple of girls you’ve never seen before to do a bunch of things you’ve done so many times it makes your skin crawl just o think about it. Things. To do. That you dreamed about when you couldn’t have them. When there was only one thing, really, that made you feel good, and now you’ve done that so many times it’s like masturbating. Except you never really made it, did you. Never really killed anybody. That’s what you always wanted to do, smash the brains out of somebody’s head; break him apart until nothing is left but you. But you never made it.

If I had to boil this down, Hard Rain Falling is immensity. Jack had the right idea; his first reaction to the immensity of the ocean was to smile, wild with curiosity. Did anyone expect that of Jack? I just didn’t. But it was so perfect that he did. In that moment, I believe he 'made it' in a way that really counted.