Gascoyne

by Stanley Crawford

Meet Gascoyne, a man who spends whole weeks in his car, eating, sleeping and conducting his business via mobile phone. Gascoyne has found a new preoccupation―hunting down the killer of his business associate (last seen slithering away from the crime scene in a tree-sloth costume), and finding out how the southern California megalopolis has suddenly slipped out of his grasp.

Genres: Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Crawford is the author of "Gascoyne," "Petroleum Man," "Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine," "A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm," "Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico," "The River in Winter," and "Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage and to my Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of their Childhood." He lives in new Mexico with his wife, RoseMary, where they own and run a garlic farm.

Reviews

[Ben Segal · Rating 5 out of 5]

goofball citizen kane/freeway maximalism/thomas pynchon banging out mr magoo fan fiction for nanowrimo?

That sounds maybe terrible, but this is great in this ridiculous exhaust(ing/ed) way that comes from seeing capitalism in its true form as the absurd merger of ever increasing greed and speed.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic!

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Instead of putting his anti-hero Gascoyne behind the wheel of a “Kaiser,” author Stanley Crawford might have made a clearer statement by opting for a “Rambler” instead.

For ramble indeed is what the author's main character and first-person narrator does for 245 pages of “Gascoyne.”

This is an elder scoundrel who pulls the strings via corruption in a metropolis hard to place on the map until the very end when we learn Gascoyne is leaving town for the desert. It's black comedy and Gascoyne is hard to root for, even when today's television fare can hook you into siding with Tony Soprano (“The Sopranos”), Don Draper (“Mad Men”) or Walter White (“Breaking Bad”).

The set-up is simple enough. Gascoyne gets into an old car and begins tooling around the unnamed burg under his tutelage, only to stumble into an apparent murder at the palatial home of a rival/business associate.

This triggers a long series of cruises, with a few different cars, throughout the city, which is bucking Gascoyne's crooked authority even as he shambles around trying to solve the mystery murder. Are we sad? Perhaps. Gascoyne is hardly likeable, but the people out to uproot him appear even worse.

The presentation is slapstick. You follow the effusive narrator from one outrageous and impossible situation to another. You may find the give-and-take funny, you might not.

Here's a bit this reviewer liked:

“He sees me and says, 'All right drop your gun GASCOYNE.'

Which is really my line he's stealing...”

And here's a passage that will give you the tone of the work while summarizing the essence of Gascoyne, The Man:

“I zip under the Turnpike Tollroad underpass but of course I'm not going to take the tollroad because I absolutely refuse to pay another cent to officials I'm subsidizing in other ways, so I keep on Clyde Hopkins Bird Sanctuary Road which angles back toward the center of town.”

The author is, throughout, obviously unabashed and out to push buttons, but there's a lot that happens in “Gascoyne” that doesn't add to anything more than its length and somebody might have stepped in and shortened the old man's day for the good of the story.

It seems that neither plot nor cast of characters are developed enough to hold up the long and repetitive descriptions of mayhem or rudeness that are the book's stock and trade.

Gascoyne is a triumph of language over structure, a painting done with words rather than an analysis that marries them to thought or insight. Your liking or not liking it are tied mostly to whether you find what the protagonist has to say darkly mordant, or extended flight of fancy.

[wally · Rating 3 out of 5]

1 jan 16, 1st from crawford for me and apparently this will be the first review of this story here at goodreads? huh? was buying stories yesterday i think it was, using up these points i am awarded for buying material from a certain supplier...that was bought up by another supplier this year past and whose name is now the name of the other supplier and whose reward points will fall by the wayside come a time later this month...so.

story begins
it all starts when i give the accelerator pedal a couple of pumps and turn the ignition key and the starter growls and finally the engine turns over and comes to life with noises that aren't as regular as they used to be.

don't ya hate when that happens? remember when the chain fell off the bicycle? or you had a flat? onward and upward.

2 jan 16, finished. silly. absurd. juvenile. sophomoric. non-stop present tense 1st person comedy. did this come out before, or after, it's a mad mad mad mad world? for a story written in '66, the use of the phone in the car makes it sound like something present. liked the cover. bunch of zany whacko happenings. have some other stories from crawford on hand to read...see what develops.
onward, ever onward.

[Brent Legault · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amateurishly written. Plotted by augery. Preoccupied with traffic. Choked with imaginary brand names. Did I say amateurishly written already? I did but it's worth saying again. And again. Or was it all pose and parody? Or did I just dream up this novel myself? It has that feel, you know, like it was nightsweated, like it oozed out of Crawford's pores.

That's not to say that it was a waste of my time. I like any book that can genuinely surprise me. The whole opening was one long surprise. I kept thinking, "Why? Why is Crawford doing this to us? Why is he doing it to himself?" But I kept on reading. (The novel is subtext free and breezes by.) And then, when he had GASCOYNE (He is referred to, throughout the novel, in ALL CAPS.) whistling or gobbling and throwing pebbles into bushes in order to mimic a frightened bird, well, I just had to laugh.

GASCOYNE did that to me on several occasions: it, he, made me laugh. Perhaps I'm an easy mark, though. I mean, bird mimicry isn't exactly the stuff of comedic genius. But laughter often springs up whenever we witness a novel juxtoposition of these. And there was much of that in GASCOYNE, amateuruishly written, of course.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot was slightly interesting but characters weren’t flushed out very well and it’s just a first-person narrator rambling through the story and through town. Some extra background to characters or relationships would have been great. However the words were spent detailing, numerous times, how fast he’s driving in his car and what lane of the road he’s in. Not interesting and not helpful to the story.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would give it 3.5 stars if I could. Rounded up because of the unexpected entertainment and wacky/fun/oddball factor I enjoyed. Although ending felt a bit unresolved. I like that I still don't know whether I like the character GASCOYNE or find him sympathetic.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm so excited to read this! best birthday present ever!

[J.A.]

Like Mad Max meets The Maltese Falcon. A strange and enjoyable ride.

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won’t go to bat for this as a great work of fiction, but it’s still a thoroughly entertaining read despite many obvious flaws. Perhaps it was an inspiration for Inherent Vice written decades later, which similarly has the noir-esque feel, the dark comedy, and a meandering narrative in SoCal.

[Jeannine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trippy yet/and disturbingly relevant. Anything by Stanley Crawford is worth reading, but this is not my favorite. But then, I am not the one you want to ask about dark comedy.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderfully odd novel. Odd, as in, wait--when was this first published? I would have sworn, from the car phone to the narcissistic capitalist protagonist, that I was reading current events. Or, anyway, events from 2016-2020. But nope: 1966 the novel was published, and it's set about 1964 or so. I stumbled upon Gascoyne when searching for "noir surrealist detective"--other than a Pynchon or two or three, this was what came up. And at first, you do think maybe Gascoyne is a detective. But he is so much more, and so much worse, that I can't say more, as the novel simply is the unwinding of Gascoyne's character. No, put it this way: Crawford (a garlic farmer in New Mexico, which is funny as the smell of garlic makes people gag in this novel) winds Gascoyne up so tight there's only one possible outcome: SPROING!

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

borderline awful.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this on clearance at B&N and was half expecting to give it up after 25 pages, but its actually pretty funny. It reminds me of Mad Men!

[in8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

talked about it some here: http://5cense.com/11/sussex-2.htm