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Shoot the Piano Player

David Goodis

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Feb 24, 2023 Dave rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Originally published as a Fawcett Gold Medal #623 paperback in 1956 under the title “Down There,” this fairly short compact novel by David Goodis is best known as a 1960 movie “Shoot the Piano Player,” directed by Francois Truffaut, which moves the action from Goodis’ Philadelphia to Truffaut’s Paris, the center of the noir movement. Most folks know it know it by the Shoot the Piano Player title. It is representative of Goodis’ down-on-his-luck novels about fallen men in the backstreets of Phila Originally published as a Fawcett Gold Medal #623 paperback in 1956 under the title “Down There,” this fairly short compact novel by David Goodis is best known as a 1960 movie “Shoot the Piano Player,” directed by Francois Truffaut, which moves the action from Goodis’ Philadelphia to Truffaut’s Paris, the center of the noir movement. Most folks know it know it by the Shoot the Piano Player title. It is representative of Goodis’ down-on-his-luck novels about fallen men in the backstreets of Philadelphia. It is a story about how no matter how hard you try or how much you drink, you can never fully escape your past, which will always return to haunt you.

It is the saga of Eddie and Lena (who is often just referred to as the waitress, perhaps because we barely get to know who she is and Eddie never even knows her last name). Eddie plays piano in a run-down dive bar. Yes, he is the piano player of the title. He does not say much. He minds his own business. No one really knows his past or where he came from and he would like to keep it that way. That all changes when one of his two brothers shows up out of nowhere and then two mean guys chasing the brother in a green Buick.

Eddie has several pasts he wants to escape. First, there is his past as a grand classical pianist all set to play Carnegie Hall, that is, until he discovers that he was never that good and only got the billing because his wife, thinking she could advance his career, slept with his agent. This is something Eddie could not forget or live down. It is never quite clear which hurts him more, his wife’s infidelity or the thought that he never really was recognized for the talent he thought was his.

The other past he wants to escape is in the form of his two mobbed-up brothers, now on the run from the mob itself and the two hard guys following Eddie, trying to find his brothers who are hiding out in the farmlands of South Jersey.

Eddie is one of the good guys, but he, like all good guys in these kinds of novels, is always getting into jams through no fault of his own. By the middle of the book, he is not only on the run from the two hard guys, but from every law officer in the state.

Eddie has to figure out quite quickly who he really is and what matters to him and who essentially has his back. Goodis has an extreme talent for writing about these kind of downtrodden characters who are basically alone in the world, friendless, penniless, despondent. ...more

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Jun 11, 2021 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-noir

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Aug 11, 2020 Spike marked it as to-read

Dec 06, 2020 Bill rated it really liked it

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