Cassidy's Girl (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

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Summary: Why the French Loved Goodis
Review: Long after Hollywood had abandoned David Goodis and left him washed up and unaapreciated living above his parents garage in urban Philly, French filmmakers (dassin & truffaut) were inspired by the black hearted passion and off beat noir that was more concerned with the peicemeal, poetic destruction of his characters than formulaic plots of his American counterparts. For Goodis it is all about obsession and failed redemption. And Cassidy's Girl stands alongside THE STREET of NO RETURN and THE BLONDE on the STREET CORNER as one of his masterpieces. David Cassidy is caught between two women. One woman, an alcoholic lost soul emanating good represents a second shot at former greatness. The other woman, voluptuous and iron willed drives his dark lusts, offers him bodily bliss and inevitable doom. Of course, the usual array of bums, losers, rummy philosophers and tender-hearted whores populate this work, giving the book that dreary, broken bottle, rainy sky, desolate and realistic feel of forlorn hope. Goodis is to NOIR what Poe was to horror, that is to say that Goodis transcends genre, concerning himself less with plot and stereotypes of stupid cops, sadistic killers and tough guy PIs but more about revealing the alchemy of the dark desires that drive the human spirit away from happiness and towards self-destruction.