Shoot the Piano Player Paperback – October 3, 1990

If you are a follower of film noir, you hear a lot about "Shoot the Piano Player," arguably one of Truffaut's best-known films following his breakthrough, "The 400 Blows."But I hate to admit that until my friend and former journalism student Steve Pham pulled my coat, I had never heard of "Down There," the terse noir novel it is based on, or its author, David Goodis, even though Goodis had written the book "Dark Passage" on which one of my favorite Humphrey Bogart films was based.I read the Black Lizard edition of "Down There," which has been renamed "Shoot the Piano Player." The book is noir fiction in a nutshell, hitting on just about every note the genre is known for. It has an alienated protagonist, the hopelessness of his attempt to steer clear of trouble, the frustration of his inability to make basic relationships work, and a completely understated aura of violence that makes the entire thing work.In brief, the book and the movie are both about a man named Eddie, a renowned concert pianist who dropped out after his wife commits suicide because of her shame at being trapped into an unwilling sexual liaison with Eddie's agent.Now Eddie lives in a run-down flat, scraping by playing honkey-tonk for drunks in the Hut, a Philadelphia gin joint. He is withdrawn, cool and without affect. His dealings with people are at arm's length. His only desire is to avoid involvement.Unfortunately, Eddie's past comes back to haunt him: his brothers, petty crooks who have been working as hired muscle for a Mafia-style crime syndicate, have robbed their employer and are being sought by a pair of mob hit-men.One of the brothers chances across Eddie in the Hut. Eddie intervenes when the killers catch up to his sibling, but the hit-men immediately turn their attention to Eddie, realizing that he can lead them to his brothers and the missing swag.Lena, a waitress in the Hut, is attracted to Eddie and has figured out his past as a concert musician. Eddie finds himself falling in love with her, despite his desire to remain aloof and unattached. The romance is complicated by the fact that the Hut's bouncer wants Lena, too.The hoods make a move on Eddie and Lena but the pair slip through their fingers. Lena figures out that the bouncer has told the two gunmen where to find Eddie and, when they return to the Hut, she confronts him. A brawl ensues and Eddie unintentionally kills the bouncer with a knife.Now a fugitive from the law who also is wanted by the mob, Eddie has Lena drive him to his family homestead in South New Jersey, then tells her to go away, fearing for her safety if she is drawn into his brothers' criminal lifestyle. She leaves but returns and the two gunmen shadow her to South Jersey where the tragic denouement of the novel takes place.I watched Truffaut's film before reading Goodis' book and I have to say the novel is quite superior to the movie. Truffaut slips a number of false notes into his film and adds a younger brother who does not appear in the novel, unnecessarily complicating the plot and making the two mob killers more bungling and buffoonish than they are in the novel.The novel also is more effective at developing Eddie's back story, and explaining why it is so easy for him to slip into unthinking violence.Primary characters are sharply drawn in Goodis' novel and even minor players are rendered in a memorable fashion. The dialog is terse and realistic, free of the frequent wise cracks that are so common to other noir specialists such as Raymond Chandler, but better for it, because Goodis is trying to create a world of people who are down, desperateand unable to see much humor in the bleak world they inhabit, let alone joke about it.The violence, though understated, is brutal -- which is appropriate because the lives of the main characters is brutal, too.Whether it is under the imprint of "Shoot the Piano Player" or "Down There," this bleak little novel is well worth reading.

SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER has all the noir characteristics in spades. So why only four stars? Because of the utter implausibility of the backstory.Eddie grew up on a remote watermelon farm in South Jersey. His two older brothers became professional criminals. Eddie's salvation was the piano. A promising career as a concert pianist was interrupted by World War II, during which Eddie served in Burma with Merrill's Marauders and was wounded three times. Back in the States, Teresa, a Puerto Rican, brought him out of his shell. He married her. By unlikely happenstance he encountered a high-powered agent, who took Eddie under his wing and provided an entrée into the highly competitive classical music world, which Eddie took by storm, with concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Academy of Music. But then Eddie learned that the quid pro quo for the agent taking on his representation was periodic sack time with Teresa. Upon revealing that secret, she commits suicide and Eddie goes berserk. After three years on the streets in an emotional daze, he eventually drifted into a job as the piano player at Harriet's Hut, a working-class bar in the Port Richmond section of North Philadelphia.David Goodis gives us that backstory in the middle of SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER. Had he started with it, I don't think I would have continued reading the book. As it is, the book opens after Eddie had been at Harriet's Hut for four years, as the quiet, inscrutable piano player whose best friend is Clarice, a ditzy three-dollar whore. Eddie's brother Turley enters Harriet's Hut, looking for refuge from two thugs who are chasing him. Eddie is sucked into a maelstrom of violence and mayhem, in which he is paired with Leni, a tough worldly-wise waitress at Harriet's Hut who has developed a soft spot for Eddie. Eddie tries, vainly, to fend off emotional commitments to Leni and to extricate himself from the whirlpool. The story plays out in first-rate noir fashion, leaving the bodies of both the good and the bad in its wake.Goodis probably concocted that implausible backstory in order to provide a psychological explanation for Eddie's character and his anomalous emotional response to Leni. But noir doesn't really require that its characters make psychological sense.The novel originally was released in 1956 under the title "Down There". It was the basis for the François Truffaut's 1960 film "Shoot the Piano Player", which then was adopted as the title for succeeding editions of the novel.SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER represents my introduction to David Goodis. Goodis was born in Philadelphia, lived there much of his life, died there in 1967, and set much of his fiction there. Perhaps because he depicts the underbelly of Philly, Goodis has not been celebrated as a noted Philadelphia author by the city's literary establishment. That might change with the recent decision by the Library of America to issue a volume containing five of his novels. I don't think I will commit to four more Goodis novels, but SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER was good enough that I intend to sample at least one or two more.

Originally published as “Down There” (still available in some editions under that title) this was adapted for Truffaut`s “Tirez sur le Pianiste”.I hadn't read any of Goodis` books before this one, so how representative it is of his style I'm unable to comment on; he has a very good ear for contemporary dialogue and a good turn of phrase; pretty much all of the narrative is expressed as the thoughts of the central character which takes a little time to acclimatise to, but is effective and different from run-of-the-mill hard-boiled writing.It's a bleak and very dark piece, poignant and quintessentially Noir.I enjoyed it – though it is very much a tragedy; I`ll certainly be looking for more of the author`s work on the strength of this.

Goodis is the noir genre's most underrated progenitor. At his best Goodis is untouchable, his prose can be breathtaking in imagination and delivery. It's easy to get absorbed in his novels because he has the ability to paint descriptive paragraphs that draw you into his books.There's a hardback book in circulation containing 5 of his best stories including the novel that brought him fame "Dark Passage" They are the definitive masterpieces of noir, compelling reading for any fan of the genre.In my opinion Goodis' work started to wane in the 1950s and for whatever reason he was unable to reach the giddy heights of his earlier work. But having said that he still wipes the floor with Hammett and most of his contemporaries even when he's not at his best.There's something in his books that make him unique from other noir superstars. Incomparable is the word best suited to describe his uniqueness.Shoot the piano player, although a commercial success was far from vintage Goodis. Similar in theme to Street of no Return. The running theme of the terminal loser runs through most of Goodis' books and the main protagonists never escape the tragedy in which they are trapped. Goodis was an exceptional talent and all the evidence is there to see in his body of work.

The book smelled very bad... humidity I would say....