Epitaph For A Dead Beat

Harry Fannin #2

by David Markson, Robert McGinnis (Illustrator)

Early noir title from experimental author David Markson.

Genres: Crime

191 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

David Markson was an American novelist, born David Merrill Markson in Albany, New York. He is the author of several postmodern novels, including This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, and Wittgenstein's Mistress. His most recent work, The Last Novel, was published in 2007 and received a positive review in the New York Times, which called it "a real tour de force."

Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."

Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.

In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.

The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.

Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.

Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

If luck be a lady, then this cuckoo broad better be patted for a pair of testes. I kid you not: she's strung tighter than a Stradivarius and I forgot my bow. Butch by name, mayhap. And take the company she keeps—please. These silly beat-boys pepper any given conversation with more metaphor and allusion than Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry's 1947 masterpiece penultimate in the annals to only Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan and some goddam stairs. I tell ya, fella, if these tea smoking hepcats ponced around less in their fruit boots banging on their bongos, a cop like me might get some decent shut eye. As if. Not in this naked city. Cry for me Argentina, cause New York City's got Helen Keller's peepers; blind to the plight of man or beast, and no one's blowing a blue sax. But what are you going to do about it, Fannin? The world changes, goatees sprout up like dandelions in Spring, dames walk-talk like good ol' lez Sappho, and a-ring-a-dang-doo. You move on....the cop life. So finish this martini that's dirtier than that whammo bimbo waiting in your bed, Fannin, then go give that angel her wings. And don't forget to call your ma tomorrow—that old bat's the only solid thing you got left in this life besides Willie Gaddis' jaw-dropping door-stopper, The Recognitions—published by Harcourt, Brace & World, and available wherever fine books are sold.

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 4 out of 5]

своєрідне продовження попередньої "епітафії", другий роман про приватного детектива Геррі Фенніна, і, якщо в попередньому була ціла навала літературних алюзій, то в цьому їх уже менше, але вбивства пов'язані з ненадрукованим романом померлого письменника. Назагал багато кумедних фраз, але сам детективний сюжет слабенький, хоча, певно, автор просто хотів описати свій улюблений Ґринвіч-Вілледж.

[Russell Atkinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been paired in a paperback with its predecessor Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat: The Harry Fannin Detective Novels in paperback form. I reviewed Tramp a few months ago. This one is not quite up to form but still captures the pulp fiction feel, mostly tongue-in-cheek.

Harry Fannin, tough guy private eye, keeps stumbling upon dead bodies, and gets beaten up pretty regularly for it. The setting is Greenwich Village in the 1960s and Markson has fun showing off his familiarity with the authors and celebrities in vogue with the beat generation; he mocks them mercilessly through Harry's acerbic wit. There is a lot more wordplay in this one than in Tramp. Even the space between Dead and Beat in the title is intentional, since most of the victims were beatniks, not deadbeats. Markson must have been paid by the word, as there was way too much filler - whimsical similes that made no sense, and so forth. "As crazy as a two-headed gnu," "as quiet as a Robert Frost snowfall," "It was still easy, like walking off a building." You get the idea.

I wrote another review, one of The High Window where I extolled the gritty feel of the pre-political correctness days. Chandler's women were dames, but Fannin's are chicks, the men cats. Real men wear suits, even if they're $70 Woolworth varieties. The women that throw themselves at Harry are breathtaking beauties with seam-bursting figures. The others have bodies like ironing boards. Everybody smokes and drinks like the cast of Mad Men. Definitely not PC. I read that these Fannin novels were written for a crime magazine before Markson got published as a serious writer, so being PC would definitely have been a negative for that readership's demographic. I had a nostalgic twinge reading through this. I'm old enough to remember those days and I knew a few self-styled beatniks. Another sign of the times: Fannin got set upon by character who was described as a mountain. We learn later he was six feet tall and two hundred pounds. In 1960 that would have been a big guy. Today it's your average 9th grade boy. A few 9th grade girls, too. While this isn't great literature by a long shot, it was an entertaining enough read.

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

The follow-up to Epitaph For a Tramp, the second and last novel to feature thinking man's pulp tough guy Harry Fannin before Markson went on to write "serious" novels. In this one, Fannin gets tangled up in the seedy world of Greenwich Village of the early 1960s, where everyone is a dope field, a fop, a dandy, a woman-hater, a vamp, or a preening pseudointellectual. Among this crowd, Fannin stands out as a real man. So when he comes to the aid of a woman being abused in a bar he happens to stop at, naturally he's the man to come to in times of trouble, like when your roommate is found dead. But in this crazy mixed-up underground scene, Fannin can't tell who's playing whom ("there's that about Greenwich Village. Nobody takes a poke at you, but you're never quite sure who's winning"), even when the corpses start piling up.

This one is slightly less satisfying than the first novel, probably because I found myself rolling my eyes a bit at the non-stop bohemian jive-talk. For some reason crime novelists can't ever get 1960s slang sound natural. However, Deadbeat offers lots of the same hard-boiled wisecracks, allusions, and self-denigrating imagery ("When I reached the sidewalk a lamppost fell against my shoulder so I held it up for a minute, listening to it wheeze") that made the first book so fun to read. Indeed, I'd call the labyrinthine plot secondary to Fannin's erudite narration, full of wordplay and simile. Sometimes Markham even lets the detective novelist guise drop; at one point, after being cracked on the head a few too many times, Fannin gets loopy and starts spouting off some authentic stream of consciousness post-modern word association jibber-jabber.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Expertly(?) rides the line between clever and stupid, right down to the title, which made me slap my head when I realized. A massive improvement over Markson's first novel, and a substantial step toward his experimental works in that unless you have an atlas (and maybe a Who's Who of the '50s) handy, you'll likely miss specifics of plenty of prose jokes.

Really dislike the homophobia, though.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it a parody or just a late noir? It's violent and harsh Greenwich village but it's also full of nudge nudge literary references and silly name drops. It's all pretty fun, though it would take a lot of hand-waving to connect it to markson's later books which I love.