Street of No Return

by David Goodis, Robert Polito (Introduction)

In Street of No Return, we meet the pathetic figure of Whitey. Once upon a time Whitey was a crooner with a million-dollar voice and a standing invitation from any woman who heard him use it. Until he had the bad luck to fall for Celia. And then nothing would ever be the same.

In Street of No Return, David Goodis works the magic that made him one of the most distinctive voices in hard-boiled fiction, creating a claustrophobic universe in which wounded men and women collide with cataclysmic force.

Genres: Noir, Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Novels, Thriller, Mystery Thriller

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Born and bred in Philadelphia, David Goodis was an American noir fiction writer. He grew up in a liberal, Jewish household in which his early literary ambitions were encouraged. After a short and inconclusive spell at Indiana University, he returned to Philadelphia to take a degree in journalism, graduating in 1937.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodis is known for writing gloomy books, and this is definitely one of them. It starts at the bottom and stays there. Whitey was once a famous singer whose precious throat gets ripped to shreds after he refuses to let go of his love for Celia, a dancer and gangster's girl. Now he's a down-and-out drunk living on Skid Row for seven years and going nowhere. One night, he decides to actually go somewhere and finds himself on a dark adventure in the Philly "Hellhole" neighborhood on one eventful night.

You can't help but feel sympathy for Whitey knowing what he's been through and to root for him now that he's finally found a purpose. And although he's prone to rambling, Goodis really knows how to evoke an atmosphere, and knows how to give a voice to characters who are at their lowest point.

"...yesterday could never really be discarded, it was always a part of now. There was just no way to get rid of it. No way to push it aside or throw it into an ash can, or dig a hole and bury it. For all buried memories were nothing more than slow-motion boomerangs, taking their own sweet time to come back. This one had taken seven years."

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Street of No Return (1954) is set like so many of Goodis’ novels in Philadelphia’s skid row and tells the story of Whitey, a skid row bum sitting around with two other bums, trying to figure out how to get another drink. Race riots are going on in the nearby Hellhole neighborhood between Puerto Rican immigrants and the police. When Whitey ambles down the street into the aptly named Hellhole, the reader learns who he was and how he ended up on the train to Nowheresville. Spoiler coming up——



Whitey was an up and coming singing sensation who fell for Celia, a stripper who was attached to a gangster, Sharkey, and two minions, Chop and 300 pound Bertha, one of the deadliest and most vicious thugs in crime fiction ever. When Gene (Whitey) won’t take a hint to lay off Celia, they take him for a ride and brutally ruin him, pounding his jaw and vocal chords. When it was made decades later into a 1989 movie, Whitey was a rockstar not a crooner and played by Keith Carradine.

The back story of Whitey’s history takes a bit of a backseat to his ill-timed walk through the riots. At its best when describing Whitey’s downfall, the dialogue with regard to the riots feels a bit stilted and forced rather than natural.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodis' 1954 'SONR' is something of a forerunner to his more-successful, more-decidedly-noir 'Shoot the Piano Player' (published two years later). 

The novels share singularly talented, brink-of-fame protagonists; the first is a singer, the second a pianist. Both men could easily make it big in their fields. But both men fall - and fall HARD - for particular fallen women. 

At least in 'STPP', the attraction sort of makes sense. Its development is somewhat more organic and the questionable woman-in-question (Lena) is a gutsy (and therefore entertaining) force of nature. She has real color and some surprising depth. 

However... in 'SONR', our main man (mainly known as Whitey) falls for Celia - who is much more of a fantasy figure (albeit a rather pathetic one), bereft of character. Her main saving grace is that she knows full-well just what a losing proposition she is and tells the nicknamed Whitey upfront:

It won't be easy, Gene. You better not start.

But start he does. He ultimately winds up facing Celia's disarming BF but that's nothing compared to the fate Whitey meets at the hatchet-lady hands of 300-pound Bertha (God! Bertha!). 

In 'STPP', Eddie doesn't pay dearly for his passion. Well, let's say he doesn't get beaten to an unrecognizable pulp over it.  

'SONR' is less streamlined than 'STPP'. It's somewhat more scattershot. It eventually coalesces but there are several times where you might wonder 'Where is the story now?' or 'Why are we taking this particular detour?' Simultaneously, it's impressive watching Goodis challenge himself in his manipulation of narrative. 

The novel's standout is its centerpiece: a mêlée in a police station caused by an out-of-control race riot (one that has been manufactured). This whole extended sequence is particularly well-observed and well-orchestrated, highlighting the overwhelmed mindset of the station's Captain. 

'SONR' - apparently like all of Goodis - is a very quick read. Familiar as well is its overblown nature - but it's effective; that is, up to the ultimate showdown. 

The aftermath of that showdown is a bit of a disappointment; some of the steam is let out uneasily and the ending could probably have been a bit more satisfying instead of oddly unresolved. But, at that point, it may not matter. ~ meaning: overall it's a solid slice of darkness.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intensely claustrophobic, gloomy and suspenseful thriller about a skid row bum on the run from the cops for a murder he didn't commit. Equally, it is a bleak character piece focusing on a neighborhood that feels like a black hole for lost souls. Whitey, our protagonist, is a glutton for punishment, indifferent and even happy to lose it all if he can't be with the woman he loves. Over the course of one night, ostensibly on the hunt for his next drink, Whitey gets caught up in murder, race riots, police brutality, gang violence, corrupt cops and more. As bleak a picture as Goodis paints here, he reveals at least a faint glimmer of something more hopeful, buried deep in the recesses of man's soul.

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dark and more unpleasant than not, but ending on a very satisfying note, with the depth that Goodis always seems to have.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Street Of No Return' is one of my favourite Goodis novels. It's multi layered, has an interesting central character and a deep interlocking plot. Goodis views race riots, alcoholism, murder, police corruption and a deep seeded longing for a better place all through a tainted glass beer bottle. Whitey, a bum amongst bums, is mistaken for a murderer after trying to aide a felled police officer in a dark alleyway. His trip to the station house brings insight into the world around him. Danger and breathing go hand in hand. The world is not a nice place and the boys in blue have a hidden agenda.

I was surprised at how complex Goodis made 'Street Of No Return'. Not only did he maintain an interesting plot set in the present but also enveloped the reader in the past - a time when Whitey wasn't a street dweller and his clothes not insect infested. Even more interesting to read is how that past, and a women named Celia impact on the race riots happening around him in the present tense.

'Street Of No Return' is a fast paced crime novel - set primary at night to hold true to the noir theme. The protagonist is a helpless drunk, the good guys are bad, the bad guys are bad and the riots are only the tip of a much larger and deadlier iceberg. The speed at which the story is delivered is not without its filler content with some passages coming across as dialogue heavey and perhaps unwarrented.

The only thing that really holds 'Street Of No Return' back is the typical Goodis internal dialogue by which the character has a tendency to over think a situation and analyse every possible move and outcome. Some of this introspection detracted from the story at hand - which is a shame as the plot itself was excellent. That aside, I really enjoyed 'Street Of No Return' and have no hesitation is saying that this will be a future re-read. 4 stars.

This review of 'Street Of No Return' is from the Library of America single bound hardcover collection 'David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940's and 1950's' - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the opening scene, the men called Bones and Phillips are lamenting that they need some liquor. They and a third man, Whitey, are backed up against a brick wall in Skidrow. Bones and Phillips repeat their wish several times and eventually Whitey, with a whisper of a voice, concurs. Not one of them has the funds for more liquor though each would gladly share if a bottle could be had. The other topic of conversation is the screams heard from 3 blocks away in another neighborhood termed the Hellhole. There have been race riots in that locale for several nights running. At last, Whitey sees a man across the street and decides to follow him. Strangely, the following takes him directly towards that Hellhole neighborhood.

Pulp fiction was that written for magazines which used very cheap paper called, not surprisingly, pulp. The stories published were often of the gritty crime variety though sometimes they were adventure stories like Tarzan of the Apes. The author of this title, David Goodis, and others more well known like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett wrote the crime stories for these pulp magazines. Often novels would appear in serial form.

David Goodis' work is often very gritty and this title is no exception. Whitey is down and out. We learn both why and how far his down and out has become. This is a crime novel, but it is more a character study than a plot driven novel.

I wasn't sure at first that this was exactly what I wanted to be reading. However, it didn't take me long to become entirely absorbed and I realized it was *exactly* what I wanted to be reading just now. I think it isn't 5-stars worth, though I'm sure it is worth the 4th star.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Goodis's star is ascending in the noir writers' skies. He had a Library of America volume of his five novels appear this year. Goodis is an ace on several fronts. For instance, I like his breezy dialogue that sounds authentic to my ear. I like his characters, especially the protagonist Whitey in STREET OF NO RETURN. Once a promising golden-throated crooner (did his career remind you of a young Sinatra?), Whitey's life has wrecked, but the Skid Row lush still rises to the occasion to do one more heroic act. I like Goodis's social commentary underpinning the story. Yeah, life sucks a lot more for some us. His secondary characters are unforgettable, especially Bertha and Chop, the pair of muscle goons. The three-hundred-pound Bertha is as hardboiled a "dame" as they get in noir. Great stuff. Loved it.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Goodis is the patron saint of losers everywhere. At one time, he had it made, with money pouring in from novels and screenplays, but then he left Hollywood and move back to Philadelphia to live with his mother. He liked hanging out in cheap bars where he liked to get verbally abused by big black women. Shortly after his mother died, he died as well.

Street of No Return is the tale of a popular singer named Whitey. He fell for the wrong girl and got his vocal cords damaged by her boyfriend. As the book begins, he is a wino living in the streets. He wanders into a race riot between Puerto Rican immigrants and white Americans and comes upon the body of a murdered cop. Almost at once, he is picked up on suspicion of murdering the cop. That's where the story takes off ...

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED the first chapter of this fine noir from a true master. I actually read the first chapter three times before proceeding: the first because it felt like some sort of "Skid Row" parody of Waiting For Godot; the second because I realized it is such an excellent opening for a novel - from here the story could go countless ways; the third so that I began to enjoy where the author takes things.

The only reason I don't got to 5 stars is that parts of the story feel unrealistic where others are like being there myself - one of the strengths of David Goodis!

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Goodis is the 3:00 A.M. poet of the lost and the forgotten - in other words the damned. Remarkable novelist that reads like a noir as a feverish nightmare. Wonderful book.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skid Row Meets Helltown

David Goodis' 1954, "Street of No Return" is the final work in a collection of five novels in a recent Library of America volume: "David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s". Goodis (1917 -- 1967) was living in his parents' home in Philadelphia when he wrote "Street of No Return" which was published as an inexpensive pulp paperback. In his younger years, Goodis had written for Hollywood and his novels have the movies in view. In 1968, Samuel Fuller directed a movie version of "Street of No Return" starring Keith Carradine and Valentina Vargas. Edited by Robert Polito, the LOA volume preempts the 1987 edition of Goodis' novel I am reviewing here, which included Polito's valuable and still-accessible introduction.

"Street of No Return" is a poetical novel of lonely, failed people and outcasts set in a cold late November in Philadelphia the late 1940s or early 1950s. The story takes place in two adjacent slum neighborhoods along the river: Skid Row, the home to derelicts and alcoholics with no place to go and no prospects and Helltown. The latter community, three blocks from Skid Row, is in a condition of racial ferment, as new residents from Puerto Rico and the earlier residents come to violence and rioting against one another.

The book tells the story of Eugene Lindell, 33, a seven-year resident of Skid Row who goes by the name of "Whitey" due to his prematurely white hair. Lindell has two companions, Phillips and Bones. As the novel begins, the three men are outdoors on a frigid day and thirsting for alcohol. When Lindell chances to see a man from his past on the street, he follows him to Helltown, beginning the connection of the two communities in Goodis' tale. With the ongoing Helltown riots, Lindell stops in an effort to assist a policeman who has been clubbed to death. The policeman dies in his arms, and two arriving patrolmen arrest Lindell for his murder.

As the book develops, the reader learns a great deal about Lindell. He had been a popular singer with a promising future before he fell for a dancer and former prostitute, Celia, the common law wife of Sharkey, a small-time gangster with large ambitions. Sharkey's two thugs, Bertha and Chop, beat Lindell to a pulp, almost destroying his voice while totally destroying his ambition.

The book turns on character and atmosphere. Goodis makes the reader feel the poverty and hopelessness of lonely streets and people in Skid Row and Helltown. In a short novel, Goodis develops place through character. Besides Lindell and his two Skid Row companions, Goodis introduces many other failed, isolated individuals who are formulaic in part but sharply and individually etched in the mind. The characters include a police captain and his two lieutenants, Sharkey and his minions, a Puerto Rican gang leader, Gerardo, and his cowed, frightened assistants, and an aged African American man, Jones Jarvey, who understands Lindell and recounts his own story. Jarvey begins:

"Every man has an ax to grind. Whether he knows it or not.... I've been on this earth a long time... I'm eighty-six. That makes me too old to grind the ax. But the Lord knows I did it when I was younger. Did it with all the strength in my body. And don't think I wasn't scared when I did it. So scared I wanted to turn and run and hide in the woods. Much safer that way. Much healthier. But there's some things more important to a man than his health."

The plot of the book is contrived. It turns on coincidence, a lengthy scene of eavesdropping, and an implausible twist to the story of racial tension and rioting in Helltown. "The Street of No Return" remains a strong, brutal and sad novel with its rawness, depictions of place and character, and lyricism.

I have enjoyed getting to know the novels of David Goodis through the Library of America volume. Writing in a formulaic medium, he captured a world of sadness and isolation in books of a strange beauty and insight.

Robin Friedman

[Curt Buchmeier · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first experience with a David Goodis book and, thinking about the story and the style over the last couple of days, it's better than three stars. Goodis does a great job of establishing most of the characters, none were predictable or stereotypical. And, after a so-so start, he does a good job of taking the reader on a wild, if not quite believable, ride over the course of one night in the late-forties, in what were then the rougher parts of Philadelphia(Precinct 37, I think).
Our hero, Whitey, doesn't fit what I was expecting for a hero. I use the word hero but, in all honesty, Whitey is the most reluctant hero I've come across since Holden Caulfield. He meets and falls for the femme fatale, Celia, early on. Then he loses her in what has to be one of the most half-hearted attempts in literature to steal the girl. The word lazy comes to mind but, it was less than that. It was like he didn't care; about anything or anyone. Without giving it away, it plays like this.
After Celia's boyfriend finds out that Whitey and Celia are more than friends, he meets Whitey one night, even eats dinner with him, all pretty civil and calm, considering. This guy is connected with the syndicate (mafia), or was and wants back in again, or whatever. Anyways, the mob-boyfriend straight up tells Whitey; leave Celia alone or he will mess him up. And he can make that happen, there's no doubt. So what does Whitey do? Whitey dreams up this terrible plan to flee with Celia, just pack what they can carry, meet at the train station at pre-arranged time and place and catch a train somewhere south the very next night.
Well, the boyfriend is still suspicious, he'd just met with him. He's keeping close tabs on Celia. The half-assed plan fails miserably and Whitey is taken for a ride to the country by several people, severely beaten and left for dead. He barely survives and is a shell of the man he once was; messed up bad and permanent. So, over the next several years, he takes to drink, spends all his money, burns all his friends. Classic slide to skid row, life by the drop. He's homeless and pitiful and likely mentally ill. Thing is, I was rooting for the guy, hoping he would do something to 'save' himself, or at least to try. It was frustrating the first third of the book watching this apathetic hero keep giving up every chance he got.
Then one night, seven or eight years later, he gets in a tight situation; he's wanted for killing a Cop. He's innocent, of course, but it's not looking good for old Whitey. He ends up on the run from the Police and others. Along the way, he meets up with a wide variety of characters, all in the same night. Goodis' talent is undeniable throughout the last half of the book.
Take these couple lines describing how Whitey, who is sober, feels about himself. He has been beaten, he's hungry, scared and cold, and is trying to move north through the poorer neighborhoods, keeping out of sight using backyards and alleys. He happens to look at a house with the lights on over a backyard fence. And who is standing in the kitchen window but Celia. Our hero is dumbstruck and begins telling himself how there is no way he can reach out or try to talk to her now; his situation is hopeless and he's likely a dead man.

"So now you're getting to see. You're in that same bracket, buddy. You're one of them less-than-nothings who like the taste of being hurt. That makes you lower than the mice and the roaches. At least they try to save their skins, they got a normal outlook. But you, you're just a clown that ain't funny. And that's a sad picture, that's the saddest picture of all."

On that cheerful quote, I'll wrap it up. I'll recommend it. Goodis was unique, I found plenty of things to like in this book but, I'm betting he had more success in others.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some outrageous business about a Frank Sinatra type crooner who gets his vocal cords mangled, so since he can't sing anymore he becomes a Skid Row lush in Philadelphia (Goodis Town). He's stuck in the middle of a race war between Puerto Ricans and the cops. It doesn't get more depressing than this.

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

081010: second review: this is the last of five novels of the goodis anthology, here republished by library of America, again i up the rating, for this one seems almost like his particular template- fast, lean, pathetic, poetic. or maybe just the archetype for him, all the usual suspects: sensitive artist type, thin frail blonde, criminals, cops, and then same plot: artist blindsided by love, girl held back by criminals, ruined and debased world vs transcendent purity of love, lost, lost, lost... maybe i was mistaken in calling it 'nihilistic' because, though he loses out, there is tragedy, there are ideals, there is love... but yes, this is a bleak book, this is a vision of the 1950s far not only in era from the comfortable uptown suburbs i grew up in and always already thought the whole world...

first review: sad, sad, sad. walk with the destitute, the indigent, the loser locked into a spiral of self-destruction, all- of course- triggered by love of a woman. short, bleak, existential. possibly most nihilistic of the roman noir i have read.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A "better" written Goodis novel - more care per sentence, more strategic distribution of plot shifts and tensions - and also possibly an attempt at wider appeal by shifting focus from within his characters' haunted psyches to social conditions - race relations, public corruption - of an external world and the characters' positions therein, perhaps attempting to move beyond what I read were his typical readers - men seeking dark, cheap thrills - but as gripped as I was by his usual street-level authenticity and knowing and compassionate rendering of down-and-outs haunted by viral pasts, using his own tortured soul as template, I prefer (at the moment) his cheaper, (even) tawdrier tales written with less care and more dark recklessness and interiority.

[Andrew Vachss · Rating 5 out of 5]

An obsessed genius who didn't last long, but he could put Jim Thompson on the trailer anytime he wanted.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

4½. This is the best book by Goodis I've yet read, although I must admit I've only read 3 or 4 others. They all had moments of excellence, of course I respond to the tone of resignation and the depressing themes, but they never quite coalesced into anything all that memorable. Given how often he's been recommended to me and how highly he is lauded (at least where pulp fiction is concerned) my reception to his work was a surprise to myself. There's always danger in expecting too much, though; I've got the point where I expect nothing out of life but suffering and disappointment (which is what I get, almost invariably) but I see I still haven't annihilated every last trace of hope (which is something I'll have to work on). And it was just when I began expecting mediocrity from Goodis that he nearly floored me. The characters here are more vivid, the plot more compelling and surprising, and his handle on suspense is actually quite masterful. Or perhaps it all boils down to my own psychology.

[Daniel Polansky]

A crooner turned alcoholic bum is framed for killing a police officer during a race riot. It’s weird that the most revered genre writers, at least when it comes to mystery, tend not to have any of the qualities that genre books are supposed to have. Chandler, for instance, couldn’t plot a narrative to save his life and Chester Himes’s stuff similarly has a weird tendency to run out in strange directions. Not that I’d put Goodis in that category, but he does have that interesting quality of a slumming ‘literary’ writer. His experiences as being basically, a miserably impoverished alcoholic in Los Angeles, shines (glooms?) through the narrative, and the slice of life bits, about drinking shoe polish to get high or whatever, they really work, in a depressing sort off fashion. But the genre bits in this – the mystery, the action, etc., frankly didn’t interest me in the slightest, and the back story is incoherent, and there’s more of that then there is the good stuff. Library, but drop.

[Christopher Fulbright · Rating 4 out of 5]

STREET OF NO RETURN by David Goodis is an addictive, compulsively readable book from a giant of the pulp crime era.

Open on River Street, Skid Row, a tenement’s front steps with a circle of bums staring at an empty bottle of booze, wondering where the next one’s gonna come from. The way the book starts you’d never guess that in another few pages, after learning their stories, you get the feeling you could end up like one of them. But the star of this ensemble turns out to be a bum named Whitey, and it’s his story you’re gonna know best of all. And boy, does he have a story.

You don’t really learn much of it before Whitey gets up and heads down the road. His bum pals are baffled, see, because Whitey has followed this mystery man into a place called the Hellhole, where no one in their right mind ever wants to go. It’s the underbelly of the city, torn by racially-motivated gang riots and violent crime. But Whitey doesn’t care. The mystery is tied to his story, which comes a little more unraveled bit by intriguing bit so a reader can’t help but hang on. This seemingly meek bum named Whitey with a raspy soft voice ends up on Hellhole street corner on his lonely mission when a bloody cop groans for help from a dark alley. Whitey goes to the dying cops’ aid, but too late. Too late and too bad, because the cop dies in his arms, and just as he does, a squad car pulls up at the end of the alley and puts the spotlight on Whitey. If you think you know where it goes from here, you’d only be partly right.

THE STREET OF NO RETURN delivers on a higher level than a lot of crime novels because this book isn’t about a crime, it’s about a man -- not only how he ended up like this, but what he does with it all after he’s there. The story has a lot of great hooks that keep you going in deeper with Whitey until you just can’t put it down. I started reading this book when I was getting my car’s oil changed, and I was pissed off when my car was ready. I took every spare moment that day glued to this book until I’d finally followed it around its last twisty-turn to its bracer conclusion.

Perhaps the real zinger here is that this book, and a few other books by Goodis, are available for free online for all e-readers. I’m someone who initially dug in his heels against e-book revolution, but now I’m an e-book addict, mainly because so much great stuff like this is available for free. I don’t condone illegal downloading, but public domain works are free game, and it seems that several of his books are now in the public domain. So, really, if you have an e-reader and are a fan of crime fiction, there’s no reason at all that you shouldn’t be reading David Goodis.

Wikipedia gives us a nice glimpse into Goodis’s career. After his first novel saw print in 1939, he wrote a staggering amount of fiction for pulp magazines and even wrote for some old time radio shows like House of Mystery and Superman. In his time, Goodis met with a good deal of success. His books in the 1940s and ‘50s were bestsellers that drew interest from Hollywood, where he later ended up writing scripts for Warner Brothers.

At the time of his death, all of his books were out of print, and remained so unti lthe 1980s when those saints of underground crime fiction Black Lizard/Vintage Crime brought some of the titles back. Finally, this year, the Library of America compiled five of his novels into an omnibus edition, cementing his name in the litrary equivalent of Hollywood’s walk of fame. It’s good when stuff like that happens. It gives you a little faith. It even kind of implies that old addage “the cream rises to the top” might actually be true.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winter in the Philly slums, amidst alcoholics, the homeless, the lost and forgotten, is a faceless but once-famous man (see Shoot the Piano Player (aka Down There) for this theme revisited by Goodis) scarred by his past, and then the long-ago past reappears. And Celia. He's soon caught up in race riots, naked greed, and official corruption. What should be way too many plot points somehow works, as the reader descends into the tense and hopeless life of Skid Row. Goodis is one of those rare writers who's always just as intelligent as his reader. Also a 1989 film with Keith Carradine, directed by Samuel Fuller.

[Hex75 · Rating 5 out of 5]

i libri di goodis sono sempre una discesa nel lato sbagliato della città, e della vita.
qui abbiamo whitey, barbone alcolizzato con un passato da dimenticare e un presente fatto di una serie di pessime coincidenze: coincidenze che potrebbero costargli la vita, e che hanno luogo in un quartiere -la fossa del diavolo- teatro di una serie di violenti scontri razziali.
come sempre in goodis c'è una tristezza di fondo pazzesca, con un protagonista certo di essere comunque uno sconfitto senza più nulla da perdere.
certo, il finale è quasi positivo, ma -come in cerchio perfetto- tutto ritorno all'eterno presente di squallore e tristezza che è la vita di whitey.
da leggere assolutamente se si è fan del noir, ma anche per gli altri lettori potrebbe essere una scoperta bellissima.

[Stas · Rating 5 out of 5]

By the third page I realized that I'd seen the Sam Fuller film (with Keith Carradine). There is a matter of broken vocal chords and broken heart. This book is a hard gem; be careful swallowing it, sometimes it chokes you.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Whitey wasn’t listening. He was thinking about her. In his mind he could see the gray-green eyes and the lighter-than-bronze hair, and he said to himself: You didn’t even get a chance to talk to her. And if you’d had the chance? What then? What could be said? Not a damn thing more than hello again and good-by again. Because she’d never leave Sharkey. She can’t leave Sharkey. If she tries to leave him, he puts the hook on her and drags her back. She knows she can’t skip out on him. So that’s the way it is. She’s hooked, that’s all. Maybe she wants to be hooked, whether she knows it or not. After all, that’s the only life she knows, and without it she’s nowhere. Like you’re nowhere without a drink. And sure as hell you need one now. All right, stop carrying on. At least you had another look at her. You had that, anyway. So you ought to be satisfied. All right, you’re satisfied. You feel great. But where can I get a drink?"

I got hard feelings about this one. Parts of it are fantastic and really well written. Other parts just come off as really unbelievable and goofy. I have to give credit to the social dynamics at play here however, especially regarding the themes of race riots.

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a disappointment. At least to me. Or, at least, it was neither persuasive nor pathetic. The protagonist likewise did not appeal to me, and was too thinly drawn.

[Tim Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whitey is a wino on Skid Row. One of the lowest of the low. When he can't afford the wine he's been known to imbibe in Sterno, risking blindness and death for that sweet relief. But Whitey has a secret. He was once somebody. That is until he met the wrong woman, Celia, and threw it all away for her. Now, in the midst of race riots, Whitey is falsely accused of murdering a cop. And it brings his past back up to the forefront. And Whitey has to decide if he wants to face that past or turn himself in for a crime he didn't commit and face almost certain death at the hands of a police Captain who has been driven right up to his breaking point.

Goodis takes us back to the bad parts of Philadelphia as is his wont and this is a great excursion. Goodis packs a hell of a lot in this small paperback original package. Whitey is really the only character that gets anything resembling characterization, but that's fine. The bad guys are very bad and the good guys...well they're mostly bad too. Goodis works in the, then current, racial tension between whites and Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia. And the ending...well by noir standards it's maybe not as dark as one would expect...but it's plenty dark.

This is top shelf Goodis. Very close to being on par with Down There/Shoot the Piano Player. Take a quick walk in the very bad part of town with this one.

[Daria Dykes · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I could, I'd give it 2.5. But I won't round that up to 3.

This was an okay noir - the story unfolds over a single night between about midnight and 6 a.m., and describes the adventures of a skid row bum who catches sight of and follows a figure from his past - and gets led into trouble. This is a nice set-up and structure; I like the "real time" feel of the whole thing and I liked the gritty feel of the landscape. However, the dialog is very badly written and the protagonist is not clearly developed. His motivations are stated, but they don't sound recognizable in any way. Of course, perhaps I have been spoiled by too many Jim Thompson books with all of their complex internal dynamics. Street of No Return left me feeling that this was a good idea executed poorly - perhaps the worst book by a generally very good writer.

[Tim E Ogline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take a white knuckle thrill ride down the Street of No Return.

David Goodis takes the reader on a dark passage into the night cloaked, whiskey soaked mean streets of Philadelphia of 1954. This is a part of Philly on the wrong side of the tracks and at the bottom of the ladder... and as far from Rittenhouse Square as you can get. Bums and thugs and crooked cops struggle for the scraps cast off by polite society and battle to be king of the hill of the trash heap.

This genre defining classic tells the story of a golden boy whose rise to the top careens wildly off course when he crosses paths with the dark angel who would change his life forever. This is the story of his fall and his struggle for redemption on his own terms.

Samuel Fuller harnessed his maverick genius to adapt this story as his final film in the 1989 epic of the same name starring Keith Carradine.

[Lisa Ciarfella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, intriguing, hopelessly sad yet compelling read here! Goodis mastered capturing the flavor and tone and utter sense of desperation of both skid row and Helltown in the darkly tragic noir tale.
Found it hard to keep reading, yet impossible to put down, all at the same time. Finished it in a few hours.
Whitey is the most tragic character, doomed from the start and his femme fatale is inevitable as she takes him down without so much as a glance backwards.
Madge is one brutal thug. Pig like eyes buried in a sea of 300 pound flesh, beating the crap out of Whitey is a sight to behold...Makes you want to read, and not read, and yet reading prevails!

A master of the dark, the dubious, the dreadful...Goodis tale is not one for the weak.

[Esme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gossenpoesie und Slumromantik

Drei Clochards an eine Häuserwand gelehnt überlegen, woher sie noch einen Tropfen Alkohol bekommen können. Einer von ihnen - Whitey - sieht eine Frau aus seiner Vergangenheit und nimmt fast wie in Trance die Verfolgung auf. Diese Nacht wird für ihn zu einer Reise in die Vergangenheit, in der er sich schmerzhaften Erinnerungen stellen muss.

David Goodis schreibt in "Street of No Return" ("Straße ohne Wiederkehr") über die Verlierer und die Verlorenen. Sie haben nichts, als den Alkohol und ihre Träume. Und mit dem Mut der Ausgestoßenen hängen sie an ihrem Leben, ihrer Menschlichkeit.

Eine Reise ins Herz der Finsternis. Tiefschwarz und melancholisch...