Tonight, Somewhere in New York: The Last Stories and an Unfinished Novel

by Cornell Woolrich, Francis M. Nevins Jr. (Editor)

Cornell Woolrich reinvented suspense fiction for the twentieth century. His unnerving tales of the psychological terrors lurking on the underside of the commonplace earned Woolrich epithets like "our poet of the shadows," the twentieth century's Edgar Allen Poe, and the father of noir. The twilight years of Woolrich's career did not soften his vision; they darkened it, as the selections in Tonight, Somewhere in New York, rivetingly show. In addition to nine masterly stories from the late 1950s and 1960s, some of them never before collected, this Woolrich anthology offers two evocative episodes from the autobiographical manuscript on which he worked during his latter years as well as five chapters of the novel he left unfinished at the time of his death in 1968. Page after suspenseful page, this collection amply demonstrates the power of his vision. Again and again, ordinary individuals get caught up in everyday circumstances that spin perversely, murderously, out of control. Unexpected perils lie in wait everywhere—in a hotel corridor, in the insistent ring of a telephone, on a street one day in Rome, or inside a black sedan that without wheels would look like a coffin.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
***********************
TONIGHT, SOMEWHERE IN NEW YORK (aka THE LOSER)
Chapters 1-5
Morning after murder --
The night of February 17,1924 --
Murder, obliquely --
The penny-a-worder --
The number's up --
Too nice a day to die --
Mannequin --
Intent to kill --
For the rest of her life --
The poor girl --
Even God felt The Depression.

Genres: Short Stories

409 pages, Paperback

First published August 3, 2005

About the author

Cornell Woolrich is widely regarded as the twentieth century’s finest writer of pure suspense fiction. The author of numerous classic novels and short stories (many of which were turned into classic films) such as Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Waltz Into Darkness, and I Married a Dead Man, Woolrich began his career in the 1920s writing mainstream novels that won him comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The bulk of his best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing serialized in pulp magazines or as paperback novels. Because he was prolific, he found it necessary to publish under multiple pseudonyms, including "William Irish" and "George Hopley" [...] Woolrich lived a life as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters and died, alone, in a seedy Manhattan hotel room following the amputation of a gangrenous leg. Upon his death, he left a bequest of one million dollars to Columbia University, to fund a scholarship for young writers.

Source: [http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bi...]

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I got this from inter-library loan to read one story ("Too Nice A Day To Die") but as I've previously read three other stories here, and the first chapter of Woolrich's final, unpublished novel, I figured I'd re-purpose those reviews first.

The "Penny-A-Worder" is a non-crime story, more in an O Henry mode (including an ironic surprise ending), a structure Woolrich uses here to sketch his personal knowledge of the realities of writing fiction for pulp magazines under strict deadlines as an up-and-coming wordsmith must craft a story overnight tailored to fit a lurid cover painting. There's some very well-observed details here on the mechanics of writing and the flow of imagination.

"The Number's Up" is an excellent story - a brutal tale of Mob violence directed at a young couple, it has a particularly cold and cynical view of the world as events keep progressing beyond the point where hope dies. And then a little fillip at the end to drive home the belief in a cold, random universe. Great stuff.

I read the opening chapter of Woolrich's unpublished later novel THE LOSER (retitled here as TONIGHT, SOMEWHERE IN NEW YORK for reasons unknown to me), but it stands alone as an interesting character study of a man who opens the tale having just committed murder and then follows him to his eventual night in jail on completely different charges. Very engaging.

"For The Rest Of Her Life" is a masterpiece here and possibly the grimmest, darkest story I've yet read from Woolrich. It is a suspense tale that ends on such a horrific note that it could be considered a horror story. There's some powerful, observational writing at the start about relationships and love and "attachments", and I'll assume that Woolrich's homosexuality helped inform his wonderfully well-written female character's assessment of men's attractiveness. The story starts in an almost "Woman's Gothic thriller" mode - in that a young woman marries a wealthy and charismatic New-Englander she meets in Europe and moves to his home in the countryside, only to eventually discover his dark secret of sadism - but told with psychological depth and Woolrich's master's touch of suspense writing. There's a thrilling "hiding in a closet from a threat" scene, and and even more exciting car chase. As has been said, one of Woolrich's superior strengths is that, due to his cynical worldview of random fate working against human desires, you never *really* know how his stories are going to turn out - triumph or tragedy, cold acceptance, laughs or tears - which makes his suspense sequences that much more effective. There is *no* light present in the horrifying ending of this story!

Finally, "Too Nice A Day To Die" is a later, somewhat gentler piece by Woolrich. I've mentioned in other reviews how Woolrich's view of a random, uncaring universe gives his suspense stories an interesting dynamic - because, since the universe doesn't care, it's just as likely that there'll be a happy ending! Later in life, though, one can see Woolrich slipping close to cynicism in a story like this, which opens with a lonely young girl being interrupted in her suicide-by-gas attempt when a mis-dialed phone call for a local delicatessen disrupts her plans. She decides to continue with her plan for obliteration the next evening and spends the next day walking around New York, reflecting. A random event, a purse-snatching, pairs her up with a perfectly charming young man and she ends up spending the day with him as love slowly grows between them. Her instruments of suicide still wait back in the apartment and, when she changes her mind, fate has other plans. This is, as always with Woolrich, a study in anguish - here the slow, controlled, lonely anguish of the forgotten individual. The ending, while typically Woolrich-esque, seems slightly curdled and bitter, as if cynicism or nihilism have begun to take hold. Still, a very solid story, with some great writing.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woolrich, the best. Just missing one star because this is scrappy collection and it contains non-sequential / unfinished material - more for the die-hard fans.