Have you ever finished reading a book and just shook your head because you realized you just read something by an unheralded master of the form and it makes you a little sad. I honestly find it hard to believe that Lynn Kostoff isn’t more well known.
One of the themes running through these two novels is that the characters are going through or are in the throes of some sort of mid-life crisis. If noir is about characters in a state of crisis then the mid-life variety is one that we don’t see too often. But man is it fertile ground.
In A Choice of Nightmares Robert Staples makes a series of decisions and actions that torpedo his marriage. He chooses a different life then the more stable one that he has created in pursuit of his dream, to be a successful actor. These choices will set him on a path that will afford him more then one opportunity to fuck up. And when he does he does so spectacularly. In order to get out of this jam he agrees to help out his boss and this will enter him into the life of a cocaine cowboy and he’ll shack up with a hot femme fatale. The life he’s leading is as far removed from his old one as he can get. So that means he’s happy right? He comes to realize that his dream life, the one he has chased and caught, is really a nightmare and that he isn’t a good fit with it.
Throughout the novel Staples is haunted by the ghosts of his former life. This is really subtle but its there. For example the man at the gas station with the wife and kids who stares hungrily at the femme fatales sexual performance of taking a drink in the parking lot. This man, who is stable and wants some excitement, is a possible Staples if he would have continued on with his old life. These possible versions of himself are scattered but they bear witness.
What’s amazing about his downward spiral is how fast he finds himself there. The bottom keeps dropping out from under him and we all realize just how few moves it takes for one to be caught up in something.
Joseph Campbell once wrote that a mid-life crisis is when you reach the top of your ladder and realize that it was up against the wrong wall the whole time. That sentiment pervades A Choice of Nightmares and to the extent that it is about a mid-life crisis, which is really just a small part of it, this is really amplified in The Long Fall. Kostoff doubles down on the bet and gives us two main characters going through a mid life crisis, Jimmy and Evelyn, and pushes it more to the front.
Both are unhappy with their lives. Jimmy is fresh out jail for a stupid crime and just wants to get clear from the local loan shark and has a plan to do so using his grandfathers property that he inherited. Evelyn feels put into a box after 20 years of marriage and with added pressure from her husband who now wants children she feels like she needs to break out of it. After being robbed at gunpoint by Jimmy at the dry cleaner that she works at she’s going to step out of her life and be with him.
One of the things that Kostoff does so well in The Long Fall is to take a small cast of characters, there are four of them, and put them in a closed environment so that they keep interacting with one another increasing the pressure and tension. Kostoff excels at tension through character development and for such a small group these relationships become increasingly complex. Within these four people: Two of them are married; two are siblings; two are lovers; one of them caused the other to lose his job; one wants revenge on another and still a different one wants revenge for different reasons; one stole from the other. There are more relationships then there are people involved.
Kostoff’s writing style runs contra to the norm. He doesn’t pray at the alter of transparent prose. He starts riffing and running in shorter bursts with a minimum of one gem per page and he builds on it and builds on it and builds on it; he’s giving you a style you’ve consumed before but it’s a rope-a-dope. Like the virtuoso he is he’s building an alter to great fiction one piece at a time. But he’s got other tricks that he hasn’t shown you yet. Like one of the classic Milton Berle anecdotes he has only pulled out enough to win. When you feel like you’ve tuned into his rhythm and your coasting along on the prose Lynn Kostoff lays down the rest of his hand. He comes off the ropes and throws his shit down in epic multi-hundred word sentences that are full and robust; that are more then a catalog of data (think Pynchon in Inherent Vice); that are a complete and self-contained story. A sentence that is heroic and vertiginous and sublime. A single sentence that breaks you. Make no mistake, this is a performance. One that the reader is sure can’t be sustained any longer until Kostoff brings everyone’s feet back down to Earth. And this is only page three. With another couple of hundred pages to go you’re in great hands.
When I came across the first of these epic sentences in The Long Fall I said this.
At some point Tom or Jerry began feeding the juke, and eventually Jimmy found himself slow dancing with one Nicole Braddock, dark-haired and olive-skinned, the shapely daughter of a BMW dealer in Palm Springs and who was an absolute dead ringer for Jimmy’s high school sweetheart, Jean Page — the same hair, eyes, mouth, skin — and in his arms Nicole felt like the stamp to his envelope, her head on his shoulder, Jimmy taking in thee smell of her hair as they moved, Jimmy remembering all the make-out sessions with Jean, both of them seventeen, the universe running under their skin, and every necessary truth found in tongues and fingers and the sweet ache of breath, Jimmy dancing with a COD boner, and Nicole right there, not leaning away from it, Jimmy whispering in her ear, the music pouring around them, Jimmy not hearing the bass notes, only the melody line, and with Nicole pressed tight against him, Jimmy could conveniently ignore the arithmetic of passion, the very real fact obliterated by the false dawn of six rounds of tequila sunrises that the twenty-year-old girl in his arms could technically have been his daughter if jean had run off and married him like he had asked her to instead of going along with her mom and old man’s plans for her, Jimmy following the music instead, matching his moves to Nicole’s, Jimmy leaning over and putting his lips on her neck, lightly kissing kissing her hair, tasting perfume and the warmth of her skin, Jimmy whispering that it was a beautiful night for a ride in the desert, they could catch some stars, Cassiopeia is on the rise and a new moon out there, just the two of them, Nicole shuddering under his touch and Jimmy closing his eyes, it taking him longer then he should have to realize the shudder came from her trying to stop laughing, because that’s what she was doing, laughing, even while she kept her breasts pressed against him, she was laughing, Jimmy lifting his head and looking over at the table of friends, all of them toasting Jimmy and Nicole and laughing, too, and that’s when Nicole did it, put her hand gently on his cheek and in a low breathy voice told him that he was the genuine article, a true anachronism, one a girl like her found hard to resist, Nicole keeping her eyes locked on his, letting that little purr run loose behind her words, and Jimmy could see how much she was enjoying herself, how certain she was that someone like him wouldn’t know what an anachronism was, the college girl toying with and putting one of the local yokels in his place, the whole thing a big joke, and Jimmy got pissed, leaned in and whispered, “This is your Local Color Station with a late-breaking bulletin. One day, honey-pie, you’re going to wake up and discover those firm Tahitis you’re now so proud of are sagging and chasing your navel, and you’re going to panic and look around for that young Republican you married, but he’s going to be on the seventeenth hole of of the Scottsdale Country Club wielding his nine iron and working on his second coronary, and right then, when you’re absolutely alone and up against it, you’re going to remember this dance. It’s going to ghost your bones.” Jimmy kissed her cheek, then stepped back and walked out.
The Long Fall is many things; a brilliant crime novel and a modern day classic among them. Lynn Kostoff’s books are the intersection of great story, great characters and great writing. New Pulp Press has done a great thing here in bringing A Choice of Nightmares back in print. I don’t know the status of The Long Fall except to say that most people will probably go ‘the Walter Mosley novel?’ Kostoff’s third novel, Late Rain, will be hitting the shelves in a couple of months from Tyrus. When the time comes make sure you grab it, I don’t have a copy yet but I’ll be right in front of you in line.
Here, here. One of the true crimes of the crime genre is that Lynn isn’t more heralded. He’s a great writer. If you haven’t read The Long Fall, do so now. It’s a wonderful book. And wait’ll you get Late Rain … brilliant writing from a brilliant writer. Glad to see he’s getting some attention. More than deserved.