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Epitaph For A Tramp by David Markson


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Two books bundled: Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat

Author: David Markson

First Published: 1959

New Publishing: 2007

Publisher: Shoemaker and Hoard (Avalon)

 

Billed as The Harry Fannin Detective Novels, this is a love letter to the "hard boiled detective-noir" genre.

 

The back cover claims that this author wrote these before becoming a serious novelist to pay the rent. I don't know if I'm offended by this, but the only book on his list that I've heard of is Vanishing Point.

 

The two books take place in Greenwich Village in the 1950's. New York City during the beatnik generation; Harlem, jazz, poets, heroin, pot, hustlers, homosexuals, writers ... and obviously: tramps and dead beats.

Our hero is a PI with a Magnum, a love for whiskey, an ex-football player and a love for Thomas Hobbs, Thelonious Monk and obscure authors.

 

It's a comfortable genre with the same trappings of Sam Spade -- tough molls, rough cops, punk kids and a ton of similes. "She folded like a cheap deck chair" or "he discarded his tissue like Billy Graham giving up on Las Vegas."

This is the true treat of these two books, this author lovingly wraps his words around the simile using literary, music, sports and pop culture references! It is simply gorgeous to read. My take is that he is having a ball writing these books and filling them with wit, humor and just plain fun.

 

Be warned - it was written in 1959, there are a ton of cultural references you may or may not understand. It is rife with wit and humor.

 

Here is a brief sample that I personally enjoyed, they were chasing a punk and shot him - the punk falls through the window of an antique store:

I got over there. It was an antique store and there was a lot of junk on display. Furniture mostly. A couple of tall stiff-backed old chairs which looked almost as good as new because nobody for a dozen generations had been quite tired enough to sit on them. Two or three nervous-looking little tables on legs carved so delicately they would probably collapse under the weight of an empty shot glass. A set of yellowing bone china which Pocahontas had gotten as a shower gift from the girls at the wigwam. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's favorite bronze candlesticks, the ones he wrote
Hiawatha
by the glow of.

 

And another, this is a musician speaking:

Man, how can I blow this tune if you keep standing on the score? Like sure, I saw Leeds again. But, man, I ain't come to that part yet. Chapter three, book sixty-four, verse nineteen, brought to you by Welch's Grape Juice. You know? Like I say, first she blasts off in the MG bomb. I'm maybe five pads up the block, and I'm debating. If Leedsie flubbed the dub with the chick, maybe we can dig that Mills record one more time. I'm still giving the matter considerable ratiocination when he bounces out the front door like some cat set fire to the joint and who's got the gauze, you know? He's got his Dodge across the road and zoom, he's off like a tall bird. And I am alone in the still nigh
t.

I recommend these books if you love the written word and it's craft, if a decent well-paced Tough Guy detective novel appeals to you and if you enjoy a light romp through Greenwich Village and it's Hep Cats.

 

Expect loose dames, plenty of booze, some beatings, pop culture references, literary and historical references, a fast pace and some laugh-out-loud moments.

There is no swearing, no graphic sex and no dull moments.

 

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"She couldn't say no, not even to murder"

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