James Sallis's (Drive) seminal biographical essays on crime fiction
pioneers Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Chester Himes restored to print
and joined by a handpicked collection of essays, reviews, and
introductory writings on noir fiction.
At the time of its original publication by Gryphon Books in 1993,
Difficult Lives was a pioneering work of literary investigation.
Sallis's subjects of Himes, Goodis, and Thompson were as enigmatic as
they were out-of-print, and literary scholarship on the subject of their
lives and works scant. As the title of the collection indicates, the
three men led difficult lives, and although they forever changed the
history of crime writing, they all passed in relative isolation.
The literary detective work Sallis did then has been built upon since
but rarely with the same poetry and authorial sympathy. Despite there
now existing several works of academic and popular biography on each
writer Sallis's novella-length biographies retain the sense of the newly
uncovered.
Those three pieces, "Jim Thompson: Dime-store Dosteoevski," "David
Goodis: Life in Black and White," and "Chester Himes: America's Black
Heartland" are prefigured by a new introduction by the author as well as
the original introduction, "Portable Worlds: The First Paperback Novel."
Following Difficult Lives is collection of reviews, essays and
introductions, selected by Sallis, covering a wide range of crime
fiction's most legendary authors and books: Derek Raymond, Jean-Patrick
Manchette, Boris Vian, Patricia Highsmith, James Lee Burke, George
Pelecanos, Paco Taibo, Shirley Jackson, and more.
