The Big Clock (Audible Audio Edition) Kenneth Fearing Joe Barrett Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : The Big Clock (Audible Audio Edition) Kenneth Fearing Joe Barrett Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
George Stroud is a hard-drinking, tough-talking, none-too-scrupulous writer for a New York media conglomerate that bears a striking resemblance to Time, Inc. in the heyday of Henry Luce. One day, before heading home to his wife in the suburbs, Stroud has a drink with Pauline, the beautiful girlfriend of his boss, Earl Janoth. Things happen. The next day, Stroud escorts Pauline home, leaving her off at the corner just as Janoth returns from a trip. The day after that, Pauline is found murdered in her apartment.
Janoth knows there was one witness to his entry into Pauline's apartment on the night of the murder; he knows that man must have been the man Pauline was with before he got back; but he doesn't know who he was. Janoth badly wants to get his hands on that man, and he picks one of his most trusted employees to track him down George Stroud. Who else?
How does a man escape from himself? No book has ever dramatized that question to more perfect effect than The Big Clock, a masterpiece of American noir.The Big Clock (Audible Audio Edition) Kenneth Fearing Joe Barrett Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock is an atypical noir that puts us square inside of the big corporation, in this case Janeth Enterprises, run by the big man, Earl Janeth. George Stroud, an editor of Crimeways, is a mechanism to this daily grind, often referred to as the “big clock.”Trouble finds George after his night out with Pauline, one of the girls who works at Janeth Enterprises. When Pauline winds up dead, things really get complicated for George, especially since Pauline was Earl’s girlfriend.
There are two major conflicts and predicaments that keep The Big Clock running from start to finish. One is that George himself could be implicated in the murder, so he is trying to save his own skin. The second delimma involves bringing forth the real murderer. And these two objectives have a deadline, so it is a race to see this through.
One effective aspect to The Big Clock is the author’s methods. Fearing weaves an effective noir that breaks into other genres and modes. While this is an exceptional mystery, it is also a superb psychological thriller that builds with suspense as we get closer to a George’s ultimate dilemma. Fearing’s technique of constantly shifting narrative point of view with different characters narrating also adds dimension to vantage points of the plot. Tension builds, and then keeps building. And this is what pulls us in to the book’s final conclusion. There are really times when it seems as though Fearing has written himself into a corner, but he is masterful towards the end.
In another sense, the “big clock” comes to symbolize not only the essence of time against the corporate grind, but the individual being pulled in into an escapable, fateful path that comes in the way of inevitable mortality. George, early in the novel, reflects on this:
“Time.
One runs like a mouse up the old, slow pendulum the big clock, time, surries around and across its huge hands, strays inside through the intricate wheels and balances and springs of the inner mechanisms, searching among the cobwebbed mazes of this machine with all its false exits and dangerous blind alleys…”
The Big Clock is an effective change of pace for noir, one that enthusiasts for this genre should check out.
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The Big Clock (Audible Audio Edition) Kenneth Fearing Joe Barrett Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books Reviews
This is a good read. Clever and suspenseful. In short, it's all about our main character and his dilemma. We know this guy and we want to like him. And we always share the urgency that surrounds him. Until the resolution, no doubt about it, we are trapped with him. Read it. Fearing I think was a better poet than novelist. And what a wonderful name, eh? Kenneth Fearing.
The Big Clock is a superb, tightly written novel with the atmosphere of a top-notch noir and the artful reverberations of a major literary work. Still, I'm troubled by the abrupt ending--perhaps mainly because I didn't want the novel to end.
The Big Clock a classic work of noir, twice made into movies. Nicely plotted, based on characters who drink, sleep around, and lie, and who are not much characterized beyond that. The twist that makes this book a classic is that the main character is forced to lead an investigation that, if successful, will result in his being framed for murder. The plot moves briskly and despite the main character's subtle efforts to slow the investigation, his situation soon grows dire.
I will say no more, which I wish could also said of Nicholas Christopher's introduction at the start of the book. It is an intelligent analysis of the story and its failings, but matter-of-factly gives away the entire plot and its resolution. I urge you, if you have not read the book before, to skip the introduction until after you have done so.
Oh, yes, how the clock still goes on humming. Kenneth Fearing heard its mechanical heartbeat, saw its two giant claws scrapping around and around the numerals – twelve on top, six on bottom, nine on the right and three on the left, back in the 1940s as he wrote his novel, The Big Clock – a story about the work-a-day world filled with people willing to conform, no matter what the price high blood pressure, cerebral hemorrhages, ulcers eating out the lining of their stomach and moral decay eating out their soul. As Fearing’s main character says about the clock “It would be easier and simpler to get squashed, stripping its gears than to be crushed helping it along.”
The Big Clock is Kenneth Fearing’s classic noir/thriller novel published in 1946 and is not only a caustic commentary on American business but a story holding the reader in suspense with a keen desire to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. More specifically, the novel features the following
Multiple narrator/rotating first-person – Not only is the story told from the point of view of George Stroud, a sharp-looking, nimble-minded publishing executive/husband/father, but from the point of view of six other men and women – and with each rotation of first-person narrator the story picks up serious momentum and drives toward the conclusion. Considering how effective multiple narrators can be in the hands of an accomplished writer, it’s surprising this literary technique isn’t used more frequently.
Femme fatale – What’s classic hardboiled noir without a femme fatale? There’s Vivian Sternwood in Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Brigid O'Shaughnessy in Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, Phyllis Dietrichson in Cain’s Double Indemnity -- and, yes, of course, Pauline Delos in The Big Clock. Here’s George Stroud’s first impressions when meeting Pauline at a posh uptown Manhattan party “She was tall, ice-blonde, and splendid. The eye saw nothing but innocence, to the instincts she was undiluted sex, the brain said here was a perfect hell.” Incidentally, here are the first impressions of a similar sharp-looking, nimble-minded married man on meeting femme fatale Caroline Crowley at a similar posh uptown Manhattan party in Colin Harrison’s 1996 novel, Manhattan Nocturne, “She may well have been the most beautiful woman in the room. . . . her face was no less beautiful as it approached, but I could see a certain determination in her features. ”. Goodness, some things never change.
The power of myth – Robert Bly speaks of a major character from ancient Norse mythology the giant the giant is a being we can not only view as huge, cannibalistic, mean, violent and heavy-footed, but also as psychic energy from our shadow side that can, when we become enraged, take possession of us. Perhaps, on some level, the author was aware of this mythology when writing how business tycoon Earl Janoth reacts with extreme violence after Pauline makes accusations about his homosexual relations with Earl’s life-long friend/business colleague “It wasn’t me, any more. It was some giant a hundred feet tall, moving me around, manipulating my hands and arms and even my voice. He straightened my legs, and I found myself standing.“
A Greenwich Village artist – George Stroud collects the paintings of Louise Patterson. As a point of contrast to the men and women droning their life away in an office, Louise is a complete eccentric who hates anything smelling of the business world. Since events pull her into the story, she interacts with Stroud and his colleagues. Here is a snatch of dialogue where she lambasts one of the mousy white-collar types, “What the hell do you mean by giving my own picture some fancy title I never thought of at all? How do you dare, you horrible little worm, how do you dare to throw your idiocy all over my work?” The author gives Louise Patterson a turn as one of the first-person narrators -- a real treat for readers.
The art of the novel – Kenneth Fearing was a poet as well as a novelist. Although The Big Clock is a caustic commentary on the business world, it is also a work of literature all of the characters are complex and developed. There are no easy answers given; rather, Fearing’s poetic vision prompts us to reflect deeply on the challenges we face living in a modern urbanized, highly standardized and clock-driven world.
Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock is an atypical noir that puts us square inside of the big corporation, in this case Janeth Enterprises, run by the big man, Earl Janeth. George Stroud, an editor of Crimeways, is a mechanism to this daily grind, often referred to as the “big clock.”
Trouble finds George after his night out with Pauline, one of the girls who works at Janeth Enterprises. When Pauline winds up dead, things really get complicated for George, especially since Pauline was Earl’s girlfriend.
There are two major conflicts and predicaments that keep The Big Clock running from start to finish. One is that George himself could be implicated in the murder, so he is trying to save his own skin. The second delimma involves bringing forth the real murderer. And these two objectives have a deadline, so it is a race to see this through.
One effective aspect to The Big Clock is the author’s methods. Fearing weaves an effective noir that breaks into other genres and modes. While this is an exceptional mystery, it is also a superb psychological thriller that builds with suspense as we get closer to a George’s ultimate dilemma. Fearing’s technique of constantly shifting narrative point of view with different characters narrating also adds dimension to vantage points of the plot. Tension builds, and then keeps building. And this is what pulls us in to the book’s final conclusion. There are really times when it seems as though Fearing has written himself into a corner, but he is masterful towards the end.
In another sense, the “big clock” comes to symbolize not only the essence of time against the corporate grind, but the individual being pulled in into an escapable, fateful path that comes in the way of inevitable mortality. George, early in the novel, reflects on this
“Time.
One runs like a mouse up the old, slow pendulum the big clock, time, surries around and across its huge hands, strays inside through the intricate wheels and balances and springs of the inner mechanisms, searching among the cobwebbed mazes of this machine with all its false exits and dangerous blind alleys…”
The Big Clock is an effective change of pace for noir, one that enthusiasts for this genre should check out.
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