Fresh from the sprawling literary triumph of Tree of Smoke, American novelist Denis Johnsonhas turned to the antithetical genre of noir crime fiction. Nobody Move is a slim (just over 200 pages) gem of concentrated violence, bleak humour and yearning, as different from Tree of Smoke can be, yet curiously alike in its phosphorescent use of language and focus on lost souls.
Unlike many noir attempts, Nobody Moveis set in the here and now. We meet Jimmy Luntz in a barbershop chorus in Bakersfield, California. When he walks out in his Hawaiian shirt, he is confronted by plug-ugly gangster enforcer Gambol. For Jimmy is a gambler and a loser, the raw stuff of many a noir tale. Soon Jimmy is on the run, and as he teams up with Indian stunner Anita, possessing her own subplot of lost millions, and then learns head gangster Juarez has joined the chase, Jimmy’s chances can clearly be seen to be lousy or none.
Johnson has shifted his usual fluid, lyrical down a notch, perfectly capturing noir’s staccato take on life. Short paragraphs and rapier-sharp dialogue drive the violent plot onward, yet Johnson manages poetic, glancing prose often enough to make one smile with admiration. Every character lives on the page, real and sympathetic. We know the ending will be dire but when it arrives, it shocks and cleanses, and feels as natural as all of Nobody Move does.