Tales of the City
Our good friend Erick Lyle has just compiled a compendium of tomes taking on San Francisco's nethers for the this week's issue of the Bay Guardian. Entitled Tales of the city—A literary roundup of San Francisco's down-and-out, disenfranchised, and drunk and disorderly, the piece examines classic contenders, pulpy runners-up, and literary last-in-lines all vying for the title of "the great San Francisco novel." From old favorites like Frank Norris's McTeague to Brautigan's buddy Don Carpenter (weighing in with his 1964 Hard Rain Falling), Lyle revels in the lurid descriptions, old and new, of his Market Street stomping grounds. In his 1966 tell-all The Night Action, Bruce Douglas Reeves' North Beach pleasure seekers "spend all their time getting wasted in bars on Broadway, putting down the squares, and trying to get it on with Becky, the girl who dances, nude but wrapped in cellophane, each night at the Dill Pickle." As is fitting for "a city 'too busy, too cold,' where each day's paper lists another suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge, and where 'the fog seemed to issue from the hearts of men and women in the streets,' Reeves finally punishes his tiresome and irritating main characters by forcing them to marry each other and raise a kid, but not before Rob Roy can threaten one last poignant dash for freedom: 'Maybe I'll go away — away for good. I'll go to New York and join a mime troupe!'"