The Big Clock

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.

Although THE BIG CLOCK was written in 1946, Fearing's noir thriller holds up remarkably well. The twists and turns of the plot are as exciting and surprising as they were when the book was first published. The essence of the story is an innocent corporate employee caught in a web of murder and betrayal and charged with finding the killer, who more and more appears to be him. Fearing throws in some great jabs at the values of the corporate world, which feel like they were written yesterday. The poetic image of all of us being little more than wheels in The Big Clock is especially powerful. George, the main character, is far from heroic, but he has an everyman quality that makes the reader root for him until the very end of the novel. The scene where the authorities close in on George is anti-climactic when compared with the same scene in the movie "No Way Out," which is based on Fearing's novel but this in no way detracts from the effectiveness of the book. In his day, the author was more known as a poet than a novelist and THE BIG CLOCK contains some seriously good writing for a crime novel. All in all this book is a good, fun read for any fan of mystery and suspense fiction.

I just thought this was the most fun little book. The last line was not missing. I'm not sure what that reviewer was talking about. The book was suspenseful but also light and funny. The book has a happy ending, but I wouldn't say it was pat. The protagonist is both clever and lucky. I suppose the book was somewhat predictable, but if you read it you'll see that isn't really a bad thing in this case. In fact it would be rather strange if it weren't predictable, given the circumstances. I guess some people wish the protagonist had to pay for his crimes, but this is noir, the gray world.

I enjoyed the book but was confused by the ending---it seemed to end so abruptly and ambiguously. Then I got to my book club and discovered that the kindle edition is missing the very last line---the newspaper headline that the protagonist sees as his taxi is stopped at a red light. Seems like a problem, Amazon.

The Big Clock is not only one of the great thrillers of the 40s but one of the great novels, period. No mystery, the murderer is known from the outset, but the story is told from different points of view, heightening the tension. Fearing deftly weaves the various threads to its not thrilling but satisfying conclusion. The novels is also a good behind-the-scenes look at the publishing industry of the 40s.

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.

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.

It's a shame Kenneth Fearing's superb poetry has been largely forgotten, but if it's to be overshadowed by anything, let it be this perfect noir novel. The premise is so diabolically clever that not only did Hollywood make a great film version, other filmmakers continue to steal from it -- see No Way Out or Out of Time as good, entertaining examples.

Probably best known as the source for the Costner/Hackman 1987 film No Way Out, Fearing's The Big Clock is a post-war noir classic, The Big Clock. Well regarded in the States, the novel is far less known in British accounts of the noir genre. And that's a shame, as this is a great novelfilled with literary modernist techniques, making it very different from the brutal pulp styles of many better known novels, or the late romanticist style of Raymond Chandler. Almost surreal at times, the novel is at times as mysterious as the plot it's hero George Stroud is trying to uncover.

George Stroud works in an advertising agency cum publishing house in post-War New York. In todays terms we would call him and his colleagues investigative journalists or even paparazzi. George is also quite a sleazeball. He is a womaniser, adulterer, self-obsessed to the point his boss describes him as having 'colossal vanity'. His excuse for a weekend cheating on his wife is, 'I had one of those moods'. By a cute story twist from Mr Fearing he is set up to investigate a murder where he knows he will 'discover' that he is the patsy. At first sight I struggled to believe such a story could be credible but all credit to the author that this trick is successful. Although the trick works, I cannot say the same for Mr Fearing's style. A multi-narrator tool is used but to little effect as I struggled to tell the difference between the voices; what was the point of this method? 'The Big Clock' is used as a clunking metaphor for the march of time. This is a shortish read that can be done in one sitting, yet even so the first 40-50 pages could do with a kick up the backside. He did convey a seedy feel to George and his world. I was taken aback by the 1940's description of his bisexual girl friend as 'a part-time Liz'! Also was Mr Fearing short of proper names; George is married to Georgette and they have a daughter Georgia. Worth reading for the curiosity of the storyline but fairly low down on the crime thriller food-chain.