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NoirNovels.com - A unique repository for all things noir
The Price Of The Ticket
Reviewed By Steve Nester One ought to thank Dennis McMillan Publications for reissuing Jim Nisbet?s The Price of the Ticket. Originally published in French as Sous le signe du rasoir, Nisbet and his oeuvre, seven novels and five volumes of poetry, are unknown to readers who haven?t scratched the surface beneath the best seller lists. When Pauley, an ex-con living on the fringe of society in San Francisco purchases a used pick-up truck from Martin Seam, a young man who is a blank page but feels himself possessed of wisdom, taste, talent etc., a short and bloody road trip is mapped out for both. Pauley witnessed the accidental death by shaving and electrocution of his father, a brutal and abusive drunk, so it is understood that he will mature into a person with enough profound quirks to have him find it difficult to fit into normal society. After spending years in prison, Pauley has a good job constructing torture racks for wealthy connoisseurs of the degrees of sensation separating pleasure and pain. Pauley also is in possession of Celeste Bonnard, a twenty-five year old tattooed and pierced sexpot. She relishes the variety of love/hate mind games twisted people such as she and Pauley play. They are the basis for the kind of healthy heterosexual relationship Pauley and Celeste share. Martin knows he has a lemon and he dumps it on Pauley. The truck breaks down and Pauley wants his $600 back. The rent is coming due and the state Tax Board wants its money too, so Pauley knocks on Martin?s door and asks for a refund. Martin has just been fired from his job as a salesperson in a department store. The $600 dollars has already been spent. There is going to be a show down in the I?m not OK, You?re not OK Corral. When a hardened criminal with a perturbed perspective on life finds he has been beaten by a socially anemic, pimply-faced masturbator, and the room where the denouement occurs is not be large enough to swing a dead cat in, the dead cat nevertheless will be swung. When not employing a stream-of-consciousness which allows the reader to experience not only what the characters experience but why they experience it, the narrative uses a third person point of view that has the off-hand and carefree feel of Charles Bukowski. The guiding principle of The Price of the Ticket is what Nisbet calls psychic metabolism, or the intersection of fate and character and how one adjusts the two and tries to harness them through the journey of life. The price of the ticket? $600. Ticket to where? You?ll just have to read the book. |
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