The Big Clock

Racing the Clock of Life

The Big Clock is a different kind of murder/crime novel, but nonetheless dark and tawdry as American Noir should be. It’s different because the murder doesn’t come until well into the novel, and then really isn’t the focus of the suspenseful race against the clock. The focus is George Stroud, an ambitious magazine writer/editor, a man who drinks hard and cheats on his wife, who thinks quite highly of himself, of his intelligence, and his appreciation of aesthetics, particularly when it comes to art. The plot is a finely honed chase story about an innocent man, at least innocent of murder, trying to save his life. Even more, it’s a keen psychological probing of a cunning mind, that of George show more Stroud.

Outlined, the story begins with George grumbling to himself at a party thrown by his employer, Earl Janoth, chairman of Janoth Enterprises, an agglomeration of magazines. There he meets Pauline Delos, a magnetic blonde, who also happens to be seeing Janoth. Sometime later George and Pauline hookup, when George’s wife and daughter are safely out of town. The pair have a wild weekend in New York, where they buy a painting that proves a key clue in the tale, and upstate in Albany. At the end, he sees her home, but not to her door because Janoth is arriving at that precise moment. George holds back in the shadows, unrecognized. Next thing he knows, Pauline is dead and the most likely murderer is Janoth. In a twist, though, to protect himself, Janoth and his business partner concoct a tale about the mystery man, who is the only one who can place Janoth at Pauline’s apartment, with the objective of eliminating him. They sic the full resources of the publishing house on finding the man, and they put George in charge. George, faced with the task of ferreting out himself, has to continually throw his team of investigative reporters off his scent, until, at the end, they have pretty much closed in on him. It’s then that Fearing springs a surprise, the seed of which he has placed in plain view at the outset of the novel.

Readers will find two features of the novel particularly interesting. First, the clock of the title; it serves as both a sort of stopwatch counting down the hours and minutes until George finds himself exposed. It also functions as an overarching symbol of the relentless grind of life, it’s unalterable march to the fatal moment in every life. The second are the Louise Patterson paintings; one hanging in George’s office builds tension as we readers and George wait for somebody to identify it as a Patterson. Even more, though, George’s attachment to his Patterson paintings, and specifically the one from the antique shop, speak volumes about George’s character: his self-pride, his superior aesthetic eye, and his willingness to behave recklessly to preserve is purchase, which is really part and parcel of his identity.

You’ll find The Big Clock not only suspenseful but more sophisticated than the typical noir crime novel. show less

3.5/5

A short and sweet thriller noir that highlights the crushing weight of the capitalist system and does an excellent job of ratcheting up the tension every few pages. I haven't read much in the way of crime fiction, but this has convinced me that there is a space in this genre that would really enjoy, even if The Big Clock doesn't hit all the right notes for me.

We follow George Stroud, a serial alcoholic, adulterer, and liar, who is employed by a seedy magazine publishing company owned by another goon named Earl Janoth. Stroud has an illicit affair with Janoth's girlfriend, Pauline, and successful hides it from his family. After escorting Pauline home one day, things take a turn when Stoud sees Janoth entering her building with her, show more only to find out that she is found dead the next day. The sole witness to the crime, Stroud must hides his involvement, not only because Janoth is trying to find the mysterious figure that had seen him at Pauline's apartment, but because if he goes to the cops to rat Janoth out, he will undoubtedly loose his wife and child because of his admitted adultery. The tension of The Big Clock grows like a vice around Stroud as both the police and Janoth try to find him, and he desperately tries to slow the investigation on both sides.

Needless to say, there's really nobody in this book that's a role model, with perhaps the exception of Stroud's wife and child. This is a grim picture of corporate America, of the inescapable pressing force of the machinery that controls us all, and how the few that do escape the race are capable of doing so in no small part due to their contemptible moral values. There are some particularly memorable lines as Fearing describes the monolithic building that the publishing company occupies, and the 'offerings' it requires from the people who work there day in and day out. Fearing's character work is also impressive, creating a few memorable figures that represent this era of noir writing well.

I appreciated that Fearing switched point of view several times, lending us a more personal perspective on other characters, and giving us an outside look at Stroud himself. My biggest gripe was that it took too long for the inciting action to take place. Not that those pages go to waste, they do a good job of setting up the framework for the ensuing drama, but I almost put the book down because it didn't grip me within the first 50 pages (since the book is only 170 pages long). If nothing else, The Big Clock has certainly created an itch in me for more of this genre and style of writing. The Big Clock is a perfect book for a short afternoon read that you can finish in a few hours, which at the same time doesn't sacrifice meaningful theme work to be entertaining. show less

Racing the Clock of Life

The Big Clock is a different kind of murder/crime novel, but nonetheless dark and tawdry as American Noir should be. It’s different because the murder doesn’t come until well into the novel, and then really isn’t the focus of the suspenseful race against the clock. The focus is George Stroud, an ambitious magazine writer/editor, a man who drinks hard and cheats on his wife, who thinks quite highly of himself, of his intelligence, and his appreciation of aesthetics, particularly when it comes to art. The plot is a finely honed chase story about an innocent man, at least innocent of murder, trying to save his life. Even more, it’s a keen psychological probing of a cunning mind, that of George show more Stroud.

Outlined, the story begins with George grumbling to himself at a party thrown by his employer, Earl Janoth, chairman of Janoth Enterprises, an agglomeration of magazines. There he meets Pauline Delos, a magnetic blonde, who also happens to be seeing Janoth. Sometime later George and Pauline hookup, when George’s wife and daughter are safely out of town. The pair have a wild weekend in New York, where they buy a painting that proves a key clue in the tale, and upstate in Albany. At the end, he sees her home, but not to her door because Janoth is arriving at that precise moment. George holds back in the shadows, unrecognized. Next thing he knows, Pauline is dead and the most likely murderer is Janoth. In a twist, though, to protect himself, Janoth and his business partner concoct a tale about the mystery man, who is the only one who can place Janoth at Pauline’s apartment, with the objective of eliminating him. They sic the full resources of the publishing house on finding the man, and they put George in charge. George, faced with the task of ferreting out himself, has to continually throw his team of investigative reporters off his scent, until, at the end, they have pretty much closed in on him. It’s then that Fearing springs a surprise, the seed of which he has placed in plain view at the outset of the novel.

Readers will find two features of the novel particularly interesting. First, the clock of the title; it serves as both a sort of stopwatch counting down the hours and minutes until George finds himself exposed. It also functions as an overarching symbol of the relentless grind of life, it’s unalterable march to the fatal moment in every life. The second are the Louise Patterson paintings; one hanging in George’s office builds tension as we readers and George wait for somebody to identify it as a Patterson. Even more, though, George’s attachment to his Patterson paintings, and specifically the one from the antique shop, speak volumes about George’s character: his self-pride, his superior aesthetic eye, and his willingness to behave recklessly to preserve is purchase, which is really part and parcel of his identity.

You’ll find The Big Clock not only suspenseful but more sophisticated than the typical noir crime novel. show less

A little too clever for it's own good, and slightly disappointing at the end - I was hoping for something a bit more like John Franklin Bardin rather than what I did get - but this really is a corker on the whole. The main idea of the book is frankly brilliant and if nothing else Fearing really does up the tension *unbearably* during these scenes. Excellent stuff.

The Big Clock is a first rate noir novella from 1946, a gripping story of suspense that is widely regarded as a classic. Protagonist George Stroud cheats on his wife and spends the night with the girlfriend of his own boss – Earl Janoth, the powerful head of a major publishing empire. Not knowing who she has been with, Janoth kills her in a jealous rage; he then puts George in charge of finding who her lover was in order to pin the blame on that person. Without giving away the plot, it will suffice to say that George and Janoth are engaged in a desperate battle of wits, one in which both their lives are at stake.

The Big Clock is chilling, and peopled by well- drawn distinctive characters. The story transcends the genre of crime show more fiction, being less “hardboiled” in tone than surrealistic. It takes the unusual approach of being narrated by each of its major characters in the first- person. Thus, the reader not only gains an omniscient view of events as they unfold, but sees each of the characters through the eyes of the others – and none (as viewed by the reader) is particularly admirable. Despite the subject matter, the novel has irony, satire, symbolism, humor, and humanity (as in George’s interactions with his infant daughter Georgia). The pace moves inexorably towards a gripping climax. While some find the ending is a bit of a let-down, it’s hard for me to imagine how else the story could have been ended.

No one pens a hardboiled line quite like Kenneth Fearing. Of Pauline Delos, Janoth’s blonde mistress (with whom George has his dangerous affair): The eye saw nothing but innocence, to the instincts she was undiluted sex, the brain said here was a perfect hell. Earl Janoth’s ruthless subordinate, Steve Hagan is “a hard, dark little man whose soul had been hit by lightning, which he'd liked. His mother was a bank vault, and his father an International Business Machine." One character remarks: ”Judas must have been a born conformist, a naturally common-sense, rubber-stamp sort of fellow who rose far above himself when he became involved with a group of people who were hardly in society, let alone a profitable business.”

As for the clock of the book’s title, I take it to be an ambiguous metaphor for a world governed by powerful impersonal forces and remorseless fate. The clock “measures people the same way it measures money, and the growth of trees, the lifespan of mosquitoes and morals, the advance of time.” Early in the novel, George reflects ”The big clock was running as usual… Sometimes the hands of the clock actually raced, and at other times they hardly moved at all. But that made no difference to the big clock. The hands could move backward, and the time it told would be right just the same. It would still be running as usual, because all the other watches have to be set by the big one, which is even more powerful than the calendar, and to which one automatically adjusts his entire life. And later: “The super-clock would go on forever, it was too massive to be stopped. But it had no brains, and I did. I could escape from it.”

The Big Clock was Kenneth Fearing’s only notable novel (his other work included poetry and minor works of fiction, some of which were published in the pulp magazines under a pseudonym). The book was adapted into a successful Paramount film starring Ray Milland and Maureen O'Sullivan. (In the film, the clock is not metaphorical, but a giant timepiece that occupies the lobby of the great publishing company where Janoth and George Stroud work). The book and the movie brought Fearing quite a lot of money, which he reported frittered away on alcohol.

For a fine essay on this novel and other writings of Kenneth Fearing, see the link below:

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/04/books/not-yet-on-the show less

Oh, yes, how the clock still goes on humming. Kenneth Fearing heard its mechanical, deadly 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 when he wrote his novel, The Big Clock – a tale 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, moral decay eating out their soul. As Fearing’s main character George Stroud says about the clock: “It would be easier and simpler to get squashed, stripping its gears than to be crushed helping it along.”

One of my all-time favorites, Kenneth show more Fearing’s classic noir/thriller published in 1946 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 right up to the last sentence. 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 its conclusion. Considering how effective multiple narrators can be in the hands of an accomplished writer, it’s surprising this literary technique isn’t employed 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 thriller, 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.“

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 scathing depiction of the world of business, it is also a work of first-rate 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, clock-driven world.

A New York Review Books (NYRB) Classic, its two hundred pages, can be read in a few days -- highly, highly recommended. I wish I could give it ten stars but the system only goes up to five.



Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961) show less

Oh, yes, how the clock still goes on humming. Kenneth Fearing heard its mechanical, deadly 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 when he wrote his novel, The Big Clock – a tale 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, moral decay eating out their soul. As Fearing’s main character George Stroud says about the clock: “It would be easier and simpler to get squashed, stripping its gears than to be crushed helping it along.”

One of my all-time favorites, Kenneth show more Fearing’s classic noir/thriller published in 1946 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 right up to the last sentence. 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 its conclusion. Considering how effective multiple narrators can be in the hands of an accomplished writer, it’s surprising this literary technique isn’t employed 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 thriller, 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.“

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 scathing depiction of the world of business, it is also a work of first-rate 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, clock-driven world.

A New York Review Books (NYRB) Classic, its two hundred pages, can be read in a few days -- highly, highly recommended. I wish I could give it ten stars but the system only goes up to five.



Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961) show less