by Ed Gorman

BROOKLYN NOIR 2 The Classics Akashic Books $15.95 edited by Tim McLoughlin

Though the title is misleading--even by the most liberal interpretation of the word "noir" several of these pieces just don't belong here--but you know what? Who gives a damn. This collection of reprints is so packed full of literary treats the title is irrelevant. The stories here are all set in Brooklyn and date from early in the last century to the present day. That's good enough for me.

The most familiar to genre readers will be "By The Dawn's Early Light," probably the best piece of fiction ever written by Lawrence Block and "The Best Friend Murder," a melancholy detective piece that proves that Donald Westlake can master brilliantly any form and style he chooses.

Other genre names include H.P. Lovecraft (!), Stanley Ellin and Carolyn Wheat. Pete Hamill and Johnathan Lethem add name luster to the marquee.

Thomas Wolfe is also present but writing in a kind of faux-Eugene O'Neill dialect that is all but impenetrable to me. But then just about anything by Wolfe is all but impenetrable to me; sorry.

And the O'Neill influence is to be found again in a far better story here, the Irwin Shaw "Borough of Cemeteries." I recall reading a review a few years back in which Shaw was roundly pronounced dead, no longer of interest or merit. I hired an old friend of mine from our Army days and had the reviewer whacked.

Shaw, along with John O'Hara, deserves the respect he never quite got while he were alive. Both Shaw and O'Hara committed the mortal sin of writing successful commercial novels and thus were forever dimsissed by the literary squinters who decide such matters as taste and pertinence. But the best of their short stories--and we're talking hundreds of them--are Chekovian in an American way. And if that sounds like too much, just sit down and starting reading their short stuff and I think you'll agree.

"Borough" is working class Shaw, here showing that he'd read both his O'Neill and Clifford Odets. In fact, there's an air of "Waiting for Lefty" in this perfect utterance about angry and forlorn workingmen in Depression Brooklyn. The last six or seven hundred words will give you a chill--never has self-destruction seemed more elegant or exuberant.