Paul Little, the ex-convict at the center of Aaron Philip Clark’s debut The Science of Paul doesn’t do a lot of convict-y sorts of things. He doesn’t sling drugs, he doesn’t hang out with ne’er do wells on a stoop, in a pool hall or behind the liquor store. He does have a temper, he doesn’t have a gun. He has a work ethic, but no job. He is very smart, but you wouldn’t know it from his actions. He’s just a few hours from being off parole at the book’s opening and wants nothing more than to escape the spirit-suck that city life in Philadelphia offers him and go work his late grandfather’s thirteen-acre farm in North Carolina. Simple living, hard, but honest labor and peace of mind draw him to the idyllic rural landscape, but there are practical considerations to be seen to, emotional baggage to be hauled, attachments to be cut and loose ends to be tied before he can go.
So he keeps telling us.
Paul has a thing for books. He especially appreciates philosophy - David Hume, (A Treatise of Human Nature) and the like. Hume asserted that desire (not reason) ultimately runs (ruins) our lives, and if that’s the case, deep down Paul wants to be miserable. Ultimately, he’s his own greatest obstacle, sabotaging every attempt to leave the city, disintegrating relationships and creating moral dilemmas that most people would shrug off easily. Paul believes he should be punished and that he doesn’t deserve to be happy, but he’s dismayed that his punishment and frustration come in forms that he does not approve of.
Trying to make some money to get out of town with, he becomes stuck, lodged between a dangerous drug dealer and a suspicious police officer, each holding something over him and manipulating him for their own purposes. Every attempt he makes to shake free his bonds, only end up tightening them. And he likes them snug. Only when he’s bound well and good, can he really let loose on his favorite whipping boy - himself. He’s full of the kind of self-loathing familiar to Jim Thompson readers. He is smart where most are stupid and kind where others are cruel, yet he is unable to succeed in life because of rather than in spite of his superior intellect, morality, nature and so forth.
As the body count rises and the misery compounds, Paul is strangely freed. He is free, as an object of unrighteous persecution to finally take action toward his goals, especially as they seem less and less obtainable. Will he make a go of straight life? Will he ever find peace? Will he allow himself to be loved? Forgiven? Redeemed?
The Science of Paul is classic mid-century noir updated and run through with self-conscious (but unobtrusive) observations of the modern trappings of race and class. It’s a serious novel, not in the least pulpy even though it’s published by Jon Bassoff’s New Pulp Press an outfit out of Colorado that specialize in strange and transgressive works that would scare off other even moderately commercially concerned houses (God bless you, Mr. Bassoff). And Clark is a serious writer, one I hope to see more from soon.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
