1936. Ralph Creel is thirty-years-old, lives with his extended family of parents and sisters, and does nothing. Nothing that is except hang on the street corner ("There was no other place to go"), munch Indian Nuts and smoke. His closest friends are all the same. There are no jobs - supposing they want jobs - no ambition and, one suspects, no future. Ralph and Ken half-heartedly write songs and there is talk about Florida, but you know it's all just so much hot-air.

Goodis' book reads like a paean to the unfocused desperation of his own life. As Jim Sallis records in Difficult Lives, Goodis lived as a virtual recluse from the age of 33, frequenting ghetto bars and nightclubs, searching out verbal abuse from obese black women. His Ralph is angry but resigned, trapped in a hand-to-mouth existence but too pliable to the wills of others to finally abscond.

At its best, the writing in The Blonde On The Street Corner summons an extraordinary prose poetry: "The glitter, the glimmer, the gloss and the glow." Dialogue is snappy, description surreal, and imagined through a disturbing high-pressure narrative. Let's hope Serpent's Tail don't stop the roundabout of Goodis reissues here.