"A Rage of Desire" by Clayton Matthews (Monarch Books 1960, Black Gat Books 2026)

A Rage of Desire, the debut novel of Clayton Matthews (originally published by Monarch in 1960, and recently republished by Black Gat Books/Stark House Press), is proto-sunshine noir, where the bright California sun contrasts with the dark and desperate urges of its characters. But instead of Hollywood glitz and glamour, or beach-front luxury, Matthews dumps readers in Los Angeles’s decaying Figueroa Street, where middle-aged WWII vet Mitch Sutton is the sales manager for a used car lot whose neighborhood had seen better days.

“Figueroa Street was not the street it had been during, and for several years after, the war… but the memory of Figueroa Street as it once had been, the tempo of the fast buck, the fast deal, the eager customers; all this spiced Mitch's reveries. He could not bring himself to leave the street. The best days of his life had been spent there. Then, too, there was the diminishing hope that the affluent days might once more return to the street.”

Mitch Sutton is married with two kids, a boy and a girl. He’s got a house and car, and while the car isn’t anything fancy, it runs. After a couple stints in jail for rowdy behavior, he’s come to accept he can’t handle his liquor and now sticks to beer. He should be happy and content—but then he sees a Jane at the bar drinking scotch and soda, and his life starts to unravel. After his attempted one-night stand doesn’t go as planned, he still can't forget her. And then she walks back into his world—as his boss's new wife. But even that isn't enough to get her off his mind. And, as it turns out, Jane can’t get Mitch off her mind, either.

Mitch is a perfect example of noir’s “self-made loser” (as opposed to the all-American “self-made man”). With each passing page, Mitch digs his own grave a little deeper. By the opening line of the second chapter, he’s already as good as dead: “When Mitch awoke, he was cold and stiff.”

For a debut novel, A Rage of Desire is impressively constructed, borrowing elements from James M. Cain’s doomed affairs and from Orrie Hitt’s suburban passions, but Matthews is no mere copycat, and he brings plenty of novel twists to proven formulas. Plenty of times I thought I had nailed down exactly where the story was headed, only to discover that Matthews was one step ahead.

“Basically speaking, there is a certain number of plots going back several hundred years that are still in use,” Matthews explained of his working method. “All a new book is is a different version of the same story. There are no new stories. Somebody might come up with an original punchline for a short story, but in the novel field, all the stories have been written. It is the way the thing is put together that makes it different, if you succeed, that is.”

Where Matthews excels is his depiction of middle-class, middle-aged ennui. The symbol of the second-hand car is a perfect metaphor for the tattered illusion of the American dream that Mitch is pursuing—the best he can get is somebody else’s discarded past.

Before turning to writing full-time, Clayton Matthews worked at various times as an animal trainer, carnival barker, construction worker, railroad gandy dancer, surveyor, taxi driver, and truck driver. While he doesn’t make excuses for Mitch’s poor decisions, he clearly has sympathy for the working man’s blues. Mitch wanted a better life—but, like most noir protagonists, he thought OTC meant over the bar counter and mistakenly thought a stiff drink and a fast dame would restore his life. Boy, was he mistaken.

Hopefully A Rage of Desire won’t be the last of Stark House’s forays into the works of Clayton Matthews.

Sources:
Thomas Fox, “Paperback Writers,” The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee), February 10, 1980, Section G, p. 6.
Dick Lochte, “Book Notes,” The Book Review, Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1981, p. 2.
“Fiction Writing Duo Make Home in Bonsall,” The Enterprise (Fallbrook, California), December 15, 1983, p. B-9.