Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
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2024 December 11 • Wednesday

Happy birthday!

Death Wish has rooted itself deeply enough into our cultural consciousness that most people will be pretty confident that they know what it's about. And they'll probably mostly be right.

Brian Garfield's original novel deserves more attention than it's received, though.

It's a nimble piece of writing, a study in character first and a thriller second. Garfield is a virtuoso of understatement and economy and can grab readers and pull them in with ease.

Let's get some of the differences between the book and the movie out of the way first. In the book, the main character is a Jewish man named Paul Benjamin, a conventional, middle class, comfortable sort of person, liberal to the extent that he has an opinion about anything: "had never supported Zionism or the Temple of the B'nai Brith".

At his wife's funeral, the rabbi's "remarks were dutiful and innocuous". Those are the words to describe Paul as well.

His wife has been killed and his daughter traumatized to the point of being unable to return to life with other people after three young men, apparently looking for drug money, force their way into Paul's apartment. Esther and Carol don't have more than a few dollars on them and so they become human punching bags for their attackers, who you might think were enraged or desperate but are described as laughing hysterically, so perhaps high and/or insane.

One big difference between book and movie is that this happens off-page in the book. We are not an audience for this scene of brutality. Another big difference is that in the book there isn't anything sexual about what happens. It's explicitly stated that nothing like rape occurs, just beating. It's just inhuman and senseless violence that apparently means nothing to its perpetrators.

The senselessness of it makes it especially horrific to everyone affected. In the movie, of course, the assault is right there for everyone to see and it includes sexual assault, in a sharp departure from the book. And while the three assailants are described in the book as Peurto Rican and/or black—like all of Paul Benjamin's eventual targets—the movie gives us three Caucasian attackers, of whom one is Jeff Goldblum.

The filmmakers were wise not to make this a story about a white man blowing away a bunch of non-white criminals. The book uses this dynamic to show us a prejudiced and unfair world that celebrates Paul's violence. The police end up being solidly on his side, which leads to the novel's powerful and chilling conclusion. The movie is rather limp in comparison, showing explicit sexual violence that simply isn't in the book but shying away from uncomfortable ideas, of all things.

When Paul's son-in-law, who significantly works for Legal Aid, tells Paul that he has to go on living, Paul disagrees. And Paul doesn't go on living. "Paul" is dead (a Beatles reference?) and a new Paul will take his place.

His lowered head swung back and forth like the head of a worn-out prelim fighter in the ring, trying to locate his opponent. "I'm not thinking about suicide, I didn't mean that." But he kept bulling it, thinking. His breathing was shallow; his sphincter contracted, he formed a loose fist. "I've never hit a man in anger in my life. Never called a black man 'nigger' or stolen a penny from any man. I've given money and my own time to a dozen worthwhile causes from block associations to the N-Double-A-C-P."

And that's a pretty clear description. Paul has been thrown into the ring, he has no experience and he's getting clobbered. His whole self is reacting and he's forming "a loose fist". The first will get less loose.

Garfield's book tracks how Paul Benjamin becomes, in his own way, the same species as the maniacs who kill his wife and shatter his daughter's sanity. Or perhaps it's better to say that he starts living in the same jungle as them, he becomes a predator instead of prey. And, crucially, part of the transformation involves the rush of both sex and drugs as well as the addictive properties of both.

Garfield signals this direction early on, when Paul interacts with a black police officer in the emergency room. This cop has seen it all, he lives and works in this hell, but he's kind and considerate. But he's got a gun, hasn't he?

After a while—he wasn't reckoning time—the cop got to his feet clumsily, rattling the heavy accoutrements that hung like sinkers from his uniform belt. The thick handle of the revolver moved to Paul's eye level.

There it is. But the cops are literally weighed down and clumsy, sinking beneath the weight of their requirements. Paul won't have that problem.

In the book he's an accountant and in the movie he's an architect. And of course in the movie he's Charles Bronson. Which means that Paul Kersey (as he's called in the movie) is already kind of up to the task becayse he's Charles Bronson. While the Paul in the book has to learn how to fire a gun because he's never done it before, in the movie he grew up with guns and already knows everything about them and is a great shot.

Which is actually kind of boring.

Garfield slips into the second person often—"You preserved a modicum of sanity only because there were so many idiotic decisions you had to make"—effectively allowing readers to see through Paul's eyes.

The book also functions as a deft social satire at times and is only really bogged down by a long section that's a presentation of an article from a magazine about the vigilante's motives. I had to imagine Garfield's editor demanding that he tell his readers what they're supposed to think about what's been happening, even though the writing is very clear and sensitive.

Death Wish is a book about a character rather than an abstraction like "vigilantism". This is a character who has experiences that change who he is and what he does as a result. This radiates outwards to change those who experience the things that he does, either directly or vicariously, thus causing a ripple in this particular social pool.

The movie aims more for conventional exploitation goals and reaches them. The draw of a Charles Bronson movie is action more than character and that suits most people just fine.

The book is worth a look, though.

The first line is "Later he worked out where he had been at the time of the attack on Esther and Carol".