Down there (1956)

Also published as Shoot the Piano Player, this follows a once-celebrated pianist surviving by playing in a Philadelphia bar. Family trouble pulls him towards the violent world he has tried to leave behind. Goodis makes retreat itself feel precarious: loyalty can reopen the past as quickly as ambition. Exhausted urban atmosphere surrounds a man trying to keep his remaining life small. That shrinking ambition gives the violence an unusually melancholy weight.