I’ve never seen Cool Hand Luke, and was only aware of it from pop culture references until picking up Donn Pearce’s novel. I didn’t know what to expect beyond it being about a nonconformist prisoner who eats a lot of eggs. As a novel, it exceeded my expectations, narrrated in a dreamy, impressionistic style by a man named Sailor, about whom we know almost nothing.
Cool Hand Luke uses first person pedestal narration. which is a writing workshop way of saying that the narrator is a character but not the main one. The narrrator can feature prominently (think Fifth Business or To Kill a Mockingbird) or tangentially (think the Great Gatsby or Breakfast at Tiffany’s) but they are not the protagonist. Rather, the serve to bear witness to the protagonist, who is usually a tragic figure. In Cool Hand Luke, the narrator is kept so vague that he is barely a character—chapters can go by when you forget that he’s in the story, and not just a disembodied voice telling it. This feelign is underscored by the prose, which uses a non-colloquial poetic diction to convey scenes.
This is contrasted with portions narrated by another inmate, Dragline, who accompanied Luke on his final, fatal escap eattempt. Much of the novel is actually takign place during one of Dragline’s retelling of this episode to new inmates, though Sailor, our ghostly narrator, gives his version of events for much of the same period. There’s no line breaks or even dialogue tags to indicate who is speaking, but Pearce handles the transitions well with his command of vernacular dialogue. It’s always quite clear when we’re listening to Dragline or Luke and when we’re listening to Sailor.
The story is itself fairly simple, mostly the arc of Luke’s arrival at the prison, ascension to a place of honor among the inmates, and a gnawing dissatisfaction that forces him to escape again and again wtih a desperation that flirts wit hthe suicidal. The story is well realised and well told. A truly excellent novel. I’m surprised Pearce didn’t write more, though it seems he only published another two before taking a prolonged hiatus to do other work. I’ll have to seek these out at some point.