tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35748989982960591142024-03-13T13:09:09.416-04:00Pulp SerenadeCommentary on books, movies, and music by Cullen Gallagher. Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.comBlogger603125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-16587609821209386992022-12-14T07:36:00.003-05:002022-12-14T10:06:44.642-05:00"Test Tube Baby" by Sam Fuller (1936)<i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP9gp-go1zgR80s5QHLXxz1oBPN30xpHpWNhCVgEtVDtn1irv6phohAAeebAwnubM4P9nwKRPd90NgKkSvpssbLLvnfa7rgKpz8xwu3lVxp8OSqoztKaQmCahYJYUMa4SDhQA1ttuS-sXohQ1-caijUzkOqK4i0I82SwlWnrbTDepFQssiYwNXGbLk/s1733/Test%20Tube%20Baby_cover.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1733" data-original-width="1273" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP9gp-go1zgR80s5QHLXxz1oBPN30xpHpWNhCVgEtVDtn1irv6phohAAeebAwnubM4P9nwKRPd90NgKkSvpssbLLvnfa7rgKpz8xwu3lVxp8OSqoztKaQmCahYJYUMa4SDhQA1ttuS-sXohQ1-caijUzkOqK4i0I82SwlWnrbTDepFQssiYwNXGbLk/s320/Test%20Tube%20Baby_cover.jpeg" width="235" /></a></div>Test Tube Baby</i> is the second novel from Samuel Fuller (here credited as “Sam Fuller”). Published in 1936 by Godwin, Publishers, it is among the rarest of Fuller’s publications, never having been re-printed. Thanks to a friend, I was able to borrow a copy to read it, and I’m glad I did. <i>Test Tube Baby</i> offers a fascinating glimpse into the growth of an artist. After a slow start, there’s a spark in the middle of the book where Fuller’s voice suddenly comes to life. This is the sort of book that only Fuller could have written: a nitro-tabloid stylized melodrama about the moral struggles of a good boy who wants to be bad, infused with petty con-men, punch-drunk ex-boxers, Park Row news-hawks, and tramps. The plot might be sensational—and nonsensical—at points, but Fuller, fresh from his tenure on the <i>New York Evening Graphic</i>, sees the world through a front-page lens, and tells his story through all-caps headlines. <i>Test Tube Baby </i>is wild, and perhaps uneven in quality, but as a Fuller devotee, I treasure the insight this offered into his artistry.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>The novel begins with single mom Eleanor Garrison giving birth to her son, Jimmy, who she intends to raise as a “test tube baby”—nothing but education and studying and hard work for him, so that he can grow up to be a genius. The experiment is a success, and Jimmy grows up to be a medical wunderkind! A chemist who has also made great discoveries in genetics and cancer research and performs open-heart surgery on a child badly injured in an accident. But what has the newspapers all abuzz is Jimmy’s latest explorations into in vitro fertilization. Needing a break, Jimmy takes his first drink of alcohol, winds up taking the ferry from New York City to Jersey where he meets Peggy, a sex worker, at Palisades Amusement Park, and has sex for the first time. The experience awakens a hidden Mr. Hyde within his Dr. Jekyll (to borrow an apt analogy from the <i><a href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/fuller_sam" target="_blank">Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction</a></i>).</div><div><br /></div><div>Back home, Jimmy can’t focus on work, and he’s lost interest in good-girl Pat. “Why didn’t she stand up to his face and tell him she loved him—or make up her mind to forget the walking test tube?” Pat muses, frustrated. “Test tube? She detested the two words which shot a chill up her spine. She hated everything they stood for. He wasn’t human. He was a machine.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Jimmy’s life gets an unexpected dose of excitement when he takes Pat to a dance, which is held up by a pair of low-level hoods, con artist Augie and punch-drunk boxer Punchy. Jimmy attacks the gunmen and saves the day. But when Augie and Punchy see Jimmy’s picture in the paper, they strike up an unexpected friendship with the scientist. Jimmy loves the allure of the criminal life, and is slowly sucked in, to the point where he orchestrates an elaborate armored car robbery plan. Threatening the heist is Peggy’s jealousy over how much time her boyfriend Augie is spending with Jimmy, who has also lost interest in her.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a way,<i> Test Tube Baby</i> feels like multiple books in one. Part Horatio Alger, part W.R. Burnett, part <i>Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i>, part social melodrama, part medical drama, and part romance. My favorite bits were about Augie and Punchy, and a reporter named Brassy Nichols who also sees Peggy. These are the characters who has the most Fuller flavor, and he writes them with a verve that revitalizes the book and really gets it going. Brassy would be right at home in <i>Park Row</i>, and Augie and Punchy would fit in with the denizens of <i>Pickup on South Street </i>(albeit they are rendered a little more comically here). These types seem so intimate, as though Fuller had known such people and was drawing from real life. These characters also have a humor and depth that Jimmy and Pat lack. The romance angle is a bit conventional, but it is the criminal and journalistic elements that give the book Fuller’s unique touch.</div><div><br /></div><div>Overall, I enjoyed <i>Test Tube Baby</i>, and while it is clearly the work of a young writer still honing his skills, there are flashes of Fuller’s artistic genius, and it was a joy to see them in such a nascent state.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Cover: <a href="https://www.royalbooks.com/pages/books/148683/sam-fuller-samuel/test-tube-baby-first-edition" target="_blank">Royal Books</a></span></i></div>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-35957178018325754012022-12-13T07:21:00.003-05:002022-12-13T07:41:04.129-05:00"The Pitfall" by Jay Dratler (1947, re-published by Stark House Press 2022)<div class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSaxvXhNuClm9dbcxZVO0C6ro1EqTrFw3MqBve4S0zK7J1n7tx9XK-RXwJmKwARf6LmubdvuBOoOCQ0NpsvVA9z_41uu3S4dmgxk0QiDdoXultg3ksula8z0Fpb8p0Nqek57Em5VSRxXwlnw5r8PtRB_KYZ_RY43tZgGeI5aoMyWbNfKoFjmLfc56f/s2000/Pitfall%20Stark%20House%20Cover.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSaxvXhNuClm9dbcxZVO0C6ro1EqTrFw3MqBve4S0zK7J1n7tx9XK-RXwJmKwARf6LmubdvuBOoOCQ0NpsvVA9z_41uu3S4dmgxk0QiDdoXultg3ksula8z0Fpb8p0Nqek57Em5VSRxXwlnw5r8PtRB_KYZ_RY43tZgGeI5aoMyWbNfKoFjmLfc56f/s320/Pitfall%20Stark%20House%20Cover.jpeg" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>While the 1948 film <i>Pitfall</i> has risen to be regarded as a film noir classic, Jay Dratler’s original 1947 novel <i>The Pitfall</i> has been unjustly neglected. Stark House Press, re-releasing the book for the first time since 1956, reveals that Dratler’s novel is darker, sleazier and less forgiving than the film it inspired. A brutal portrait of blind lust and self-destruction that out-Cains even James M. Cain, Dratler’s <i>The Pitfall</i> deserves to known as a stellar example of 1940s American noir. Stark House’s edition, which includes introductions from the author’s son, Jay Dratler, Jr., as well as novelist Timothy J. Lockhart, will hopefully restore the novel’s rightful reputation.<div><br /></div><div>In the novel, Jon Forbes is a successful screenwriter who seemingly has it all. He has a daughter, Ann, devoted to him; and his wife, Sue, is pregnant with their second child. And he works his own schedule—afternoons and evenings—at home, where his secretary Kate takes dictation. He even has a friend on the police force, Mac, who gives him insider tips for his scripts.</div><div><br /></div><div>And all it takes is one whisper from Mac about Mona, the wife of a purse snatcher named Smiley currently serving three months, to sink his entire life. Mac wants Jon to cozy up to Mona and pave the way for him. Jon disagrees at first, but can’t get Mona out of his mind. Pretending to be a friend of her husband, Jon arranges to have a drink at a hotel bar. And from the moment they meet, Jon’s doomed fate is sealed—if only he were smart enough to realize it.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>“I think you’re going to have trouble with me mister,” she said softly. “And I think my little old man is headed for a marble slab.”</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJaMpZFZqW4933o4hA-GErcm5m64UjjQhOltAdKNqq5bzsoXp-wSuSz2dcIufGO2NxoaUXu_523QoeAn3ryOrZvym_E-2GbCC3IU1Vv3-YT-F6zl_DUBYItI7AACXYpQo_YwFxw-01xVqA2iUodveq30jqwhakQ23dDYvfchLYTE9j477i9ci_hh3o/s1825/The%20Pitfall%20first%20edition.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJaMpZFZqW4933o4hA-GErcm5m64UjjQhOltAdKNqq5bzsoXp-wSuSz2dcIufGO2NxoaUXu_523QoeAn3ryOrZvym_E-2GbCC3IU1Vv3-YT-F6zl_DUBYItI7AACXYpQo_YwFxw-01xVqA2iUodveq30jqwhakQ23dDYvfchLYTE9j477i9ci_hh3o/s320/The%20Pitfall%20first%20edition.jpeg" /></a>From there, it’s a fast-moving, downward slope. Jon stops working on scripts, he ignores his family, he skips out on parties, all to be with Mona. When Jon refuses to hand her over to Mac, however, the cop gets violent. And with Mona’s jealous husband set to get out of jail, Jon must decide how much he’s willing to fight, and which life he’s going to fight for—his affair with Mona, or his family.<br /><br />Dratler’s <i>The Pitfall </i>has suffered the unjust fate of many source novels for Hollywood movies—credit goes to the filmmakers, and not the author. Even Eddie Muller, in his TCM Noir Alley introduction, completely misrepresents the plot, calling it “a Hollywood drama revolving around the sexual machinations of movie executives and their underlings”—while that sounds like a terrific yarn, it’s not Dratler’s novel at all. Sure, the book takes place in Hollywood, but it has nothing to do with the casting couch and other behind-the-scenes sexism and exploitation. It mostly takes place away from the studio, within the walls of domesticity, as a screenwriter puts aside his family and career to pursue a fantasy that destroys him and his world from the inside out. As the author’s son describes in his introduction, “The ‘black’ in his ‘noir’ genre came from within individuals’ souls—their needs, their lusts, their pride, their temptations, their frustrations, and their dreams, however illicit or impossible. Their struggle was an intenral one, and one among acquaintances, with a background of norms of behavior that everyone then took for granted.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The 1948 film, directed by André de Toth with a script credited to Karl Kamb, plays up the “everyman” angle of the story, and changes the protagonist to “John Forbes,” an insurance agent played by Dick Powell. He meets Mona (Lizabeth Scott) when he’s sent to inventory stolen property insured by his company and given to her by her boyfriend Bill Smiley (Byron Barr), currently in jail. At first Forbes is all business, but Mona implores him to act human—and soon he’s riding around in her motor boat, which he doesn’t report to his company. Private detective Macdonald (Raymond Burr), hired by Forbes to find Mona, has become obsessed with her, and when he sees Forbes moving in, he thratens to reveal Forbes’s indiscretion. And, just as in the book, it is the release of Mona’s boyfriend that forces Forbes to decide just which life of his he wants to protect.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the biggest difference between the book and the movie is its moral gray area—the book has a much blacker center, something that the movie had to compromise in order to pass the Hays Code. In the book, Forbes’s lust is unrepentent: “I never knew I could be that much of a heel—but the seed of it must have been in me, the seed of destruction.” While he’s unaware of the trap he’s stepping into, he’s very aware of his own infidelity and his attempts to manipulate both Sue and Mona. In fact, when he first meets Mona, she calls him out on his lying: she knows he’s no friend of the family, but she’s game for an affair becaues it what she wants. “I’m pleased to meet you becuase you’re delightful. You’re wonderful,” Forbes says. Mona replies, “No, I’m not. I’m a pretty woman you’ve just met. I’m married and my husband isn’t around.” In this way, Dratler is much more fair to Mona than de Toth’s film, which paints her as a manipulative femme fatale out to deceive Forbes from the start. For Dratler, it is Forbes who is the homme fatale; for de Toth, Forbes is a sympathetic character, a victim as much to scheming outside forces as his own desires. Neither character gets out of the mess untarnished, but while de Toth allows Forbes to linger in purgatory, Dratler sends him straight to hell.</div><div><br /></div><div>The one character that de Toth’s film improves is Sue Forbes. In the novel, she feels that, because she was pregnant and often bed-bound, she was to blame for her husband’s actions, as though she had failed him as a wife. “And she believed it,” Jon reflects. “That’s the incredible part of it. She believe it.” In the movie, Sue (Jane Wyatt) is a much stronger character, and far less forgiving of her husband. “You're not going to the police,” she tells him, when he wants to confess to ease his conscience. “You lied once. It came easy enough for you then. You've got to lie now. I mean this, Johnny, if you drag this family through the dirt, I'll never forgive you.” Dratler’s implicit perspective of Jon seems to have been transferred to Sue for the movie.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dratler’s book had been sold to Hollywood even before it hit shelves. Many initial reviewers of the novel were shocked by its luridness. As quaint as their opinions might seem today, they offer evidence of how daring and edgy Dratler’s book was in its time. “We felt so dirty after reading this one,” commented Omaha’s <i>Morning World-Herald</i> (February 16, 1947). “It is so sex-packed that it makes the flesh crawl…We can see no reason for writing it, for publishing it or for reading it.” <i>The Oakland Tribune</i> called it “peculiar and lurid…makes Hollywood a James M. Cain land” (February 23, 1947). Shirley Wolter in Montreal’s <i>The Gazette</i> wrote, “Readers will not appreciate his <i>Pitfall</i>. Screen censors would not appreciate his <i>Pitfall</i>. We can only hope Mr. Dratler will appreciate his pitfall…and be the good screenwriter he is.” (April 12, 1947). <i>The Indianapolis Star</i> was also shocked by the book: “[What] is supposed to be Hollywood, changes suddenly to the bedroom and somebody locks the door…<i>The Pitfall</i> might well be changed to the word referring to that type of tumble made famous by slapstick comedians” (January 19, 1947). And <i>The Philadelphia Inquierer</i> felt that “many a reader’s capacity to take such an unrelieved pounding may not be quite up to Jay Dratler’s skill” (June 15, 1947).</div><div><br /></div><div>The quality of Dratler’s novel was not lost on all reviewers, thankfully. “This is a tight, swift, sexy yarn. And strangely, a very moral one,” wrote Clip Boutell in the Los Angeles <i>Daily News </i>(March 1, 1947). <i>The Gasconade County Republican</i> (July 10, 1947) thought the book was “mostly concerned with sex” and that “in this tautness of style and frankness of characters lies the book’s charm.” And the <i>Latrobe Bulletin</i> called it “Salty, tough, modern” (April 18, 1947).</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj79GeFwDjxs_1JFRMdpAbGvk6J89Ltu6hxm1K8IKZ1OghKk1Ej-HkiKtM8Fpz2j9x4TEuVnkVIFtyC1hU8hzt5qoxd9Rb1biAs5BOoZV-iTiKiMcACj0Slpgom20kzIjR3lXxuyFg7cGiVwP7IqICUwkyP0JeHEo9shJWsWuLIKdPZgJfpNvTCQZWk/s946/The_Mirror_Wed__May_4__1949_%20crop.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj79GeFwDjxs_1JFRMdpAbGvk6J89Ltu6hxm1K8IKZ1OghKk1Ej-HkiKtM8Fpz2j9x4TEuVnkVIFtyC1hU8hzt5qoxd9Rb1biAs5BOoZV-iTiKiMcACj0Slpgom20kzIjR3lXxuyFg7cGiVwP7IqICUwkyP0JeHEo9shJWsWuLIKdPZgJfpNvTCQZWk/s320/The_Mirror_Wed__May_4__1949_%20crop.jpg" /></a></div><div>Decades later, Dratler’s<i> The Pitfall </i>is long overdue for a reassessment, and hopefully this Stark House edition will offer the opportunity for the book to ascend to its rightful place in the noir pantheon.</div><div><br /></div><div>P.S. As a curious sidenote, after the book was published, Dratler was sued for $300,000 by one Arthur J. Fitzpatrick, “a former Beverly Hills policeman, who claims that a character in Dratler’s novel, apparently based on him, exposes him to contempt, ridicule and public disgrace” (<i>Hollywood Citizen-News,</i> August 23, 1948). Los Angeles’s <i>The Mirror</i> reported, “He spoke freely to Dratler, Fitzpatrick says, many nights when the two sat in a police car on the corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Doheny Dr. The move writer assertedly violated his confidence by using the material for his book, the suit claims” (May 4, 1949). Newspapers at the time did not report on how the case was settled.</div>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-30122014832092812662022-12-01T06:59:00.004-05:002022-12-14T12:37:14.871-05:00"Beach Bodies" by Nick Kolakowski (2022)<p><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beach-Bodies-Nick-Kolakowski/dp/B0B6XVBP6Y/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=" target="_blank"></a></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ZCC_xyA-dWe55tlPffqr5oGpd_XPouloK7kNDZLYQebu_wwNiM1rllnPs9fvqJR3XejPB2DLgPiGiUvzwxjzyAnFYE1ur7dLqaEooI-QQO4hbzXL4IijOeE91VWKoSx87ZliM0s0H9fRQTkho1BbBYACETrRgrGu64DF5uuWJZgDWzRsWeL7qbzA/s2699/Beach%20Bodies.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2699" data-original-width="1792" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ZCC_xyA-dWe55tlPffqr5oGpd_XPouloK7kNDZLYQebu_wwNiM1rllnPs9fvqJR3XejPB2DLgPiGiUvzwxjzyAnFYE1ur7dLqaEooI-QQO4hbzXL4IijOeE91VWKoSx87ZliM0s0H9fRQTkho1BbBYACETrRgrGu64DF5uuWJZgDWzRsWeL7qbzA/s320/Beach%20Bodies.jpg" width="212" /></a></i></div><i>Beach Bodies</i>, the latest novel from Nick Kolakowski, is a mind-trip, genre-bending twist on the home invasion scenario, and its swiftly-moving 139 page pack a whole lot of weirdness.<p></p><p>The set-up is straightforward: Julia is working as caretaker to a billionaire prepper’s bunker located at a remote beach-front area. Staying with her is her ex-boyfriend Alec, a wanna-be crypto bro recovering from a shrapnel injury obtained in Ukraine. When the motion detectors sense intruders, Julia investigates and finds three people, one of whom is badly injured. Her job forbids her to let her in—but these people won’t take no for an answer.</p><p>What ensues is decidedly not-so-straightforward. Every time I thought I had an inkling of what was coming around the corner, Kolakowski defied expectation, and took the story into marvelously messed-up places I never saw coming.</p><p>Bless Kolakowski and his warped imagination, who offers moments of high-octane thrills; gross-out comedy; Cronenberg-y body horror; a bar-sex scene set to a Rudolph Valentino-Nita Naldi silent film I never knew I wanted so badly; and, in the quiet moments between the batshit craziness, there’s perceptive scenes about two young lovers who are shitty to themselves and each other because they still have a lot to learn. </p><p>This is gonzo noir, and I love it.</p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-76287741797732970692022-11-24T17:48:00.006-05:002022-12-14T12:37:23.073-05:00"The Paris Manuscript" by Joseph Goodrich (2022)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibUJXRxH365H9bRQRWZHDYOqOQp-yWWGIQcjJjVk3MAVpmI2U4WAOG3ISCWaZz-YBK6cnBDzbClUPZ9Q7X2yI34WtAWZ09kuG9nZDf0hfFEFsOPwOaY9Ha_JTM6i8qKnPA63vcQf8qRD0J2HXImylFnKk1eMknEJ_FTJwBFy2EpQd-4wEcK-xeaxx5/s500/The%20Paris%20Manuscript.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibUJXRxH365H9bRQRWZHDYOqOQp-yWWGIQcjJjVk3MAVpmI2U4WAOG3ISCWaZz-YBK6cnBDzbClUPZ9Q7X2yI34WtAWZ09kuG9nZDf0hfFEFsOPwOaY9Ha_JTM6i8qKnPA63vcQf8qRD0J2HXImylFnKk1eMknEJ_FTJwBFy2EpQd-4wEcK-xeaxx5/s320/The%20Paris%20Manuscript.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>I was fully enraptured by Joseph Goodrich’s <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Manuscript-Joseph-Goodrich/dp/1935797948/ref=sr_1_1?crid=11HINH6XJXC4L&keywords=joseph+goodrich&qid=1669329989&sprefix=%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Paris Manuscript</a></i>, a historical noir set at the dawn of the fabled <i>Années folles</i> that is at turns dark, whimsical, nostalgic, and deeply moving. Structured like an on-rush of memories, the book begins in 1979 when elderly widower Ned Jameson goes through an old trunk while deciding whether to move in with his daughter, the contents of which send him back to 1919, in the years following World War I, where he lived with his wife, Daisy. Tormented by memories of the war, he worked as a journalist, and Daisy as an illustrator. Intrigue overtakes their lives when Daisy’s brother is blackmailed into becoming a saboteur. After the blackmailer is found murdered at a party they were attending, Ned begins to suspect Daisy is behind it—and he sets out to find the truth with an unlikely amateur detective, Marcel Proust, who volunteered at a hospital during the war.<p></p><p>When Proust enters the picture, <i>The Paris Manuscript </i>takes on a wonderful air that’s almost magical realist at times, but Goodrich keeps it grounded, making Proust a believable character within the drama at hand. When one thinks about it, isn’t <i>In Search of Lost Time</i> the underlying theme of so many noir works? In this sense, Proust makes a natural, though not obvious, sleuth proxy. Through Proust, Goodrich also makes a strong case for the detective-as-artist (or, is it, artist-as-detective?). “My asthma made it impossible for me to leave the car,” Proust recalls. “…I had to content myself by feeding upon what I could see. But what I can see is never enough… I must extrapolate. I am predisposed to the art of detection by illness… What I do as an artist is not so very different form what I do when I discovered [a clue which you’ll have to read the book to find out!]”<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Though <i>The Paris Manuscript </i>is Goodrich’s debut novel, he is far from a debut writer, and is widely celebrated for his short fiction, plays, and non-fiction—and one of the pleasures and surprises of <i>The Paris Manuscript </i>is seeing how all of these facets of Goodrich’s artistic career find their way into the book. Correspondence, poetry, theatricality, and fiction all have significant roles, informing both the characters as well as the form of the book itself (which incorporates diaries, letters, and excerpts of literature). An accomplished dramatist, Goodrich won an Edgar for his play <i>Panic</i>, and several of his stage works have been collected in <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/South-Sunset-Plays-Joseph-Goodrich/dp/1935797654/ref=sr_1_5?crid=11HINH6XJXC4L&keywords=joseph+goodrich&qid=1669329989&sprefix=%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-5" target="_blank">South of Sunset</a> </i>(Perfect Crime Books). His short fiction has appeared in <i>Ellery Queen</i> and <i>Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine</i>; his critical writings have been collected in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unusual-Suspects-Non-Fiction-Joseph-Goodrich/dp/1935797832/ref=sr_1_2?crid=11HINH6XJXC4L&keywords=joseph+goodrich&qid=1669329989&sprefix=%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-2" target="_blank"><i>Unusual Suspects: Selected Nonfiction</i> </a>(Perfect Crime Books); and he’s the editor of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Relations-Selected-Letters-1947-1950-ebook/dp/B00CMZER7S/ref=sr_1_16?crid=11HINH6XJXC4L&keywords=joseph+goodrich&qid=1669329989&sprefix=%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-16" target="_blank">Blood Relations: The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen 1947-1950</a></i> (Perfect Crime Books).</p><p>Goodrich is a mystery scholar par excellence, it’s pure joy to read as he plays with literary form and tradition, bringing both reverence and innovation to archetypes (the amateur sleuth, the party murder, and a fabulous finale that gathers all the suspects back at the crime scene), which he clearly loves and understands on the levels of scholar, author, and reader. Paying homage (without becoming a satire), <i>The Paris Manuscript </i>is very much a mystery for readers who love mysteries—which certainly describes me. </p><p>As much as I’ve been writing about the meta aspect of the novel, it doesn’t overpower the core story, about a man who is quite literally (to borrow Proust’s title), in search of lost time, at two very different moments in his life. In 1979, he pores over objects that bring him closer to the past, the wife that’s gone, and the life they had. In 1919, Ned is also adrift, unable to shake the shackles of war trauma from his past. “I’d beaten the odds, but I was miserably wear and bluer than a midsummer Minnesota sky. I could see no light, no hope anywhere. Life wasn’t worth the trouble it would take to end it.” Grappling with guilt, suspicion, and remorse, Ned is a noir protagonist through and through—doomed by circumstance, and doomed by choice. But unlike Goodis or Woolrich, Goodrich at least gives his characters a chance, not to undo the past, but to try and make things right, and to take back control of time.</p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-35339253769645391442022-11-19T07:18:00.006-05:002022-11-19T07:18:44.431-05:00New Acquisitions: November 19, 2022<p> Aviation pulp, anyone? Time for a deep dive into the early work of David Goodis. Here's a large pile of <i>Fighting Aces </i>that I've amassed recently.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjov6YexASqNjTwrvEXLEDCwUS3ANFH82_OwXCyssSTbdweIV0eQGdBjC53A1aLIljeCHhVCOD18HfAhFbseCJ6r3tkZOJDQD5dQyy0QdkK1GUnvuc-lH2OdKeRIL3dekKMOrVzbCJKJH0obxbjMU0tzPI47d97IIFsg3QNUzHGcESpFmyEWC9ShjpO/s4160/IMG_20221119_071206165.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjov6YexASqNjTwrvEXLEDCwUS3ANFH82_OwXCyssSTbdweIV0eQGdBjC53A1aLIljeCHhVCOD18HfAhFbseCJ6r3tkZOJDQD5dQyy0QdkK1GUnvuc-lH2OdKeRIL3dekKMOrVzbCJKJH0obxbjMU0tzPI47d97IIFsg3QNUzHGcESpFmyEWC9ShjpO/w300-h400/IMG_20221119_071206165.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-69738749902451174542022-11-14T18:13:00.007-05:002022-11-14T18:13:49.414-05:00New Acquisitions: Nov. 14, 2022<p>A few recent additions to the library: <i>Beach Bodies</i> (2022) by Nick Kolakowski, <i>Say Goodbye When I'm Gone</i> (2020) by Stephen J. Golds, and <i>Corruption City </i>by Horace McCoy (1959).</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqlUqMAvcxm1OXoLgA4U0w2p8FJTe1yX3btVVPsDTyW0A1g_FOm9KCSJbFUJVpVndtwMSjHkIXM7Zt9i_j9c2kuJ3RA1VfNMtR_zB_BR73TVPkWfVKOBk2YGhvirHSumUWCBccCaLOmWxT-W_Pst06ctBPUOg6pu69YGvsKoucdRF6QfK5WaKfGye3/s3889/IMG_20221114_180747641.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2586" data-original-width="3889" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqlUqMAvcxm1OXoLgA4U0w2p8FJTe1yX3btVVPsDTyW0A1g_FOm9KCSJbFUJVpVndtwMSjHkIXM7Zt9i_j9c2kuJ3RA1VfNMtR_zB_BR73TVPkWfVKOBk2YGhvirHSumUWCBccCaLOmWxT-W_Pst06ctBPUOg6pu69YGvsKoucdRF6QfK5WaKfGye3/w400-h266/IMG_20221114_180747641.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-24598811121052125032022-11-14T10:37:00.005-05:002022-11-14T10:37:52.864-05:00Got a Light? In Search of the Samuel Fuller Matchbook<p>Anybody got a light? Not that I smoke, but I am looking for a special matchbook created by Samuel Fuller to commemorate the publication of his 1936 novel <i>Burn, Baby, Burn</i>. According to the Pottstown, Pennsylvania <i>Pottstown Mercury</i>, one million of these promotional tchotchkes were produced. Maybe one of them is out there, somewhere.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJWN9iMCHwwzitRHhSbgiLfUYFR0WHYSBUGpSSydE7V-0-elWtSIVUv-Pa4z4lhRHRF4PScluahlu8Iyh758vUJIVAerO6YYnF_e2h_P4_8PzJvwaCyLGniXHnHSrIHOEzahcE6QKcWm9eXwPP5HQzWeGmSUUSqai1D_QP_SGC_kt5bNKuvBGyspG/s7655/The_Mercury_Tue__Jan_21__1936_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2780" data-original-width="7655" height="116" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJWN9iMCHwwzitRHhSbgiLfUYFR0WHYSBUGpSSydE7V-0-elWtSIVUv-Pa4z4lhRHRF4PScluahlu8Iyh758vUJIVAerO6YYnF_e2h_P4_8PzJvwaCyLGniXHnHSrIHOEzahcE6QKcWm9eXwPP5HQzWeGmSUUSqai1D_QP_SGC_kt5bNKuvBGyspG/s320/The_Mercury_Tue__Jan_21__1936_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">(<i>Pottstown Mercury</i>, January 21, 1936, page 4)</div><p><br /></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-24850300484941291182022-11-12T15:51:00.002-05:002022-12-14T12:37:31.385-05:00Pulp Modern: Halloween Horror Issue (vol. 2, no. 9, Fall 2022)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYuuY2OGq8OiGhOSY6yMAHsNpfMn2x_vepPtnTGrFJRyvuOpz0P2_gNtfYGTdeVzfNxdnDUnBGxpjQ0qkUoywxgRmOhwaFYa68yPHOQb1j4gVYCs1aZpvgfXWKgQJg3D9XeAxrXFVwI2bxyUMyv2yQro6jUsmDtGumzV1oD4SWGCe9Bd3bFQ3i8hfs/s1545/PulpModernHalloween2022.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1545" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYuuY2OGq8OiGhOSY6yMAHsNpfMn2x_vepPtnTGrFJRyvuOpz0P2_gNtfYGTdeVzfNxdnDUnBGxpjQ0qkUoywxgRmOhwaFYa68yPHOQb1j4gVYCs1aZpvgfXWKgQJg3D9XeAxrXFVwI2bxyUMyv2yQro6jUsmDtGumzV1oD4SWGCe9Bd3bFQ3i8hfs/s320/PulpModernHalloween2022.jpeg" width="207" /></a></div>The latest issue of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pulp-Modern-2-Issue-9/dp/1957034165/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1GJ5NF7DDAJH3&keywords=pulp+modern+volume+2+issue+9&qid=1668213923&sprefix=pulp+modern%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Pulp Modern</a> </i>(vol. 2, no. 9, Fall 2022), edited by Alec Cizak, subtitled <i>Halloween Horror Issue</i>, is a terrific collection. I greatly enjoyed all the pieces, and appreciate Cizak's curation, which brought together a nice variety of fiction, non-fiction, and illustrations, all of which complement each other in how different they are, and together celebrate the breadth of the horror genre. Among my favorites were the opener (Ramsey Campbell's "Out of Copyright") and closer (Stanley Rutgers' "Rejection"), which both offer macabre takes on the publishing industry. In "Out of Copyright," an unscrupulous editor gets more than he bargained for when he republishes a rare text, and in "Rejection" a frustrated writer will do anything to get published in his favorite magazine. Bookending the issue with both stories was a clever and effective editorial choice not only for the obvious thematic similarity, but also because they highlight something key to horror: desire, and most specifically what happens when one is confronted directly with desire. <span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSKTDQ88hNu8TMs5es8c-6jM4V0zj2DUZaqsi8EQOVKo9twa0ZcDn_h3ayxkN6H0Z2aTu0YpjcYVX4Z40SKq_yrPR_BpeD4-DHPbHjjbQfeEVCfgUSVaSbHlW9d0_vVwmkMYDP5y8z9Yp5LdsHPK9I8FStaEySH2_RN5mAHfK0moYkaa46IRDqrgey/s927/PulpModernHalloweenBack2022.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="927" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSKTDQ88hNu8TMs5es8c-6jM4V0zj2DUZaqsi8EQOVKo9twa0ZcDn_h3ayxkN6H0Z2aTu0YpjcYVX4Z40SKq_yrPR_BpeD4-DHPbHjjbQfeEVCfgUSVaSbHlW9d0_vVwmkMYDP5y8z9Yp5LdsHPK9I8FStaEySH2_RN5mAHfK0moYkaa46IRDqrgey/s320/PulpModernHalloweenBack2022.jpeg" width="207" /></a></div><br />In between these two tales, the remaining stories deal with other aspects of horror. Lisa Voorhees's "The Yellow House" is a clever riff on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." Here, the protagonist reluctantly takes a vacation at a friend's family home, and finds herself trapped in supernatural circumstances. How characters deal with the uncanny is one of the most fascinating aspects of horror. Sometimes, they embrace it. Other times, they run from it. And others, they reject its possibility entirely, as though they cannot bear to admit its potential reality and how it might alter their own perception of the world around them. I won't spoil "The Yellow House," but it was a surprising and very enjoyable conclusion. The story pairs well with M.E. Proctor's "Apples in the Attic," which also deals with a protagonist's relationship with a supernatural house. In this story, a young woman inherits her grandmother's old home and, while reliving the past, uncovers the property's dark secrets. It's a terrific premise and there are any number of ways that the author could have their character react to the situation, but I think Proctor found the perfect balance that brings closure but allows for the horror's presence to remain and live on in the future.<p></p><p>Among the other works included are John Kojak's "The Curious Case of the USS Arroyo," a sci-fi-horror hybrid; Anthony Perconti's "Dark Amplifications," an essay on Richard Corben's Edgar Allan Poe illustrative work; Sarah Cannavo's "10-48," a comedic tale about two late-night speed-trap cops who get more excitement than bargained for when someone calls in about a clown in the woods; and Brandon Barrows's "You Were the Last," in which a driver rescues a female hitchhiker fleeing an abusive husband, and perhaps finds himself involved in a local ghost story.</p><p>Also deserving of mention are the fabulous artists: Darren Auck (who did the cover), Theo Ellsworth, Brad W. Foster, Allen K., Rick McCollum, Michael Neno, and Bob Vojtko.</p><p>Click here for more info on <i>Pulp Modern</i>, visit <a href="https://www.pulpmodern.net/" target="_blank">their website</a>, <a href="https://larquepress.com/" target="_blank">Larque Press</a>, or <a href="https://www.unclebpublications.com/" target="_blank">Uncle B. Publications</a>.</p><p><br /></p></div>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-23968088067663616812022-11-09T19:51:00.004-05:002022-11-14T18:14:49.786-05:00Recent Acquisitions: A Trip to the Mysterious Bookshop<p>I decided to make an out-of-the-way pit-stop at the Mysterious Bookshop on my way home from work to pick up a signed copy of Lawrence Block's <i>The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown</i>. As expected, I found a couple other things I had been looking forward, and several I didn't know that I had been looking for but clearly should have been. Stark House Press/Black Gat's reissue of Robert Silverberg's <i>Killer</i>, a whole ton of vintage A.A. Fair paperbacks, a reprint of Day Keene's <i>Homicidal Lady</i> that I didn't have, and lots more.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPPac2VwokWn35nrbMRKcT6LWSyLT-djwJyw4dprUgQZTYCNqSw1Out06z9HqHC7Veu2IbN9edi0j_1H65atXIn-HFpmPAcfm08q_NeVjQ7B0TMvV_fARLRTgZxLEPqGkywAYz1UKqnoT8sJIhIPIVx7utPKKwiSXVyYxRgSN5IGA1-4JMrI6CLdlS/s4160/IMG_20221109_194146347.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPPac2VwokWn35nrbMRKcT6LWSyLT-djwJyw4dprUgQZTYCNqSw1Out06z9HqHC7Veu2IbN9edi0j_1H65atXIn-HFpmPAcfm08q_NeVjQ7B0TMvV_fARLRTgZxLEPqGkywAYz1UKqnoT8sJIhIPIVx7utPKKwiSXVyYxRgSN5IGA1-4JMrI6CLdlS/s320/IMG_20221109_194146347.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9K4K5-xtPoRU-F8sfQv1gy38EC5jppbXgmhWBKD49JT3FVqaOoW-h26N7Smj-AFW9W0LADuHAcIZdBTRgTNls4n5KrXwiWXu-bdNIohwO7r8exmiXiTBLgbuX2WqXqNEjZTdqgq1133-XjJI2_0nP-uMpqnboQTMorwNPZmS3K2CFOvyMNljg7KS-/s4160/IMG_20221109_194150567.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9K4K5-xtPoRU-F8sfQv1gy38EC5jppbXgmhWBKD49JT3FVqaOoW-h26N7Smj-AFW9W0LADuHAcIZdBTRgTNls4n5KrXwiWXu-bdNIohwO7r8exmiXiTBLgbuX2WqXqNEjZTdqgq1133-XjJI2_0nP-uMpqnboQTMorwNPZmS3K2CFOvyMNljg7KS-/s320/IMG_20221109_194150567.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-30525337652613933362022-11-06T10:58:00.001-05:002022-11-06T10:58:11.210-05:00From Gil Brewer to Harry Whittington<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkMqhu9FC1qlPvSvIjhxovn8px8s1zWvWlAQrBtEqDxjWaombkwlEzAwzMxF7fFqZQ1qHIQ3C8Kc1e9l1aRQW7JrerIcbl6K3yT6NqeVlzOUm6YVeYDVg9hYXiS0U9Dga0M1k4pNaD_uZG0RmQqrNCIFS0DtPJG5xUATIlt-nSI_nUwwcskqXpKHHE/s724/brewer%20red%20scarf.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="490" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkMqhu9FC1qlPvSvIjhxovn8px8s1zWvWlAQrBtEqDxjWaombkwlEzAwzMxF7fFqZQ1qHIQ3C8Kc1e9l1aRQW7JrerIcbl6K3yT6NqeVlzOUm6YVeYDVg9hYXiS0U9Dga0M1k4pNaD_uZG0RmQqrNCIFS0DtPJG5xUATIlt-nSI_nUwwcskqXpKHHE/s320/brewer%20red%20scarf.jpeg" width="217" /></a></div>I'm suffering from some serious book envy today. <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31046019474&searchurl=an%3Dgil%2Bbrewer%26sgnd%3Don%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-image1" target="_blank">Royal Books</a> has a first edition hardcover of Gil Brewer's The Red Scarf for sale, inscribed from Gil to Harry Whittington and his wife Kathryn with some writerly tough-love motivationFor Harry and Kathryn:<div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div><i>Harry, if you don’t sit yourself down and write the honest to God book of your guts very soon, I’m sure as hell going to bash you over the head with a sledge hammer.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><i>I mean it.</i></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Since I can't afford this treasure, I'll have to be content with the images posted by the seller. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwfxx12bK0DGKnzegbcMMeHHNi4r5RH_q50krr2pvlGrWKMM4J84Xof66JsIiPLE6FQEUrkDYT6gSuQq2jF86MVlmtMcWr3tfPFnKexYfCHI1NfzxhrSQZA6P3ysWMVOj8Nh8KkHWPHvhps9GNS5QzjtrVZsxiJgh8bKl2uRRg8zMt4bP96dniWntm/s783/gil%20brewer%20inscription%20to%20harry%20whittington%20close.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="783" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwfxx12bK0DGKnzegbcMMeHHNi4r5RH_q50krr2pvlGrWKMM4J84Xof66JsIiPLE6FQEUrkDYT6gSuQq2jF86MVlmtMcWr3tfPFnKexYfCHI1NfzxhrSQZA6P3ysWMVOj8Nh8KkHWPHvhps9GNS5QzjtrVZsxiJgh8bKl2uRRg8zMt4bP96dniWntm/s320/gil%20brewer%20inscription%20to%20harry%20whittington%20close.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-29145648116741054632022-11-03T11:35:00.011-04:002022-12-14T12:37:36.923-05:00"The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown" by Lawrence Block (2022)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEAhdRN6EVJd5TVX6a9KO5LresOiPXjmcVQJOg3J-pGJrddnfJQ1BI3Ke0q09SDsyzyt9L3zrMkJIBzttNxbLkEYQ8TeCo4dgov81E63jz7CGz0u6S57WeUHomK8FCOH8pxae1tE9NBr1P3ywgYE6VIE51DawNCOH-EvviA3ESwdE0dtlkCnxVWKva/s2400/The%20Burglar%20Who%20Met%20Fredric%20Brown%20cover.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEAhdRN6EVJd5TVX6a9KO5LresOiPXjmcVQJOg3J-pGJrddnfJQ1BI3Ke0q09SDsyzyt9L3zrMkJIBzttNxbLkEYQ8TeCo4dgov81E63jz7CGz0u6S57WeUHomK8FCOH8pxae1tE9NBr1P3ywgYE6VIE51DawNCOH-EvviA3ESwdE0dtlkCnxVWKva/s320/The%20Burglar%20Who%20Met%20Fredric%20Brown%20cover.jpeg" width="213" /></a><span style="text-align: left;">Wouldn’t it be nice to curl up with a good book, doze off, and wake up in that world? That’s a question Lawrence Block explores in his latest novel, </span><i style="text-align: left;">The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown</i><span style="text-align: left;">, the 12th novel to feature professional thief and Greenwich Village bookstore-owner Bernie Rhodenbarr. No one’s asking me to contain my enthusiasm, and so I won’t—I absolutely loved this book, and I think any of Bernie’s many fans will, too.</span></div><p></p><p>As a big fan of Block and his Bernie series, this didn’t disappoint in the slightest, hitting all the hallmarks of the series that readers have come to expect. The humor, the Greenwich Village setting, the warm friendship between him and series regular Carolyn, and of course the burglary. But Block also takes readers into new territory. <i>The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown</i> is much more a fantasia than the earlier volumes. If you’re familiar with Brown, then you might have a little idea what’s in store, and if not, then it might help to know that Brown was an ardent admirer of Lewis Carroll, and there’s more than a hint of Wonderland in both his works and in Block’s latest. I found Block’s incursion into magical realism to be an absolute delight.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjccWQq-T5XaPVDi3Iyuhg9MOU_3x-EuNJ9Mfz55HDLWLiBlV0H_lHJc2ZV1I6jhtSMQ7_OewQsOrWj8outoDf1DNUsX6ZnI1hyQPOVetIChnqCnqhfvUx9OetKoUVHcJwRgj5WIPl5ddd3Odkj_ZkIV7qT-OtIHjBCaaeK2y0JZcVzb4LKXNC5MR_I/s1465/What%20Mad%20Universe.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1465" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjccWQq-T5XaPVDi3Iyuhg9MOU_3x-EuNJ9Mfz55HDLWLiBlV0H_lHJc2ZV1I6jhtSMQ7_OewQsOrWj8outoDf1DNUsX6ZnI1hyQPOVetIChnqCnqhfvUx9OetKoUVHcJwRgj5WIPl5ddd3Odkj_ZkIV7qT-OtIHjBCaaeK2y0JZcVzb4LKXNC5MR_I/s320/What%20Mad%20Universe.jpeg" width="218" /></a>As the book opens, Bernie lives in a world sadly recognizable as 2022. Amazon and eBay have all but killed his business, Barnegat Books, and omnipresent security cameras and electronic keypads have all but killed his other business, burglary. The sixty million-dollar Kloppmann Diamond is only a few blocks from his home, and become of 21st century technology it is painfully out of reach. But after reading Fredric Brown’s science-fiction masterpiece, <i>What Mad Universe</i> (about an alternate New York), Bernie awakens to find his bookstore swarming with customers, there’s no eBay or Amazon to speak of, and the inaccurately-named MetroCard in his wallet is now appropriately named SubwayCard. </p><p>A few other things have changed, too. Old neighborhood restaurants and bars have returned, and so, too, has the local bowling alley. Bernie’s also realized that he now has certain amorous feelings towards his best friend in the world, Carolyn, a dog groomer (and occasional partner-in-crime) who is in no uncertain terms a lesbian—except, in this world, she also seems to be experiencing newfound attraction towards Bernie. And those security measures protecting the Kloppmann Diamond? </p><p>They never existed.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD8VSxQCB9n_445GWQNgKZ3H8uBxIyxZ5wsoRWp5slsBC2RZjfGRMHZRU3SLayNd5QWT6O4mpbJdTbDqZkBNyBLrn8G4T-LPKPGyQMkoKq0DtpFI9dx5H-_ZR7dEJxNKxNlQQqlyyW5RQAezoawyaBdfyWR7jrTwmAy7SLEsNTaAP0t2W-Miekacrm/s501/Lawrence%20Block%20pic.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="334" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD8VSxQCB9n_445GWQNgKZ3H8uBxIyxZ5wsoRWp5slsBC2RZjfGRMHZRU3SLayNd5QWT6O4mpbJdTbDqZkBNyBLrn8G4T-LPKPGyQMkoKq0DtpFI9dx5H-_ZR7dEJxNKxNlQQqlyyW5RQAezoawyaBdfyWR7jrTwmAy7SLEsNTaAP0t2W-Miekacrm/s320/Lawrence%20Block%20pic.jpeg" width="213" /></a>There are a whole lot more surprises in the book, so I won’t spoil any more of the story.</p><p>If you’re new to the series, <i>The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown</i> certainly stands on its own—there’s nothing you’ll need to know from the previous books that isn’t given here. As a fan of the series, though, I think the book rewards familiarity with the characters. The ending, in particular, is a poignant and tender moment between two friends that I found very moving. If this the last outing for Bernie (and I hope its not), no reader could ask for a finer or fonder conclusion.</p><p>On the surface, <i>The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown </i>might seem like a longing for the past, however by the end it’s plain that it is less about nostalgia and more about a love for storytelling. And, in this reviewer’s opinion, Lawrence Block is a raconteur in a league of his own. I was entranced from the first sentence, because Block is a writer with an unmistakable voice, a cadence and phrasing wholly his own. It’s there in the early sex books (albeit in a still nascent and underdeveloped way), it’s there in early masterpieces like <i>After the First Death</i>, it’s there in the Scudders and Bernies and Chip Harrisons, it’s there in his previous novel <i>Dead Girl Blues</i>, and—no surprise—it’s here, too. There’s a musical lilt to Block’s prose, as though you can hear every word spoken aloud. As Bernie reflected while listening to his old fence Abel Crowe, “How could I regret a single moment of the time we’d spent with this particular elderly gentleman?…There was no rushing Abel, and we were happy to listen to every word…”</p><p>This being a book about transporting readers to another time and place, I myself was transported to the first time I encountered Block’s work. I was standing in Partners and Crime in Greenwich Village (not far from Bernie’s fictional bookstore), waiting for the late-show of W-WOW’s old time radio play. Between Red Bulls, Kizmin Reeves (one of the store’s owners) asked if I had read Block. I replied that I hadn’t. She pulled out <i>One Night Stands and Lost Weekends</i>, flipped to “The Burning Fury,” and told me to “listen.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, but she had great taste and had never lead me astray before, so I did as I was told. I loved the story, but wasn’t sure what she meant by “listen.” So, I asked, and she began talking about Block’s voice. I loved the way she spoke about his work, so I bought the book. It didn’t take long for me to get what she was talking about, and I have been a devotee ever since.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-dWBCkkt5BorvgFPgxU2LtWPgHStNW6oxxAdoe_2YNEubV7Yojk7wIVdSI7tIJyjNom746lJ22cmNU6NvxEZnC9osXwczROVo2PxYm9_x7SzrQf0gfSlSlTd4P-UgoF6i9QFvaKiVeac29PUuu11CvLjyNwfkTlgR7EN9Kijs0_A3nHj1LkxAAk8/s500/dead%20girl%20blues.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-dWBCkkt5BorvgFPgxU2LtWPgHStNW6oxxAdoe_2YNEubV7Yojk7wIVdSI7tIJyjNom746lJ22cmNU6NvxEZnC9osXwczROVo2PxYm9_x7SzrQf0gfSlSlTd4P-UgoF6i9QFvaKiVeac29PUuu11CvLjyNwfkTlgR7EN9Kijs0_A3nHj1LkxAAk8/s320/dead%20girl%20blues.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>I was struck how much <i>The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown</i> reminded me of Block’s previous novel, <i><a href="http://www.pulp-serenade.com/2020/07/dead-girl-blues-by-lawrence-block-2020.html" target="_blank">Dead Girl Blues</a></i> (which I also greatly enjoyed). For anyone who has read Dead Girl Blues, the comparison might seem surprising—it begins with a killing and act of necrophilia, and then follows the murderer for the rest of his life. While there’s hardly anything “funny” about that book (though it does have its own sense of black humor), these are both works of autumnal reflection, both for the characters and their author. In <i>The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown,</i> Bernie and Carolyn often ask themselves whether which is the best of all worlds—their dreamland without Amazon or cameras, or the real world in which they have no control over change. In <i>Dead Girl Blue</i>s, Block revisits the recurring theme of the aftermath of violence, but this time from the perspective of the perpetrator—one who manages to grow and change, and who must carry with him the memory of his horrible deed while he lives a life that almost anyone would be happy to lead. <p></p><p>Block has been writing professionally for nearly seventy years, and there’s been a lot of change and growth within his own writing, and the world in which he writes. Like Bernie, he’s managed to find a niche for himself, and a way to keep going. This reader, for one, is glad that there are still new Lawrence Block books to look forward to reading. Having just closed the covers on this one (beautifully designed covers, I might add, by Jeff Wong), it’s time to head to the bookshelf and choose which world to which I want to be transported this time. </p><p><a href="https://lawrenceblock.com/leave-the-door-open/" target="_blank">Block's own site</a> has links to various places to buy the book. <a href="https://www.mysteriousbookshop.com/products/lawrence-block-the-burglar-who-met-fredric-brown-preorder-signed" target="_blank">Mysterious Bookshop</a> here in NYC has signed copies available (for the moment).</p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-50679567029230619782022-11-02T18:34:00.002-04:002022-11-12T15:52:50.781-05:00Justin Marriott Interview<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9QRE2Dqs9C2xVV-eme3vj_xJfTTXBm2B_L4vyvR0v1BFonNqvDmFVheS9nC4uyhUItSQMFVX9nnnMFKQyvqqZAbtXBxjYPoL8zEwfOjPJjpUXjS7oNqVvqqaPYI0KvjG05rI893iWlSYmmf6fp3DEMGbe697fZ6BhiNVnnRmki2bD5Xjnvbj33oxj/s500/paperbacksatwarF.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9QRE2Dqs9C2xVV-eme3vj_xJfTTXBm2B_L4vyvR0v1BFonNqvDmFVheS9nC4uyhUItSQMFVX9nnnMFKQyvqqZAbtXBxjYPoL8zEwfOjPJjpUXjS7oNqVvqqaPYI0KvjG05rI893iWlSYmmf6fp3DEMGbe697fZ6BhiNVnnRmki2bD5Xjnvbj33oxj/s320/paperbacksatwarF.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>Last year I had the pleasure of contributing to Justin Marriott's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Paperbacks-War-century-conflict-paperbacks/dp/B096TRWV4S" target="_blank">Paperbacks at War: 20th Century Conflict from the Front Lines of Vintage Paperbacks, Pulps and Comics</a></i>, an in-depth look at over 170 wartime classics (and some not-so-classics). I wrote about <i>Doomsday Mission</i> by Harry Whittington, <i>Hell to Eternity</i> by Edward S. Aarons, <i>The Dirty War of Sergeant Slade </i>by Lou Cameron, <i>Gresham's War</i> by William Crawford, and <i>Skylark Mission</i> by Ian MacAlister.<p></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJustin+Marriott&s=relevancerank&text=Justin+Marriott&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1" target="_blank">Marriott</a> is a prolific editor, writer, and publisher, and he was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work and <i>Paperbacks at War</i>.</p><p><b>Before we talk about <i>Paperbacks at War,</i> could you give a little background about yourself, and how your interest in literature developed?</b></p><p>I’m a pretty average Joe. Early 50s, married with two young daughters and living in a coastal town in the West of England. The day job is for a large financial organization where I work as a project manager in IT. </p><p>I’ve still yet to develop any interest in literature! But I was a voracious reader from an early age, especially of comics, a habit I inherited from my dad. Growing up in the 70s in the UK, it was an age before video, and there were only 3 TV channels, all with limited programming aimed at kids. So Dr. Who was a must see on Saturday evenings, and the novelizations of Doctor Who were the first genre books I encountered. These were in the form of hardbacks loaned from the local library. I would read them cover to cover in a day. Even at that early age, I started to identify which authors I preferred—with Terrence Dicks, the creator of the Daleks, being a favourite. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>There was a big, out-of-town discount superstore my parents would take me and my younger brother to in the ‘70s. It was an asbestos riddled maze, which included a large stationery department with several spinner-rack of paperbacks. These boasted the distinctive saw-cut in the edges to show they were warehouse remainders and sold at less than cover price. We would be given our pocket-money and then spend hours choosing pens and paper (with which to draw our own comics) and perusing the paperbacks. I remember buying New English Library editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs, specifically <i>Tarzan</i> and <i>Synthetic Men of Mars</i>. The latter, I found tremendously exciting to read with hero John Carter trapped in the body of one of the synthetic men and taking part in gladiatorial battles. I also found the salacious covers of space women in metal bikinis equally as exciting!</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpIZNJlDuzpvpVAztNFe8urUZUAb-jayGlYXZbuOgTiW45DFvlVuKU7pzKo0xU_hrIyzsN6M5RXcd2oTIQcpGRaSDToor9TvgZP8n2Ml74i1Aaivq5wMYRHS46XvhTSruuqfNNlbjE5LRpCTncSH3HSKXcv8E13li1gjp6I94I7tCR2siYOw60vHZf/s500/paperbacksatwarb.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpIZNJlDuzpvpVAztNFe8urUZUAb-jayGlYXZbuOgTiW45DFvlVuKU7pzKo0xU_hrIyzsN6M5RXcd2oTIQcpGRaSDToor9TvgZP8n2Ml74i1Aaivq5wMYRHS46XvhTSruuqfNNlbjE5LRpCTncSH3HSKXcv8E13li1gjp6I94I7tCR2siYOw60vHZf/s320/paperbacksatwarb.jpg" width="224" /></a>The first book I remember being passed around at school, handed over with a conspiratorial nod and a wink like dog-eared contraband in a prison camp, was <i>Chopper</i>, another New English Library book. This outlaw-biker classic was first published in 1971, but I’m talking about 1979 when I was ten, so it’s little wonder it was held together by Sellotape and spit after so many years in circulation. A biker version of <i>Macbeth</i>, replete with explicit sex and violence, it was entirely inappropriate for a ten-year old, which is exactly why it was so wonderful. Decades later, I discovered the author of <i>Chopper</i> had lived around the corner from my house for many years. </p><p>A similar youth-cult book was <i>Skinhead</i>, which on top of the sex and violence was also deeply racist. When my parents found it and flicked through it, they disapproved and made me donate it to a yard-sale. My parents were very liberal, allowing me to watch Hammer horror films and turning a blind eye to my girlie magazine collection, so I knew the book must have been bad for them to confiscate it. Of course, this awarded it holy grail status in my eyes, and I wonder if my whole path of a life in pursuit of rare and unusual paperbacks was triggered by this piece of parental intervention. </p><p>I bought <i>Skinhead</i> at Read ‘n Return, a used book store which made its money from the huge selection of skin-mags displayed at the back of the shop—off-limits to the likes of me. It was guarded by a grizzled Alsatian dog the size of a bear. Although the owner was cool, I later heard he sold all sorts of highly dubious material under-the-counter. He also stocked comics, which is why I had started to frequent the place. He would give you half back on your purchase price if you returned the comics for re-sale. The boxes of older returned comics were an absolute treasure-trove to any teenager on a budget.</p><p>I purchased my first book outside of my parent’s supervision there—<i>Reign of Hell </i>by Sven Hassel</p><p>I have no idea how I knew about this book, but it was part of a fifteen-odd book series purportedly based on true events surrounding a German penal regiment in WW2. With a colourful gallery of rogues, and a strange mish-mash of extreme gore and anti-war preaching, this was the book I fervently pushed into other kid’s hands. It spawned a whole genre in the UK, with any number of English authors adopting Germanic pseudonyms to tell their own gritty stories of German Stormtroopers, with Leo Kessler being the most successful example. </p><p>There’s no way that I could have guessed that four decades later I would be self-publishing a book devoted to these authors. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq5Rbzxw7M9UyN11hzRR2t9rxdS9NPj-XS2Q5J7ZS586jC1Eppn29QeFEkV0lKcaRzuCwT1hinYOJfascwV_J5xJcGfysAwb7rDWJcZXru1XTUfZ6DdBYMBMYhwSVPFZ9ExX4hu0fRr7NuXfxqOacvH4A3wGT0llFYC_3C7FREBq0JbdjOeXkJsLnM/s500/battlingbritonsf.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="386" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq5Rbzxw7M9UyN11hzRR2t9rxdS9NPj-XS2Q5J7ZS586jC1Eppn29QeFEkV0lKcaRzuCwT1hinYOJfascwV_J5xJcGfysAwb7rDWJcZXru1XTUfZ6DdBYMBMYhwSVPFZ9ExX4hu0fRr7NuXfxqOacvH4A3wGT0llFYC_3C7FREBq0JbdjOeXkJsLnM/s320/battlingbritonsf.jpeg" width="247" /></a><b>You've been editing <i>The Paperback Fanatic</i> since 2007, and your other projects include <i>Pulp Apocalypse</i>, <i>Battling Britons</i>, <i>Hot Lead</i>, <i>Men of Violence</i>, <i>Pulp Horror</i>, <i>The Sleazy Reader</i>, and <i>Monster Maniacs</i>. How did you start as an editor and a writer?</b></p><p>From a young age, I always produced comics and fanzines, which typically never went beyond a single copy and then passed around at school. The first I printed in any quantity and distributed was in the mid-1990s. Dedicated to reviews of exploitation movies, it lasted seven issues, of which the first six were free of charge to anyone sending me a SAE (stamped and addressed envelope). It was intentionally crude and opinionated, with a collage layout of comic panels and movies posters juxtaposed with speech bubbles and headlines from tabloids. I look back now and cringe at the humour and the totally put-on uber-snotty persona I adopted, but at the time it gained something of a cult following. </p><p>I gave it up following a nearly-encounter with the long arm of the law! It’s difficult to summarize in a paragraph, but in the 90s, horror films were the bete-noir of the UK tabloid press, often blamed for some terrible copy-cat crimes. Amongst UK fans of horror movies, there was much trading of copies of European horror films which were not legally available in the UK. In the hysterical atmosphere of 1990s UK, you risked a dawn-raid by Trading Standards and the Police for owning and trading this type of material. This may seem like exaggeration, but the editor of the most popular UK horror film fanzine, Samhain, lost his job as a nursery assistant when the local paper ran an ‘expose’ on him and his literate and considered publication. </p><p>A mate who ran a mail-order distribution service for horror mags, fanzines and collectibles, told me the police had visited him and when they saw my zine, claimed it was a “snuff movie catalogue” and wanted to know where it came from! I published under a pseudonym and never included my personal details in the zine, and my mate played dumb, but as a result, I immediately destroyed my video collection and stopped publishing.</p><p>Throughout this time I wasn’t collecting paperbacks, although I was reading contemporary authors like James Ellroy and Michael Slade. One day whilst passing time, I browsed the book section of a charity shop, and stumbled across a handful of New English Library outlaw biker paperbacks, which I had so avidly read in the late 1970s as a teen. I purchased them all. </p><p>I then began searching for information on the publisher and the authors. I expected to find these paperback gems to be well documented in the same way as genre films and comics of the era—with books, web-sites, and magazines dedicated to them. There were none, so I felt I had no choice but to start another fanzine, this time focused on the UK paperbacks I had grown up reading in the 1970s. Hopefully the threat of arrest and tabloid expose’ would be much reduced compared to the murky world of horror film fanzines!</p><p>In 2007 I published <i>The Paperback Dungeon</i>, which was 32 pages A4, run off on a photo-copier at work after 5pm when the office was quiet, and available to anyone for a SAE. I immediately noticed people connected with this zine in a way they hadn’t with my previous publications. It also elicited some very personal responses, so I decided to focus on making it into a regular publication. The Paperback Fanatic was then created. </p><p>I am aware that my answers are already far too long, so to try and cut to the quick, about that time I was seriously ill with testicular cancer. During periods of self-reflection, it made me realise how important self-expression through the fanzines was to me, and that I needed to knuckle down to improve my productivity. I suppose I gave away a bollock and in return gained a whole load of focus and motivation. I think I have since published approximately 80 issues of paperback related fanzines, and my appetite and drive is as strong as ever. I can’t imagine a time when I am not self-publishing. </p><p>I never think about a target market for any of my fanzines as they are not commercially driven or an attempt to become a professional writer. I purely write them as the sort of publication I would like to read myself. I often think if someone else had been publishing a zine about vintage paperbacks in the UK, I never would have started <i>The Paperback Fanatic</i>!</p><p><b>What inspired <i>Paperbacks at War</i>? Was there a particular book that made you sit down and decide to assemble this volume?</b></p><p>The honest answer was I had loads of the bloody books sat on a shelf gathering dust, and I wanted to show them off! In the late 90s and early 2000s, during which I had no children, disposable income and time to travel, I started to collect paperbacks and soon reassembled runs of the war authors that I had enjoyed as a teenager. Such as Sven Hassel whom I mentioned earlier, and other authors in the genre of gritty and violent war paperbacks such as Leo Kessler. The idea of gathering all of the covers and authors into one volume appealed to me. </p><p>Also, I am typically attracted to the material which is ignored or looked down on by the mainstream. I am well beyond trying to be hip or cool, and sometimes it’s not to my personal tastes, I just have a genuine fascination as to why western paperbacks or horror films or heavy metal music still endure. War paperbacks and comics just struck me as another example of that, with people having strong opinions on the genre, which wasn’t always matched by reality. Every time the likes of the Sven Hassel books were mentioned on a Facebook page connected with vintage paperbacks they created a stream of memories and anecdotes from readers, so I knew there was still an ongoing fascination which would support a publication like <i>Paperbacks at War</i>. </p><p><b>What is the range of historical wars/conflicts covered in this book? How far back and how recent do the entries cover?</b></p><p>Pretty exclusively 20th century conflict, and with a leaning towards WWII, although WWI and Vietnam are well represented. I was worried that it would result in a certain “sameness” to the contents, but there are 20-odd contributors all with individual voices, and the books they covered ranged from literary through to trash. (The latter mainly from me!) For instance, one reviewer is still in a US Airborne division, so was able to compare reality with the books he reviewed, which I found fascinating. Plus, as well as paperbacks, there are comics and pulps reviewed, which further diversifies the mix.</p><p><b>Were there any wars/conflicts that were more represented than others? Any that you were surprised weren't better represented?</b></p><p>I would have liked to have covered more in the way of pre-20th century conflict, such as the Napoleonic war, which is a conflict that fascinates me. And less a period of conflict, but war at sea is under-represented in the book in my opinion, especially as naval adventure is an enduringly popular genre. I was relieved that the book wasn’t flooded with the Germans-as-anti-heroes genre represented by Sven Hassel as although that was my starting point, ultimately it would have made the book too samey, and American readers would probably not have shared that flush of nostalgia that UK readers would have experienced. </p><p><b>Did you notice any trends in how war novels were written, and how the genre has changed over time? For example, how would a Gold Medal war novel from the 50s differ from one written in the 80s?</b></p><p>Certainly the 70s novels were much grittier and explicit than the 50s and 60s, and perhaps more conscious of class and challenging of authority. I explore the possible cultural influences in an article in <i>Paperbacks at War </i>and how they resulted in different books in the UK and the US. In short, the UK had the school of desperate German tank soldiers serving in a penal regiment genre, and the US had a school of hard-bitten veteran sergeants leading greenhorn recruits.</p><p><b>After editing this collection, what were the biggest discoveries to you? Anything in particular you are most excited to read?</b></p><p>For me it was a series of books by Alan White, all of which were riffs on the <i>Dirty Dozen</i> on a suicide mission theme. But apparently White had served as a commando on behind-enemy-lines missions during WW2, and as a result, the books have an air of authenticity about them. Rarely do I lose myself in a book, but I certainly did in White’s writing, and he is second to none in communicating tension and the mind-set of an effective secret operative. Highly recommended for any fan of the war genre. </p><p><b>Is Michael Hughes's <i>Scumbags</i> (1986) really that bad? The title had me so excited, and then I read your review and it seemed disappointing.</b></p><p>That is exactly how I felt! So the review did the trick if the review acted as a warning. Maybe if title hadn’t led me to expect some gloriously tasteless romp, I would have been more forgiving. But I am in no hurry to revisit the scumbags! </p><p><b>Seeing all the covers inside is great! Are these all from your collection? And do you have any particular favorites?</b></p><p>Most of the covers are from my own collection, which is somewhere in the region of 12k paperbacks in a double-garage. Many people don’t realise that the images you typically see on-line are of insufficient quality for printing. Of the covers I featured in <i>Paperbacks at War</i>, I think it is the impact of seeing a series of covers for one series that I enjoyed the most. Tony Masero and David McAllister were two artists who worked on the Leo Kessler books, and their illustrations for the Otto Stahl and Wotan series are especially effective. I also like the art of Mike Codd, who employed a distinctive blocky style of painting and a washed out palette which works very well for war scenes. </p><p><b>What's up next for you? Any chance for a Paperbacks at War volume 2 down the road? </b></p><p>At this stage a second volume seems unlikely as I scratched the itch with this one. I am not moving too far away from the subject though, as I am turning <i>Battling Britons</i> into an ongoing title about British war and adventure comics. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJustin+Marriott&s=relevancerank&text=Justin+Marriott&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1" target="_blank">If anyone types my name into Amazon, they will hopefully see a list of the zines, and that will grow over the years. </a></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-89104913692782186202022-10-10T09:52:00.003-04:002022-11-12T15:53:09.380-05:00Jason Starr Interview<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5jfsi8_sJoObr_N4TNZ99aqZnDGqJJwuXIfHxCv0baVR38wVRpyxQMQOuXIwjPzfl5lpEAdPJTAOVfW9VdahSl2MKzTCFtnW91_orx8-dsPbjyCuk_bteX4_RmnTs0-Z6oHzbwiPdhBk2wbsYJq_tovg7_6xRlzoq0EiSr2R75W-G-LAhBlyY48pH/s1500/jason-closer-chinatownmed.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5jfsi8_sJoObr_N4TNZ99aqZnDGqJJwuXIfHxCv0baVR38wVRpyxQMQOuXIwjPzfl5lpEAdPJTAOVfW9VdahSl2MKzTCFtnW91_orx8-dsPbjyCuk_bteX4_RmnTs0-Z6oHzbwiPdhBk2wbsYJq_tovg7_6xRlzoq0EiSr2R75W-G-LAhBlyY48pH/s320/jason-closer-chinatownmed.jpeg" width="213" /></a></i></div><i>Back in June 2011, I interviewed Jason Starr about his then-latest novel, </i>The Pack<i>, and the interview was published by Spinetingler Magazine. Since the site is down, I've republished the interview below.</i><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>In Jason Starr's <i>The Pack</i>, advertising executive Simon Burns life goes into a tailspin after he’s fired from his job. Marriage counseling isn’t helping the intimacy issues with his wife, and being a stay-at-home-dad is harder than it at first seemed. Things start to look up when he meets a group of dads at the playground: Simon has guys to hang out with during the day, and his kid has other children to play with. But after a night of partying, Simon blacks out and wakes up in the woods naked, and all he can remember about his dreams is a wolf. The nightmare continues to haunt him, and as his body begins undergoing changes, Simon fears that he, in fact, might be turning into a werewolf.</p><p>Yes—a werewolf—but don’t start thinking this is another <i>Twilight</i> spin-off. Nor is <i>The Pack </i>anything close to a conventional horror novel. The story is less about physical transformation than it is emotional and psychological changes, and how they can affect—and sometimes destroy—a relationship. Simon is one of Starr’s most realistically and sympathetically crafted characters, and the slow dissolution of his marriage is harrowingly and poignantly written. Much like <i>Panic Attack</i>, <i>The Pack</i> is really about the discovery of a father’s latent violent urges and the disastrous after-affects it has on his family.</p><p>Don’t let the werewolf element throw you off. <i>The Pack </i>is pure Jason Starr, and it is one of his most gripping novels yet.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><b>Pulp Serenade: When I first heard that The Pack was going to have werewolves, I was expecting more of a horror novel, but the finished product certainly doesn’t feel like a conventional genre book.</b></p><p><b>Jason Starr: </b>I definitely didn’t intend to write any type of horror or genre novel, but I knew that when you had werewolves in the story that’s one of the expectations a reader might have. I think the other expectation is that it would be a mystery-romance because these days there’s so out there with werewolves and vampires. I was just trying to write my regular type of book, a sort of social drama about relationships and the city, with an added twist or element.</p><p><b>PS: Where there any particular conventions you were trying to stay away from?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>I was definitely trying to stay away from Romance, like those <i>Twilight</i> books, for example. I knew I didn’t want to go in that direction. I think one different thing about The Pack is that I start in the real world, not a paranormal world. The horror elements are there, and if there’s sex and romance it is definitely on the edgy <i>Sex and the City</i> vibe as opposed to “Romance,” but to me it’s really about Simon and his personal journey. I was just trying to stay true to the main character, Simon, and trying to imagine that I was in his place and situation. All along, I wanted the focus to be on Simon’s relationships and how this was affecting him personally.</p><p><b>PS: Both <i>The Pack </i>and your previous novel, <i>Panic Attack</i>, had a lot to do with the financial and emotional pressures of the modern nuclear family, as opposed to the singles scene as presented in The Follower. Was this shift deliberate?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>I wrote an earlier novel, <i>Nothing Personal</i>, which was also about a family with a kid, but I wanted to take <i>The Pack</i> in a different direction than my recent crime fiction. So, I was trying to move away from <i>Panic Attack</i>. After I wrote <i>Lights Out</i>, <i>The Follower </i>and <i>Panic Attack</i> all in order I wanted to do something a little different, more of a post-9/11 type of suspense novel where it starts off in the real world and where weirdness slowly intrudes, but with very real, viable characters. That’s what I was going for here. I don’t think I’m tying to write “family” novels, but I see that now that you point it out.</p><p><b>PS: Like in many of your novels, New York City plays a crucial role in <i>The Pack</i>. How did you pick the locations?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>I try to find the neighborhood that would be best to tell the story. So, for Simon, he starts out as a high-paid advertising executive, so I knew I had to put him in a somewhat affluent area. I chose 89th and Columbus because I used to live there on that corner, so I knew it very well from my own experience. On a side note, the building that Martin Scorsese filmed in <i>Taxi Driver</i>—where Robert DeNiro’s character lived and did the famous “You Talkin’ To Me?” scene—was on 89th and Columbus, the same corner where I lived, but it’s a different building now. It was a tenement, but it was torn down. The condo where I lived there in my 20s is still there. So, I knew the building very well. I’ve done that before—I’ll choose a location because I have personally spent a lot of time there. It saves having to do research, but it also keeps it personal for me in my head. I felt like I wanted the reader to identify with Simon, and I wanted to pretend I was like Simon in that situation, so thinking in an area that’s familiar to me helped me accomplish that as a writer.</p><p><b>PS: What was the biggest challenge in writing <i>The Pack</i>?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>The biggest challenge was that, aside from my graphic novel <i>The Chill</i>, I had never written any prose fiction that was urban fantasy or paranormal in any way. I’ve always written in a really realistic world. So, I didn’t want to get psyched-out by the conventions of the genre, or by people’s expectations of what happens in a novel where there are werewolves. It’s also the first in a projected series, so I had to think about those issues in the back of my mind, like how the books will move forward in the future. In the end, what I realized was that even in crime fiction there are certain conventions you have to stick to, and these are just a new set of rules. So, when I thought of it that way, it just became clear in my own head. I approached this like writing one of my usual books, and it starts off with a situation that might have been in one of my earlier novels (<i>Cold Caller</i>, for example), and I just took it in a completely different direction.</p><p><b>PS: Are there any updates about Bret Easton Ellis’ miniseries adaptation of<i> The Follower</i>?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>That is currently at Starz, and he’s written three episodes at this point. That’s the latest news.</p><p><b>PS: Have you ever tried adapting your own work for movies or television?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>I wrote the screenplay for my first book, <i>Cold Caller</i>, which is in development in Australia. It was fully financed by the South Australian Film Corporation. I’m still working on that, penning a new draft currently. I’m always interested in the idea of adapting my own work but, if there’s some situation like with Bret adapting <i>The Follower</i>, it could just be more interesting to have someone else adapt it. They could have a new perspective on the story, which could be better than me doing it myself.</p><p><b>PS: Do you have any particular writing rituals you follow? I know Fredric Brown always used to work out plots by taking long bus trips.</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>When I get stuck, I find the answer when I’m working out, if I’m running or biking, or when I’m under a hot shower. Maybe it’s something about relaxing. I write everything by computer. Sometimes I’ll print out pages and edit by hand, but usually I’ll just write on the screen. I think the biggest challenge these days is not getting too distracted by the Internet. It’s really about creating a block of time for yourself, and I think it is becoming harder and harder. That’s the big challenge: the discipline not just to do the work, but to be able to block out distractions.</p><p><b>PS: Jim Thompson didn’t have to deal with Facebook and blogging.</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>That’s true. Publishers tells us we have to do all this stuff—like Tweets, blogs—but they’re a major distraction. I think it was Thompson who used to lock himself in a hotel room sometimes to finish a book. It could be Charles Williams or someone else. That used to happen with old pulp writers: they’d have a deadline, lock themselves in a hotel room for a few days, probably getting drunk, but finishing the book nonetheless. I think there are always distractions. Those guys probably felt distracted, too. Today, you can still go to a cabin in the woods to write the book, but you have to figure a way out to block out your cell phone and the Internet.</p><p><b>PS: I read that <i>Cold Caller </i>was adapted into a radio play in Germany. What can you tell us about that?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>It was produced when the novel first came out. It did pretty well, and they bring it back every couple of years. I don’t speak German, but I’ve been over there a bunch of times for my books and they usually have me do readings with an actor. The actor will read in German and I’ll read in English. The radio play was cool, though, it was a full production with a full cast. Of course, I couldn’t really understand it myself.</p><p><b>PS: Any chance that you and Ken Bruen will pick up your Hard Case Crime series and write a fourth book (after <i>Bust</i>, <i>Slide</i>, and<i> The M.A.X.</i>)?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>Ken and I started a fourth book set in Sweden. We wanted to capitalize on the Swedish craze in crime fiction (I’m being semi-sarcastic when I say that), and we just thought it would be funny if we put our character Max in Sweden. We wrote about four chapters, but then we just haven’t gone back to it lately, so I don’t know. [<b>Since this interview, they have collaborated on a fourth novel in the series, <i>Pimp</i>, from 2016.]</b></p><p><b>PS: Any advice for young writers just starting out?</b></p><p><b>JS: </b>Just figure out how you’re going to block out the Internet. I think it’s really important to have a ritual of writing, like a word count, and stick to it everyday. Just get into the groove of being a writer. Whether the book sells or not, just get into the groove of finishing books. With your first novel, expect that it won’t be great, but you just want to finish it for the sake of knowing you finished a novel, then immediately go onto the next one. You’ll hate your book when you finish it, which is very common, but you’ll start to realize there’s quality there, and then you’ll start to develop your voice. It’s a process. Some writers expect that it will happen really quickly, and it rarely does. It can only really develop through trial and error. From my own experience, it takes writing a few things to see for yourself what is unique about your voice and why it stands out.</p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-51682967015155501992022-07-02T10:39:00.002-04:002022-07-02T10:39:27.608-04:00Exorcism (1975)<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjXLn1noDfeobxrCr0mkQ1bC8cJvvpfeV6XSkxo3KZaymXVs6CAE2Xv04BtXb-iX4sXECKO1v_UN9RjrTPS7Qn9u98zwuPMPiBu52km3ByQmwkq2yJKySLL0UJ4wYGnqQ3ePr_xLukOExfmiiXvd02J9UJaigLu6mta537QbFME_RRZKb1TL-Ad8bU/s2148/Exorcism.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2148" data-original-width="1520" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjXLn1noDfeobxrCr0mkQ1bC8cJvvpfeV6XSkxo3KZaymXVs6CAE2Xv04BtXb-iX4sXECKO1v_UN9RjrTPS7Qn9u98zwuPMPiBu52km3ByQmwkq2yJKySLL0UJ4wYGnqQ3ePr_xLukOExfmiiXvd02J9UJaigLu6mta537QbFME_RRZKb1TL-Ad8bU/s320/Exorcism.jpeg" width="226" /></a></div>Cult auteur Jess Franco stars in <i>Exorcism</i> (1975) as Mathis Vogel, a defrocked priest who now makes a living writing erotic stories for porno mags edited by Franval (Pierre Taylou). After overhearing Frontal and his secretary/girlfriend Anna (Lina Romay) plan a Black Mass-themed orgy, Vogel mistakenly thinks the Satanic ceremonies to be real, and begins stalking and purifying the orgy's participants--by murdering them. <p></p><p>Alternately erotic, surreal, and menacing (and often all at the same time), this is one of the strongest Franco films I've seen thus far. The narrative is fairly cohesive and straightforward, and gives structure to Franco's pscyho-sexual environs. </p><p>The opening sequence, of two women enacting an S&M performance on stage for an audience, introduces a key theme of the movie and of Franco's work as a whole: the intertwining of performance, role-playing, voyeurism, and eroticism. Nearly every encounter in the film, whether sexual or not, involves some element of performativity. Whether its two lovers expressing submission and domination, or a college-educated cop competing with his street-wise superior, Franco seems interested in the extent to which people are always acting, and whether even the most seemingly "normal" elements of our reality are, in some ways, fictional fantasies of their own. </p><p>The version of <i>Exorcism</i> streaming on <a href="https://www.kinocult.com/feature/exorcism" target="_blank">Kino Cult</a> is sourced from varying prints, and some scenes show minor damage (such as scratches), and certain sequences inter-cut between different prints in order to deliver the most complete version of the film possible. Despite this, the colors are strong and not faded, making this an overall very attractive presentation of the film. Kino's <a href="https://www.kinolorber.com/product/exorcism-dvd" target="_blank">Blu-ray</a> also includes a cut-down version called <i>Demoniac</i> (exclusive to the disc, not streaming), which focuses more on the horror elements of the film, and includes alternate footage and less nudity. </p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-71601023939373083452022-04-08T09:28:00.001-04:002022-04-08T09:28:20.638-04:00The Age of Cinema (2022)<p>Recently I had the pleasure of participating in a feature-length essay film experiment by director Matt Barry. As part of a folk-film challenge, we decided to make our own movie during the Oscars broadcast. Filmed over Zoom, the result was <a href="<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SmOB2QvPkbk" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>" target="_blank"><i>The Age of Cinema </i>(2022)</a>, a discussion about the intersection of personal collecting and film history. I also had the pleasure of writing original music for the opening sequence. </p><p><br /></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SmOB2QvPkbk" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-15435151978378667982022-03-01T13:40:00.006-05:002022-03-01T13:42:07.928-05:00Farewell, My Lovelies: Pt. 1<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj3RNv6_uAFYCaoyOQyfCZO_TpA-mLFKe986eu5V6IEiaASUXR2PFZkoCzjGQ5tnXakvBoZCYJovA1kMUdWHde3kP-ncl9mPOOQEDV_NKAC-HC2Kj4al6EJgOdMTh-ZuKF-HYKFhAT2k5Uw90Tjj68ohoiYoa1-jqx_JKFMsgxPnj71yS9wS-bkedP6=s2000" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj3RNv6_uAFYCaoyOQyfCZO_TpA-mLFKe986eu5V6IEiaASUXR2PFZkoCzjGQ5tnXakvBoZCYJovA1kMUdWHde3kP-ncl9mPOOQEDV_NKAC-HC2Kj4al6EJgOdMTh-ZuKF-HYKFhAT2k5Uw90Tjj68ohoiYoa1-jqx_JKFMsgxPnj71yS9wS-bkedP6=s320" width="240" /></a></div>A friend once told me that I was always either in the process of accessioning or deaccessioning: talking about all the new books or records that I had found, or complaining about the arduous and emotionally taxing labor of trying to weed the collection and sell items to make space. New York City is known for many things, and spacious apartments aren't one of them. <p></p><p>I've hit the saturation point again, and have no shelf space (or closet space, or floor space) left. In the past, when this has occurred, I've diminished my book to collection to make space, only to regret decisions and buy the books back (often at a higher price and lower quality). This time, I'm trying something different. And, honestly, I should have done it years ago.</p><p>I've rented storage space.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Thankfully, it's within walking distance of my apartment. To prepare for the transition, I've bought paperback storage boxes. I'm alphabetizing each box, and inventorying them in a spreadsheet so I know what I have. I moved 500 books last weekend, and I have another 500 ready to go. And I'm just dealing with the vintage paperbacks for now. Trade pbs and hardcovers will come next.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5cfnq0KsvEfl4EVFPH0xKZKP5Zvxz_1Gf0183xEdsivUd0Wsi7GZsPeW2i21UueHIXB7MSJnH-dmGSxM4oXbKjGLeu5gJUOrlpYMeBnKjy9jrjHT6i4fTXOreK1RIMMXSw6AuNPG__FEVlREhy3uzIy9BOp9jveEP6pjXFdmHa-ruRjA8BmerpcwY=s2000" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5cfnq0KsvEfl4EVFPH0xKZKP5Zvxz_1Gf0183xEdsivUd0Wsi7GZsPeW2i21UueHIXB7MSJnH-dmGSxM4oXbKjGLeu5gJUOrlpYMeBnKjy9jrjHT6i4fTXOreK1RIMMXSw6AuNPG__FEVlREhy3uzIy9BOp9jveEP6pjXFdmHa-ruRjA8BmerpcwY=s320" width="240" /></a></div><span></span>Part of this process involves deciding what should stay and what should go. And even though it's not "go" for real—just down the street—it still distresses me. I'll expand upon this process in a later post.<p></p><p>The reason I'm writing about this here on the blog is that I've come to realize my book collection, which at first inspired this blog, has lately been hindering the blog. As I was sorting through books, I recognized titles that I bought 5, 10, and some close to15 years ago. Many I intended to write about. And I pass over them, I realize that one of the reasons I haven't written about them is that I acquired so many books I couldn't keep track of what I had. Finding a book, let alone choosing one, because such a chore that often I just got on the subway without a book and listened to my iPod, or fiddled with my phone. In the past, I was never without a book. Having so many goddamned books didn't speed up my reading, or make it more pleasurable; instead, it made reading stressful, slow, and laborious. And, as a result, the blog slowed to a crawl. Some years hardly a post at all.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDIFBcvu0KkAjxUg5VqdVk6krh-zteDy3etqo333WHSlbbyyYA0O5YZnVbkLD_r5Yaa5gLWK7ayUJ3Avte4ItVUD7K2u6JNL3ClqGPruO7_h0jQFMBzHSpiAExtHAunYh_Nq76iCFWwiUZF4IlNUMKTbZdQHBFMm9TsjpieNmsStnl-nDMlQG1bl9w=s2000" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDIFBcvu0KkAjxUg5VqdVk6krh-zteDy3etqo333WHSlbbyyYA0O5YZnVbkLD_r5Yaa5gLWK7ayUJ3Avte4ItVUD7K2u6JNL3ClqGPruO7_h0jQFMBzHSpiAExtHAunYh_Nq76iCFWwiUZF4IlNUMKTbZdQHBFMm9TsjpieNmsStnl-nDMlQG1bl9w=s320" width="240" /></a></div>And so, as I make decision what goes into storage, and what stays in the apartment, I actually feel a great weight lifted. I'm starting to make plans about what to read again. I still plan on reading every book that is going into storage, even though the rational part of my brain tells me that I don't have enough years left on this planet to do so, but it's the thought that counts, right?<p></p><p>And so, I must say, farewell, my lovelies, to many of my books. Not a long goodbye, mind you, because I'll see them soon. In a weird way, I'm looking forward to having a dedicated space for just my books. I just wish it were in my living space. For now, though, it's nice to know they'll have a home, and as a result more of them will actually get read.</p><p>In the next installment, I'll discuss making the decisions about what stays and what goes.</p><p>To be continued...<br /><br /><br /></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-47931869781578858352021-12-30T18:24:00.000-05:002022-12-14T12:37:44.272-05:00"The Girl With No Place to Hide" by Marvin Albert as Nick Quarry (1959)<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiu72mtIl4FYMbHxfSFpS17_G3ADbvoXIB0XK9Uk-UsF27e4G03JgtF1NvNBIoEusaQdXhKz3j2xliX91GGDdsIodsVO7he8L8pKSI7OStouW3k57awN4x1MaEkTZWlkwdw3sQNaqN2dRxWGVH8ESIEjDqPL63nIt7jK-TE2TquUnpf_DE3Wz4JBCPu=s1360" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="826" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiu72mtIl4FYMbHxfSFpS17_G3ADbvoXIB0XK9Uk-UsF27e4G03JgtF1NvNBIoEusaQdXhKz3j2xliX91GGDdsIodsVO7he8L8pKSI7OStouW3k57awN4x1MaEkTZWlkwdw3sQNaqN2dRxWGVH8ESIEjDqPL63nIt7jK-TE2TquUnpf_DE3Wz4JBCPu=s320" width="194" /></a></i></div><i>The Girl With No Place to Hide</i> gave me everything I wanted from a 1950s private eye novel—and in spades. A thoroughly hardboiled protagonist, gritty New York city ambience, wild nights in Greenwich Village bars, Bronx flophouses, incriminating photographs, two-way mirrors, blackmail, loan-sharks, shoot-outs, fist-fights, jail-house brawls, prizefights at Madison Square Garden, thugs, crooked cops, duplicitous dames—you name it, this book’s got it. But it’s also got something extra special—and that’s Marvin Albert. <p></p><p>The story begins when a young woman enters a bar looking for private eye Jake Barrow’s friend, fight manager Steve Canby, who left the bar just moments before. Later, as Jake is leaving the bar, he finds a thug in the alley strangling the woman. He rescues her and takes her to his apartment for safe keeping, and she reveals that she’s in trouble, and that something bad has happened to her friend Ernie. Before Jake can find out more, he gets an urgent call to come up to the Bronx for $200. When he gets there, he realizes it was a ruse. Returning to his apartment, Angela is gone. The next morning, Jake sees in the newspaper that a photographer named Ernie was found murdered—and he fears that Angela will be the next victim.</p><p>I’ll say no more except that this is a wild ride all across New York City, with plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing every step of the way.</p><p>Originally appearing under Albert's pseudonym “Nick Quarry” in 1959 by Gold Medal Books, <i>The Girl With No Place to Hide</i> was recently reissued by <a href="http://starkhousepress.com/albert.php" target="_blank">Black Gat Books</a> from Stark House Press, and it magnificently captures why Albert was a writer’s writer. <i>The Girl With No Place to Hide</i> is the work of a real pro—a slickly designed plot that hits the right beats but not in the expected places, so readers will get what they're looking for but not in the same way they’ve read it before. Albert also shows restraint with the prose, no leaning too much on sex, violence, or slang. This is Albert’s third novel with his series character Jake Barrow—but don’t let that stop you from jumping in. If you’re like me and you haven’t read the first two yet, you’ll have no trouble following along (though you might want to rush out and find the others). </p><div><br /></div>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-60406750763044605182021-10-23T15:28:00.004-04:002021-10-23T15:33:25.895-04:00"The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues" (1955)<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYRN_HIxxDP8valbtZ7_zbfepuEc4QCYVm7sqcsaJGLtsq4soOG1y53q0fJ8CNAnbEJ1ebwvkHm5qr5LwRybua4SisBSJYmsnxcVR67sMjrJVuPSxym6vSynLIoanOz3D0kdzNRa4l40/s1834/The+Phantom+from+10%252C000+Leagues+%25281955%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1834" data-original-width="1513" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYRN_HIxxDP8valbtZ7_zbfepuEc4QCYVm7sqcsaJGLtsq4soOG1y53q0fJ8CNAnbEJ1ebwvkHm5qr5LwRybua4SisBSJYmsnxcVR67sMjrJVuPSxym6vSynLIoanOz3D0kdzNRa4l40/s320/The+Phantom+from+10%252C000+Leagues+%25281955%2529.jpg" width="264" /></a></i></div><i>The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues</i> (1955) is the type of movie that puts title and poster first—and story and production values dead last. And that’s ok! It’s schlocky good fun with a ragged monster that’s more cute than menacing. A bargain basement <i>Creature from the Black Lagoon</i> with a Cold War espionage twist, <i>Phantom</i> also embodies the highs, lows, and everything-in-betweens of what wound up on the bottom half of double bills in the 1950s. This particular movie accompanied Roger Corman’s <i>Day the World Ended</i> (1955), and together they made enough money at the box office to more than double their production costs. Sure, the monster doesn’t get enough screen time, and everyone uses the same boat, and nobody has a car, and there are lots of chance encounters happen on this one particular beach…but these sorts of decisions were made in the name of keeping the budget low, the production schedule quick, and the run-time short. So, maybe <i>Phantom</i> isn’t the horror classic that it tries to emulate, but it has an undeniable econo <i>joie de vivre</i> that makes ‘50s schlock so enchanting.<span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>Here’s the setup. A doctor’s experiments with a radiation ray have attracted the attention of the US government, who have sent two undercover agents to find out what’s going on, as well as a mysterious enemy group who have sent two spies (a Tony Curtis lookalike and a beach bunny) to steal the doctor’s secrets. The radiation ray, however, has also turned a small turtle into a large phantom who haunts the beach, attacking anyone who takes a boat into its territory.</p><p>Directed by Dan Milner and produced by Dan and his brother Jack, <i>The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues</i> was made for American Releasing Company in its second year of production—the following year, it would change its name to the now legendary American International Pictures, which oversaw two decades of classic B movies, including Corman’s Poe series, and early features from Curtis Harrington, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Bogdanovich. Knowing where the ARC would go gives Phantom an added level of interest and importance, as it was an early hit for the company and helped establish their reputation. </p><p>The <a href="https://www.kinolorber.com/product/phantom-from-10000-leagues-blu-ray" target="_blank">Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray</a> looks stunning, as expected from the company. It includes commentary from film historian Richard Harland Smith, and a Trailers from Hell segment with Joe Dante. </p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-51618172082980356222021-08-05T10:52:00.003-04:002021-08-05T10:53:33.135-04:00"The Gang" (1977)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jvbavASXyA0K7AYlJGvrCLNrFa-e-cUzvpTSZFKELrUbdm9aN1pcqcEluxLVWxY4k4CFQDesMSsZ4l1ak_nzBHqRotgAHER9HWDSYhB8MUsIoeSc9v8YpY9Ho1MJsp5fOiT9ifYSYX4/s1500/TheGang-ThreeMenToKill_DVD.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1062" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jvbavASXyA0K7AYlJGvrCLNrFa-e-cUzvpTSZFKELrUbdm9aN1pcqcEluxLVWxY4k4CFQDesMSsZ4l1ak_nzBHqRotgAHER9HWDSYhB8MUsIoeSc9v8YpY9Ho1MJsp5fOiT9ifYSYX4/s320/TheGang-ThreeMenToKill_DVD.jpg" width="227" /></a></div>Making its Blu-ray debut from the Cohen Film Collection (distributed by Kino Lorber), Jacques Deray's <i>The Gang</i> (<i>Le Gang</i>) is a strikingly unusual and idiosyncratic arthouse gangster film that should hold many surprises for fans of French crime dramas. While it has moments that resemble French master Jean-Pierre Melville, as well as American films like <i>The Godfather,</i> <i>The Sting</i>, and <i>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid</i>, stylistically the film is quite distinct from all of those. <p></p><p>The Gang begins with the titular group of men gathering before a job, and then jumps to directly after the job, as they return with their leader, Robert "The Crazy" (Alain Delon), wounded. This leads into a voice-over from Robert's wife, Marinette (Nicole Calfari), who takes the story back to post-war Paris where they meet at a nightclub, where Robert holds the patrons at gunpoint after an American soldier insults one of the gang. From here, the story alternates between idyllic scenes of the gang celebrating baptisms, relaxing in the countryside, and glimpses of their crimes filmed with Melvillain sobriety. Robert becomes increasingly brazen as their success grows, and it's only a matter of time before his craziness gets him—and perhaps the gang—killed.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>What's most interesting about <i>The Gang</i> are the expected paths it doesn't take. It's not an action movie, nor is it particularly suspenseful. Unlike <i>Rififi</i>, The Gang never lets us in on the plans, so we're not invested in the execution of the heists. Nor does the film probe the psychology of the characters: they're all pretty much blank slates. Also, inter-gang conflicts and melodrama are noticeably absent. And despite the voice over from Marinette, this isn't a love story. </p><p>Instead, <i>The Gang</i> approaches its story from an abstract perspective. In this sense, one can feel the influence of Melville a little, though Deray doesn't share Melville's hardboiled sensibility. Instead, the film shifts tonally between verite-style robberies and getaways, pastoral interludes, and comedic moments scored to a jaunty piano melodies. I found such leaps to be refreshing and original, allowing the film go its own direction without following expected beats and genre conventions. I was also struck by how none of the characters–not even Robert—are presented as particularly ingenious or clever. There's something very spontaneous about their crimes, as though they were opportunities within the chaos of post-WWII France, still in disarray after the war. </p><p><i>The Gang</i> was co-written by legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who collaborated with Luis Bunuel on such classics as <i>Diary of a Chambermaid</i>, <i>Belle de Jour</i>, <i>The Milky Way</i>, <i>The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie</i>, <i>The Phantom of Liberty</i>, and <i>That Obscure Object of Desire</i>. Previously, he had collaborated with <i>The Gang</i>'s director Jaques Deray on the underrated crime film <i>The Outside Man</i> and on the 1930s gangster pic <i>Borsalino</i> (also starring Delon). </p><p>Overall, <i>The Gang</i> is a welcome addition to the home video world, giving us access to the work of Jacques Deray, whose films have been not been widely available in the US. An attractive bonus feature, the Blu-ray includes another Deray-Delon film, <i>Three Men To Kill</i>, which I'll review separately.</p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-58148218303463377522021-06-26T09:36:00.002-04:002022-12-14T12:37:50.476-05:00“The Kid I Killed Last Night and Other Stories: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Vol. #7,” edited by David Laurence Wilson (Ramble House, 2021)<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeCo9VuONpU9wLG6bQ-kpG2NG7D5I2sa1dNB7SiaeZVfssZtfdNfb8xDKKsdGrBSEPm3gWs3CWaPNmOmL5QDRfpyfy3gOvV3e0PGJqfPboxIeyWb2yr7DPBhfm5HvnEgSBEbghom5OGo/s1500/Day+Keene+The+Kid+I+Killed+Last+Night.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeCo9VuONpU9wLG6bQ-kpG2NG7D5I2sa1dNB7SiaeZVfssZtfdNfb8xDKKsdGrBSEPm3gWs3CWaPNmOmL5QDRfpyfy3gOvV3e0PGJqfPboxIeyWb2yr7DPBhfm5HvnEgSBEbghom5OGo/s320/Day+Keene+The+Kid+I+Killed+Last+Night.jpg" /></a></i></div>I'm ecstatic over the seventh and most recent volume in Ramble House’s series of Day Keene’s short stories is <i><a href="http://www.ramblehouse.com/The%20Kid%20I%20Killed%20Last%20Night.htm" target="_blank">The Kid I Killed Last Night and Other Stories: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Vol. #7</a></i><a href="http://www.ramblehouse.com/The%20Kid%20I%20Killed%20Last%20Night.htm" target="_blank"> (2021)</a>. Expertly compiled, edited, and introduced by David Laurence Wilson, this collection is one of the most interesting and illuminating volumes released yet. Devoted to Keene’s earliest stories published under his real name Gunard Hjertstedt and later tales published under pen names (John Corbett and Donald King), <i>The Kid I Killed Last Night</i> sheds light on the more obscure areas of Keene’s pulp career. Fans of the author will delight in being able to access such rarities, and newcomers will hopefully appreciate the author’s wit and crackerjack plots. Early or late, real name or pen name, Keene was a master of the short story, and Ramble House and David Laurence Wilson deserve applause (and lots of orders) for keeping the author’s legacy alive. <span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>Arranged in chronological order, the book begins with Keene’s first published tale “Ashes” (<i>10 Story Book</i>, August 1930), about a racketeer who pays to have his wife “disappear” and then returns home to find that the hired hand absconded with the money and the lady for himself. This is the first of several revenge tales in the collection. What’s most interesting about Wilson’s selection of stories and arrangement is that one not only sees the growth of Keene as a writer, but also the themes and motifs that unify his career, and how he reworks them as he matures as a writer. “Ashes” is a short yarn that mainly works because of its brevity; “Homicidal Journey” (<i>Detective Tales</i>, November 1945) revisits the concept of a husband who wants to murder his wife, however a Dickensian twist gives the protagonist, a returning WWII vet, newfound empathy for his wife, left at home to bear her burdens alone during the war. “Who Dies Last?” (<i>New Detective Magazine</i>, September 1949) further evolves the concept by switching gender perspectives: this time it is a wife who wants revenge on a two-timing husband. </p><p>Veterans also appear in “Johnny’s-on-the-Spot!” (<i>Detective Tales</i>, June 1945), about a former mob hitman who escaped New York to a small, rural town and rebuilt his life as a bank president. Coming home from the war, he finds that his past has caught up with him—a double-crossing mobster wants to frame him, and a cop wants to arrest him. And in “They Gave Him a Badge!” (<i>Detective Tales</i>, January 1946), veteran Stan Martin is given the job of sheriff because of his war record and in hopes that he’ll stay silent on certain corrupt matters—but Martin won’t stay quiet when political boss Mal Hunt tries to cover up a murder as a suicide.</p><p>Among Keene’s most distinctive characteristics is his eccentric sense of humor, which is on full display in “Mr. Beaver, D.A.” (<i>Detective Fiction Weekly</i>, January 30, 1932), in which a recently disbarred doctor gets revenge on the man who he thinks framed him, only to have his seemingly-perfect murder fouled up by the titular woodland creature. Another early tale, “I Hadda Hunch (<i>Detective Fiction Weekly</i>, November 21, 1931),” features Keene’s earliest series characters, the detective firm McPherson, Swanson and McCoy Operative Bureau; here, they’re off to Panama to find a cashier who ran off with a few hundred thousand dollars, and wind up in a wonderfully slapstick bar fight with flying bottles and knives. </p><p>One of the sub-genres in which Keene specialized was the “shudder pulp,” a mystery that begins as supernatural but is revealed to be rational. In “Dames Are Poison!” (<i>Detective Tales</i>, February 1945), the owner of a failing bar comes up with a winning attraction, “The Kiss of Death Girl”—the only problem is even the girl thinks the curse is real. Another “shudder pulp” tale is “Hound of Hell” (<i>Dime Mystery Magazine</i>, February 1946), in which a stock broker thinks he is being haunted by the ghost of his partner who he pushed out of a window on Black Friday in 1929. </p><p>Keene’s knack for twist endings is evident in several stories, including “Grave in Bloom” (<i>Detective Tales</i>, September 1945), in which a man murders his brother (who plans to will his estate to charity), but nature won’t stay quiet. Another favorite is “Who Dies There?” (<i>New Detective Magazine</i>, January 1950), in which a sheriff conceives a clever way to find who ran off with $225K after a con artist is murdered. <i>“As conscientious a fisherman as he was officer of the law, bait was a sore spot with him. It hurt the artist in him to watch some well-meaning fool bait for redfish with cut-bait in water where they'd only hit fiddler crabs, or vice versa. Fishing, in his opinion, was a science. A man finding himself in Ybor City might order chicken and yellow rice. But the same man at Steve's Rustic Inn would order steak. It was the same with fish. To catch a fish, you had to give it the particular type of bait it wanted.” </i></p><p>Keene wasn’t all laughs, though. His more serious crime stories include the Ozarks moonshine noir “Murder Mountain” (<i>Detective Fiction Weekly</i>, April 14, 1932): ”One kills for one's kin, or one kills one's kin—it is a subject for inter-tribal solution, and concerns only the parties involved.” And the titular tale, “The Kid I Killed Last Night” (<i>New Detective Magazine</i>, September 1949) is a chilling story of vigilantism, in which a police sergeant has a change of heart after killing a teenager in the course of his duty, and decides to take down the corrupt elements running crime and poisoning his town.</p><p>Overall, <i>The Kid I Killed Last Night and Other Stories</i> is a stellar collection of pulp stories that displays the style, wit, and personality of Keene, as well as the author’s growth. A must-read for fans of mystery pulps. </p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-17449500839094024982021-05-09T07:01:00.002-04:002021-05-09T07:07:33.407-04:00"Manhunter" by Arnold Hano (1957)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVw0RCzOgLeSTGIqs0KRa7WoUWkpxo4bfSXUZaAJHx-V7DhWrjOe-e1kWZJqI0wSnFJWx9eOBibvrWaC36U0QDP9nGEIm3AIyyE5KnneT2-KWJLShJm7Aa_HryJZ1CMjXvfbz-WW2-mNs/s2048/9781951473334.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVw0RCzOgLeSTGIqs0KRa7WoUWkpxo4bfSXUZaAJHx-V7DhWrjOe-e1kWZJqI0wSnFJWx9eOBibvrWaC36U0QDP9nGEIm3AIyyE5KnneT2-KWJLShJm7Aa_HryJZ1CMjXvfbz-WW2-mNs/s320/9781951473334.jpg" /></a></div>In Arnold Hano’s westerns, the frontier is deceitful above all things, truth is rarely simple, and resolutions never easy. Where other books end—the capture of the killer and the confession—<i>Manhunter</i> begins.<div><p><i>“Ross was no longer vitally interested in Gill. He had his father’s killer, his confessed killer. But Gill could clear up who was lying, and why.</i></p><p><i>“On the heels of that thought came a terrible doubt, streaking across his brain like a yellow comet. It had all happened so long ago. Maybe it was he—Ben Ross—who was lying.”</i></p><p>Originally released in 1957 under the pseudonym “Matthew Gant” and recently released by <a href="http://starkhousepress.com/hano.php" target="_blank">Stark House Press</a> (paired with <i>Slade</i>), <i>Manhunter</i> is emblematic of Hano’s strikingly original approach to the western genre. Revenge and closure don't drive his protagonist forward, it’s something darker and all-consuming. These sorts of qualities separate Arnold Hano’s westerns from many of his peers, and what gives them the distinction of being labeled retroactively as “western noir.” <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>11 years ago, Ben Ross witnessed his father, a Texas sheriff, gunned down at his desk. Three men rode of out town that night, and one of them was responsible for the shooting. Now that he’s been deputized to bring back the killer dead or alive, Ross heads to Colorado to find a man named Gill who knows the identity of the murderer. Arriving in town, Ross discovers that Gill is missing, and his former employers—the Stanton Brothers—are enmeshed in a range war over fences against Caesar, who wants to keep the range free and open. From a vantage point in a cave overlooking the range, Gill orchestrates both ends against the middle in hopes of taking everything for himself.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBCuqMBNvtjy-f5RvC3w86Hyl4EgKmv3iByBcTpgkn_Zyh6S7voyo3iSE2bMxP2YeDh3c7AajGa1heJK6IVulpCrM0uRL37wwUNfvU8fIL5GO0wmZBTO-EdHb-Gj7oFESSD0SxwDYVwI/s453/ArnoldHanoManhunter.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="266" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBCuqMBNvtjy-f5RvC3w86Hyl4EgKmv3iByBcTpgkn_Zyh6S7voyo3iSE2bMxP2YeDh3c7AajGa1heJK6IVulpCrM0uRL37wwUNfvU8fIL5GO0wmZBTO-EdHb-Gj7oFESSD0SxwDYVwI/s320/ArnoldHanoManhunter.jpg" /></a></div>One of the hallmarks of Hano’s western fiction is that nobody’s motivation is pure at heart. “Men had their special provinces,” reflects Laura, the saloon singer and fortune teller, “painful provinces, where men shot each other or built fences so other men could tear them down.” There’s no moral high ground in Hano’s frontier—no one is wholly right, and most everyone is at least partly wrong, if not wholly corrupt. <p></p><p>Memory haunts <i>Manhunter</i>. “Outside the sun sank through the west, and shadows blotted out great areas of the town and of the western hills. Ben Ross remembered many things he had forgotten. That was funny, he thought. A man forgets things, but he doesn’t. They’re there, all along.” Characters chase fragments of misremembered events; others run from things they might have done, could have, wanted to; and still others play with the truth, distorting it into fictions to suit their own purposes. Nothing is absolute in Hano’s world, not memory, not morality, and not history. </p><p>Another trait of Hano’s books is the complexity of the stories. He tackles situations that can’t be fixed by a shoot-out or dying man’s confession. It only takes a few chapters of <i>Manhunter</i> before you realize that no one is going to come away clean from this mess.</p><p>Concluding with a duel with no gun, and a posse with white flags against an small army of armed riders, Hano eschews conventional climaxes and dismantles the mythology of heroic bloodshed. <i>Manhunter</i> is an antithetical western, a powerful, brooding, and radical approach to the genre. Many thanks to Stark House Press for continuing to champion Arnold Hano one of the great mid-century novelists and progenitors of the western-noir subgenre.</p></div>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-5396015306005873712021-05-08T05:44:00.002-04:002021-05-08T06:33:38.727-04:00"Slade" by Arnold Hano (1956)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5xFNCBxIiBxOat83dpchHXBqiGttkawdzsEzKV5Hr_oVgd0DpQcEAhyphenhyphen-y0OdjC8H2dmxsvYvL84VMnhu5bHdIfoch_AJ9ulQVpNzq70AwM1oVpEJCMzLOj59szbylaNR0yHdi5q0rzd0/s2048/9781951473334.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5xFNCBxIiBxOat83dpchHXBqiGttkawdzsEzKV5Hr_oVgd0DpQcEAhyphenhyphen-y0OdjC8H2dmxsvYvL84VMnhu5bHdIfoch_AJ9ulQVpNzq70AwM1oVpEJCMzLOj59szbylaNR0yHdi5q0rzd0/s320/9781951473334.jpg" /></a></div>There’s nothing heroic or romantic about Arnold Hano’s westerns. The frontier is a dark and violent landscape that doesn’t offer redemption, rebirth, or hope. In Hano’s books, the barren landscapes reveal the naked awfulness of its people. These qualities are on full display in <i>Slade</i> and <i>Manhunter</i>, two of Hano’s grim, gut-punch westerns recently reissued by <a href="http://starkhousepress.com/hano.php" target="_blank">Stark House Press</a>. These great books embody why Hano deserves the title “Master of the Western Noir,” which is the name of Paul Bishop’s terrific essay-interview with the author, which is also included in the new volume.<p></p><p><i>Slade</i> was originally published in 1956 under the name “Ad Gordon” by Lion Books, where Hano was also the editor. Hano doesn’t handle his characters with kid gloves—he puts them through hell, over and over again. <i>Slade</i> begins with him knocking the titular character off his high horse, and what a fall he takes. Like Icarus before him, Slade flew too close to the sun and paid for his hubris. Here, the gambler bet everything he had—including his saloon—and lost it. With only his horse, his hat, and a sock with $500 he tries to leave town, but after he’s jumped and beaten unconscious he loses even the sock. “Dilt drove both his fists to the back of Slade’s neck and kicked himself loose. Yet somehow he got up again. Finally, the wild red washed through him and turned gray and the last thing he remembered was Dilt saying hoarsely, ‘Fall, you son of a bitch, fall.’”<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjjh-v5Q03X7bNATD1SAKxZm2G5znuKpzEskpdy-dWoMWXpMqSt9AVEzkvKVKA3qJvcRptmai8T_43CB2WJvCLWnvnoqnEzTc5ogv00IqArbulUDCX44jMCW8ULJJXj6_keo4NdyR674s/s2048/ArnoldHanoSladeLion.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1275" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjjh-v5Q03X7bNATD1SAKxZm2G5znuKpzEskpdy-dWoMWXpMqSt9AVEzkvKVKA3qJvcRptmai8T_43CB2WJvCLWnvnoqnEzTc5ogv00IqArbulUDCX44jMCW8ULJJXj6_keo4NdyR674s/s320/ArnoldHanoSladeLion.jpg" /></a></div>Broke, Slade heads to Cowpoke, New Mexico, to look his up old friend Crispin, in hopes of starting over. But Slade doesn’t even get that chance. He rides straight into a land war over territory that’s about to become a whole lot more valuable because of the coming railroad. Crispin is missing, presumed to be murdered by a trio of greedy men. There’s Big Thomas, a landowner who won’t stop until he has all the property in the area, but who is already deep in debt to the bank. Then there’s Sheriff Wilkinson, a corrupt lawman who takes out his Napoleonic complex by pushing everyone around him, and who lusts after Crispin’s sister. And then there’s Abbott, the bank owner who’s plans on using Big Thomas to push the homesteaders off their land and then disposing of him like the others.<p></p><p>Other writers might have used this set-up to position Slade a savior of the homesteaders. But not Hano. Nobody’s motivations are pure and righteous. None of the other homesteaders want to defend their homes and are ready to sell. Crispin’s sister, May, is a hard woman that knows how to survive in a hard land, but even she’s too hardboiled for Slade (who years before harbored a crush on her which has long since faded). May’s husband, Hogue, is a coward who fears he’ll be killed next. And Slade’s primary motivation is that he has only one silver dollar in his belt buckle—and he’s gonna need more than that to move on.</p><p>At its blackened heart, <i>Slade</i> is about greed. In the book’s most symbolic moment, a character is even lynched by their money belt. In its portrayal of ruthless, selfish, power-hungry characters recalls W.R. Burnett and Paul Cain. Hano has said that his westerns were influenced by Jim Thompson, and in <i>Slade</i> one can see Thompson’s influence in the long pestilent trail of nastiness that runs through whole book. </p><p>In an ironic ending, Hano doesn’t have his Slade ride into the sunset, and instead has him ride into a blazing sun—deeper into the inferno. He may be smiling, but the optimism seems unwarranted and foolhardy. Knowing Hano, nothing but more trouble awaits Slade at the end of the trail.</p><p>A stunning achievement, <i>Slade</i> deserves to be known as classic of the noir western subgenre. Thank you to Stark House Press for bringing this back to bookshelves. <i>Manhunter</i> review to follow shortly…</p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-76632361158325132782021-05-04T13:46:00.001-04:002021-05-04T13:46:15.929-04:00My new story "Death Drives By Night" is at Beat to a Pulp<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgIcQHitWWsycCCPHA6uCke2Qvz1taN5QDfxMyJC1ox8LloycYB3R4qP7uO5NdmagtgDjE2qm0L9fFPQyaJEcPrtz7UHAFCgmtDTUgm2rvogLGJa9d4FMDDYaBrB4lhWHCfiidybCPFCI/s1737/Death+Drives+By+Night+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1158" data-original-width="1737" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgIcQHitWWsycCCPHA6uCke2Qvz1taN5QDfxMyJC1ox8LloycYB3R4qP7uO5NdmagtgDjE2qm0L9fFPQyaJEcPrtz7UHAFCgmtDTUgm2rvogLGJa9d4FMDDYaBrB4lhWHCfiidybCPFCI/w400-h266/Death+Drives+By+Night+Cover.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />I've been a big fan of <i>Beat to a Pulp</i> since I discovered them a little over a decade ago, around the same time I started this blog. Since then, it's been a dream of mine to have a short story included on their website. That dream has finally come true, and I'm thrilled that they've given a home to my story, "Death Drives By Night." It's about a rural veterinarian with a sideline patching up criminals who gets caught in the middle of a drug war when violence follows the trail back to his home. Zakariah Johnson described it as "Gritty, gravel-road-noir."<p></p><p><a href="http://www.beattoapulp.com/wz20210502-cg-deathdrivesbynight.html" target="_blank">Click here to read "Death Drives by Night."</a></p><p><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image: Designed by me, photograph <a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035766041@N01/11888136" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">"129201-07"</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif;"> </span><span data-v-e1c1f65a="" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif;">by <a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035766041@N01" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">phrenologist</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif;"> is licensed under </span><a class="photo_license" data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/?ref=ccsearch&atype=rich" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">CC BY-NC 2.0</a></span></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-47715652436119205012021-04-27T09:52:00.001-04:002021-04-27T09:52:28.522-04:00"Love Like Bleeding Out With An Empty Gun In Your Hand" by Stephen J. Golds (2021)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZdCzq5JzVeY-FcYgZfZDstItUr-SyR1YuKHqjC6TnjCklbZDkPJ6AVWsiXOX6CcziC7riJnUUse0ZrJFjy-g78hyphenhyphenLRmIehj8M-lp_uzLv-OdWhw8-7SmIkGkPZOnHkVhdTlOUa2AVAy0/s1576/Stephen+J+Golds+Love+Like+Bleeding+Out+With+An+Empty+Gun+In+Your+Hand.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1576" data-original-width="1125" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZdCzq5JzVeY-FcYgZfZDstItUr-SyR1YuKHqjC6TnjCklbZDkPJ6AVWsiXOX6CcziC7riJnUUse0ZrJFjy-g78hyphenhyphenLRmIehj8M-lp_uzLv-OdWhw8-7SmIkGkPZOnHkVhdTlOUa2AVAy0/s320/Stephen+J+Golds+Love+Like+Bleeding+Out+With+An+Empty+Gun+In+Your+Hand.jpg" /></a></div>Nothing ever lasts in Stephen J. Golds’s world—not the good, and not the bad. <p></p><p>In Golds’s hard-hitting collection of noir-influenced poetry and prose, <i>Love Like Bleeding Out With An Empty Gun In Your Hand</i>, there’s a lot of past, not much present, and even less future. Characters look back and see what’s better left behind; they look around and don’t like what they see; and they look ahead but don’t see much of anything. Yet somehow, Golds manages to be both a romantic and a nihilist at the same time—and that’s as good as definition of noir as I can think of.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Past. A man half-assedly looks for a job to preserve a marriage he knows is doomed (“Two Goldfish”); a dying man spends his last moments thinking of a woman he kicked to the curb and who replaced him in less than a week (“Love Like Bleeding Out with an Empty Gun In Your Hand”); and a trip down memory lane with Eddie reminds someone just how murderously annoying he always was (“A Contrarian Conversation in Hell's Kitchen”). These are just a few of the characters who may only exist for a few pages, but between the lines they live a lifetime.</p><p>Present. “The dream, my only dream is not to have a nightmare,” reveals the protagonist of “Two Goldfish.” This one line encapsulates the worldview of so many of Golds’s characters: an ambition of oblivion. They don’t aspire to greatness so much as to alleviate them of the weight of the eternal present moment. As the narrator describes at the start of “Like a Starving Rodent,” “That boiling, tumorous feeling in your guts, it never goes away. It doesn’t fade. It doesn’t soften. It never lets up. Like a starving rodent, it’s always there, gnawing away at your insides with black, rotten incisors.” Whether it’s escaping the mundanity of everyday life, or the loss of a loved one, Golds’s characters would rather be anywhere but here. “Ghoul. Ghost. Every day felt as though I was existing in the reality between being awake and being asleep” (“Blood and Cherry Blossoms”).</p><p>Future. Golds’s characters don’t have much to look forward to. The old ones—the wise ones—realize that. Like the aging has-been gangster in “Hereafter” who relives his glorious youth by signing his own death wish, rushing head-first into a disaster that will most likely kill him. He’s fine with that. He knows, like Sisyphus, that his future is just more of the present. The young ones, on the other hand, lack such foresight. Like the narrator in “On Being Fourteen Years Old and Loving Miss Perkins,” a student who fantasizes about a teacher from his school who is rumored to be in a relationship with a teacher he loathes, Mr. Perkins. Perkins becomes, in the narrator’s mind, a romantic rival. Eschewing standard dramatic structure, Golds avoids any conflict, choosing to have the teachers quit school and get married. “Mr. Berkins had won after all,” concludes the narrator. Though they are separated by decades in age, the protagonists of both of these stories share the same future: un-ending emptiness. As he says in the poem “A Cold Sunday,” “I wait for the sound of a bell / to mark the end of the round / but it never comes / there’s only the night / and the old / and / this waiting. / on the ropes always.” Golds’s nihilism spares nobody.</p><p>But, in the midst of all this darkness. there are moments of respite, like in “Table”: “Everything was changing so fast it seemed sometimes, but the table was still the same at least.” An anchor in a raging storm. Or the hanging final paragraph of ““A Contrarian Conversation in Hell's Kitchen,” consisting of just one solitary word—“Relaxing”—like the last gasp of a Bukowski poem, a rare moment of calm in a chaotic world. Or, more poignantly, like in “Broken,” in which a man getting his teeth drilled reflects on his recent divorce and job loss. I normally refrain from spoilers, but after so much pain and misery this ending gleamed like a rare jewel of hope: “Today was Friday and he’d get to have the kids for the weekend. That was something good that he still held onto. Something that was unbroken.” Even that light doesn’t last for long—the very next story, “Like Those Old Western Movies,” begins with “Darkness…Pain…”—and it only gets grimmer from there.</p><p>Unapologetically bleak, there’s also an undeniable beauty to Golds’s words. The inclusion of both prose and poetry is fitting because poetry informs so much of Golds’s prose style. From the names of stories (like the titular tale), to his vivid descriptions, to his lyrical dialog, and even structure of his paragraphs, Gold imbues his writing with the brevity and depth of poetry. The poems at the end of the collection are, perhaps, my favorite part of the collection.</p><p><i>Love Like Bleeding Out With An Empty Gun In Your Hand</i> was my first book by Stephen J. Golds—and it certainly won’t be my last.</p><p>Out April 30, 2021 from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0917LZHYG" target="_blank">Close to the Bone Publishing</a>. </p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3574898998296059114.post-46442525387365441122021-04-26T10:09:00.002-04:002021-04-26T10:09:49.204-04:00Wallace Stroby Interview at CrimeReads<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ISI27id7DFD279x-FSMiGITtjYrH0VPBoScVHgGb8t2ge-uAuB_cmnmWXI4hU21vhtWP-cf6DVYU9yVpfPMk5EMnI2YKmBaAE863DYUuI0XpypyetoszVbTcHs0wsXu9zJq0thH5pdE/s800/Stroby+Interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ISI27id7DFD279x-FSMiGITtjYrH0VPBoScVHgGb8t2ge-uAuB_cmnmWXI4hU21vhtWP-cf6DVYU9yVpfPMk5EMnI2YKmBaAE863DYUuI0XpypyetoszVbTcHs0wsXu9zJq0thH5pdE/s320/Stroby+Interview.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />I've long been a fan of Wallace Stroby's crime novels, especially his Crissa Stone series, but his latest is my new favorite. In design, <i><a href="https://www.mulhollandbooks.com/titles/wallace-stroby/heavens-a-lie/9780316540605/" target="_blank">Heaven's a Lie</a> </i>reads like something straight out of Gold Medal from the 1950s, but in feeling and tone it is completely modern, and deeply tied to the present moment. The main character is Joette, a woman who was laid off from her bank teller job when the bank downsized. Now she works a day-shift at a decaying motel during the off-season in order to pay for her trailer and support her dying mother. But that's all backstory you learn later. Stroby kick-starts the action with the first sentence of the book. A car turns over in front of the motel. Joette rushes to help rescue the driver. Inside the open trunk, she sees a bag of cash. She takes it. And, of course, the rightful owner quickly figures out she has it and wants it back. Trouble is, Joette's got nothing left to lose and is determined to keep the cash.<p></p><p>One of Stroby's strongest abilities is character development. He eschews archetype for realistic people made of flesh-and-blood, with urgent and relatable motivations, and who—when pushed—surprise not only those around them, but also themselves. And <i>Heaven's a Lie </i>is a book in which characters frequently surprise themselves. Whether it is Joette recognizing her boldness and recklessness, or Travis—the sadistic drug dealer—acknowledging his limitations and powerlessness, the cast of <i>Heaven's a Lie</i> face life-altering and disturbing self-realizations. </p><p>I loved <i>Heaven's a Lie</i>—a tightly-knit chamber noir filled with melancholy and heartache set against a backdrop of America's struggling economy and the destructive wake of gentrification.</p><p>On the occasion of the book's release, Stroby was kind enough to speak with me about the writing process. </p><p>Read the full interview, <a href="https://crimereads.com/wallace-stroby-on-life-death-and-noir-on-the-jersey-shore/" target="_blank">"Wallace Stroby on Life, Death, and Noir on the Jersey Shore,"</a> at <i>CrimeReads.</i></p>Cullen Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14236957954996740924noreply@blogger.com0