JAMES CRUMLEY RIP

James Crumley, one of the great ones, died a few days ago. I was introduced to him at the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore by the old owner who knew exactly what to recommend to "those lunatics who read Jim Thompson." He handed me a copy of The Wrong Case opened to page 5. The narrator describes witnessing a purse snatching from his office window that ended with the thief struck by one car and dragged a half block by another. "I had never realized purse snatching was such a dangerous crime..." Sold!

Crumley's probably best known for The Last Good Kiss and its immortal opening line:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

And things only get better when the aforesaid Mr. Trahearne happily finds himself in a car "'...wandering around America with an alcoholic bulldog, a seedy private dick, and a working quart of Wild Turkey.'" How can anyone resist?

Sadly, Crumley only wrote a handfull of books. They all slide down well and pack a whallop, but like fine whiskey, deserve to be slowly and carefully savored.

IRRESISTIBLE BLOOD LUST

• Blood Lust #1: Irresistible by Michael Bates (Bantam, 1994)
  
  
  I've been hooked on the Blood Lust series of sex & shock young adult horror novels since reading a post on "What YAs shouldn't Read" back in the glory days of Usenet. Well, Publisher's Weekly "Gleefully recommends this slick combination of macabre softcore porn and whiny schadenfreude..." and so do I.
  
  Irresistible is as good a place to start as any. "Irresistible" is a perfume clandestinely distributed to the popular set by the inevitable revenge-crazed nerd. Alas for the recipients, this product works far to well. A few drops triggers a bodice-ripping, restraining-order inspiring passion. A whole bottle, well, the cheerleader that tried that wound up partially devoured by her "bad boy" date.
  
  And that's just the start of the fun. The just as inevitable nice girl finds the boy of her dreams so hopelessly devoted to her he Hitchcocks a cheerleader in the shower (25 times!) for saying something mean about her and then breaks another rah-rah's neck for good measure. The double funeral is marred by an passionate couple sneaking behind a monument! To quote our heroine's thoughts, it's "...totally twisted to be having fun while two of your friends were being buried!"
  
  The scent-crazed youngsters stop at nothing, not even necrophilia, right up to the pleasingly unresolved ending. Subsequent volumes (seven, I believe) mine similar suburban horrors with equally surreal results. Kids today just have it way too easy....

DIME A DANCE

The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercial Recreation and City Life by Paul Cressey (University of Chicago Press, 1932. 2008 reprint)

This is perhaps my Ur book, a combination guaranteed to satisfy both my Cornell Woolrich induced taxi-dance hall obsession and my jones for gritty ethnography. I pre-ordered it over a year ago. And it was worth every minute of the wait.

The Taxi-Dance Hall is the gem of the “Sociology Noir” sub-genre centered at the University of Chicago from 1915 to 1935. For the uninitiated, taxi-dance halls were common in large cities between the world wars. Men paid women dance hall employees a dime for the pleasure of a 90-second dance, with the hall and the hostess splitting the take. For various legal and public relations reasons, the halls advertised themselves as “dance academies” and called the dancers “instructors.” However, little instruction was expected or given. As one dancer said, “You don’t have to know how to dance anyway.”

Although Cressey is a bit of a blue-nose who finds his subject “demoralizing,” he doesn’t let this keep him from presenting an unflinching, keenly observed portrait of the Chicago taxi-dance hall circa 1928. Via extensive case studies, interviews, and even historical, economic and geographic analysis, he captures the personality of the customers and dancers and the atmosphere of their norish milieu.

The customers as a rag-tag mix of immigrants (especially Filipinos) out to meet “immodest” American women, slummers checking out the other half, young bucks learning how to kick up their heels, older men and “the dwarfed, maimed, and pockmarked.” Surprisingly, many were just looking for dancing or companionship and attention from young woman. As one middle-aged man said, “Who wants to dance with an old woman? [it] makes me tired before I start.” But others were out for a whole lot more. No serious taxi-dancer lacked for after-work “dates,” where they matched wits with “the fish” in what Cressey calls “the sex game.”

The dancers themselves tended to be native born locals from broken or instable homes. Cressey divides them into four groups: “nice girls,” who were well-behaved or simply inexperienced; “smart girls,” who worked their dates with expertise; “never-miss girls,” who were really part time prostitutes; and, “sensual dancers” whose dance floor antics (vertical lapdancing?) “functions as a utility for her patrons.” Yes, there was plenty of exploitation in the taxi-dance hall scene, but as Cressey makes clear, it was a two way street.

Ultimately, Cressey concludes that the taxi-dance hall is not a cause, but a symptom. Its patrons are “a panorama of the maladjustments of urban life.” The halls themselves are “testimony to the inadequacies of present day life for its patrons” that nonetheless meets a need, however imperfectly. He calls for regulation and reform, not repression, an attitude that didn’t play too well back in those days. The disreputable nature of this book (originally submitted as his thesis) cut off his academic career at the knees. But I bet it’s this disreputable nature that has this book back in print more than 75 years after the fact, while its more respectable cousins are left to the ironists. This is the real noir.

I WAS A DRUNK FOR THE FBI

The Big Decision: The Story of Matt Cevetic, Counterspy by Matt Cvetic (self published circa 1959)

Matt Cevetic was the "I" in the "I Was a Communist For the FBI" franchise of the '50s which went from a series of "as told to" articles in The Saturday Evening Post to a film (nominated for the documentary Oscar despite the fact it was a narrative film starring Frank Lovejoy!) and a radio show starring Dana Andrews. A mild mannered civil servent, Cvetic was recruited by the FBI in the early '40s to keep tabs on CPUSA's Pittsburgh franchise. They canned him in 1950 for his alleged erratic, alcohol-fueled behavior. He nonetheless spent the next several years as a successful "professional witness" for the HUAC and related concerns until the fad ran its course.

Little of this appears in The Big Decision, the self-published memior by an apparently embittred former media darling. As Cvetic tells it, all he really wanted to do was join Army Intelligence. But the FBI played on his fear of THE RED KNOCK--the dreaded sound of Red fists pounding on the door of every loyal American the morning after the Big Takeover (!). He knew it meant sacrifices. Not only would he not go on the FBI payroll until he was a full-fledged Party member, he couldn't tell a soul--he would risk "savage Communist reprisals in the form of brain washing (?), torture, or even death at the hands of vicious Red inquisitors," no doubt in a secret torture chamber in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh.

He drove his friends away with his regular spouting of the ever-changing Party Line. His wife left him: "I'm not going to have people point at me and say: There goes a Commie's wife." His father stopped talking to him. His brothers hated him. Only his long suffering, albeit bewildered mother continued to accept him. Even love eluded him--a promising relationship with a waitress at the local beanery ended when her father told him "I'd rather see my daughter 6 feet under than married to a Communist skunk like you." And naturally, Cvetic was too American to engage in any immoral dalliance with an of his fairer Party Comrades. "Those scheming Reds with their loose morals sickened me." You'd think the FBI would prefer unattached recruits for this kind of work.

As Cvetic tells it, life in the Party is no piece of cake. The Party may not have a monopoly on paranoia, but don't tell them that. Accusing one another of being an FBI informant is a standard past time. Leaving was frowned upon--Cvetic is always alluding to the suspicious "suicides" of former members and suspected informants. And the things the "Red lice" say, like "when the Communist Revolution starts... I'm sure as hell going to enjoy torturing and butchering the clergy and tossing their bodies in the Ohio River"--it's enough to make any good, loyal American like counterspy Cvetic puke! (Luckily, he doesn't) Even the Soviets weren't to happy with their stateside vanguard. One Russian Red confided in Cvetic that 90% of the American Communists would need to be liquidated after the revolution--"If their own country can't trust them how can we?" So much for getting in on the ground floor

It's pretty hard to take Cvetic seriously. For someone infiltrating a supposedly ruthless, violent organization, stunts like living in a hotel under an assumed name near party HQ or sneaking off to take Communion seem like the recipe for a short career. And Cvetic never quite explains what horrible crimes and vital intelligence he's uncovering. It's not like he's in some secret cell--he has an office in Party HQ in downtown Pittsburgh! But to listen to him tell it, his testimony sent dozens of Reds to jail, making our lives safe for apple pie and the installment plan.

It's all great kitsch in the J. Edgar Hoover tradition of breathless exposes of Commies In Your Back Yard. But it would be nice to know the real story.

BUSTED TO THE M.A.X.!

Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr (Hard Case, 2006)
Slide by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr (Hard Case, 2007)

Jason Starr has long been my pick of the younger-than-me noir crowd for his rare ability to bring classic noir sensibilities to unabashedly modern settings. Hard Case Crime is currently my favorite paperback publisher. Nor were my high expectations for this fortuitous combo disappointed. In Bust, Starr takes that hoary old plot of husband killing wife to run off with secretary to previously unexplored levels of perversity. Wife Diedre is so appalling you hope the plot succeeds; husband Max is so odiously upscale you hope he gets caught. And enhanced secretary Angela, who’s only in it for the money, ensures comedy of the darkest variety when she refers Max to a “hitman:” her too-psycho-for-the-IRA paddywhacking boyfriend. A series of completely unexpected (albeit predictably bloody plot twists) set the stage for the sequel Slide. Max reinvents himself as “The M.A.X.,” the lamest crack dealer ever! Angela imports an even bigger Irish psycho who dreams of eclipsing Ted Bundy! The only thing piling up faster than the bodies are the noir-shout outs. I’m sure I missed plenty, but Willeford is all over the place, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s co-author Ken Bruen (now high on my to-be read list) reflexively falling victim to an abortive Rolling Stones kidnapping plot. I can hardly wait for the next sequel, Max, to hit the shelves of Kayo Books.

THE REAL TITICUT FOLLIES

Screw: A Guard's View of Bridgewater State Hospital by Tom Ryan (South End Press, 1981)

Frederick Wiseman's Titicutt Follies is the only film in American history banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security. A 1967 verite documentary chronicling the less than stellar conditions prevailing at a Massachusetts state hospital for the criminally insane, a judge put the kibosh on it ostensibly on the grounds that it invaded the inmate's privacy.

As a Wiseman fan since seeing High School in high school, I rushed out to see TF when the ban finally expired in 1992. It was a great film, but the hospital didn't come across as the snake pit I'd expected from the press clippings. Perhaps I'm jaded. For the real horrorshow, you'll have to turn to Screw.

Ryan was a psychology student working with Bridgewater inmates who took the job in 1974 to check up on the abuse stories he was hearing. And neither he (nor I!) was disappointed. The picture he paints of Bridgewater is of a combined human warehouse and open sewer. His fellow "COs" were the flowers of Dorchester and South Boston manhood. They cheered the hospital's modern therapeutic methods ("...a lobotomy. That what should be done to all these maggots") and criticized its failings ("Counselors, hah! It's do-gooders that wreck this place"). So socially conscious were these guardians of the sick that some spent their off hours drilling with a chapter of the Minutemen. Patients were locked in cells without toilets or sinks. Doctors were virtually nonexistent; drugs were dispensed by nurses. Beatings were common, and not of the COs. Ryan himself got in trouble with his comrades for refusing to join in on a 10-1 affair. So much for camaraderie.

Needless to say, patients failed to thrive in this environment. One ripped open his cheeks. Another, mocked by the guards, plucked out one of his eyes. A few days later, he plucked out the other . And then he plucked out his glass eyes! Ryan admits that things got better when the old hospital closed and they moved to a new facility. But not that much. Ryan ended his correctional career after 18 months and one witnessed beating too many.

It's something to consider whenever someone rants about "getting off" via the insanity defense.

MOTHER LOVE

The Big Love by Florence Aadland with Tedd Thomey (Lancer, 1961)


"There's one thing I want to make clear right off: my baby was a virgin the day she met Errol Flynn." This line opens The Big Love, the true story of the then 48-year old Errol Flynn's affair with 15-year old Beverly Aadland as told by her mother Florence. Imagine Day of the Locust as told by a "Mommie Dearest;" it’s the ultimate testament to stage mothering run amok.

Of course, Florence denies being one of those Hollywood mothers, even though she had little Beverly modeling at six months and taking singing and dancing lessons at two. Fortunately for mother and daughter alike, Beverley had looks and talent. She was on the cover of Collier's before she was five, and made her first movie in first grade. And Florence proudly noted, "For the first 15 years of her life, I kept that girl in a cellophane bag."

Then Errol Flynn noticed the new leggy blonde the Universal lot. Before you could say "Robin Hood," the aging swashbuckler had the underage ingenue up at his lodge to "read for a part in a play." Florence wistfully wrote, "It must have been quite a scene...in front of the fireplace, the two of them alone together." And, pray tell, how did dearest Mama know? Florence gushingly points out that Beverly "...told me everything she did with Errol Flynn. And in detail, because she and I love details and get a kick out of things like that."

Sadly, Errol died just weeks after announcing the engagement at Beverly's 17th birthday. Cut-off from the Flynn estate, the Aadlands's life quickly degenerated into chaos that ended with Florence convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and losing custody of Beverly. But regrets? Florence had none. She wouldn't have deprived her "baby" of those two precious years with Errol for anything. The Big Love ends with Florence proud of her daughter's new nightclub act and confident of a successful appeal of her conviction and ultimate victory over the scandal mongers.

Sadly, it wasn't to be. Beverly ultimately left Hollywood for a quiet suburban life as a wife and mother. But Florence only spiraled further out of control. A hopeless alcoholic, she died of alcohol poisoning six years later. Her end came as a surprise no one, least of all those who have read The Big Love.

VACATION CONSIDERATIONS

Like most of you, I was first exposed to Sinclair Lewis via a forced reading of Main Street. (OK, maybe for you it was Babbitt) in high school. Unlike Ethan Frome, various plays, The Grapes of Wrath, and other force-fed works, I really liked it. I have voluntarily been working my way down the hierarchy of Lewis's novels with pleasure ever since. Not even Bethel Merriday has put me off on my quest. Where to next? World So Wide? Cass Timberlane?



Dodsworth was #5 on my list. Either the greatest of his lesser novels or the least of his great novels (behind Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry). it's a personal favorite. The title character is Zenith automobile manufacturer Samuel Dodsworth who sells his plant to take an extended tour of Europe with his wife Fran. Surprisingly, it's the go-getting Dodsworth that is the good guy; Lewis aims most of his barbs as Fran's mid-life crisis and pathetic tempts to re-invent herself as a expatriate ingenue.



But my favorite part is the travel stuff. I truly believe that travel is among the most overrated of human activities, and Lewis has has many delightfully unkind things to say about this odd obsession. To wit:

Actually, most of those afflicted with the habit of travelling merely lie about its pleasures and profits. They do not travel to see anything, but to get away from themselves, which the never do... They travel to escape thinking, to have something to do, just as they might play solitaire, work crossword puzzles, look at the cinema, or busy themselves with any other dreadful activity. These things the Dodsworths discovered though, like most of the world, they never admitted to them.

And my favorite:

If travel were so inspiring and informing a business...then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers, Pullman porters, and Mormon missionaries.

So, where are you planning to go on your summer vacation?

HALF PULPED

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage, 2007)


One of the first things you learn as a writer is to write for your intended audience, especially if you're getting paid for it. Thus, when I reviewed The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps here a few months ago, I felt the need to assume I was advising naifs for whom John Travolta epitomizes pulp fiction.

Now I don't.

The Big Book is not a great anthology--it's a great package. It's so god damned big (1,100+ pages), authentic (the stories, cover art, and interior illustrations all from real pulps!) and, like the pulps themselves, cheap (only $25!), it's hard not to get your money's worth.

But I do need to bitch about the editing. Otto Penzler may be Mr. Mysterious Press, but he's pretty far down on my list of potential pulp anthology editors. (I bet he doesn't even trail bits of pulp paper behind him when he walks.) Despite the 1,100 pages, there a surprising lack of variety on the contributor's list. While plenty of big names are missing, several authors are represented by two stories, and Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet, and Erle Stanley Gardner have three each! And not one by Robert Leslie Bellem? It's just not right.

My biggest gripe, however, is the inclusion of an entire damned novel by Carroll John Daly. As Penzler points out, you can't not include Daly in this sort of anthology. He literally wrote the first hardboiled detective story, and was as big as Hammett back in the day. But the years have not been kind to him. His stuff is virtually unreadable today. (Not surprisingly, his biggest fan was the equally talented Mickey Spillane.) A short story (and yes, he wrote many) would have been painful enough. A full novel is not only sadistic, it takes up space that could have been enjoyably devoted to any one of a dozen writers.

But even after you skip the Chandler stories you already read, skim the second-rate Hammett stuff, and carefully avoid soiling yourself with the Daly novel, you're still left with more than 700 pages of some pretty good pulp fiction. If my copy hadn't been free, I would have bought one.

ALMOST ALL THE WAY

All the Way by Charles Williams (Dell, 1958)

Books have always come first with me. Much of the film portion of my media diet consists of movies adapted from favored books. No matter how many print silk purses I’ve seen rendered as cinematic sows’ ears, I can’t resist reading the book and seeing the movie.

Thus, when I saw The Third Voice on the schedule for last January’s Noir City Festival, I immediately brushed off my copy of the book it was based on, Charles William’s All the Way. For those yet to be initiated into the dusty world of mid-20th century paperback originals, Williams was one of the big names, penning a an excellent series of tough, literate suspense novels (mostly set in south Florida) that ultimately made it into hard covers. If he’d had a series character he could have been John D. MacDonald; if he’d gone crazy, he could have been Jim Thompson. Instead, he’s forever doomed to be on the verge of “rediscovery.”

All the Way is vintage Williams. Secretary Marian Forsyth built her boss/lover Harris Chapman into a big shot. Unfortunately, once he’s in the chips, Chapman signs his death warrant by throwing her over for a younger “professional virgin.” Forsyth goes shopping for an accomplice and winds up with the narrator, Jerry Forbes. But unlike every other “woman scorned” noir you’ve read, she’s ready, even eager to do the big job herself. Forbes’s part is to pose as Chapman. He’s supposed to drain the bank and brokerage accounts and make it look like Chapman had gone nuts and taken a one way rowboat trip with a concrete flamingo (metaphor alert!) and a dead call girl. And it works! They get away with the money, not that they live happily ever after, but heck, that’s noir for you.

It plays equally well on the big screen. The only black & white Cinescope movie I’ve ever seen, The Third Voice is great movie and an amazingly faithful adaptation—up to a point. For the 77 minutes, it’s All the Way on the screen. The action’s been relocated from south Florida to Mexico and some sub-plots and scenes steam-lined out, but it’s essentially the same. Even a lot of the dialog originated at William’s typewriter, not the screenwriter’s. Unfortunately, it’s a 79-minute film. It slams you over the head with a hackneyed ending that comes up so suddenly it’s like they ran out of film.

Hell. At least they got it 95% right.

WELCOME BACK, MR. BREMER

An Assassin's Diary by Arthur Bremer (Harpers, 1973)

On November 9th of last year, Arthur Bremer was released from prison. He had been serving a 53-year sentence for shooting and paralyzing George Wallace as he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination at a Maryland shopping mall in 1972.

What better time to re-visit Mr. Bremer's magnum opus?

An Assassin's Diary is a delightful relic from those wonderfully tasteless days before Son of Sam laws and civil suits killed the commercial potential of would-be-writings of would-be killers. It reprints the portion of Bremer's diary found after his arrest: 13 entries over a six-week period prior to the shooting. (The first 148 pages were reportedly found in 1980 but remain unpublished.) It's dreary, garbled, and poorly written, and only breaks the 100-page barrier courtesy of a layout really heavy on the white space. And of course, it's utterly essential.

Bremer was the apocryphal "lone nut" of the '60s who turned assassin strictly for the publicity. His diary chronicles his wanderings through New York, Ottawa, and Michigan, at first in pursuit of Nixon before tight security forced him to switch to Wallace. (He frets over the lesser newsworthiness of his back-up target.) For the most part, it's a dreary record of cheap motels and crummy restaurants, sparked occasional gems like "The [maid] doesn't like me because I left my toe nails on the run at the foot of my bed." The New York City sequences are especially Travis Bickle-ian; he makes a point of mentioning how he never leaves his room without his gun. Small wonder that his story reportedly was part of the inspiration for "Taxi Driver."

The highlight of the diary is his trip to a massage parlor in New York. In an excruciatingly painful scene, the "masseuse" attempts (unsuccessfully) to relieve him manually as Bremer pathetically attempts to get a whole lot more for his $48. She explains they have rules against that sort of thing. He later notes, "The first person I held a conversation with in three months was a near-naked girl rubbing my erect penis and she wouldn't let me put it through her."

Mr. Bremer is now living in a halfway house. Let us wish him more satisfactory conclusions in all his future endeavors.