Two posts from 2011 that didn't get quite the number of eyetracks they could...particularly Ed's, posted after mine below....
Friday, April 15, 2011
FFBs: HRF Keating: CRIME & MYSTERY: THE 100 BEST BOOKS; Lupoff & Thompson, eds.: ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME; Peter Nicholls, ed. SCIENCE FICTION AT LARGE
H.R.F. Keating passed on 27 March [2011], and we lost another gentleman, by all accounts, in the CF field, one who had been a fine fiction-writer (most famously for the Inspector Ghote stories) and critic both, and this book, widely available but barely in print (the current edition is handsome, but still a product of the collapsed Carroll & Graf; one hopes Running Press or someone might reissue it), is a gimmicky (in format, and I think the first of its series for C&G, which series has also included notable volumes on sf and horror fiction) but no less valuable selection of a hundred important and valuable books in the CF field, most of them of the "true" mystery rather than suspense or other related fields, some collections (leading off, unsurprisingly, with a Poe collection) though most novels, all given two-page essays to limn their virtues and what flaws they overcome. The Keating assessments are bookended by Patricia Highsmith's two-page introduction (even Highsmith had nothing but good to say of Keating) and an unsigned "Publisher's Note" adding a 101st entry, for one of Keating's Ghotes. Aside from the insightful and deftly-written vignette entries, Keating also doesn't respect received wisdom: he nominated for Ross Macdonald The Blue Hammer and for John D. MacDonald The Green Ripper, the often-dismissed last novels in the two Macs' famous series (Lew Archer and Travis McGee), and makes the case for these specific novels well (hey, I started reading RM with The Blue Hammer, and I wasn't sorry), while the all but inarguable classics (Stanley Ellin's short fiction, The Maltese Falcon, Murder on the Orient Express, The Friends of Eddie Coyle) are treated similarly. Despite at least one dunderheaded comment I've seen, going on about how "outdated" this book is since it was published in 1988 (remarkable how books spoil, isn't it), the book is joy to go through, argue with, and be informed as well as amused by.
Also "outdated" (I mean, it hardly deals with comics after the '40s! I mean, come on!), All in Color for a Dime, which I've reread in the Krause Publications 1997 reissue, retains the enthusiasm of the new ground being tilled (since most of the essays at least have roots in articles in the Lupoffs' Xero and the Thompsons' Alter-Ego, with Comic Art the pioneering comics fanzines [while Xero, at least, also dealt with other matters] from the earliest '60s, and this book was pioneering when first published in 1970). The contributors run most of the changes one could want on their subject matter (and they range from such passionate professional writers of fiction and pop-culture history as Ron Goulart, Harlan Ellison, and Lupoff himself through folks with feet in multiple camps such as Ted White and Jim Harmon, to folks whose primary work was extraliterary, but nonetheless, such as Chris Steinbrunner, had a long engagement in criticism or other sorts of similar work in literary circles--Steinbrunner was, among other things, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's a/v columnist for a decade or so: "Bloody Visions"). While, as I mentioned last week, the Blue Beetle is nowhere mentioned (the book is not attempting to be comprehensive), the coverage of the evolution of the Love Romances Publications line of comics, Planet Comics and its stablemates, would be worth the price of the book alone, as would the pioneering Lupoff article on Captain Marvel and his eventual clan, or Ellison on the George Harriman-esque George Carlson (only Carlson was busy where Harriman was lean).
New material was added to the reissue, but here's the ISFDB index to the Ace edition pictured above:
- 7 • Introduction (All in Color for a Dime) • (1970) • essay by Richard A. Lupoff and Don Thompson
- 17 • The Spawn of M. C. Gaines • (1970) • essay by Ted White
- 41 • Me to Your Leader Take • (1970) • essay by Richard Ellington
- 63 • The Big Red Cheese • (1970) • essay by Richard A. Lupoff [as by Dick Lupoff ]
- 93 • The First (Arf, Arf!) Super Hero of Them All • (1970) • essay by Bill Blackbeard
- 121 • OK, Axis, Here We Come! • (1970) • essay by Don Thompson
- 144 • One on All and All on One • (1970) • essay by Tom Fagan
- 165 • A Swell Bunch of Guys • (1970) • essay by Jim Harmon
- 193 • The Four-Panelled, Sock-Bang-Powie Saturday-Afternoon Screen • (1970) • essay by Chris Steinbrunner
- 212 • Captain Billy's Whiz-Gang! • (1970) • essay by Roy Thomas
- 233 • The Second Banana Super Heroes • (1970) • essay by Ron Goulart
- 247 • Comic of the Absurd • (1970) • essay by Harlan Ellison
Science Fiction at Large, the first anthology of critical essays (speech transcriptions rendered into essay form) I read, which had somehow found its way into my first high-school's brand-new library in 1978, and featured impressive essays by Ursula K. Le Guin and Thomas Disch which were to grow into or form important parts of later books (UKL's "Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown" was collected in her The Language of the Night; "The Embarrassments of Science Fiction" is integral to Disch's The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of and has been collected in his On SF), as well as by Harry Harrison, Alan Garner, John Brunner, Robert Sheckley, Philip K. Dick, and the editor; Edward De Bono's introduction to his take on "lateral thinking" was very useful to me then, and remains so. I haven't yet reread John Taylor's essay, and Alvin Toffler's remains slight. A book worth seeking out.
ISFDB indes:
- 7 • Introduction (Science Fiction at Large) • essay by Peter Nicholls
- 13 • Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown • essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
- 35 • Lateral Thinking and Science Fiction • essay by Edward de Bono
- 57 • Scientific Thought in Fiction and in Fact • essay by John Taylor
- 73 • Science Fiction and the Larger Lunacy • essay by John Brunner
- 105 • Worlds Beside Worlds • essay by Harry Harrison
- 115 • Science Fiction and Change • essay by Alvin Toffler
- 119 • Inner Time • essay by Alan Garner
- 139 • The Embarrassments of Science Fiction • essay by Thomas M. Disch
- 157 • Science Fiction: The Monsters and the Critics • essay by Peter Nicholls
- 185 • The Search for the Marvellous • essay by Robert Sheckley
- 199 • Man, Android and Machine • essay by Philip K. Dick
For more of this week's "forgotten" books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
5 comments:
[Word verification for this comment: Polessi. (noun) What an Italian character in a Harry Stephen Keeler novel calls a cop.]
It's an entertaining look at the industry, as I recall.
Yeah, Rick, I was joking (about the kind of imbecile who thinks that 100 BEST BOOKS is outdated because it doesn't cover books published after it...as if anyone is fool enough to propose a finalized and unchanging canon of literature through the ages...not even Mortimer Adler...). Though that a few relatively obscure, once popular figures weren't touched on at all (or now not obscure at all, such as Carl Barks) was almost too bad. But there hasn't been Too much written about PLANET COMICS since, I think.
Friday, March 25, 2011
FFB: Ed Gorman on Evan Hunter/Ed McBain and LEARNING TO KILL
The stories covered virtually every pulp genre – crime, western, adventure, science fiction, horror – done under seven or eight pen-names.
We had everything ready to go when Evan had second thoughts. There were just too many of these stories he didn’t want to resurrect.
In Learning to Kill (Harcourt, $25) Evan and Otto Penzler have brought together the very best of those early stories in a stunner of a hardback package. This shows you how early Hunter was a master of both form and character.
The stories are divided into categories: Kids, Women in Jeopardy, Private Eyes, Cops and Robbers, Innocent Bystanders, Loose Cannons, Gangs.
He wrote well across the entire spectrum of crime and suspense stories, so well in fact that several of these stories are true classics that will be reprinted for decades to come – “First Offense,” “Runaway,” “The Merry Merry Christmas,” “On The Sidewalk Bleeding” and “The Last Spin” aren’t just for readers. They’re also for writers. These particular stories yield great insights into use of voice, plot, character and milieu. I could teach a full semester of writing using just those stories I mentioned.
Hunter/McBain was one of the two or three best and most influential crime writers of his generation. Otto Penzler has paid tribute to that fact with this hefty and important contribution that belongs in every mystery collection.
4 comments:
(WARNING - perhaps - if you haven't read COMA and want to)
As for the others, surely I can't be the only one to think COMA shamelessly ripped off Christianna Brand's GREEN FOR DANGER?
That one book made his whole career. Face it, he is not a very good writer and most of the rest of his books are (to my mind, at least) pretty crappy bestsellers.
He's one of the perfect examples (sadly, there are others) of a writer who hits the bestseller list once and then over and over again even if unworthy of doing so.
But then, a lot of readers can't tell the difference between good and crap.
Jeff M.