Sunday, August 16, 2015

it's a gothic if we say it's a gothic...

The Lair of the White Worm...as gothic.  Paperback Library was perhaps the most opportunistic about  this kind of repackaging....






























































They at Paperback Library were particularly fond of conflating the original sort of Gothic fiction with post-Dark Shadows "supermarket gothics"...

Recycled for one of DC's short-lived gothic comics...































But PL wasn't alone...the first Award edition explicitly labeled this as a gothic...cover by Jeff Jones.


















































And if gothic readers were disappointed, as they were, by a fairly standard suspense novel...

...imagine what the innocent gothic fan made of "Carmilla"...










































































































A Weird Tales serial, in boards from Arkham House, that *might* just fit if you squint at it the right way...






















As Kelly Robinson mentions in comments below, Dell Books decided to package this Newbery Award-winning YA historical novel as a gothic without tagging it in any way as a gothic (or a YA) for at least one edition that saw multiple printings as a "Fic" title (on the spine) and with gothics advertised on the back pages...the back cover headline is "Prisoner in a House of Strangers"...Dell also had a Yearling edition (digest-sized YA line) in print simultaneously.  Pretty outrageous, but as Ed Gorman has mentioned to me in email, paperback publishers could routinely look forward to over 100,000-copy sales for any gothic by the early 1970s.

 For some good reading on the subject, including the repackaging of other sorts of suspense and horror books to sell them to the Phyllis Whitney-style gothic audience, please see this excerpt from Joanna Russ's essay "Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's My Husband: The Modern Gothic" as collected in Russ's To Write Like a Woman.

 The Vault of Evil post that inspired this one...

 Late additions: Bantam 1972 paperback reprint:
Paperback Library again...1967 reprint:

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Friday, August 14, 2015

FFB: YESTERDAY'S TOMORROWS edited by Frederik Pohl (Berkley, 1982) and, essentially, EDITORS edited by Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford (Toby Press, 2001); Lancer Books, Airmont Classics and other editorial adventures of the ex-Futurians...

This wasn't the book I was going to review this week, but it kind of shouldered its way in...it arrived the same day as what was supposed to be Editors, edited by Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford, which was a similar volume with a similar remit...both were meant to cover the previous forty years in their editors' careers as editors of various magazines and often periodical book series. But, instead, the inventory sticker for Editors had been slapped onto a back issue of Granta (and not the cleanest copy I've ever seen), #99, one highlighted by an interview with Richard Ford (I have one of his books hanging fire, waiting for me to read it for this exercise as well). Bellow and Botsford, in their fat volume (1100 pages), pulled items from their various collaborative projects beginning with The Noble Savage (and I have a book in the queue that was mostly invented there) and wrapping up with their last such effort, News From the Republic of Letters; the rather fat Pohl volume (a mere 430 pages) begins with selections from the magazines Pohl began editing when 19 years old, Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories; from there, the book draws on items from Pohl's first reprint anthologies, then the new-story Ballantine anthology series (and for one issue a magazine) Star Science Fiction; then onto taking over Galaxy and its sibling magazines (most notably If), at first while officially helping out the ailing H. L. Gold, and then in the clear, for more than a decade (ca. 1958 to leaving with the magazines' sale in 1969), editing for several months at the collapsing Ace Books of the early '70s and moving on from there to rather less chaotic times at Bantam Books for most of the decade; the last years are represented by novel excerpts, as Pohl didn't have an anthology series at Bantam: one each from Samuel Delany's Dhalgren, fellow former Futurian Society member David Kyle's completion of the planned but unfinished "Lensman" adventure novels by the late E.E. Smith, and Gustav Hasford's The Short-Timers, which, after this anthology was published, would be adapted for film as Full Metal Jacket, the script a collaboration between Hasford, Michael Kerr and Stanley Kubrick which won them an Oscar. 
Bantam let Arbor House do the hardcover edition (left), which they packaged atrociously as well.

 In the prefatory material running through this utterly functional (and no more than that) physical package, Pohl spells out, in more detail than I've seen elsewhere, the nature of his working life at each of his editorial desks, even if the reprint-anthology selections are a bit out of any sort of chronological or other apparent order.  He can be cagy about certain matters (he mentions in passing that he met his second wife as a colleague at Popular Publications, the artist and writer Dorothy Les Tina, but doesn't mention her name here, even as he never mentioned meeting her at his first editorial job in his book-length memoir The Way the Future Was), but nonetheless is engaging and informative about the day-to-day production and business practices as well as the editorial work itself in each of his gigs.  (It's notable that the Bellow/Botsford is similarly a no-frills physical presentation, featuring memoirs by its editors that include such bits as Bellow's boyhood acquaintance with the first professional writer he knew, a 1930s contributor to Popular's Argosy magazine and Street and Smith's Doc Savage; even as Pohl includes stories he'd gathered for his reprint anthologies, the B men include some of reprinted items they'd run in their magazines, particularly The Noble Savage's front pages, and the editorial offices of their magazines were not free of the odd romantic/emotional entanglement, such as the affair that inspired Bellow's Herzog.)  The Pohl (courtesy the Homeville/William Contento indices):

EDITORS  [their introductory memoirs]
Keith Botsford: On the Facts
Saul Bellow: Great and Not so Great Expectations, Noble Savage 3
Saul Bellow: Hidden Within Technology’s Empire, A Republic of Letters, The New York Times
Saul Bellow & Keith Botsford: Dialogue: As seen from the ground, ANON

ARIAS [essentially, editorials from the four magazines, including ANON and Bostonia]
Saul Bellow: Pains and Gains, Noble Savage 1
Stephen Spender: Doctor of Science, Patient of Poetry, Noble Savage 4
Saul Bellow: The 11:59 News, Noble Savage 4
Keith Botsford: Obit on a Witness, Noble Savage 4
Saul Bellow: Mr. Wollix gets an Honorary Degree, ANON
Mark Harris: Nixon and Hayakawa, ANON
Saul Bellow: White House and Artists, Noble Savage 5
Felix Pollak: The Poor Man’s Civil Defense Manual, Noble Savage 5
Philip O’Connor: A few Notes on the Changing World, Noble Savage 5
Saul Bellow: View from Intensive Care, The Republic of Letters 1
Saul Bellow: Graven Images, The Republic of Letters 2
Philip O’Connor: Last Journal, The Republic of Letters 2
James Wood: Real Life, The Republic of Letters 2
Martin Amis: Cars and the Man, The Republic of Letters 3
Julia Copeland: Objective Correlative,The Republic of Letters 7

ARCHIVES [reprints from what they reprinted in their magazines]
Samuel Butler: Ramblings in Cheapside, Noble Savage 1
DH Lawrence: Portrait of Maurice Magnus, Noble Savage 2
Joseph de Maistre: The Executioner, ANON
Victor Hugo: The Interment of Napoleon, The Republic of Letters 4

INVESTIGATIONS
George P. Elliott: Critic and Common Reader, Noble Savage 2
Harold Rosenberg: Seven Numbered Notes, Noble Savage 3
Louis Simpson: On Being a Poet in America, Noble Savage 5
Herbert Blau: The Public Art of Crisis in the Suburbs of Hell, Noble Savage 5
Marjorie Farber: The Romantic Method, Noble Savage 5
Raymond Tallis: A Dark Mirror, The Republic of Letters 2

LIVES
Josephine Herbst: A Year of Disgrace, Noble Savage 3
Antoni Slonimski: Memories of Warsaw, Noble Savage 4
G V Desani: With Malice Aforethought, Noble Savage 5
Rudolf Kassner: Sulla and the Satyr, ANON
Saul Bellow: Mozart, Bostonia, Spring 1992
Saul Bellow: Ralph Ellison in Tivoli, The Republic of Letters 3
Alan Govenar and Leonard St. Clair: Life as a Tattoo Artist, The Republic of Letters 6
Saul Bellow: Saul Steinberg, The Republic of Letters 7

POEMS
Howard Nemerov: Life Cycle of Common Man, Noble Savage 1
Oonagh Lahr: The Advance on the Retreat, Noble Savage 4
Alexander Pushkin: Count Nulin, Noble Savage 4
Anthony Hecht: Message from the City, Noble Savage 5
Cesare Pavese: What an Old Man has Left, ANON
Michael Hulse: Winterreise, The Republic of Letters 7

TEXTS 
Edward Hoagland: Cowboys, Noble Savage 1
Harold Rosenberg: Notes from the Ground Up, Noble Savage 1
Josephine Herbst: The Starched Blue Sky of Spain, Noble Savage 1
Arthur Miller: Please Don’t Kill Anything, Noble Savage 1
Wright Morris: The Scene, Noble Savage 1
Mark Harris: The Self-Made Brain Surgeon, Noble Savage 1
Louis Guilloux: Friendship, Noble Savage 2
Sol Yurick: The Annealing, Noble Savage 2
Dan Wakefield: An American Fiesta, Noble Savage 2
Jara Ribnikar: Copperskin, Noble Savage 3
John Berryman: Thursday Out, Noble Savage 3
Seymour Krim: What’s This Cat’s Story? Noble Savage 3
Thomas Pynchon: Under the Rose, Noble Savage 3
Herbert Gold: Death in Miami Beach, Noble Savage 3
G V Desani: Mephisto’s Daughter, Noble Savage 4
Louis Guilloux: Palante, Noble Savage 4
Louis Gallo: Oedipus-Schmoedipus, Noble Savage 4
Elémire Zolla: An Angelic Visit on Via dei Martiri, Noble Savage 4
Robert [Chapin] Coover: Blackdamp, Noble Savagee 4
John Hawkes: A Little Bit of the Old Slap and Tickle, Noble Savage 5
Nelson Algren: Dad among the Troglodytes, or Show Me a Gypsy and I’ll Show You a Nut, Noble Savage 5
Bette Howland: Aronesti, Noble Savage 5
Anthony Kerrigan: Don Alonso Quixano, Lineal Descendants, Noble Savage 5
Arthur Miller: Glimpse at a Jockey, Noble Savage 5
Sydor Rey: Hitler’s Mother, Noble Savage 5
Leon Rooke: The Line of Fire, Noble Savage 5
Meyer Schapiro: Lichtenberg, Diderot, Galiani , ANON
Christopher Middleton & Cristoph Meckel: Pocket Elephants, ANON
Umberto Saba: A Jewish Savant, Bostonia, November 1989
John Auerbach: Distortions, Bostonia, March 1990
Bette Howland: A Little Learning, Bostonia, May 1990
S J Perelman: Strictly from Hunger, Bostonia, June 1990 (reprint of a classic reprint)
Conall Ryan: Grace Notes, Bostonia, September 1990
Keith Botsford: The Second Life of Gioacchino Rossini, Bostonia, February 1992
Silvio d’Arzo: Two Old People, Bostonia, September 1993
G T de Lampedusa: Lighea, or the Siren, Bostonia, September 1994
Karl Logher: My Father in the Mirror, The Republic of Letters 3
Saul Bellow: All Marbles Accounted For, The Republic of Letters 4
Murray Bail: The Seduction of My Sister, The Republic of Letters 5
S Scibona: Prairie, The Republic of Letters 6 

So, basically, books you can swim around in. A lot of work to be proud of for all three men, and yet also it would've helped had Berkley taken (and perhaps Toby Press to have had the resources to have taken) more care in packaging these bug-crushers so that they might be more pleasing to the eye.  Though whether you're basking in the casual brilliance of R. A. Lafferty ("Slow Tuesday Night" is almost the template for what's best of his short work) or of Thomas Pynchon ("Under the Rose" isn't too far from his correspondent to the Lafferty), or we enjoy the work editorially pointedly solicited from Josephine Herbst and Alice Sheldon (aka "James Tiptree, Jr.") in these largely boys' clubs, you do get a good helping of why the editorial efforts of these writers mattered, and what kept drawing them back to the editorial chair.  (Certainly, I was pleased in small, petty part to be appointed editor-in-chief of Hawaii Review when 18, beating Pohl's appointment to his first professional magazines by some months, but more because I hoped to do a fraction of what he'd done in the decades since...and have done rather a smaller fraction than I'd hoped.) Bellow, too, if more distantly, had also been a spur...I was perhaps a bit too much like Herzog even as a teen, and his "Seize the Day" if anything moved me more profoundly. (It should be noted that striving to mirror either Pohl or Bellow, and even Botsford in comparison, is setting a high bar.)























But in considering these books for today (while I'm still awaiting the delivery of Editors, I did read another copy some years ago), it occurred to me how much the complex of the former Futurians (including Pohl, Merril, Kyle, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight and other geniuses) had an outsized influence on my literary life...not only the anthologies edited by Donald Wollheim (including the first story I read by ex-Futurian Richard Wilson, "A Man Spekith", being one of the first adult and rather grimly satirical sf stories I read, in my father's copy of the Wollheim and Terry Carr's World's Best Science Fiction 1970) but also in my wider reading, as the first edition of Dracula I picked up, about age 9, was the Airmont Classic paperback, a series edited and with introductions from ex-Futurian Robert A. W. Lowndes (he was already editing the Magazine of Horror by then, and would publish the first stories by Stephen King and F. Paul Wilson in Startling Mystery Stories not long after publishing his edition of the Stoker); even more importantly, I was collected as many of the Lancer Books Magnum "Easy-Eye" classics paperbacks, going for a quarter apiece at the local W.T. Grant's discount department store, a series edited and with brief introductions by ex-Futurian Larry Shaw (who was briefly married to Lee Hoffman, and had done a lot of interesting if usually underfunded editorial work as well...Lancer's 1960s reprints of Conan stories had done nothing to hurt the popularity of Robert Howard nor sword & sorcery fiction generally)...not solely the Poe collection (the first I'd bought of the Magnum Classics line) or sf such as Wells's The Time Machine and Edward Bellamy's socialist utopian Looking Backward, but also Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Helen Keller's autobiography (no lack of socialists!), Booker T. Washington's and Benjamin Franklin's, O. Henry, Bret Harte, Edward Everett Hale, Henry James and such other fantasists as Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame. Signet Classics and others were important as well to my early reading, but these editions, which I could obtain by the handful through parental largesse on every trip to that store, had a profound effect.  It wasn't too many years later that I was reading Pohl's and Knight's memoirs, and even given the tough times they faced, decided that even more than a writer what I wanted to be was an editor.  It was through Knight's The Futurians that I first read excerpts from and about Doris Baumgardt, one of the first female members of the Futurians and, in the 1940s photos in the Knight, devastatingly pretty; she and Pohl married, albeit briefly, and she took her first editorial job with the same low-rent entrepreneurs, the Albings, who gave Donald Wollheim his first (barely) professional gig; Pohl and Wollheim
recall that Baumgardt, known to her friends as Doë and professionally and in fandom in those years mostly as "Leslie Perri", wrote most of the content of her no-budget stablemate, Movie Love Stories, to Wollheim's no-budget Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories. I finally read, last night, one of only three short stories Perri apparently published in the sf magazines, and sadly it's probably the least of them, a vignette written in the kind of overstated prose Lovecraft favored, perhaps as an experiment; it and the longest Perri story were both published in magazines Shaw edited at the time, this one in If for September 1953 (which is highlighted by ex-Futurian James Blish's important "A Case of Conscience" as well as stories by Philip Dick and eventual hardboiled crime-fiction specialist James McKimmey), the longer one in an issue of the later Infinity Science Fiction I'm going to need to pick up, given how much interesting unreprinted fiction is contained there. Baumgardt and Richard Wilson eventually were married, a period when they were both primarily employed as newspaper journalists, before their divorce in 1965, and her death from cancer in 1970...not too long after the publication of "A Man Spekith" in 1969, and republication in the 1970 book where I would read it ca. 1973. Life is full of almost closed circles and gossamer connections such as that...for more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog (and her novel and those of several other friends and acquaintances await me in the TBR/Re-Read stack as well).
Albing magazines--better covers than they paid for...
...whether of Rita Hayworth or by Hannes Bok...

























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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: new links to the reviews, interviews, etc.

Picnic
The selections (reviews, interviews and citations at the links below) of undeservedly (and a few deservedly) under-appreciated audio/visual experiences...as always, thanks to all the contributors and you readers... 

Allan Fish: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (aka: Valerie A Tyden Divu); Lilika; Happiness

Anne Billson: The Road

 Anonymous: The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

Bill Crider: Barbarossa  [trailer]

BV Lawson: Media Murder 

Colin: Edge of Eternity

The Gift
Comedy Film Nerds: Gilbert Gottfried

Cynthia Fuchs: The Gift; Angry Sky; Toe-Tag Parole: To Live and Die in Yard A

 Dan Stumpf: The Law and Jake Wade; The House of Fear

 David Cramner: Get Smart at 50

David Schmidt recommends: Seance on a Wet Afternoon


David Vineyard: Diamonds Are Forever (BBC Radio 4)

Dean Treadway: The Innocents

Ed Gorman: Eric Lichtenfeld on vigilante films

Elgin Bleecker: The Dam Busters

Elizabeth Foxwell: Home at Seven (aka Murder on Monday); The Lodger

Evan Lewis: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939 film)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Gary Deane: Lure of the Swamp

George Kelley: Snatch; Mr. Holmes

How Did This Get Made?: Top Dog 

Iba Dawson: the un-marketing of Fantastic Four

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Hands Up! and silent-film comedy

Gilligan Newton-John: TV Guide, Salt Lake City edition, February 12th 1977

J. Kingston Pierce: A/V notes

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Our Cook's a Treasure" (Robert C. Dennis adapting Dorothy L. Sayers)

Jackie Kashian: The Great Gatsby; Zach Sherwin on word puzzles, rap, and Neil Gaiman 

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Lady in the Lake

James Clark: Manhunter

James Reasoner: Little Manhattan

Jeff Flugel: films this year, so far 

Jerry House: The Expendables

Oral Fixation
John Grant: Noose for a Lady; Oral Fixation

 Jonathan Lewis: The Haunted Palace; The Karate Killers (a Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode repackage) 

Karen Hannsberry: The Devil Thumbs a Ride 

Kliph Nesteroff: Murray Roman on Mason Williams 

Kristina Dijan: The Gorgon; The Mystery of the 13th Guest; Never a Dull Moment; around the classic horror cinema
Cat People


Lance Charnes: intelligence vs. spies 

Laura: Sombrero; Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant; Eight Below

 Laura Miller: The Diary of a Teenaged Girl (courtesy Elizabeth Hand)

Lucy Brown: Picnic

Mark Evanier: The Tonight Show: Muppets (1974)

Martin Edwards: Inspector Morse and Oxford

Marty McKee: The Candy Snatchers; The Midnight Man

Mystery Dave: Move Over, Darling
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Patrick Murtha: Bourbon Street Beat: "Wall of Silence"

Patti Abbott: Lake Mungo

Paul Bishop: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Pearce Duncan: Eyes without a Face (aka Les yeux san visage)

Pedro Silva: Amarcord

Pop My Culture: voice actor Jess Harnell

Randy Johnson: Ringo and Gringo Against All (aka Ringo e Gringo contra tutti)

Best of Enemies
Raquel Stecher: Best of Enemies

Rick: Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Capra, Griffith; Pamelyn Ferdin

Rod Lott: Inseminoid

Sam Juliano: My Childhood 

Sergio Angelini: Scott Turow's Innocent

Scott Cupp: The Day Mars Invaded Earth

 Stacia Jones: The Outrageous Sophie Tucker; King of the Gypsies

Stephen Bowie: 1960s A/V supercomputers

Steve Lewis: Front Page Detective: "Galahad"; Gemini Man (pilot telefilm); Brenner: "Charlie Paradise"

Victoria Loomes: Wardrobe in Double Indemnity 

Vienna: Portia on Trial

Yvette Banek: most memorable film scenes
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Saturday, August 8, 2015

Saturday Music Club: some orchestral third stream music: Gunther Schuller, John Lewis, Gil Evans, Toshiko Akiyoshi, McCoy Tyner, Randy Weston, Gary McFarland Orch. w/Bill Evans, Brubeck Quartet with NY Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein


Orchestra U.S.A.: "Duke Bey"


McCoy Tyner Orchestra: "Fly with the Wind"

Live performance

The Gary McFarland Orchestra featuring Bill Evans


John Lewis Orchestra: "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West"


Gil Evans Orchestra featuring Miles Davis: "The Duke"; "Blues for Pablo"; "New Rhumba"


Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band: "Children in the Temple Ground"


 Orchestra U.S.A. featuring Coleman Hawkins: "A Portrait of Coleman Hawkins"


Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra featuring Randy Weston: "African Sunrise Suite"


 John Lewis Orchestra: "Afternoon in Paris"


 The Brubeck Quartet and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra: Dialogues (for Jazz Combo and Orchestra), composed by Howard Brubeck, followed by DBQ recordings of Leonard Bernstein showtunes *Since the first playlist I linked to here has been corrupted, a relink..with a bonus link below...

bonus: the Brubeck Quartet plays the second movement, "Andante Ballad", as a quartet alone, on the BBC television series Jazz 625 (1964)
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Friday, August 7, 2015

Cele Goldsmith Lalli

Michael and Cele Goldsmith Lalli at a 1980s LunaCon.
Photo by and Copyright © Andrew Porter; all rights reserved.
And here's the obit I wrote for the April 2002 issue of Science Fiction Chronicle:

Cele Goldsmith Lalli, 68, former editor of Amazing and Fantastic and later editor-in-chief of Modern Bride, died January 14th [2002] in a car crash near her Newtown, Conn., home when she apparently lost control of her car and hit a tree. She is survived by her husband Michael Lalli, daughters Francesca Morrissey of New Milford, Conn. and Erica L. Sullivan of Stamford, and five grandchildren. 

 Four decades ago, Cele Goldsmith took Amazing and Fantastic, two digest-size magazines which were practically moribund during the 1950’s, into the forefront of SF and fantasy publishing. Her reign lasted from Amazing and Fantastic’s December 1958 to their June 1965 issues. To honor her, she received a Special Hugo Award for her efforts, at the 1962 World SF Convention. During her tenure, and working with a shoestring budget, Amazing and Fantastic published stories by a pantheon of SF’s greats: J.G. Ballard, James Blish, John Brunner, Avram Davidson, Philip K. Dick, Thomas Disch, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Frank Herbert, Keith Laumer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, James White, Roger Zelazny and many others. She bought the first stories of a number of authors, including Zelazny and Le Guin. In Amazing, under her editorship Sam Moskowitz reprinted numerous long-forgotten stories, with background material, and Lester del Rey and Ben Bova ran nonfiction articles. 

 Faced with falling sales, in 1965 owner Ziff-Davis, publisher since 1938, sold them to Sol Cohen, ending this intensely creative period. Goldsmith, now Cele Lalli following her marriage to Z-D assistant controller Michael Lalli, moved to Z-D’s Modern Bride, where she remained for another 33 years, retiring as editor-in-chief in 1998. Her years at Modern Bride made her one of the longest tenured editors of any major consumer magazine. She had converted to Catholicism upon her marriage to Lalli, which, according to associates, gave her insights into the wedding traditions of both Jewish and Catholic brides. Ironically, she died within a few hours of Modern Bride’s sale to Conde Nast for $52 million. 

 The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction stated, “Under Cele Goldsmith’s editorship Amazing improved dramatically, publishing good work by many leading authors... Zelazny was one of several writers whose careers were aided in their early stages by Goldsmith; others include Ben Bova, David R. Bunch, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert F. Young”.  And The Encyclopedia of Fantasy noted, “In the period 1960-65 Fantastic was the premier fantasy magazine”.

Todd Mason: That last judgement isn't wrong, but I'd suggest that Mike Ashley, who made it, is more sweeping in putting Fantastic ahead of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Science Fantasy than he might be...all three together, with some not insignificant contributions from the Magazine of Horror and others mentioned recently and over the years on this blog, made the early 1960s a good time for fantasy short fiction in magazines. Among her other discoveries: Keith Laumer (see the interview, link below).

Previous Cele Goldsmith Lalli posts:
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FFB redux: ENOUGH by Donald Westlake (Evans, 1977)...and some Westlake films, etc.

Donald Westlake is one of those writers I've been reading all my literate life...my first experience of his work was almost certainly in reading "The Winner," his heavily metaphorical sf story (first published in Harry Harrison's anthology of new science fiction, Nova 1 [Delacorte, 1970]), in which a dissident poet named Revell refuses to knuckle under to his imprisonment, to the mild befuddlement of his prison warden, Wordman. (Even at a young age, I noted that Westlake could get a bit cute with character names.) It's the kind of story that has a wide appeal, and it's well-done, and it kept popping up in odd places, including classroom-use magazines, over the next decade. I'd find Westlake stories in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: anthologies, in the old back issues of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and newer issues of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and I'd come across the likes of "Curt Clark"'s "Nackles" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1964) a story about an anti-Santa Clause who is not quite but not dissimilar to Krampus, in anthologies such as Terry Carr's New Worlds of Fantasy..."Curt Clark," as in "rude clerk" (perhaps one who'd Prefer Not To) being the name Westlake signed to some of his sf and fantasy after making a big noisy deal about quitting the fantastic-fiction field, in favor of crime fiction, in the early '60s. Of course, he did no such thing, but did publish his worst work I've read, by far, in Anarchaos (1967) as by Clark, a rather routine sf adventure novel that takes as its premise that a bunch of cutthroats supposedly inspired by a range of anarchists and not quite anarchists including among unlikely others Pyotr Kropotkin, the pacifist (very influential on Gandhi and MLK, Jr.) and biologist who was among the first to trace the importance of symbiosis and mutual aid in human and non-human matters, and who died under house arrest under Lenin, have set up a society on a planet they've dubbed Anarchaos, and engage in behaviors the most berserk of Ayn Rand's followers might find a bit sociopathic. Westlake could be snotty.

 But he was also, almost invariably, acute and clever and inventive. In 1989, having just read in quick succession Elmore Leonard's Freaky Deaky, Westlake's Trust Me on This, and an Algis Budrys critique which in passing noted that Leonard's fiction was a bit less cartoonish than Westlake's, this last struck me on the fresh evidence to be exactly reversed (though Leonard's work was as charming and engaging), that Westlake's work could incorporate satiric elements without having to employ so "colorful" a cast of characters as Leonard seemed to prefer at all times; Westlake's work could offer more nuanced characterization, but perhaps was less consistently popular than Leonard's and some other writers of similar industry and talent because relatively few of Westlake's characters were sympathetically-drawn in the usual manner...they tended to be coolly-observed and deeply flawed, self-centered or -deluded, corruptible. And without much if any redemption from these flaws by the end of their stories, and sometimes without comeuppance, and frequently without becoming cartoons of evil ("Hello, Clarice"). This not the usual means of entering the bestseller lists.

 By the '70s, though, Westlake was actively engaged in film work, with several adaptations of his novels by others already released and his own film work proceeding apace, and sometimes a treatment still being shopped or a script in turnaround would apparently find its way, transmogrified, into prose fiction, as apparently was his "Call Me a Cab," and "Ordo," the shorter of the two fictions in the 1977 book I've read for this week's FFB, Enough (M. Evans, paperbacked as above by Fawcett). "Ordo" the novella (83pp), along with A Travesty the short novel (184pp) collected in this volume, both deal with the periphery of the film industry: A Travesty, more of a conventional if "open" mystery than Westlake usually wrote, involves a self-centered, but not altogether unlikable, film reviewer who accidentally kills one of his girlfriends just before page one, and spends the rest of the novel dancing as fast as he can (and not always in self-preserving ways) to avoid, once cleared in the early going, becoming the obvious suspect again, in part through buddying up with one of the investigating detectives and helping him and his partner with several other murder cases, as a vaguely Holmesian consultant (albeit at least one of the critic's observations in that regard will almost certainly occur to most readers, and should've to any competent detective). In the course of this, critic Thorpe has plenty of time to share acidic observation not only of film culture but of our lives generally, engage in a bit of Dortmundering, and to anticipate such later Westlake sociopaths as those who inhabit The Ax or The Hook or such brilliant screenplays as the original of The Stepfather; the novel might eventually put you in mind of the O. J. Simpson/Brown and Goldberg matter, as well, some years before those ridiculously horrible events, the LAPD's actions as well as Simpson's.

 "Ordo" is a somewhat more subdued effort, involving a Greek-named poly-ethnic American sailor, Ordo Tupikos, who learns from his shipmates that the teen bride he knew as a very young groom, their several-months marriage successfully annulled through the eventual intercession of his mother-in-law because the runaway girl was not yet at age of consent (she had lied to Ordo and the authorities), has now become, under another name and looking much different in full adulthood, a major Hollywood actress. Ordo has some difficulty reconciling the latter-day sex-symbol with his doting, insecure wife of sixteen years previously, as he's had no contact with her since the annulment (and shipping out to avoid legal complications) and decides to take leave and see if his ex will meet with him for a reunion. As it turns out, she will, but Ordo, a rather uncomplicated man, finds unsurprisingly that although they are, if anything, more sexually compatible (and, obviously, more experienced) than they were during their marriage, they are not as suited to each other...much is made of how little Ordo has changed, and how much Estelle Anlic has sought to reinvent herself, from bullied and insecure teen who found a refuge from her unpleasant family life with Ordo, only to have that taken from her, and then to make her current life for herself. After an utterly unpleasant reunion with Mother Anlic which takes its toll particularly on his ex-wife, Ordo realizes that their interrupted life together is now a thing of the past, even as the former Estelle realizes that she is still not over the early damage, and her new persona is too fragile for Ordo to be her mate again.

 That this was a story aimed at filming is all but proven by the extremely faithful film adaptation, released in 2004, of Ordo, only (since it is a Canadian/French/Portuguese co-production) with the story relocated to France, and Estelle Anlic now a star of Francophone cinema, Ordo a French marine rather than a US sailor (the ethnicity of various characters adjusted to close analogs, accordingly). Ordo in the film (Roschdy Zem) is a bit more dense and impulsive than Ordo in the story, but only very slightly so; Marie-Josée Croze is excellent as the affectionate but brittle and moody Estelle/now "Louise Sandoli" (in the novella, "Dawn Devayne"). The script was adapted by (Ms.) Laurence Ferreira Barbosa and Nathalie Najem (I suspect Westlake provided a treatment or a draft, or could've, along with the novella), the film directed by Barbosa, and the home video release is from the Canadian titan Alliance Atlantis (CSI, etc.)...and yet this remains an even more overlooked film than I realized, with almost no theatrical arthouse play in the US and that dvd apparently out of print and with highish to ridiculous asking prices on Amazon (at least), and only one review on IMDb, where one Brit? "rowmorg" seems ready to go out of his? way to dismiss this film, noting it "suffers from having a phony story contrived from a Yankee pulp novel" (thus making, to paraphrase James Blish, four major errors in twelve words, and only two of those matters of subjectivity), but, then, he? also cleverly notes "There's plenty of Marie Josee Croze in the buff, if you like chilly 30-something blondes, swimming around her millionaire swim-pool and making out with hunky Ordo for old times' sake." Heaven forfend, that a 30-something should be engaging in such behavior, so old and all...and the Canadian Croze, lost to shame, going on to swim nude yet again in Tell No One. All in all, a film that is quiet and engaging, and worth the effort to see it, if not Too strenuous.

 As noted, Westlake has been responsible for a number of excellent scripts during his career, most famously the adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Grifters, but his original script for The Stepfather, very deftly filmed and very poorly sequeled and remade with no input from Westlake, was even better yet. Another film, reviewed by Paul Brazill some time back for the weekly Overlooked Films exercise many FFBers also do, Grace of My Heart, the engaging fictionalized biopic not quite about the life and career of Carole King, carries a Thanks credit to Westlake...whether because he provided script assistance or advice or production funds or some combination is not spelled out. But an unexpected grace note to pop up after finally seeing that film in its entirety the other month.

 For more of this week's Westlake and other books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.



Overlooked Films and A/V: CRACKERS (1984) and...


Crackers (1984) is a decidedly odd film, less for its intrinsic content, a not completely humorous heist film, as for its obvious relation to the fiction of the late Donald Westlake, particularly the Dortmunder stories, the relatively lighthearted series Westlake spun off from the relentlessly grim Parker series, when a Parker plot he was developing kept wanting to be written about reasonably sensible, professional crooks who kept being foiled by circumstance, rather than ruthlessly and efficiently succeeding (as Parker does in his stories). The novel that introduced Dortmunder and his crew, The Hot Rock, was famously filmed featuring Robert Redford as Dortmunder.

Crackers, written by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin and directed by the hardly obscure Louis Malle, features the even less obscure Donald Sutherland as the Dortmunder-like character who can't seem to catch a break, named, cheekily, "Westlake." The crew of safecrackers and supporting staff is masterminded by "Westlake," who has a Dortmunderesquely complicated plan to steal a thug's safe with some inside help. Nothing goes completely right.


The film has a pretty impressive cast, many of whom had and/or would again work with Malle, such as Sean Penn (not good, but not the hambone he has since become), Jack Warren, Wallace Shawn, and Christine Baranski, and introduced Tasia Valenza, who has mostly done animation voice-actor work in the last couple of decades (though a lot of it), and was an early credit for Trinidad Silva, who would make more of name for himself with his recurring role on Hill Street Blues. As a semi-comedic heist film, it almost succeeds, with a lot of failed jokes mixed in with decent ones, and some dramatic gambits which simply don't pay off (such as the young woman who wants to become a prostitute persuaded not to by the goodnatured pimp, koff, who has grown fond of her).

But what's strange is just how much this film echoes an already-established literary and to some extent cinematic franchise, with a wink and a nod and no claims of parody, just attempts at pastiche. As one writer put it, having heard the description of the film, "sounds actionable."

This film is not currently available on dvd, and I don't think it was ever issued on disc, though a VHS release some time back was available. Amazon and perhaps others will stream it for you...Hulu was offering it for free at one time, but no longer. I caught it, rather randomly, on a pay movie channel some months ago.
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