Friday, December 11, 2015

1965: the short fiction annuals (and their dramatic cousin): Friday's Books


The Best American Short Stories 1965 edited by Martha Foley and David Burnett 
The 10th Annual of the Year’s Best S-F edited by Judith Merril 
Best Detective Stories of the Year, 20th Annual Collection edited by Anthony Boucher 
World's Best Science Fiction: 1965 edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr 
Prize Stories 1965: The O. Henry Awards edited by Richard Poirier and William Abrahams 
The Best Plays of 1964-1965 edited by Otis L. Guernsey, Jr.
and...belatedly
The Great SF Stories: 1964 edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg (2001)

 In 1965, the five best of the year fiction annuals (imagine a time where only five such series existed, one new that year) were facing some number magic: the 50th annual Best American Short Stories (there was also a 50th anniversary best of the series); the 20th annual of Year's Best Detective Stories; the 10th volume of Judith Merril's annual (the only series still being edited by its founder, aside from the new one), the first as noted from Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr; and the 45th volume of The O. Henry Awards (which lost a few volumes after the then-current editor in 1951 died unexpectedly, and Doubleday was clearly considering discontinuing the series, before eventually continuing several years later). There's number magic in regards to these volumes now, as well: they are  fifty years old this year (and there's a "Century of BASS" volume this year along with the annual series entry); and for me there's a personal number magic, inasmuch as the stories collected in these volumes were mostly first published in the year I first emerged into the world, too: 1964. (The O. Henry book, as they did in those years, collects stories first published from June 1963 to June '64; the other volumes might have a few stragglers, too.) The Foley and the Merril saw both hardcover and paperback editions; the other three saw only one edition each (the first Ace annual didn't get a book club edition, as later volumes would; the Boucher and Poirier/Abrahams probably did get the cheaper hardcovers, but no paperbacks). 

 Meanwhile, the fiction annuals, which had had as accompaniment a humor annual for three volumes at the turn of the 1950s, and would soon after 1965 see the advent of Best Magazine Article and Best Political Cartoon annuals in the US, did have a yearbook cousin in The Best Plays annual, which underwent its own major change in 1965, when founding editor Burns Mantle was succeeded by Owen Guernsey, who would edit or co-edit the series for some decades. My memory of looking at some of the 1970s volumes was hazier than I thought, as I'd remembered the volumes reprinting the entirety of the selected plays, when actually they instead featured synopses and excerpts of the scripts, with the first-time exception in the 1965 volume (the 48th), perhaps because of a book contract elsewhere for Neil Simon, of an extensive photo sequence instead,  representing The Odd Couple...with Art Carney playing Felix along with Walter Matthau as Oscar.


Fuller reviews of these books will be forthcoming over the next week, as I get further along in each (I'm reading or rereading each more or less together, and these are not slender volumes!), and I hope to present an interview with Kit Reed, among much else the author of the lead-off story in the Merril volume, "Automatic Tiger"...perhaps the story which got her the most early attention in fantasy and sf circles (and her career has been one rather gracefully devoted to fantastic fiction, crime fiction and contemporary-mimetic fiction in nearly equal measure).  Meanwhile, along with introducing/presenting the only image online I'm aware of the Best Plays volume's cover (with a gracious assist from Alice Chang)(my copy deaccessioned from the Belfast public library, of all places), I will at least provide some preliminary indices...and perhaps even a few more comments over the course of the day.  (I will note that Flannery O'Connor's lead-off story in the O. Henry volume, "Revelation," was offered the "first prize" in this volume, I suspect, more as memorial for her than as measured judgement of this story, not, I'd suggest, one of the best she'd published, though solid work.)

Indices below; for more of today's books, almost all more thoroughly considered, please see Patti Abbott's blog.


Indices courtesy William Contento/Galactic Central
and WorldCat









And, in 2001, a latecomer chose to join this company, in the form of Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg's one-volume continuation of the Great SF Stories series Greenberg had been editing with Isaac Asimov...the last Asimov volume, finished up as Asimov lay dying, also treated with stories from the year 1963, meant to be the last in that series from DAW Books since DAW's own first annual, the World's Best SF cited above, began in '65 choosing among 1964 publication. But Silverberg, Greenberg and NESFA Press were all game, and gave a revival a shot...apparently to little response, critically or commercially, in the wake of the 11 September attacks and whatever else drew attention away.  Eppur si muove. 


    • 1 · Center of Gravity · L. J. Amster · nv The Saturday Evening Post Mar 14 1964
    • 45 · The Returning · Daniel De Paola · ss Prairie Schooner Spr 1964
    • 57 · The Transient · Stanley Elkin · nv The Saturday Evening Post Apr 25 1964
    • 93 · Opening Day · Jack Gilchrist · ss Georgia Review Spr 1964, as by John Shafter
    • 99 · The Gesture · James W. Groshong · ss The Antioch Review Sum 1964
    • 113 · Sarah · Martin J. Hamer · ss Atlantic Monthly Jan 1964
    • 125 · Sherry · Maureen Howard · nv The Hudson Review Aut 1964
    • 167 · A Family Man · Donald Hutter · ss The Saturday Evening Post Feb 22 1964
    • 187 · The Month of His Birthday · Henia Karmel-Wolfe · ss Mademoiselle Dec 1964
    • 199 · Heart of Gold · Mary Lavin · nv The New Yorker Jun 27 1964
    • 223 · A Blue Blonde in the Sky Over Pennsylvania · Dennis Lynds · ss The Hudson Review Spr 1964
    • 241 · The Guest · Frederic Morton · ss The Hudson Review Win 1964
    • 251 · The Application · Jay Neugeboren · ss Transatlantic Review Oct 1964
    • 259 · First Views of the Enemy · Joyce Carol Oates · ss Prairie Schooner Spr 1964
    • 271 · The Practice of an Art · Leonard Wallace Robinson · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 5 1964
    • 283 · A Sacrifice · Isaac Bashevis Singer · ss Harper’s Feb 1964
    • 291 · Eskimo Pies · Robert Somerlott · ss Atlantic Monthly Jan 1964
    • 299 · The Visit · Elizabeth Spencer · ss Prairie Schooner Sum 1964
    • 313 · The Tea Time of Stouthearted Ladies · Jean Stafford · ss The Kenyon Review Win 1964
    • 325 · For I Have Wept · Gerald Stein · ss The Saturday Evening Post Jan 4-11 1964
    • 345 · There · Peter Taylor · nv The Kenyon Review Win 1964
    • 371 · The Last Right · Lee Yu-Hwa · ss The Literary Review Sum 1964
    • 385 · Biographical Notes · [Misc.] · bg
    • 393 · The Yearbook of the American Short Story, January 1 to December 31, 1964 · [Misc.] · bi

Best detective stories of the year : 20th annual collection

Author:Anthony Boucher
Publisher:New York : E.P. Dutton & Co., 1965.
Description:271 pages ; 21 cm
Contents:H as in homicide / Lawrence Treat --
Routine investigation / Robert Twohy --
No way out / Dennis Lynds --
Payoff / Ellery Queen --
Temple by the river / Leon Comber --
Return of Schlock Homes / Robert L Fish --
Short and simple annals / Dan J. Marlowe --
Ingenious mind of Mr. Rigby Lacksome / Ernest Bramah --
Credit to Shakespeare / Julian Symons --
A soliloquy in tongues / William Wiser --
Papa Tral's harvest / Barry Perowne --
Blurred view / John D. MacDonald --
Reunion / Edward D. Hoch --
Violet / Hal Ellson --
A case for the UN / Miriam Allen deFord --
Legacy of office / Rog Phillips.

Prize stories 1965 : the O. Henry Awards

Author:Richard Poirier; William Miller Abrahams
Publisher:Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., 1965.
Description:xii, 295 pages ; 22 cm.
Contents:Introduction / by William Abrahams --
Revelation / Flannery O'Connor --
Ocean / Sanford Friedman --
The ballad of Jesse Neighbours / William Humphrey --
Homecoming / Tom Mayer --
Mama and the spy / Eva Manoff --
Sunday's children / Nancy A.J. Potter --
Margins / Donald Barthelme --
If lost return to the Swiss Arms / Leon Rooke --
There / Peter Taylor --
Come Lady Death / Peter S. Beagle --
First views of the enemy / Joyce Carol Oates --
Fifty-fifty / Leonard Wolf --
Sucker / Carson McCullers --
Love in the winter / Daniel Curley --
A woman of her age / Jack Ludwig --
What I wish (oh, I wish) I had said / Arthur Cavanaugh --
The hounds of summer / Mary McCarthy --
Chaos, disorder and the late show / Warren Miller.

The Best plays of 1964-65

Author:Otis L Guernsey
Publisher:New York : Dodd Mead, ©1965.


434 pages : illustrations by Al Hirschfeld ; 24 cm.

contents:
photo essay: The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
excerpts:
Frank D. Gilroy, The subject was roses--
Joseph Stein, Fiddler on the roof--
Friedrich Duerrenmatt, The physicists--
Murray Schisgal, Luv--
Jean Anouilh, Poor Bitos--
William Hanley, Slow dance on the killing ground--
Arthur Miller, Incident at Vichy--
LeRoi Jones, The toilet--
Edward Albee, Tiny Alice.

    The Great SF Stories: 1964 ed. Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg (NESFA Press 1-886778-21-3, 
    Jan 2002, $25.00, 395pp, hc, cover by Eddie Jones) Anthology of 15 stories first published in 1964, 
    a continuation of the series originally edited by Isaac Asimov and Greenberg. Authors include Norman 
    Spinrad, Poul Anderson, and John Brunner. Foreword and introduction by Silverberg, who discusses 
    why he decided to do the anthology, and the state of the US and science fiction in 1964. 
    Order from NESFA Press, PO Box 809, Framingham MA 01701; [www.nesfapress.com].



    Posted by at 4 comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

    Recent television in some of the less traveled pathways...

    The Man in the High Castle (Amazon)
    Midtown (TuffTV broadcast/Amazon streaming)
    Everyone's Crazy But Us (Funny or Die/YouTube streaming)
    The Hotwives of Atlanta (Hulu)
    No, You Shut Up! (Fusion cablecast/YouTube streaming)
    W/Bob & David (Netflix)
    The Price of More (Crackle streaming)
    Falcón (CinéMoi cable/streaming)
    Spotless (Esquire Network/streaming)
    Flesh and Bone (Starz)

    Though to refer to Netflix, Amazon, or certainly YouTube as less-travelled pathways generally than broadcast or the larger cable channels is almost wrong these days, it isn't, quite, yet, in terms of viewership of at the highest levels, which still clusters to broadcast, or the odd megahit on cable such as The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. And these series might, with the probable exception of the first (one of two miniseries based on classic sf novels we'll see this season, along with Childhood's End on the SyFy Channel), easily pass by those who aren't keeping an eye out for them.

    The Man in the High Castle is, of course, based on Philip K. Dick's novel of the same title (referred to rather awkwardly in the opening credits as the "book" by Dick, as if we are to take it as possibly a testament, instead), one which I read over thirty years ago and haven't reread...hence, I'm not sure how faithful to the Book are such details as the suppression of the Judeo-Christian Bible in both the Nazi- and Imperial Japan-occupied North America...that seems rather less Dickian than I'd guess, as well as leaving open questions of how the Italian Fascists and their satellite allies in Spain and elsewhere, with 110% support of the Church, might've fared in the world of the triumphant Axis powers posited here. And posited rather well, with all the creepiness one can squeeze from a 1962 set in the New York City of the North American territories of the Reich, the San Francisco of the Imperial Japanese occupied territories, and the somewhat improbable "neutral zone" in, essentially, the Mountain Time Zone and along the Rockies, specifically in a small Colorado town. Excellent performances from Alexa Davalos, (particularly) Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Rufus Sewell (much, not all, of Sewell's role as primary villain as written seems almost as easy as that which DJ Qualls assays, though he too better than you might expect from the dire comedies he first came to public attention with) lead those from a fine and convincing cast. The slipping in the novel by its end into a sort of surrealist dream driven by I Ching divination is rather more abruptly dealt with here, and makes for a rather enigmatic ending that reading the novel will prepare one for better than one might be by simply watching the series. Small moments, such as the Japanese police inspector assuring the family of those he's just pointlessly had executed that he, the inspector, is no monster, or the thrown-away detail of a NYC airport named for US Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, give the series a heft that adds to the verisimilitude.  A third fine series from Ridley Scott's production unit, after NUMB3RS and The Good Wife.

     Rather closer to home, Midtown is a low-budget improv sketch comedy series set among the uniformed police stationed in midtown Manhattan, one which
    hopes to remind viewers of Barney Miller even by using the same skyline angle-shot of that part of the city in its opening and transitional montages; however, the majority of the series episodes I've seen take place in the squad car of primary characters played by actual ex-cop Scott Baker and fellow improv veteran Tom Malloy; they are a bit lunkheaded but definitely not stupid characters, and it's a pleasant and reasonably funny series. The small broadcast network aimed at young men, Tuff TV, is running it weekly; Amazon has episodes up for streaming free for Prime members.
    Everyone's Crazy But Us isn't quite another improv series, but it still has a similar energy even when fully scripted in short, typically bite-sized webisodes of about five minutes each, with a very impressive primary and guest cast in the several episodes currently available (produced by Funny or Die, the most visible website devoted to professional web comedy, and accessible through YouTube).  Janet Varney (San Diego Sketchfest co-founder and -director, cast member of You're the Worst, and of The Legend of Korra) and Diedrich Bader (Veep, The Drew Carey Show and current Spider-Man animation series) play the rather brittle and self -impressed but not quite completely farcical parents of a small boy, coping with the petty jealousies and rather stronger insecurities of dealing with the status of a married couple and parents in upper-middle-class US suburbs of today. 
    The Hotwives of Las Vegas is (the second season of) a parody of the flourishing "reality tv" franchise The Real Housewives of [various US cities] and a few spinoffs from that set of self-indulgence videos; the first season was The Hotwives of Orlando. The season premiere threatens to be a bit too affectionate a parody for my taste, but the scalpel's a bit sharper in episode two, both of which are available for free viewing on Hulu (one can easily see the balance during their free trial, but I haven't yet done so). It has a tough act to follow, in the wake of The Bachelor/The Bachelorette lampoon Burning Love, but the less tightly-focused absurdity of the Real Housewives series are still full of the kind of childish acting-out that makes parody both easy and difficult to keep in believable check; Dannah Phirman and Danielle Schneider are the creators and showrunners for the scripted series. 
    No, You Shut Up! is a Very high concept series, basically a parody of the likes of The McLaughlin Group with a panel populated mostly by Muppets, from the Henson Alternative studio, though the host and moderator is human-in-the-clear Paul F. Tompkins (there are usually segments featuring human guests). As too often in such circumstances, the concept tended to hamstring particularly some of the early episodes, as a somewhat clueless male talking hot dog and a reactionary if cute female squirrel puppet add a certainly level of difficulty to putting across the kind of topical comedy one might expect of this heir, of sorts, to such series as Spitting Image (where at least the puppets in question represented actual political and other figures, rather than types of political creatures that show up on such panel discussions)...perhaps with just a touch of Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse. However, the absurdities and political satire have sharpened as the series has continued, having added very good 2016 Election Specials between the third season and the fourth season coming early next year.
    W/Bob & David is and isn't a reunion of the HBO cult sketch series Mr. Show (with Bob and David), perhaps the best of the American heirs to particularly Monty Python's Flying Circus and SCTV; the Bob Odenkirk and David Cross-hosted and -created series had a remarkable ensemble cast (nearly all of whom have at least a supporting role in one or another of the sketches in the new Netflix limited series) and even, for the several seasons of its original run on HBO, had the same timeslot, Saturday morning ("Friday night") at 12:30am, as the NBC network version of SCTV Network 90. Odenkirk and Cross have certainly kept busy since...Odenkirk most visibly in Breaking Bad and as the star of Better Call Saul, Cross similarly in Arrested Development and currently in The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret...and, as Cross has noted in at least one recent interview, fifteen years of experience as writers and performers since Mr. Show can be felt in the new series, where the transitions between sketches are even more oddly smooth than the Pythonesque links of the earlier series, and there's even more framing in the new series (Paul F. Tompkins is back not only as sketch actor but also as audience warm-up/stage and shot set-up distraction comedian, and these usually off-camera sequences are taped and presented at various points as part of the show). Great fun, even if one doesn't have any memory of Mr. Show.
    From Crackle: Heavy Lies the Head

    The Art of More is one of the new series on Sony's attempt to compete with Hulu, Crackle, and it's not too shabby. Co-produced by and co-starring Dennis Quaid, it's mostly an amiable if not altogether extraordinary crime drama dealing with the world of high-stakes art dealing. Quaid and Cary Elwes (as differing sorts of not terribly scrupulous art collectors)  are having some fun, and the other best-known cast member Kate Bosworth is given an opportunity to demonstrate her chops that most of her earlier films ill afforded; Christian Cooke, as the protagonist, formerly a US soldier and art smuggler in Iraq and now a junior associate at an important auction house, is somewhat less charming than he apparently thinks he is, but this might simply be due to his character being so as well. His past comes back to do more than haunt him, as the fellow reps and staff in his house and in their most important rival firm (where Bosworth's character is the stressed heiress-to-be, or not, to the ownership) have their own problems, as do the people involved in the back-stories of the items up for auction. It's well-produced, and a pretty clever design for an open-ended series, even if it feels a bit like something that might just as easily been cablecast on the USA or TNT channels, or broadcast on CBS or NBC. 

     Falcón is a four-part adaptation of two novels by Robert Wilson, a coproduction for Sky TV, Canal+ and ZDF in various European countries, and imported by the cable/satellite channel CinéMoi; the (figuratively) haunted police detective at the core of the series is the son of a famous, deceased painter, and this becomes uncomfortably relevant to his most recent investigation. Falcón (Marton Csokas, of the latter two The Lord of the Rings films), in the first episode (the only I've seen, I believe the only one cablecast in the US so far) is brought to the scene of the torture and murder of a weathy restaurant owner, and husband of the actual restauranteur Consuelo Jimenez (Hayley Atwell, of Agent Carter).  The dead man had had his eyelids cut away (we are not spared how this leaves the corpse) to force him to watch something disturbing. Since I haven't seen the second episode (which concludes the story begun in the pilot), I can simply note that the acting is impressive, the adaptation of the first novel (which I haven't yet read) seems smooth, and the use of digital video to record the drama allows for the program to seem to be filmed at times, and to look more like the sharper, "flatter" image of high-definition video at others, which is used deftly to cause a subtle sense of dislocation from one sequence to another, or even within scenes. The cast also includes Kerry Fox as Falcón's sister and Emilia Fox as his ex-wife, which almost could seem like a joke on the plenitude of sexual impropriety in this series and the two that follow below. (Also, it somehow seems a bit odd to have all the Spaniards speak with British accents...)

     CinéMoi is making episodes available online here.
    Another, newer Canal+ series is being imported by the cable channel the Esquire Network, which will also stream the series if you'll let them get around your cookie protection. Spotless involves two brothers from France, with some difficult times in their childhood, making their way through the world of small-time drug-smuggling (the elder, ne'er-do-well Martin Bastière, played by Denis Ménochet) and crime-scene cleanup in London (the protagonist, younger Jean Bastière, Marc-André Grondin). This one also doesn't shrink from portraying the heavy ugly inherent in the difficulties the brothers and their friends and family find themselves in...in the first four episodes (all that have been cablecast in the US), having stepped in Trouble, they keep finding themselves deeper in, as a local mob boss wants to employ them to clean up or at least restage the murders his crew perform, and isn't going to take No for an answer. And other things get more recomplicated from there.  I'll be checking in for more. Created by Corinne Marrinan (CSI and its spinoffs) and Ed McCardie (Shameless) and about what you'd expect from that sort of creative parenthood.  Esquire Network, despite being a cable channel and not beholden to FCC language restrictions, nonetheless is coy about only one word in the dialog; sadly, "fuck" is commonly used enough to make silencing it and only it on the soundtrack a bit ridiculous. 
    And in some ways the least of the series in this rundown, the Starz pay-cable series Flesh and Bone is soap-operatic and over-the-top while dealing half-well with very serious matter indeed; the ballet corps and support staff at the heart of the series, and their new-discovery ballerina escaping her tough Pittsburgh background to join the fictional American Ballet Company in NYC, are collectively riven with all kinds of physical and emotional problems. Some of them are inherent in a dancer's life, particularly in women's ballet (where going on pointe, not required of the men, tends to mess over the women's feet, at least); others, in this series, include child abuse and abandonment, anorexia and attendant other disabilities, incest, rape and lesser assault, schizophrenia, combat-induced PTSD, sex trafficking in young teen girls, and more...I can't help but think this ballet series owes its inspiration in nearly equal parts to Mozart in the Jungle, Fame and Flashdance, and manages to amp up the most ridiculous aspects of all three, being the kind of series where everyone compliments, even if backhandedly, the protagonist on her flawless beauty (not so much); series creator-producer Moira Walley-Beckett also worked on Breaking Bad. The Svengali of the company is a tantrum-prone monster who, in the process of chewing the protagonist out, more from his insecurity than her misstep, after (too) many anticipatory quick edits turns to a nest of baby birds on the window ledge, whose chirping has been bothering him, and instead of walking away from the window or closing it, picks up the nest and hurls it several stories down to the street below. And yet, after many, many similarly casually cruel encounters with his employees and others, we're supposed to buy that everyone just puts up with and Deep Down Really Loves his Tortured Genius. Meanwhile, and I know less about dance than I do about nearly any other major area of the arts, even I can tell that some of what is being presented here is pretty impressive, and some, meant to be equally so, is Ballet and Modern Dance 101. The largely dancer/actor cast does its best to keep the series watchable, and a fair amount of sex in the pay-cable series doesn't hurt that aspect, but there's simply too much of a muchness going on here to allow it to be taken particularly seriously. It's also the kind of series where no one even mentions the possibility of an abortion to deal with a pregnancy from incest...I suspect that once a certain rather more widespread taboo is broken, it's a matter that will come up no matter how firm one's beliefs against it might be, even if only to be shot down. 
    Posted by at 2 comments:
    Labels: , , , , , ,

    Monday, December 7, 2015

    Pop, R&B, Country, Classical, Jazz, Folk: More Billboard LP Charts, Week Ending 7 August 1965: Saturday Music Club on Monday (Part 2)

    Part one here.
    I'm 51 now, so it seemed fair to take a slice from the middle of the half-century-old chart.
















    Pop Album Chart continued:
    51. Chad and Jeremy Before and After

    the album's title track

     52. Joan Baez 5


    53. Cal Tjader Soul Sauce


    54. Nat King Cole Unforgettable


    55. Bert Kaempfert Blue Midnight


     56. Getz/Gilberto


    57. The Ventures on Stage























    Classical Chart: Chamber Music:
    1. Stern, Istomin, Rose  Schubert: Trio No. 1


    2. Juilliard Quartet Bartok: Quartets


     3. Julian Bream Consort An Evening of Elizabethan Music


    4. Friedman, Prince-Joseph Bach: Sonatas for Violin & Harpsichord


    5. Kohon Quartet Ives: Quartets Nos. 1 & 2

    And since the Kohon Quartet's recording isn't posted, here's the Emerson Quartet

     Country Albums:
    1. Connie Smith


    2. Eddy Arnold The Easy Way


    3. Buck Owens I've Got a Tiger by the Tail


    4. The Return of Roger Miller


     5. Sonny James I'll Keep Holding On


     R&B Albums:
    1. The Temptations Sing Smokey


    2. Billy Stewart I Do Love You


    3. Junior Walker and the All-Stars Play Shotgun


    4. The Four Tops


    5. Billy Preston The Most Exciting Organ Ever


    6. Little Milton We're Gonna Make It


     7. The Best of Sam Cooke, Volume 2


    8. Aretha Franklin Yeah!!!


    9. The Miracles Greatest Hits from the Beginning


    10. Nancy Wilson Today--My Way



    Posted by at 9 comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Billboard LP Charts, Week Ending 7 August 1965: Saturday Music Club on Monday

















    It was fifty years ago and some months change, and the week I had my first natal anniversary. (You'll find Part 2 here.)






















    Pop Charts:
    1. Beatles VI


    2. Herman's Hermits On Tour


    3. The Sound of Music


    4. Mary Poppins


    5. My Name Is Barbra


    6. The Byrds Mr. Tambourine Man


    7. The Rolling Stones, Now!


    8.  The Beach Boys Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!)


    9. Andy Williams' Dear Heart


    10.  The Beach Boys Today!


    11. The Righteous Brothers Just Once in My Life

    "You Are My Sunshine" not embeddable.

     12. Nancy Wilson Today--My Way 


    13. Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home
    14. Sinatra '65
    15. Original Cast     The Fiddler on the Roof 

    Posted by at 7 comments:
    Labels: , ,

    Friday, December 4, 2015

    FFB redux: Ed Gorman guest post: LEARNING TO KILL by Evan Hunter as Ed McBain; Mason on HRF Keating: CRIME & MYSTERY: THE 100 BEST BOOKS; Richard Lupoff & Don Thompson, eds.: ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME; Peter Nicholls, ed. SCIENCE FICTION AT LARGE

    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:

    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:


    For more of this week's "forgotten" books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
    Posted by at    
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , 

    5 comments:

    John said...
    I nearly wrote about one of the Inspector Ghote books for this week's FFB. But I'm saving it for a larger article on five of Keating's books - a sample of his fiction contributions to the genre. I found a few new authors well worth reading from this book. I'd like to track down his Christie book - he was a huge fan. Also Murder Must Appetize sounds like unusual genre history reading. Food in the crime novel. Do you know anything about that?

    [Word verification for this comment: Polessi. (noun) What an Italian character in a Harry Stephen Keeler novel calls a cop.]
    April 15, 2011 at 11:14 AM 
    Richard R. said...
    I have the later edition of All In Color... and enjoyed it. I didn't expect it to cover too far into the century as it states "for a dime" in the title and that price changed for most comics by, what?, 1956? Sooner? They were a dime when I started buying them, but went to 12 cents and then 15 cents not too long after.

    It's an entertaining look at the industry, as I recall.
    April 15, 2011 at 11:44 AM 
    Todd Mason said...
    Looking forward to that, John (the Keating essay, not so much the neo-Keeler incidents). I haven't read that, nor seen it, but CF and particularly classic mystery buffs so love their associational exploration (not that, say, sf writers haven't had their cookbooks over the years).

    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.
    April 15, 2011 at 11:57 AM 
    George said...
    For once, I have all three of your FFB books! I actually bought the Keating book when it came out and slowly read all the 100 books he recommended!
    April 15, 2011 at 4:20 PM 
    Todd Mason said...
    Yes, this is nostalgia day except for the Keating, so I'm not too surprised they were in your collection, as well (I have the Ace paperback of ALL IN COLOR in a box somewhere, as well). I have read perhaps the equivalent (given the various collections of Poe) of about twenty of Keating's hundred (plus the publisher's one). I'd run a bit higher with the two Horror Hundreds, and I'd have to take a look a the SF and fantasy books again...
    April 15, 2011 at 4:39 PM 

    Friday, March 25, 2011

    FFB: Ed Gorman on Evan Hunter/Ed McBain and LEARNING TO KILL

    Evan Hunter, Ed McBain and Learning to Kill.

     A year or so before he was diagnosed with cancer, Evan Hunter seemed intrigued by my idea of doing a massive collection of some of his earliest tales. Intrigued enough, anyway, to have somebody make copies of sixty-some stories and send them to me.

    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.
    Posted by at    
    Labels: , , 

    4 comments:

    Anonymous said...
    The McBain is indeed a terrific collection. I wish they had published all the stories.

    (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.
    March 25, 2011 at 10:22 AM 
    Todd Mason said...
    Yes, well, there's the right kind of bad, Jeff. I find even more saddening are those who can do better, but are relentlessly rewarded for doing anything (Stephen King) or whose better work is actively disregarded (Gary Jennings)...there are all kinds of consistently bad writers who are consistently hailed, ranging from Whitley Strieber to William Vollmann to Dave Eggers to John Irving (even though he isn't heard too much from any longer) to Bret Easton Ellis, to stick with just the men for a moment.
    March 25, 2011 at 10:42 AM 
    Anonymous said...
    Who exactly is Jeff M talking about: his comments follow the article about Evan Hunter but Evan Hunter didn't write COMA.
    May 23, 2011 at 10:05 PM 
    Todd Mason said...
    Well, Anon., this Gorman piece is one of a number that are part of this week's "Friday's Forgotten Books"; one of the other suggestions made was COMA by Robin Cook, and Jeff is expressing his take on that novel's derivative nature.
    May 23, 2011 at 10:47 PM 
    Posted by at 5 comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)