Signed firsts and summer in Asbury

For those who've asked about signed copies of my first two novels - THE BARBED-WIRE KISS and THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE (both of which have slipped out of print in recent months) - I'm told that Don Stine at Antic Hay Books still has some in stock, in both hardcover and paperback editions. I signed all of Don's stock back when he still had a physical store on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park, the site of one of my favorite signings ever, as part of a late night Asbury Park "Art After Dark" festival in 2005.

Though Antic Hay no longer has an actual storefront, Don continues to stock books on Shore authors and topics though, and has an extensive collection of memorabilia from the city's glory days (he'll probably have some signed firsts of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER come January as well).

If you haven't been to Asbury lately, it's definitely worth the visit. The revitalization that has taken place, on the beachfront at least, is amazing. Where the boardwalk area was once a ghost town of ruined buildings and empty storefronts that brought to mind CARNIVAL OF SOULS, it's now lined with restaurants, shops, food stands and a water park.

Because of the stunted economy, not everything has come to fruition (an unfinished condo building on Ocean Avenue stands on the site of a previous unfinished condo building), but this has been the most concerted effort to bring Asbury Park around in decades. You can find hundreds of people on the boardwalk and beach any given day this summer. There's even talk of reopening the legendary Upstage coffehouse at Cookman and Bond, which should have been named some sort of musical landmark years ago if nothing else. Instead it sat empty and deserted for more than three decades.

So, to quote another Shore resident, here's one for Asbury, hoping that the best may be yet to come.

GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER: The Video (sort of)

Courtesy of Newark's own Wyclef Jean. This song, from his 1997 album "The Carnival," was a sort of spiritual inspiration for the novel in the very early days.



A remix can be found here. And here's a live version of the song featuring Soul Asylum.

Cover preview

It won't be out until January, but here's an early look at the cover of the new novel (due out Jan. 19.), courtesy of the good folks at St. Martin's/Minotaur. Thoughts?

Mann's world

Over at THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR (and originally at the Museum of the Moving Image site), Matt Zoller Seitz concludes "Zen Pulp," his five-part series of video essays on the work of director Michael Mann. The final installment is devoted to my favorite pre-WIRE TV crime series, CRIME STORY.

Matt's entertaining and incisive essay (which, in full disclosure, I did contribute to slightly and I mean slightly) looks back at Mann's retro crime drama, which ran only two seasons in the mid-'80s, but whose multi-episode story arcs helped pave the way for shows such as THE SOPRANOS, DEADWOOD and the above-mentioned WIRE (echoes of it can also be seen in Mann's own HEAT).

The show made a star of Dennis Farina (above), and rightly so. As Chicago Major Crimes Unit Lt. Mike Torello, Farina brought just the right combination of charm and toughness to the role. In general, it had to be one of the best-cast series ever. Both seasons were packed with actors who went on to major careers, including Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, David Caruso, Gary Sinise, Ving Rhames, Lili Taylor, Michael Madsen and dozens of others. And, of course, the two-hour pilot (startlingly violent for network TV at the the time), was directed by the great Abel Ferrara.

I used to own the entire show - both seasons - on VHS. A few years back, during a bad attack of the flu that left me wiped out and sleepless for more than a week, I watched almost all the episodes back-to-back from my living room couch. I think if my downstairs neighbors heard "Runaway" one more time they were going to kill me.

I'd always hoped there would be a follow-up two-hour TV movie tying up the show's loose ends (the second season ended with a silly cliffhanger that felt like it belonged in a 1930s serial), but it was not to be. All we're left with is a not-so-great DVD set with poor picture quality, almost no extras and some of the original music removed for legal reasons. Hopefully, someone will get around to doing this right someday. It deserves it.

Matt's previous entries in the series look at MIAMI VICE, Mann's iconic male heroes, the role of women in his films, and Mann's use of doppelgangers and mirror images, especially in his film MANHUNTER. If you're even a moderate Mann fan, they're all worth checking out.

New short story

My short story "Heart" appears in the new (Aug. 2009) issue of INSIDE JERSEY magazine, currently on N.J. newsstands and home-delivered (in certain zip codes) with today's (7/19) copy of the Newark Star-Ledger. Individual copies are also available by calling (800) 876-2326.

The story is a prequel of sorts to the new novel, GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, which will be published Jan. 19 by St. Martin's/Minotaur. They both feature Morgan, an aging enforcer for a Newark drug gang. "Heart" is set at N.J.'s Monmouth Park during a summer stakes race. It's accompanied by a terrific illustration from artist Andre Malok.

Readers with good memories will recall an earlier version of a short story with the same title that appeared in Maggie Estep and Jason Starr's excellent anthology BLOODLINES a few years back. The new version is much improved, albeit slightly cleaned up in terms of violence and profanity. Many thanks to INSIDE JERSEY editor Rosemary Parrillo for taking a chance on it. It's the first piece of fiction the magazine has published, though hopefully not the last.


****
And totally unrelated:
There have been many great interpretations of the songs of Bruce Springsteen. But this one, from actress Mary-Louise Parker, has to be among the best. She does leave out a few verses though. 

Thought for the day ...

... from the new album, "Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women," featuring Alvin and seven of America's premiere female folk musicians and songwriters. The lyrics are from Alvin's soulful version of "These Times We're Living In," written and originally recorded by the late singer/songwriter Kate Wolf:

If I could, I'd tell you now,
There are no roads that do not bend
The days, like flowers, bloom and fade
And they do not come again.

Sisters in crime

For those in the N.J./N.Y. area, two of the brightest new voices in crime fiction will be hosting a launch party/signing event Tuesday, July 7 at 6:30 p.m. at New York's Mysterious Bookshop. Appearing will be Megan Abbott, author of the new BURY ME DEEP (Simon & Schuster), and Theresa Schwegel, whose novel LAST KNOWN ADDRESS (St. Martin's Minotaur) is just out as well. Both are Edgar Award winners (Abbott for Best Paperback Original for last year's QUEENPIN, and Schwegel for Best First Novel for 2005's OFFICER DOWN) as well as being lovely and charming. The Mysterious Bookshop is at 58 Warren Street in Tribeca, a short walk north from the WTC Path station. (212) 587-1011.

Black Lizard Lounge #3: VIOLENT SATURDAY

The third installment of my ongoing occasional look back at some vintage Black Lizard paperbacks from the late 1980s and early '90s:

VIOLENT SATURDAY by W.L. Heath

BLACK LIZARD EDITION: 1985

ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: Harper, 1955

THE STORY: A bank robbery throws a small Alabama town into chaos.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A major Southern novel disguised as a crime thriller. Or maybe the other way around.


"The three men arrived in Morgan Friday afternoon on the two-thirty train from Memphis. They were the only strangers to get off the train that day, and several people noticed them but didn't pay them much attention. They might have been salesmen or minor businessmen of some sort. They only reason they were noticed at all was because there were three of them."

So begins W. L. Heath's VIOLENT SATURDAY. The three aren't salesmen, of course, or minor businessmen. They're big city bank robbers who descend on the small town of Morgan, Ala., to plunder the local Savings and Loan. As their plans proceed and the titular day looms closer, the town itself seems to tremble with anticipation, as if a storm were gathering on the horizon. But before that happens, Heath delves "Peyton Place"-like into the passions and private dramas of Morgan's citizens, none of whom are very innocent themselves. When the run-up to the robbery leads to the kidnapping of the book's ostensible hero, an "expediter" for the Fairchild Chenille Company, things start to go badly wrong. And the book earns its title in a climactic shoot-out that's startling in its realism, especially by 1955 standards.

One of the great things Black Lizard did during its original run was bring near-forgotten novels like this back into print (even if they promptly fell out again), and VIOLENT SATURDAY is maybe the best of the bunch. Unlike most of their reissues, it wasn't first published as a paperback original. Though it was Heath's debut novel, it was bought and published in hardcover by Harper, and the film rights sold almost immediately. It was filmed later that year at 20th Century Fox, directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Victor Mature, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin in an early role. The story was transplanted to Arizona, with Borgnine as an Amish farmer (!) who helps foil the robbery. The film isn't available on DVD, but can be seen in its entirety on Hulu.

VIOLENT SATURDAY is very much a novel of its time, and the casual racial epithets can be a little jarring, even in context. But the finely nuanced social observations and expert build-up of suspense put it right in the forefront of American crime novels of the 1950s.

William Ledbetter Heath has become something of an enigma in the decades since the book was published. He wrote at least eight novels, three of those for younger readers, but all remain out of print. The Black Lizard edition of VIOLENT SATURDAY also contains a great introduction by Ed Gorman, with plenty of biographical details about Heath, who was still alive at the time (he died in 2007). Black Lizard also reprinted Heath's follow-up, the excellent ILL WIND, which again takes place in the fictional town of Morgan, though it's only marginally a crime novel. Last year, browsing in a used book store, I found a British edition of Heath's third novel BLOOD ON THE RIVER, which, as far as I can tell, has never have been published in the U.S. at all. Like those two earlier books, it's an almost flawless merging of character and action, deeply evocative of small-town communities in the rural South.

Next time at the Black Lizard Lounge: Peter Rabe's THE OUT IS DEATH

Chasing "Something in the Night"

And speaking of Cornell Woolrich ...

It may seem a stretch to equate noir master Woolrich's doom-laden novels and stories with the music of Bruce Springsteen, but they actually share a lot of common ground. Along with their fondness for nocturnal imagery, the best of Springsteen's earlier songs often had that haunted - and haunting - quality found in Woolrich's work. The narrator of Springsteen's "Stolen Car" (from 1980's "The River") is an archetypal Woolrich character, mourning a lost love while driving a stolen car "through a pitch-black night," wracked by guilt and fear that "in this darkness, I will disappear."

And just look at some of those other song titles - "Darkness on the Edge of Town," "Downbound Train," "Point Blank" "Because the Night," "New York City Serenade" (Woolrich had his own "Manhattan Love Song"). And years before Springsteen came along, Woolrich found his own muse in Asbury Park, setting several stories in that once-glamorous but forever-fading seaside resort. The best-known of these is probably 1935's "Boy With Body," which was reprinted as "The Corpse and the Kid" in the 1988 Woolrich collection DARKNESS AT DAWN. Woolrich always had a fondness for citing popular song lyrics in his stories as well. If he were alive and writing today, he'd probably be quoting Springsteen.

Probably the most Woolrichesque of all Springsteen titles is "Something in the Night," from his 1978 album "Darkness on the Edge of Town." It's one of the great but lesser-known Springsteen songs, filled with evocative lyrics and existential angst. It's also one of his most geographically specific songs, set on Asbury Park's Kingsley Street, which at one time formed a oval with Ocean Avenue known as "The Circuit," where aimless teenagers cruised on hot summer nights. The Circuit is also mentioned in that other Springsteen song with a quintessentially Woolrichesque title, "Night," from 1975's "Born to Run." At the south end of The Circuit was Palace Amusements, the ramshackle beachfront arcade immortalized in that album's title song.

While listening recently to some archival Springsteen shows, I came upon the first-ever version of "Something in the Night," from a concert at the Monmouth Arts Center (now the Count Basie Theatre) in Red Bank, N.J., on Aug. 1, 1976. Springsteen and his E Street Band were performing a six-night stretch there, debuting new material while an ongoing lawsuit kept them from recording (other songs premiered that week included the equally haunting "The Promise." )

This earliest version of "Something in the Night" is even more Woolrichian than the one on the album. Slowed down, with only a simple keyboard accompaniment, the Red Bank version is radically different from what was released, with bleak impressionistic lyrics and references to a night when the devil "will walk these streets like a man."

Springsteen refined the song further through the years, leading up to the "Darkness" version, which is the one he currently performs, albeit infrequently. The various live versions also offer an insight into his songwriting process, as he gradually reshaped both the lyrics and mood of the song. By the time of a widely-bootlegged performance at New York's Palladium in November 1976, Springsteen had added a mournful trumpet to the arrangement, along with a new final verse. The album track lyrics can be found here. The Aug. 1, 1976 Red Bank version follows (all lyrics are copyright Bruce Springsteen, of course).

Well, I'm riding down Kingsley figuring I'll get a drink
I turn the radio way up loud so I don't have to think
And I ease down on the gas, looking for a moment when the world seems right
And I go tearing into the heart of something in the night

I picked this chick up hitch-hiking, she just hung her head out the window and she screamed
Said she was looking for someplace to go, to die or be redeemed
Well, you can ride this road 'til dawn, without another human being in sight
'Cause baby, everybody's gone looking for something in the night

And me I gotta stop running, I gotta stop my fooling around
Well, I got this stuff running around my head, I can't live with or live down
She wants me to push this machine until the whole world disappears out of sight
And just me and you baby, we'll surrender to the kindness of something in the night

Now tonight no sins are forgotten, no sins are forgiven
And when I look out on these streets sometimes I can't tell the dead from the living
Just winners and losers, mumbling about some vague wrong and right
And kids like us, rumbling over something in the night

And now you people out on the island, lock your doors and take your children by the hand
Put on your black dress, baby, because tonight the devil will walk these streets like a man
I don't know about you, but I'm gonna bring along my switchblade, in case that fool wants to fight
If he wants me I'll be running down the highway, chasing something in the night.

An audio version of the Palladium version can be found below.

****
Above, an Asbury Park Press ad promoting the Red Bank shows, and a ticket from the Aug. 1, 1976 performance.

Random Readings, Vol. 7

This installment of Random Readings is from Cornell Woolrich's beautifully written - if highly fictionalized - unfinished autobiography BLUES OF A LIFETIME, the existing chapters of which were assembled and edited by Mark T. Bassett for a 1991 Bowling Green State University Popular Press edition. In this excerpt from the first chapter, titled "Remington Portable NC69411" (after one of Woolrich's early typewriters), an aged, infirm and deeply depressed Woolrich, sensing he hadn't long to live looks back nostalgically - and painfully - on his days as a young writer. "It makes me blue to look back at the past," he writes. "But I want to look back 1ce more, before it's gone forever." He recalls long happy nights on the second floor of a Manhattan brownstone shared with his mother, grandfather and aunts, crafting his first novel, 1926's COVER CHARGE, in a white-hot rush, reveling in the fierce joy of his art and talent:

"It had become such a fixed habit by now, such a part of my daily routine, I was so hooked on it, that I couldn't have given it up for love nor money. So every evening after my meal was over I'd sit there, anywhere from nine to eleven-thirty or twelve, in the room on the second floor that had the grand piano in it, with the white cicatrices on its lid where spilled gin from my pocket flask had eaten into the ebony patina, the door closed, the family out or inaudible, a single lamp lit behind me on a pedestal in the corner ... bending over my knee, scribbling away ... . Every now and again I'd take a breather, lean back to rest my back and ease my neck, and put out even the one light, to facilitate the gathering of new thoughts for the pencil bout to come.

"I never forgot those chiaroscuro seances in that second-floor room. Lights up, writing; lights out, getting ready to write some more; lights up, at it again. I like that kid, as I look back at him; it's almost impossible not to like all young things anyway, pups and colts and cubs of all breeds. But I feel dreadfully sorry for him, and above all, I wish and pray, how I wish and how I pray, that he had not been I. He might have had a better destiny, if he hadn't been, he might at least have had a chance to find his happiness."

****

ABOVE: Artist Larry Schwinger's evocative cover for the 1982 Ballantine paperback edition of Woolrich's 1941 novel THE BLACK CURTAIN.

Out of the past: More on Dan J. Marlowe

As a follow-up of sorts to last week's post about Dan J. Marlowe's 1962 novel THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH:

A couple of years back, I was browsing through the paperback mystery racks in a used book store in south Florida when I came across a rare find - a copy of Marlowe's hard-boiled caper novel FOUR FOR THE MONEY, published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1966 and never reissued. I'd read most of the Marlowes Black Lizard reprinted in the mid-'80s, including TNOTGID, THE VENGEANCE MAN and STRONGARM, but I'd never come across this one before.

I was even more surprised when I turned to the title page and found this:

It reads: "To that sterling character, Bill Bell - fellow worker with words - Dan Marlowe."

Yup, an autographed first edition out-of-print Marlowe Gold Medal, in excellent condition, hiding there in the stacks along with the dog-eared James Pattersons, Rex Stouts and Agatha Christies. I bought it immediately, along with a handful of other books (I think I paid $10 for the lot), and when I got it home - or at least to the motel serving as home - I found the following typewritten note tucked into the pages midway through the book:

I've been back to that store many times since, but no other Marlowes have ever turned up, and 1960s Gold Medals alone - from any writer - are becoming increasingly difficult to find. The note dates the inscription to sometime before November 1966. Had it sat unmolested within those pages for 40 years? And why and how did the book suddenly appear in that store after all that time? (I'd been there previously and never seen it).

These are all mysteries, of course, which will never be solved (Marlowe died in 1986, at age 72). But boy, I'd love to learn the backstory there. As it is, the book feels like a strange time capsule from a long-gone era. If anyone out there (Bill Crider?) can offer any clues as to context - or the identity of Bill Bell, "fellow worker with words" - I'd love to hear from you, either here or at my site.

ALSO: Reading Francis M. Nevins' introduction to the Cornell Woolrich collection TONIGHT, SOMEWHERE IN NEW YORK this week, I stumbled on another interesting Marlowe anecdote. In a letter he sent to Nevins in 1968, Marlowe recounts the night in the late 1950s when he drove down from Connecticut to Manhattan to go out drinking with Woolrich, whom he knew only casually, though both were writing for Avon Books at the time (the episode is recounted in full in Nevins' 1988 Woolrich bio FIRST YOU DREAM, THEN YOU DIE). "We had our evening, which turned out to be a disaster," Marlowe wrote. "He didn't drink much, but I learned quickly that any amount was too much for Woolrich. He simply went to pieces, and I learned later that this was his pattern... I never saw him again, although we did exchange a few notes from time to time. There was a wit in his notes sadly lacking in his person ..."

Black Lizard Lounge #2: THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH

The second installment of my ongoing occasional look back at some vintage Black Lizard paperbacks from the late 1980s and early '90s:

THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH by Dan J. Marlowe

BLACK LIZARD EDITION: 1988

ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1962

THE STORY: Amoral professional criminal infiltrates small-town America, finds it rotten to the core.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The good stuff, 100 proof

I first read this novel about ten years ago and enjoyed it. Reading it again, I think it's some sort of twisted masterpiece. Written in first person, it's the story of a ruthless professional heister who travels cross-country to a rural Florida town to investigate the disappearance of a former partner, who was holding the mutual proceeds from a Phoenix bank robbery. Once there, he runs afoul of a crooked cop, a larcenous postal employee and other out-of-town criminals on the trail of the money.

The book begins in media res during that bank job, with bullets flying. The getaway driver is killed and the nameless narrator - who uses the aliases of "Chet Arnold" and "Roy Martin" in the course of the book - dispassionately guns down two bank guards before taking a bullet himself. He and the surviving bandit split up, the partner taking the money to squirrel away while the narrator hides out and recovers from his injuries. When the partner drops off the radar - and the monthly packages of cash stop arriving - the narrator heads east to find out what happened and try to recover what's left of the money.

A lot has been written about Dan J. Marlowe, so I won't go into much of it here. Suffice it to say that TNOTGID is about as hard-boiled as they come. While on his trek east, the narrator reflects on his past life and abusive childhood, the injustices done to him by bullies and brutal cops, and how it all forged a bitter rage and alienation that can't help but explode when triggered. But he loves animals, if not people, and even adopts an injured dog after he sees it intentionally run over on a Florida street. He also has a casual relationship with a big-framed barmaid, and forges a friendship with a local real estate salesman, all in hopes of getting to the bottom of what happened to the partner and the cash.

TNOTGID does bear similarities to Donald E. Westlake's THE HUNTER, the first of the "Richard Stark"/Parker books, published that same year, though it lacks the forceful focus of that novel. Instead, it gives us an almost textbook study of an anti-social, misanthropic outlaw who kills without compunction and has a mean-on for the world that can't be slaked. It does meander a bit midway, with passages devoted to horse racing discussions, the specifics and tools of tree surgery and the narrator's fondness for women with large bottoms. But the ending is a genuine surprise, with the narrator's anger and determination only fueled by the catastrophic events that overtake him.

Marlowe's nameless narrator returned in 1969's ONE ENDLESS HOUR, in which he was rechristened Earl Drake "The Man With Nobody's Face." In this new incarnation, he became an international adventurer and secret agent and the hero of 11 more Fawcett Gold Medal titles. These new books (and slightly revised versions of the first two) were reconfigured to fit in with the mens adventure series boom of the '70s. Although one of them, 1970's FLASHPOINT (later reprinted as OPERATION FLASHPOINT) won an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, most were far removed in tone and content from TNOTGID, and the books were clearly running out of steam by the time of the last one, 1976's OPERATION COUNTERPUNCH. Marlowe died in 1986. One of his final novels was 1982's GUERILLA GAMES - an installment in the Executioner spin-off series PHOENIX FORCE - written under the house name "Gar Wilson."

Though Marlowe did water down his signature character to make him more palatable (and marketable) in later books, Arnold/Martin/Drake is at his full sociopathic glory in THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH. In contrast to the barking dogs of most pulp paperback crime fiction of its era, this book is a wolf howl in the night.

Next time at the Black Lizard Lounge: W.L. Heath's VIOLENT SATURDAY

Wild Oates

My review of Susan Compo's new Warren Oates biography A WILD LIFE appears on the Books page of today's Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, somewhat abbreviated (by me) for space reasons. What follows is the complete review.

WARREN OATES: A WILD LIFE
Susan Compo
University Press of Kentucky, 472 pp., $34.95

REVIEWED BY WALLACE STROBY

If American movies of the 1970s have a face, it belongs to Warren Oates.

With his wind-etched squint, toothy grin and rumpled charm, Oates was an iconic figure in American film. Though he never achieved the leading man status he sought, he became one of Hollywood’s most ubiquitous character actors (between 1970 and ‘79 alone, he appeared in 24 films and a dozen TV shows). In the 1960s and ‘70s, Oates was the go-to guy for doomed losers, charming hustlers and eccentric cowboys, investing his roles with a hangdog aura that suggested late-night barrooms and day-long hangovers. Although best known for the four films he made with friend and fellow hellraiser Sam Peckinpah, Oates worked with directors as varied as William Friedkin, Steven Spielberg and Terrence Malick.

This is the first major biography of Oates, and Compo has done her homework, interviewing those who knew him best, including ex-wives, children, friends and costars such as Robert Culp and Peter Fonda. All speak of Oates with affection, admiration and regret. An inveterate womanizer, hard drinker and frequent substance abuser, Oates unapologetically burned the candle at both ends, dying of a heart attack in 1982 at age 53.

Unfortunately, Compo is often too enamored of the stories she’s hearing, citing at length anecdotes that shed little or no light on their subject. She’s also a little too fond of half-clever turns of phrase and strained metaphors (she describes the jokes in Oates’ 1973 pothead Western “Kid Blue” as falling “flatter than a panhandle pancake”).

Fortunately, Compo also quotes extensively from interviews Oates himself gave over the years, infusing the book with his voice (the first time he saw singer/songwriter Tom Waits on television, disheveled and chain smoking on “The Dinah Shore Show,” Oates told a friend “That guy stole my act.”).

In those interviews, Oates seems to accept the fact that, despite his extensive filmography, he would be best remembered for the films he made with Peckinpah. And in the Kentucky-born Oates, the director found his muse. Even in relatively small roles in early Peckinpah films such as 1962‘s “Ride the High Country” and 1965’s “Major Dundee,” Oates practically leaps off the screen. Every moment, every line reading, feels real. Peckinpah also gave him one of his few leading roles, as the obsessed Benny in the twisted crime drama “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974).

Oates’ Peckinpah years have been widely chronicled, especially in David Weddle’s definitive 1994 biography “If They Move ... Kill 'Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah,” so Compo wisely does not plow the same ground again. And while she does recount some of Oates’ wilder times, Compo downplays the actor’s fondness for cocaine as a major contributor to his death. She lets Fonda, who directed Oates in the elegiac 1971 Western “The Hired Hand,” have the final word: “He smoked too much,” Fonda says. “And he lived in Los Angeles too much.”

Despite his excesses, Oates always seemed to value the stabilizing effect his family and friends had on him. And though Peckinpah cast him in two undisputed classics – “Ride the High Country” and “The Wild Bunch” – those closest to Oates considered the hard-partying director to be a dangerous influence on him. As famous for his alcoholic rages as his artistic genius, Peckinpah would die two years after Oates, at 59, estranged from his family, his health ruined and his personal and professional life a shambles.

But good films outlive the troubles of those who made them. And Warren Oates made a lot of good films – and a handful of great ones. A wild life maybe, as this fine biography tells us, but not a bad one.


Some great Oates moments on-screen:

MAJOR DUNDEE (1965)

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

DILLINGER (1973)

And the COCKFIGHTER (1974) trailer (that's source novelist Charles Willeford as the pit referee):

Complete PANIC

Nobody writes blacker black comedy than Jason Starr. I've often referred to him as "the Larry David of crime fiction," and I think the comparison is apt. His New York-based novels - 12 so far - are alternately intense, uncomfortable, disturbing and funny as hell. In one of the first experiments of its kind, his publisher, St. Martins Press/Minotaur (full disclosure, my publisher as well), is making the complete text of his new novel PANIC ATTACK available as a free download for a limited time (the physical book itself doesn't come out until August). As the industry struggles to reinvent itself for the digital age (and the current recession), it's always encouraging to see major publishers trying out new ideas.

++++

Totally unrelated - and apropos of nothing - I'm in the process of selling off a substantial collection of books, videos, comics, DVDs etc. for space reasons, via eBay. Lots of interesting stuff I've accumulated over the years, but which is nonetheless driving me crazy as I acquire more things which I don't have space for. Seller name is nightside7 and I've been putting new auctions up generally every Sunday at around 9 p.m. ET (a pair of early Richard Stark/Parker paperbacks will go up tonight). Nothing too rare and, for the foreseeable future, none of the Black Lizard books I'm currently revisiting. And that's the last I'll mention it.

Black Lizard Lounge #1: SWAMP SISTER

As per last week's post, this is the first entry in my ongoing occasional look back at some vintage Black Lizard paperbacks from the late 1980s and early 90s:

SWAMP SISTER by Robert Edmond Alter

BLACK LIZARD EDITION: 1986
ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1966 (according to the Black Lizard copyright page, other sources have it as 1961)
THE STORY: The crash of a plane carrying $80,000 in cash leads to murder and more in a rural swamp community.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Compulsively readable but somewhat tongue-in-cheek potboiler. Li'l Abner noir.

Satire alert: One of two novels Robert Edmond Alter wrote for Fawcett Gold Medal (CARNY KILL is the other, which I'll revisit in the future), SWAMP SISTER presents itself as a pulp thriller ripe with greed, lust and murder. Its hero, a strapping and virile swamp youth named Shad Hark, finally discovers the wreckage of the "Money Plane" four years after it crashes and helps himself to some of the cash, eventually drawing the attention of greedy and dangerous neighbors, swamp tramps and an insurance investigator with the unlikely name of Tarleton Ferris. Though it purports to be a down-and-dirty saga of the lives and loves of poor white trash on the bayou, it's actually a parody of the genre. Shad services unhappy housewife Iris Culver as well as Dorry Mears, the town slut, battle gators and human swamp rats, all the time conversing in local dialect that sometimes needs multiple readings to parse ("You can cold toot that again.")


It's never really clear where all this is taking place, though it might be Florida, since there are multiple references made to Jacksonville, and the swamp folk speak disparagingly of Louisiana Cajuns as if they were a different race. Alter seems to know his way around though, because the book is steeped in details about different types of swamp vegetation and the habits of bull alligators. However, there are some jarring and abrupt perspective shifts, including one when we're suddenly seeing things from the point of view of an angry gator. It seems unlikely SWAMP SISTER was the original title either. There's no major female character at all for the first 30 or so pages, and Dorry disappears midway through the book.

But Alter's satiric intentions become clearest near the end, when Iris Culver's husband - a pulp novelist - catches her half-naked in the arms of investigator Ferris, who excuses himself with a casual "Pardon me" and goes out to renew his search for the Money Plane. Rather than sheepishly apologizing, Iris takes the offensive:

"Do you think you could satisfy a woman? Any woman? ... Do you have any idea what your lovemaking is like? It's like that watered-down slop you write!...

Suddenly she spoke with cold sarcasm. "Do you know what your work reminds me of? It's like the trash those hack writers used to potboil for the pulp adventure magazines back in the '20s and '30s. They always called their dashing Nordic heroes names like McCoy or McKay or McCloud or Quincannon - names which automatically had a connotation suggestive of rough, manly derring-do. Invariably they had sandy thatches of hair, frequently red, and always a scattering of freckles on the backs of their tanned square wrists. But best of all was the manner in which these literary giants would introduce those girl-killing, booze-drinking, saloon-brawling, quick shooting, Scotch-Irish supermen. They would write. 'No plaster saint - comma - McKay'."

"Now you're not being fair, Iris. You know I don't use that archaic kind of sentence structure."

Devastated by his wife's infidelity and spot-on literary criticism, the husband retreats to his study with a .22 target pistol, intent on taking his own life. But he's distracted by the nautical scene he's left half-written on the page, and soon he's typing away, all thoughts of suicide forgotten:

He squared himself in his chair facing the typewriter and typed, "Marlinspike?" Reb cried. "I thought it was a blunt ice pick! -"

And after that - somehow - he just kept on writing.

**** UPDATE: And for those looking for more Swamp Girl cover art, look no further. Who knew?


Next time at the Black Lizard Lounge: Dan J. Marlowe's THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH.

Black Lizard lounging

A few years back, I used to occasionally browse at a now-defunct Coles bookstore at a slowly dying Jersey Shore mall (since passed on). In the weeks before the store closed for good, odd things began showing up - dusty boxes of paperbacks that had been unavailable for years, British edition PBs in plastic-sealed three-packs, entire lots of books from individual publishers. All these, I guessed, had been recently liberated after being left to yellow in a warehouse somewhere (on one visit I found Gerald Petievich's first two novels, the long out-of-print MONEY MEN and ONE-SHOT DEAL, unread, for 69 cents each). All were mint condition, uncirculated books that for some reason had been stored instead of pulped.

One day, not long before the end, they set out a table with, I believe, almost the entire run of original Black Lizard mass market paperbacks published between 1984 and 1990. Founded by publisher Donald Ellis and edited by novelist Barry Gifford (right), Black Lizard had quite a run in the late 1980s, publishing more than 90 titles before selling its name and catalogue to Random House in 1990 (the label lives on as an imprint of Random's Vintage line).

The titles on display were like-new books, with glossy covers (most featuring original illustrations by Jim Kirwan) and bright white pages. They were a mixture of classic noir (Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, David Goodis), paperback originals from the 1960s and '70s (Charles Willeford, Dan J. Marlowe, Peter Rabe) and the works of some prolific but all-but-forgotten pulp masters (W.L. Heath, Harry Whittington, Steve Fisher), as well as a handful of new titles by contemporary authors (Jim Nisbet, Murray Sinclair, Sin Soracco). Though they'd originally been priced at anywhere from $3.99 to $7.99, the books had been marked down to 50 cents each. I bought them all.

I read some of the classics right away, books I'd heard of but never been able to locate - Lionel White's THE KILLING (aka CLEAN BREAK), Heath's VIOLENT SATURDAY, Marlowe's THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH. Some I gradually got to later. I good amount of them I never got to at all - until now.

So beginning next Sunday - and continuing occasionally - I'll take a fresh look at some of those pulp gems, either reading them for the first time or revisiting them anew. First up: Robert Edmond Alter's SWAMP SISTER.

(BTW: the photo at top is a generic one, it doesn't reflect the actual books I bought that day, though I did get most of those pictured.

Click HERE for the reviews.

The end of the world as they knew it

I've never been much of a fan of American science fiction, either in books or films - I always found it somewhat uninvolving and distant (and, of course, there's the fact STAR WARS put a stake through the heart of what up-to-then had been the golden age of American cinema). Nothing snobbish about it though. I can recognize when it's well done.  I just don't respond to it on a personal level.

British science fiction, on the other hand, fascinates me, especially the socially conscious apocalyptic fiction that sprang up in the immediate post-WWII era. I've always had a fondness for that subgenre, one I revisited on my recent sojourn to points south, when I found and read an original Fawcett paperback edition of John Christopher's 1962 novel THE LONG WINTER.

Christopher (at right) – in reality Samuel Youd, a prolific British author who produced some 70 books under different names – is probably best known for his "Tripods" series of Young Adult novels, published from the late 1960s on,  about alien oppressors and the youthful resistance movement that springs up to battle them. But beginning in the 1950s, Christopher was responsible for a handful of extraordinary post-apocalyptic adult novels, including THE DEATH OF GRASS (filmed in 1970 as NO BLADE OF GRASS), THE RAGGED EDGE (aka A WRINKLE IN THE SKIN) and THE LONG WINTER (originally published as THE WORLD IN WINTER).

THE WORLD IN WINTER deals with the aftereffects of a new ice age gripping Europe - the "Fratellini Winter," named after the scientist that first predicted it. Some expected results follow - there's a mass exodus from the continent, lawlessness breaks out, and London and environs are taken over by the military. But where Christopher takes the story from there is what makes it compelling. His hero, television news producer Andrew Leedon, flees London to the warmer climes of Nigeria, which is gradually being overrun by European - particularly British - refugees. What follows is a reversal of British colonial history, as whites become the despised underclass, relegated to slums and considered fit only for menial and domestic work - or as prostitutes. Leedon eventually returns to England in an armed Hovercraft expedition with a young Nigerian journalist who's given him an opportunity to better himself. What they find is a ragtag-but-determined band of survivors living in the frozen cities, brutally ruled over by a former Home Office staffer and friend of Leedon's.

Post-apocalyptic novels are nothing new in British literature. Stephen King often cites M.P. Shiel's 1901 novel THE PURPLE CLOUD as an influence on THE STAND, and Mary Shelley's post-FRANKENSTEIN novel THE LAST MAN (1826), might be the very first book in that subgenre.  They certainly aren't relegated to the Brits alone either - American George R. Stewart's 1949 novel EARTH ABIDES is a cornerstone of the genre, as is Pat Frank's 1959 ALAS, BABYLON. But the Brits always seemed to do it better, or at least take it more seriously. That might be the result of the ravages they suffered during World War II, when nightly bombing leveled whole city blocks, and wartime rationing made daily living difficult - not to mention the constant threat of Nazi invasion. Add the burgeoning Cold War and fear of nuclear catastrophe, and the stage was set for some grim and startling - and at the same time deeply-felt - works of imagination.

 Christopher's chief rival in this fertile period was John Wyndham, right, best known for 1951's THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and 1957's THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, which became the classic film VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. The influence of  TRIFFIDS and other Brit post-apocalyptic fiction is evident in Danny Boyle's film 28 DAYS LATER ... (top image) which borrows ideas and situations from Wyndham's novels as a sort of homage (not to mention the debt it owes to the films of George A. Romero).  In 2005, BBC Four produced a documentary about Wyndham, which is linked here. One of the interviewees is Christopher/Youd, who talks about his friend and fellow writer.

Christopher and Wyndham's works drift in and out of print, but they remain the best novels of their kind - frightening, thought-provoking and all-too-believable.

UPDATE: Syle Press is now the internet home for all things John Christopher.
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Bruce and Adolf

A post with real content to come, but in the meantime, this needed to be shared... (the embedding code didn't work):

Ricky Retro returns

Yes, he's back. Those who followed his weekly pop culture column in The Star-Ledger will be happy to know that Ricky Retro (aka Steve Hedgpeth) has resurfaced, this time via an independent blog.

Steve's column ran in The Star-Ledger for six years, until he and I (and about 149 of our colleagues) left the paper in December, as part of a voluntary staff reduction. Steve - who was also an uncredited contributor to the Ledger's Ultimate Post-Internet Movie Trivia Contest, which I wrote for many years - promises to keep the retro fun coming with essays, quizzes, videos and music.

And those wondering what the real Ricky looks like can watch this YouTube video of his tearful final moments in the office, during which he drunkenly calls out to me to make sure he has a ride to the train station afterward (video by the Munchmobile's own Pete Genovese).

Jack D. Hunter: 1921-2009

Jack Hunter was the first novelist I ever met.

I was a directionless 21-year-old in my sophomore year at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla. I'd briefly attended college in Long Island three years before, then quit school altogether and worked a variety of crappy jobs, from movie theater usher to valet parker to overnight security guard at a condominium complex (the most brain-numbing six months I've ever spent). Going nowhere fast, I decided it was time to return to school, hopefully as far from New Jersey as possible. My grades, however, were awful. I was an indifferent student in both high school and my first attempt at college - straight Cs mostly. I applied to Flagler because a.) it was in Florida; b.) it was (at that time) a small, mostly unknown liberal arts college that just might accept me (total student population was about 700) and c.) it was cheap and offered enough financial aid for me to finance the balance.

As it turned out, going to Flagler was the smartest thing I ever did. I flourished there, met friends I see regularly to this day, and found a pair of teachers who set me on the right path - for awhile at least. (After a year and a half at Flagler, I transferred to Rutgers, but then continued to quit school periodically, eventually getting a degree years later).

One of those teachers was Jack D. Hunter. He taught only one class - a creative writing seminar limited to 12 students. I knew little about him, except that he'd written THE BLUE MAX, the World War I aviation novel that was filmed in 1966 with George Peppard, and half a dozen other books as well. But what I learned from him in that sun-drenched classroom in the spring of 1982 would change my life (and other lives too. Also in the seminar was my friend and classmate John Fusco, who went on to become a successful screenwriter and producer).

I learned a lot about Hunter that semester as well. Though he'd been an aviation buff since childhood, colorblindness had thwarted his ambitions of being a pilot. He'd taught himself German in order to read vintage flying texts (including the memoirs of Manfred Von Richthofen, the Red Baron) in their original language. By the time World War II came around, he was fluent enough to be recruited by U.S. Army Intelligence, who used him as an undercover operative in Germany after the war, helping to round up Nazis attempting to launch a resistance movement against the Allied occupation. He was a self-taught pianist and painter (he did the jacket art for the first edition of THE BLUE MAX, as well as the painting above) and, in addition to his career as a novelist, had done PR work for DuPont and served as special counsel and speechwriter to a U.S. Senator. While teaching at Flagler, he was also a writing coach at the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.

Hunter gave us an assignment a week, more or less, and I still have all of the corrected mss. he handed back. The first assignment was to write a biographical sketch in narrative form. When I got mine back, he'd written at the top "This is an excellent piece of work. You show great promise indeed. But don't forget to polish. Then polish some more ..."

Hunter was quick to praise, but just as quick to criticize if he thought it would help. Some of the attendees - including another faculty member - were there for the novelty of it. Others were, as Hunter put it, "dilettantes" who had no serious aspirations to be writers. He was a gentleman to all, but if you showed interest and a willingness to listen, he would go out of his way to provide attention and advice. His written comments on my pages would range from "This is the berries" to "Fine work, my lad" to "Where was your polishing rag on this one?," all signed with his characteristic "H." On one mss., a short suspense piece about a woman being stalked on the New York subway, he wrote "You use too many words. You say everything the long way. You must learn to write more tightly, to polish, polish. See my suggestions." He'd marked up the pages that followed, including entire passages he'd ruthlessly X'ed out for trimming.

When the seminar was over, I had a body of work - amateurish as it may have been - and advice to last a lifetime. More importantly, I had a confidence in my writing that hadn't been there before. And in getting to know Hunter, I'd had my first glimpse into the writing life. For all the constant struggles and rare triumphs, Hunter told us, for him, at least, it was still the only life worth living.

On the last day of class, he signed my copy of his current book, THE TIN CRAVAT, a sequel to THE BLUE MAX. Twenty-one years later, I got to return the favor by sending him my first novel, THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, with an inscription thanking him for his guidance at a crucial point in my life. He'd continued to write and publish novels in the intervening decades, even into his 80s. Most were spy novels and thrillers, including FLORIDA IS CLOSED TODAY (set in St. Augustine), THE CURE and THE POTSDAM BLUFF. Last fall, at age 86, he published his 17th novel, THE ACE, bookending his career with another WWI aviation tale (the cover featured a portrait of Hunter himself, taken in 1939 while he was attending Parks Air College in East St. Louis). He'd also embraced the internet, launching a website and regular blog.

I'd kept in touch with Hunter intermittently though the years, and I often heard reports about him from friends who still lived in town. I knew his health had been declining, especially since the death of his wife, Shirley, in 2006 after a long illness. The stress took its toll on Hunter as well, and though he still wrote regularly, he was soon dealing with major health issues of his own. He took on a caregiver/webmaster/bookkeeper named Jonni Anderson and continued to live at his tiny Spanish Colonial house in the center of St. Augustine's historic district. Last October, Jonni messaged me at my site to say she'd found THE BARBED-WIRE KISS on Jack's bookshelf, and that he'd wanted to thank me again for sending it along. I promised I'd visit the next time I was in St. Augustine, but that never came to pass.

On March 27, Hunter wrote what would be his final blog entry. "It's been a real trip, folks, but I'm hanging up my spurs," he wrote. "I've enjoyed writing my blog ... but, due to my increasing physical weakness, it has become more of a burden than a pleasure, and it's time, as the old cliché says, to exit stage right." He'd done his last booksigning only a month before, at a local Barnes & Noble, autographing copies of THE ACE. He passed away April 13, at home.

His Associated Press obituary, as it ran in The New York Times, is here. The Florida Times-Union and St. Augustine Record also weighed in with lengthy tributes.

ABOVE RIGHT: Jack and Shirley Hunter with George Peppard on the set of THE BLUE MAX. Photo courtesy of Jack D. Hunter.

The return of Billy the Kid

Took a day off from revisions last week to see Kris Kristofferson - singer, songwriter, actor, Rhodes Scholar and all-around American badass - at the Society for Ethical Culture's Concert Hall in New York. At 72, Kristofferson's an icon. He's written songs for Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin and Willie Nelson, starred in films for Sam Peckinpah, Martin Scorsese and John Sayles, and continues to act, tour and record (his most recent album, "This Old Road," came out last year). Not to mention he dated - or married - Janis, Barbra Streisand, Rita Coolidge (for awhile in the '70s, he and Coolidge were the country music power couple) and other women probably too numerous to mention.

Within the intimate confines and superb acoustics of the Concert Hall, Kristofferson was mesmerizing. Accompanying himself on just guitar and harmonica for more than two hours, he played most of his extensive catalog, including "Me and Bobby McGee," "For the Good Times," "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (maybe the best country song of the last fifty years).

The voice is ragged - though it was never sweet - and the face craggier than ever, but Kristofferson is still an imposing figure (actor Ethan Hawke wrote a pretty good profile of him in the most recent Rolling Stone, that generated a little controversy of its own ). He didn't talk that much between songs and was plagued by a cold ("Bet you folks are sorry you paid good money to watch an old fart blow his nose"), but he seemed genuinely energized and moved by the enthusiastic reception he got. And 72 or not, he's still got that rakish charm that made him an unlikely sex symbol - and a poster boy for hard and fast living - in the 1970s. Hard to believe he's survived everything he's done. Hopefully he'll get around to writing that memoir some day.  

Below is a vintage clip from "The Johnny Cash Show," and a trailer for one of Peckinpah's finest films.

Back to work.

Gone writing, Pt. 2

More fun and frivolity gathered from the Web, while I struggle painfully on with revisions ...

(I'll update this post at random throughout the week)

+ With a tip of the hat to free-form N.Y. station WFMU, a little pre-presidential time capsule from 1991.

+ Some swinging Bondage, courtesy of The Skatalites. One of the many great tracks being compiled over at the Permission to Kill blog.

+ The Violent World of Parker revisits my 2007 appraisal of PAYBACK: STRAIGHT-UP, THE DIRECTOR'S CUT.

+ And speaking of Parker films, what a cast!

Gone writing ...

... to steal a phrase - and blog heading - from Laura Lippman.

Working on revisions to the new novel this week, so blogging will be sparse until they're done (as if you hadn't noticed already). I have a couple unfinished things in the cooker that I'll eventually post, including "Big Apple Time Capsule Pt. 4," and a look at post-war British apocalyptic fiction. In the meantime, however, and till we're back to a regular blogging schedule, I'll try to provide some quick links for your edification and amusement:

+ Hours of fun over at the Bad Review Revue, as always, though they haven't updated in a while.

+ At The Rap Sheet, a look at the EXECUTIONER paperback series, a guilty pleasure of my teenage reading years, courtesy of British crime novelist Matt Hilton.

+ Crime writer - and Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement agent - James O. Born has re-emerged under the alias of James O'Neal. His first science fiction novel, THE HUMAN DISGUISE, will be out in May. He also continues to get naked every once in a while, over at his group blog.

+ A little retro girl-group fun from Sarah Borges and her band.

+ A great new look and layout to one of my favorite tribute sites, The Violent World of Parker.

+ And finally, with a tip of the hat to The House Next Door, a great moment in American acting, courtesy of Ryan O'Neal and Norman Mailer:

Sarah Borges in N.J.

Back in N.J., in the cold and damp, after nearly a month in Fla. and other southeastern climes.

Made it back to N.J. just in time for an intimate house (or rather garage) concert today in Freehold by the extremely talented (and adorable) Sarah Borges (above) and her band The Broken Singles, just kicking off a tour for their third album "The Stars Are Out." Sarah, a Boston native, is one of the best-kept secrets in American roots rock today, though The New York Times outed her in a rave review last year. She's got some real musical chops as well as a winning stage persona, and is also capable of writing ridiculously catchy songs. The new album leans more to rock than her previous discs, but it's just as infectious.

Here are a couple of Sarah's videos, first a twangy studio performance from her second album, 2007's "Diamonds in the Dark," and then rocking out Joan Jett-style on the first single from "The Stars Are Out."

I lied

Still on the road, so regular blogging will return next Sunday, March 15, likely with my thoughts on the new Warren Oates biography A WILD LIFE, by Susan Compo.

Spring is near.