Friday's Forgotten Book: Donald E. Westlake: Brothers Keepers

I've always been more interested in Donald Westlake's darker and more hardboiled stories than his humorous crime fiction, but I was still delighted to read the rather recent reprint from Hard Case Crime, Brothers Keepers. There's originality to the plot and the characters (it's about monks trying to protect their obscure monastery from the developers), and the prose flows smoothly. Still I would've liked some more fist fights.

Hard Case Crime say on their website that the book has been out of print for 30 years. It was originally published by Lippincott in 1975, but there was a Mysterious Press reprint in 1993, so technically it hasn't been out of print for 30 years.

This was one of the few books I managed to read during my Summer holiday that wasn't work-related. I'll try to get something said about the other books as well. Sorry to keep this so short, but I think it might be fun to get back to blogging (once again!).

The first edition from 1975

Donald Westlake's James Bond treatment surfaces as a novel

Hard Case Crime has dug up a James Bond novel Donald Westlake wrote as a treatment several years ago. It looks great. I'm not interested in the Bonds in the least, but this might be worth a look.

Richard Moore and Barry Malzberg on Donald Westlake's The Getaway Car

I spotted this nice mini-review of Donald Westlake's non-fiction collection, The Getaway Car, by Richard Moore on the Rara-Avis e-mail list and asked for his permission to republish it here. Richard, ever the gentleman, gave his permission. It was originally posted to the PulpMags e-mail list.

The Getaway Car by Donald E. Westlake and edited by Levi Stahl (University of Chicago 2014) is a fascinating collection of Westlake’s non-fiction. It is a must for Westlake fans but anyone interested in writing will find it worthwhile.

It includes Westlake’s “The Hardboiled Dicks” first delivered in a May 1982 lecture at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC and later published in The Third Degree. I was at that lecture and it is hard to believe it was over 30 years ago. I remember thinking the lecture was toned down in a couple of spots prior to publication but I will need to find what I wrote for a fan publication at the time for any specifics. It remains a great analysis of the work of the private eye.

One short piece that fascinates me is “Light” an unpublished manuscript found in Westlake’s files and apparently written in 1997 or 1998. His 40th novel “The Ax” was a departure that got great reviews, sold surprisingly well, and caught his publisher’s attention. His return to the world of Parker after a hiatus of more than 20 years in “Comeback” also created a stir.

Suddenly, expectations were raised. He had another novel finished but it was no longer deemed suitable as a follow-up to “The Ax.” He told his agent “It’s a little late for me to have second novel problems, but that is what this is.”

I noticed that the Wall Street Journal has just published an appreciation of Westlake and a nice review of Stahl’s fine collection by William Kristol, editor of the National Review. I rarely agree with Mr. Kristol on anything but I share his enthusiasm for Westlake. I would not go quite as far as Krystol, who said Westlake was “the greatest modern American novelist.”

Here's also writer Barry Malzberg's comment to Richard Moore, published here with Mr. Malzberg's permission: 

As I wrote Lawrence Block off-list a week or two ago, "I am being escorted however reluctantly to belief in Donald E. Westlake as the greatest 20th Century USA writer." A refugee for half a century now from the precincts of quality lit and its bias, I am perhaps unthrilled but also embraced by this inference. No writer alive or dead has given me more pleasure per capita than Donald Westlake. I wish he had not been such a nasty son of a bitch (at least to me) but as Murch's mother would point out, the best route does not usually parallel the most scenic route.

GET REAL shows a 75 year old writer going out at the top, his gifts not only undiminished but soaring. The two posth, the last novel, and the last published in Westlake's lifetime shows his gift not only intact but still growing. The posthumously published novels are sensational, in fact THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, dealing with the same essential national dilemma as AMERICAN PASTORAL outdoes Roth's great novel as social and literary document.

Friday's Forgotten Book(s): The Eighth Circle, Don't Ask, Chip Off the Bloc

Here are three books all of which I've read or tried to read recently.

Stanley Ellin's The Eighth Circle (1958) has come with high praise from many crime fiction aficionados as one of the more original private eye novels. Ellin has written some very good short stories, some of which are classics, and some good films have come out of his novels, but I couldn't get past page 100 or so of The Eighth Circle. Maybe I'm the one to blame, but nothing much seemed to happen. I also couldn't get into Ellin's style. The situation might be different if there were a good Finnish translation of the book, but unluckily this is not the case here. I'm sure many of Pulpetti's readers might like Ellin's book. (The Penguin cover is so great I wanted to use that, even though it's not very American in style.)

Donald Westlake's Don't Ask (1992) is one of his Dortmunder novels. I haven't been a fan of Dortmunders (lately I've found I don't really find jokes funny, especially in a book), but I've liked to read one now and then. This wasn't very entertaining, I must admit. I struggled the book through, as I hoped the book would turn funnier. Beside some mild amusement and some satire on United Nations and some quirky characterization the book seemed a bit forced. I'm actually sorry to say this, since I've liked other books by Westlake very much.

Gar Wilson's Chip Off the Bloc (1986) is something completely different: it's a book in the men's adventure series Phoenix Force that's a spin-off of the Mack Bolan series. I don't really care for this kind of stuff, but I have, shall we say, an academic interest for it. I left most of these books out of my first book, Pulpografia, and I've been thinking about a sequel in which I'd talk about these later men's adventure series. (Seems though I'll never make it. I might settle for a longer article.) This one was written by a guy called Paul Glen Neuman who has a website of his own (he lists at least thirty screenplays he's written, but none of them seems to have been filmed). Neuman has done also other men's adventure series, so I guess you could call him a pro. Chip Off the Bloc is written in a pretty dull way, I must admit: there's no actual development, the scenes just follow each other and something just happens in them. I understand this is supposed to be simple stuff, to be read shallowly and leisurely (which is actually what I did), but I think you could do these books with more imagination and better characterization. Now there's not much life to these people. The book has also some funny outdated stuff on early modems and computers. (I recall reading somewhere that Dan J. Marlowe penned one or two of these books, is this confirmed in the new Marlowe biography? The Finnish edition of this book, by the way, is credited with the original title as "Chip Off the Bloch"!)

More Friday's Forgotten Books here.

Sheldon Lord: Kept

As you've noticed, I've been reading Lawrence Block's old sleaze novels lately. The quality hasn't been as good as Block's reputation would indicate, but as I'm writing an article about the reprint boom of old sleaze paperbacks, I wanted to try another one: Kept, as by Sheldon Lord (Midwood, 1960). Lord was a pseudonym Block used in his novels (such as Pads Are For Passion, reprinted as A Diet of Treacle), but then again this website says Kept was actually written by Donald Westlake.

I couldn't tell. Kept could be by either one as the prose is smooth and very readable, just as both Westlake and Block can deliver. I read the book in Finnish translation (it was published as Maksettu rakastaja in the mid-sixties by Finnbooks in their short-lived series called Domino) and for all I know, it could be abridged or altered in any other way.


I was rather disappointed in Kept, because I went in looking for a criminous content, but there was none! This could've been a romance paperback, save for the fact that there are some candid sex scenes (candid for their own time, mind you) and that the lead character is a man. The book starts off promisingly, a bit like Postman Always Rings Twice, with a beautiful, young woman picking up a hobo man off the side of the road. But in the end nothing much happens: the boy gets the girl and that's about it. There's some fascinating Mad Men territory being covered here, though: penthouse luxury, new hi-fi stuff, well-cut suits, bossing women around at the office, drinks consumed almost at all times, all that.

But all in all, I'm not sure if I share the Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks conviction this should be reprinted. (But take this with a grain of salt, since I read the translation.)

The great original cover is by Paul Rader.

By the way, here's a link to the Finnish Domino series. Any comments on the books published in it?

Donald Westlake Friday

I'm a bit late on this, but better late than never, right? Here's a link to the Friday's Forgotten Book postings organized by Patti Abbott, all about Donald E. Westlake, to commemmorate the forth-coming publication of Westlake's lost novel, The Comedy Is Finished.

Donald Westlake's The Hook

A series of short posts starts from here, just in order to catch up with what's happened and what's going on. I promised to write something about Donald Westlake's crime novel The Hook which I read already during the early days of Christmas (why does that feel like it was already a long ago?). It's a very good novel, in the black humour mold of Westlake, even though not anywhere near the hilarity or the slapstick of the Dortmunders.

The Hook is almost a serious meditation on the state of writing and publishing in the early 2000's America. The famous and best-selling writer meets a midlist writer who was once famous, but has never risen to his ranks. They talk shop and wonder what's become of them: the bestselling one has a writer's block, the midselling one is still an able writer, but can't sell aggressively enough. Westlakes pokes bitter fun at how the bookstores decide what to sell and what not. I guess this is him talking here, though he's never been as low as these guys: the bestselling writer asks the other guy to give his novel to him, to be published under his name, and kill his wife. If he does that, he'll get 50% of the advance and the royalties of the coming novel.

Westlake actually shows how these two men start to resemble each other. It becomes a sort of an identity play, a bit like Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle (a historical novel by a Turkish Nobel winner, you should read it, if you haven't). Westlake sure can keep the reader glued to his seat, even though there's not much happening here. The outcome is bitterly ironic. Strongly recommended.

Finnish vintage sleaze Westlake

Here's a Finnish cover for a sleaze paperback by Donald Westlake, writing as "Alan Marshall", which was one of the pseudonyms he alone used. If I remember correctly. The sleaze pseudonyms are a tricky thing.

The book in question was called originally Virgin's Summer (Midwood 1960), which is also the Finnish title. I haven't read this one, but a friend of mine - who knows his Westlake - has and he said that it's clearly Westlake. The cover copy says: "He [or she?] felt his/her first love experience as a waking dream. [Huh?] And then it wasn't a dream anymore... Roaring tale about what goes on behind the closed doors of American motels!"

The Finnish edition was published by Finnbooks in their Domino series in 1967.

Comixology on The Hunter

Interim here's a link to Comixology's post about the new graphic novel adaptation of Richard Stark's The Hunter.

Parker graphic novel

The guy's no Lee Marvin, but still these previews of forth-coming Parker graphic novel look very neat.

Some updates on the Made In USA post

Anna Karina's character is called Paula Nelson. Jean-Pierre Léaud doesn't play David Goodis (that's Yves Afonso), but Donald Siegel. László Szábo plays Richard Widmark. Someone is called Richard Nixon and another one inspector Aldrich.

I've read somewhere what the French title of Westlake/Parker's novel is in the film's credits, but I can't find it online. I seem to remember it was something about graves. It's not a literal translation of The Jugger, that's for sure.

Made in USA isn't the only film Godard made from a paperback original. One of his most famous films, Pierrot le Fou (1963), was based on Obsession by Lionel White. Which probably means that Godard had a good taste in books. (There's also a Finnish trash flick from the mid-seventies, Karvat/Hairs by one Seppo Huunonen, which is based on the same novel, but I don't really think they knew the Godard connection. White's name is written "Lionell" in the credits. I think this is the only film ever made in Finland based on a paperback original.)

Francois Truffaut, on the other hand, directed many films based on American paperbacks, but I'll be writing about them some other time, since I'm just leaving with Kauto to a birthday party. In ten minutes, that is.

Made in USA in USA

Silly subject line, isn't it?

Jean-Luc Godard's movie Made in USA (or, rather, U.S.A.) is finally available and screening in USA. What's interesting about this is that this was made, without permission, from one of Donald Westlake's Richard Stark books. Anna Karina, Godard's beautiful wife, plays Parker (I forget what her name is in the film, she's not Parker). I think Jean-Pierre Leaud plays a character called "David Goodis" and there's a scene in the film in which someone reads a novel by Horace McCoy.

I'm not a huge fan of Godard's films (I think he was a bit of a fraud), and this is no exception. It's one of Godard's most deconstructionist films, which means it makes no sense. You can recognize Westlake's story in all this, if you know what you're looking for, otherwise you're utterly lost. However, as the first film made from the Parkers it's worth a look.

(Hat tip to Fred Blosser who mentioned this in a comment on Bill Crider's blog.)

PS. Here's also a clip from the movie. It's Marianne Faithfull singing "As Tears Go By". You can spot Anna "Parker" Karina sipping her drink in a totally hardboiled manner.

Westlake in Sweden

My friend and Pulpetti's Swedish correspondent, Anders Engwall, took up the task of scanning some Swedish Westlake covers and mailing them up to me. So here they are, in separate posts and arranged chronologically. The comments are Anders's, but I've added some in brackets.

Take it away, Anders!

Westlake in Sweden: The Man with the Getaway Face (1963)

The first item is what I believe the very first Westlake ever published in Sweden. This was published as #159 in the X-böckerna (The X Books) series in 1963. I suppose that is quite early for a Parker translation. Too bad the publishers chose to begin with the second one in the series, and in 1964 follow it up with the first one.

The cover is pretty good looking, except that I don't think Parker would ever brood like that - as if he was auditioning for the lead in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE or something. Artist unknown.

The Swedish title translates into THE MAN WHO WAS SOMEONE ELSE. No complaints there - for once they got it right.

Westlake in Sweden: The Hunter (1964)

Installment #2 in the Swedish Westlake saga.

As I said earlier, X-böckerna followed up the 2nd Parker with the 1st. This pb is #162 in the series.

Pretty cool cover. Would have been even cooler if Parker had actually been a woman.

The text on the cover translates as "Suddenly the tables were turned - and Parker was no longer the one fleeing..."

(Btw, the text on the cover of #159 translates as "When the bandages came off, Parker looked into the mirror and met the eyes of a stranger...")

A few words about X-böckerna. They existed from 1952 to 1966 (AFAIK) and operated out of Gothenburg. They may be best remembered for publishing no less than 26 Harry Whittington titles between 1953 and 1962, thus making them the major source of Whittington books in Swedish. And of course, there were those two Parker novels... They also changed the design of their books seemingly once a month. For instance, #159 measures 105 by 182 millimetres. Three books later, #162 measures 108 by 165. Not much later they would switch to covers with photography.

Westlake in Sweden: Point Blank (1968)

It's 1968, and here's the same novel again except the original title is now Point Blank. Great, great movie, so no objections from me. Yes, Parker looks like Lee Marvin, that's just how it is. Published by Kometförlaget as #183 in the Komet series.

The text on the cover translates as "He's a lone wolf in the nether world. He is hated, feared, cold as ice. His name is Parker." Pretty much on the money.

The Komet series ran between (AFAIK) 1955 and 1981. Notable for trying to launch the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. Six titles were published in 1965-66, and then a of sudden - nothing. The McGee series somehow never caught on here, although MacDonald's non-series works kept on coming here and there.

The Komet series were also known - or maybe notorious, or then again legendary - for adding a porn appendix on pink paper to their books, starting in 1966 with raunchy cartoons by the likes of Pete Wyma, but eventually printing quite hardcore material occasionally.

You can see the legend "Med 6" in the upper right corner of this cover, and if I tell you that 6 is pronounced "sex" in Swedish and "med" means "with" I suppose you can figure out the rest. Ha ha bloody ha. In this particular instance, we are also treated to something entitled A Night in a Moorish Harem: The Tale of the Italian Girl by George Herbert. Which actually is some kind of "classical" porn from way back:

http://www.amazon.com/George-Herberts-Night-Moorish-Harem/dp/156163168X

To quote the introduction in this book: A Night in a Moorish Harem belongs to the classics among porn literature. The book tells the story of how the gentleman lands on the Moroccan coast and is found by nine sex mad concubines.

Wow, two classics in one volume.

[Hey, it's a classic alright, but I believe it was a faux. There never was a lord George Herbert and the book was only written for the fast shillings. As for Stöten, that lady sure is nice. As was Angie Dickinson, no question about that.]

Westlake in Sweden: The Mercenaries (1968)

Of course you can't have a Swedish Westlake retrospective without the Manhattan series getting in there somehow. They got almost everything right - a fine selection of books, eye-catching bright red spine, totally genius name, the coolest logo ever and initially great artwork (though it had begun to decline around here). Too bad the
titles of the translations were mostly crap - usually generic and totally unrelated to the novel itself or the original title.

"The Mercenaries" was translated into "The Dead Don't Talk" in 1968. Yeah. The dead don't talk. Anonymous artwork. "3 6 1" came out as #199 later the same year, but that one looks exactly like the Finnish edition.

But that logo! That lower right corner! If I only knew how to print t-shirts...

[This one was never used in Finland, even though the Manhattan series was brought in here as such. Too risqué, that bottom... The book itself had been published in Finnish earlier by another publisher. This cover isn't by Bertil Hegland, is it?]

Westlake in Sweden: Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death (1970)

As opposed to previous entries, this is actually a sort of a respectable release. No porn! A softcover published by Skoglunds in 1970. Yeah, it's 1970 alright! Some of my books in school at the time looked somewhat like this. Aww, nostalgia... And yes, you should read the Mitch Tobin series. But I guess you already know that.

Cover art for SÅDAN KÄRLEK, SÅDAN DÖD is by Göran Lindgren. The title translates roughly as LIKE LOVE, LIKE DEATH.

[I haven't actually read any of the Tobin books. None have been translated and I haven't found them anywhere near. {I have a rule of not to order books from the net. I'd be buried in them in two weeks.} It's probable, though, that I have one or two of these, since I've been picking up every Westlake I can lay my hands on for the past five or six years. Btw, shouldn't that title be SUCH LOVE, SUCH DEATH in English?]

Westlake in Sweden: Murder Among Children (1971)

This Roy Lichtenstein ripoff from 1971 is by one Ulf Castelius. Publishers Gebers for a while published these weird hardcover twofers - sort of like those old Ace Doubles, except in respectable looking hardcovers with dust covers. This title translates as YOUNG SUDDEN DEATH. It was coupled with a Kelley Roos title whose original tilte is somehow missing. Apart from three Tucker Coe titles, the most interesting titles in this peculiar series were a bunch of Helen Nielsen titles.

Ah, pop art:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein

Westlake in Sweden: Jimmy the Kid (1979)

Rather odd-looking artwork from 1979 by one Olle Frankzén (might be a typo - I suspect it's actually Franzén).

This was #625 in the pb series Delfinserien, which was not an exclusively crime fiction series.

Since this was printed in 1979, and this is the actual copy I first read of this, I'll have to retract my statement that title might have been my first Westlake. Might have been Cops & Robbers, then. I still believe this is the funniest and best of all the Dortmunders, however. On the back cover of this pb, kidnap victim Jimmy Harrington is described as a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Albert Einstein and Ingmar Bergman. Eh, Ingmar Bergman? Btw, here's all the Bergman you'll ever need:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2MQthEYGsI