Saturday's Forgotten Book: Give Me This Woman, by John Jakes

Give Me This Woman is a sleazy P.I. story written by John Jakes and publishes by Monarch in 1962 as by William Ard. I've said to Charles Ardai that it would fit the Hard Case Crime line perfectly. Lou Largo, the private eye "hero" of the book, is very hardboiled and he's also a heel and a scumbag, which in my books makes for perfect reading. The book also features a journalist who's going on a honeymoon - with a dead lover's body in the trunk of his car!

Here's an Abebooks seller's description:

"Lou Largo thought he had a simple assignment when ex-mobster Charlie Danton sends him after his headstrong daughter, Cora, who'd runn off with Harry Talbot. The trail leads to Niagara Falls where handsome Harry is playing house with Cora - just long enough to collent 100 000 in ransom money from her anxious father. But theings start to get complicated when Joker Gallone turns up gunning for Harry to avenge the murder of his sister Rose. And when Sonia suddenly turns treacherous, the action gets violent and Lou finds himself facing two hate-filled killers and a dame with blood in her eyes."

An entry in Patti Abbott's Forgotten Books series.

New book out

The mailman brought us today our new book: it's called Retrovauvat/Retrobabies and as you can surmise, it's a trendy book with lots of photos of kids going around in vintage clothing, but it's also a serious non-fiction book. (Okay, the chapters are pretty short, but they are packed with interesting stuff: baby names, baby food, childbirth, kiddies' books etc. etc.) It's written with Elina and a friend of ours, Ville Hänninen.

Here's the link (in Finnish), on the left the cover with a vintage seventies' fashion photo.

Mickey Mouse in Finnish Big Little Books

I'm compiling an article on the Big Little Books for my fanzine, Pulp. The article won't be long, since I don't have much of first-hand information on the phenomenon and very few of these were published in Finnish.

However here are two Mickey Mouse books (or actually covers of them) that I suspect were originally Big Little Books published by Whitman. These two books, Mickey Mouse as a Pilot (based on Mickey Mouse Mail Pilot) and Mickey Mouse Is Looking for Treasure Island, were published in Finland by Werner Söderström in the mid-1930's. They are fantastically rare; last I looked they were about 500 euros each. (I looked these up at the university library where they stock just about everything that's been published here.) The format is right, the page count is right, the layout of the pages is right - it's just that at least the Treasure Island book has a wrong cover.

Sorry 'bout the black&white. Scanned them from photocopies taken at the university.

Steranko on pHinnWeb's blog

I link too rarely to my friend pHinn's excellent blog, as it contains lots of interesting stuff on Finnish cinema, experimental cinema and music, electronic music, psychedelia, nostalgia TV, etc. etc. Here's pHinn's take on comic artist Jim Steranko.

The best of Isku

To commemorate Isku's tenth issue (which is coming out later this Spring) I compiled a small collection of some of the best original Finnish stories that were published in the magazine, which is the only Finnish crime fanzine there is. The book will come out from Turbator for which I've edited some collections and anthologies and which has focused mainly on short story collections. The book will be of the classic paperback size.

Here's the tentative cover, by who else than Jukka Murtosaari. The picture is supposed to take place in the thirties - there are mock covers of the original Isku magazines, coupled with other Finnish crime pulps and other mags. It's a great cover and I'm really looking forward to seeing this.

(There could be a great, great book with the best of translated stories in Isku, ranging from James Reasoner to Vicki Hendricks and Ed Gorman... we'll see about that.)

Finnish aviation pulp

Small text on couple of Finnish pulp stories on another blog of mine here.

Covers for new issues of my fanzines

As many people reading this blog know (or maybe not that many: I'm a poor marketer), my hobby is fanzine publishing. Here are the covers for the new issues of my pulpish crime and adventure 'zines, Isku (= Punch) and Seikkailukertomuksia (= Adventure Stories). The Isku cover is by Henri Joela and the Adventure cover is by Jukka Murtosaari.

(Sorry for the poor quality of these photos: they are screen captures from PageMaker. The mags are not out as yet.)

Anthony Neil Smith: Psychosomatic

Finally got around to reading Anthony Neil Smith's Psychosomatic that came out from PointBlank some years ago. It's recommended if you think you can take it: it's about an amputated lady, with no arms and legs, who thinks she can control men. And actually that's what she does. Several guys fall under her spell and a killing spree starts. This is like Elmore Leonard on speed.

Late additions to the best of 2008

Some books I've left unintentionally out from my best of 2008 list or books that appeared in 2008, but which I managed to read only in 2009:

Yasmina Khadra: Attentaatti (in English as The Attack), originally 2006, translated in Finnish in 2008: very gripping tale of a successful Arab doctor living and practicing in Israel: his life goes in turmoil, when his beautiful wife makes a suicide bomb attack in a Jerusalem café

Denis Johnson: Jesus' Son (originally in 1992, translated in Finnish just last year, and I think the book came out only in December): a combination between Raymond Carver and William S. Burroughs, short meaningless stories about drug addicts in the early 1970's America trying to live their lives with no much success, hardboiled style merged with hallucinatory similes, Bukowski without Bukowski's machismo

Paul Gravett (ed.): The Mammoth Book of the Best Crime Comics: huge package of mostly hardboiled and noir comics from the 1930's on to this day, from Dashiell Hammett's and Alex Raymond's X-9 to Alex Toth's and Bernie Krigstein's stylish noir and to Neil Gaiman's and Oscar Zarate's very, very chilling story about one of the wealthiest man in the world and his liking for beautiful boys, but all in all, lots and lots of great stuff, the book you don't want to be without (should probably write a longer piece on this, but I don't think I'll manage, since I've been sick and am behind my work and still don't feel like starting today) - but let me add since this stuff'll interest many people reading this blog: included are also Mickey Spillane's one and only Mike Lancer story and a long newspaper story featuring Mike Hammer (which wasn't bad, interesting that Hammer was drawn to look exactly like Mickey Spillane himself)

Jerry Lewis cartoon

A friend of mine bought some British Film Fun magazines from the sixties and sent me a scan of a Jerry Lewis cartoon. I thought I'd put it up here. The magazines, he said, contained lots of cartoons with the American film heroes, mostly humorous stuff, but also Westerns and crime.

My forth-coming book

The cover for my coming book, The Short History of Cinema. The publisher is BTJ, the artist is Tarja Kettunen.

The movie of the cover wasn't mentioned in my original text, so I had to add it. Luckily I found a place where it sits quite well - after trying to come up with a sentence that ran something along these lines: "The Godfather starred Marlon Brando who'd made his breakthrough in a fifties biker film called The Wild One."

Phoebe Kisshagen Redux

Approximately one year ago I was writing about a book that had Jeeves and lord Wimsey have a fucking contest in an obscure paperback published as by Phoebe Kisshagen. I've been receiving comments on it from someone who calls himself "NSH". He's clearly an expert in old pornography, as he can locate the Kisshagen book in its earliest incarnations.

It seems, then, that the Finnish translation of the book (and probably the Swedish or Danish translation before it) has been altered so as to include the reference to Jeeves and Wimsey, two 20th century fictional heroes. The original book must've had some known characters of its own time having the said contest.

Here's the longest of NSH's responses. You can see the others ones in the original post:

Re: The famous Phoebe.

From Patrick J. Kearney’s A HISTORY OF EROTIC LITERATURE (London, Macmillan, 1982):

Talking about Edward Sellon and his works, Kearney writes:

‘...and ‘Phoebe Kissagen; or, the Remarkable Adventures, Schemes, Wiles, and Devilries of Une Maquerelle; being a sequel to the ‘New Epicurean’ (London, ‘1743' (1866); ....
Page 113.

I found no trace of the above in a French edition in Gay’s ‘Bibliographie des ouvrages... Nor in Rose’s Register of Erotic Books.

As far as English editions are concerned, see Rose, 3590:

‘Phoebe Kissagen; or, the Remarkable Adventures, Schemes, Wiles, and Devilries of Une Maquerelle; being a sequel to the ‘New Epicurean’ London 1743 (reprinted 1875) pp. 96, 8vo. Printed by Joseph Longtool, In and Out Lane, London.’

and

Gay, III 732, gives the title ‘Phoebe Kess’ with the same description as above but changing the size from an 8vo to a 16mo.
Note: Gay took a lot of his informatio from catalogues and often made mistakes in rewriting it.

Sherlock Holmes Hesarissa?

(A plea in Finnish. Sorry 'bout that.)

Tuttu väittää, että Helsingin Sanomissa olisi julkaistu, sanotaan 20-25 vuoden säteellä, joulu- tai uuden vuoden numerossa kotimaisen kirjoittajan Sherlock Holmes -juttu. Tarkempia koordinaatteja ei ole, mutta kysyn silti: muistaako joku muu?

Edit: Kiitos Risto Raition, tiedämme nyt, että kyseessä oli Erkki Arnin kirjoittama jouluspesiaali joskus 1980-luvun loppupuolella. Tietääkö joku Erkki Arnin perikunnasta mitään?

Jason Starr's The Follower

I've been a long-time fan of Jason Starr's work and consider Fake I.D. and Nothing Personal masterpieces. They are simply one of the best books of the 1990's. They are clearly hardboiled and noir, but there are no knowing hints to older genre work. There's also none of macho posturing that at times seems prevalent to the hardboiled literature. Or if there is, you can pretty much guess that with Starr the macho guy is on road to Hell.

Starr is very good at depicting sociopaths and narcists. His are heroes who think everybody likes them and everything succeeds for them. Same goes for the main male in his newest book, The Follower. Peter Wells is a nice-looking guy in his early-to-mid-twenties, working at a gym, having a load of money, buying a cozy apartment. He's empathetic and can converse with a girl for hours. Who wouldn't like the guy? You'll soon know there's no reason to like him. Starr's actual protagonist in the novel, Katie Porter, finds that out too late. And even before that her life is a mess, consisting of a bad job, having no money to live in New York and getting mixed up with largely emotionless young kids who learn their human skills watching porn. No Sex and the City here.

The Follower is, I think, Starr's longest novel to date, but that didn't trouble me at all, even though I was more at home with the brevity of Fake I.D. and Nothing Personal. I had to stay up till two in the morning to finish this.

My favourite capers

Peter Rozovsky asked his readers their favourite caper novels and films. My list:

In books: Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman, something by Lionel White, something by that Stark guy (sorry, can't pick up a specific title). By White, probably Clean Break, but mainly because it was made into The Killing by Stanley Kubrick. But anything by Lionel White is great, especially The Big Caper.

Still books: Al Conroy's Devil in Dungarees. Brian Garfield's Relentless. Zekial Marko's Scratch a Thief. The first two Earl Drakes by Dan Marlowe and also Four For the Money by the said writer.

In films: Jean-Pierre Melville The Red Circle (Le cercle rouge or some such in French). Melville must have some other films I'm overlooking, but that has had the best-staying effect. Reservoir Dogs. Still Tarantino's best and still one of the best crime films ever made. The Killing, if it only were not for the voice-over narration! The Asphalt Jungle. The caper scenes in Gun Crazy, which are just superb, superb, superb.

A Fish Called Wanda has a good caper scene in the beginning, too, so we shouldn't forget the Ealing film I Stole a Million. Nor The Ladykillers!

Mustang Gray

The Finnish pulp mag, Seikkailujen Maailma, also published some comics. They had one or two Finnish-origin comics, but all the others were imported. Here's the last one to appear in the magazine, Mustang Gray.

Mustang Gray was done by Italian artists, but it was published in the UK mag, Western Picture Library. One of the artists was Camillo Zuffi (1912-2002). The main artist, however, was Armando Bonato who later on turned into fumetti, via Diabolik. From a quick glance, Mustang Gray seems similar to Tex Willer, the best known of the Italian Western comics.

This is the opening page of the comic series, from the Seikkailujen Maailma issue November, 1960.

Another Western comic

Here's another one from the Seikkailujen Maailma mag. I don't know the original source, but it's called "In the Trails of Incomparable Arrow". This one is earlier - it was published in 1955.

The Finnish cover for The Etruscan

Here's the original Finnish cover for Mika Waltari's The Etruscan/Turms, kuolematon from 1958. The artist is Björn Landström, one of the best illustrators working in Finland in the last fifty years. (I know there are differing opinions on this.) This cover is nicely drawn and the face is psychologically complex, but I'd like to see more action in this!

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.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Mika Waltari's The Etruscan (Turms, kuolematon)

This is basically a rerun of my earlier post about the book, but I've edited it a bit and added a photo of the American edition.

Finnish writer Mika Waltari (1908-1979) wrote many historical novels in grand scale. The best-known of his historical novels is The Egyptian (1945; Sinuhe egyptiläinen in Finnish) that was made into a mediocre spectacle film in the mid-fifties, but I think a later novel, called The Etruscan from 1958 is better. (The Egyptian handles more interesting political themes, though, while The Etruscan is more on the mystic side.)

The Etruscan's original title, Turms, kuolematon, means "Turms, the Immortal". Turms is a young man who's found mysteriously lying outside a temple somewhere near Efesos, in Turkey, with no memories about his past life. He sets the temple on fire, flees and gets out on an adventure through all the Mediterranean Sea, getting strange feelings about this nature as one who can't die. He gets involved in piracy in the Mediterranean Sea and fights off some bad-ass Carthageans. Finally he ends up with the Etruscans, the strange and happy tribe of which little is now known. The book takes place in 400 B.C.

If you have patience enough for a 700-page novel and a taste for grand adventure, grab this: there are some really good battle scenes and even some sword and sorceryish moments. The prose is better than in The Egyptian which I found overwritten. A word of warning: there are also some long, philosophical moments, but then again you can't have everything.

The amnesia plot brings mind one of my favourite topics: the themes and tropes of film noir of the fourties and fifties were actually prevalent throughout the whole Western culture after the World War II. This is clear also in Waltari's other works, especially The Egyptian, in which Sinuhe's own innocence brings doom upon his head.

There seems to have been a Pocket Book edition of The Etruscan, which is abridged (I think the hardcover is also abridged). For all I know, shortening the book may've done good to The Etruscan, since I also find it too long and a bit formless in places (at times it's perfectly clear that Waltari didn't do much revising). The hardcover copies by Putnam seem to be pricey.

[My entry to Patti Abbott's great Friday's Forgotten Books series. Hey, it's still Friday in Finland!]