Friday's Forgotten Books: Contrary Pleasure by John D. MacDonald

Aside from the Travis McGee series, The Executioners (Cape Fear), and A Flash of Green, many of the John D. MacDonald books are difficult to find. That’s a shame because MacDonald is a great storyteller and his distinctive style is nothing short of exceptional.

I found a copy of Contrary Pleasure (1954) at a secondhand store. Oddly, a saucy blonde who has nothing to do with the story graces the cover.

The plot revolves around Ben Delevan, reluctant patriarch of the Delevan family and president of the Stockton Knitting Company. At 50 years of age, he laments that he has spent the majority of his life within the “worn and ugly walls” of the manufacturing company, inherited upon his father’s death. He sees a way out when a proposal for a merger comes his way, but guilt rises when he considers the impact on his relatives who have come to depend on the family-run business.

Contrary Pleasure is a soap opera similar to Dallas. Substitute Delevan for Ewings and knitting for oil and we’d have the screenplay for the oft-mentioned Dallas movie. The difference is, in MacDonald’s hands, the story is powerful and the writing poetic.

In typical MacDonald fashion, his flawed main character philosophically wonders about:

“...a civilization where this delicately engineered river of asphalt had become too cramped, too slow, too dangerous. Then it would become secondary and the bright plastic would fade and the light tubes fail and fabrics with catchy chemical names would flap in the night wind off the marsh.

It would die then, but without grace. Not the way the old city had died. The old city died in the way a forgotten doll is found up there behind trunks with rounded tops, wooden legs carved with care. And this would die like a tin toy, stamped into the ground and rusting.”

MacDonald said: "Every writer is going to put into the mouths of the people he wants you to respect opinions that he thinks are respectable. It's that simple." In the Travis McGee novels (I am a big fan), a lot of the eco sermonizing was a little obtrusive but here it works. What I respect about John D.'s environmentalism is that it wasn't meaningless diatribe but genuine passion and this was fifty years before it was the “in thing.”

Each of the character's lives is told in captivating detail. The ending is satisfying but perhaps could have been a little stronger. Even so, this book was a delight to read because MacDonald, in the words of Stephen King, is "the great entertainer of our age." I’m sure you will enjoy Contrary Pleasure.

Faust (1926)

I only recently watched the remarkable silent film, Faust, directed by F.W. Murnau, and I’m not sure what took me so long to see it considering I really enjoyed his earlier film Nosferatu (1922).

Faust is based on a German legend about a man whose good intentions become his downfall after he bargains with the devil. In Murnau’s poetic masterpiece, I was struck by the outstanding visual images he was able to create with the limited technology of the time. In a most unforgettable scene, the daunting figure of Mephisto (Emil Jannings), wings outstretched, looms over the miniature town planting the seeds of a plague knowing that Faust (Gösta Ekman) will set out to cure the people. The use of contrast between light and shadows, camera angles, imposed images and multiple shots all contribute to the exquisite special effects that were paramount to Murnau’s perfection. Some may find the sets and the imagery to be outdated, but as Roger Ebert wrote, “The world of Faust is never intended to define a physical universe, but is a landscape of nightmares.” While the music featured in this version is not the original score, it’s quite effective if a bit overextended by the end.



I’m a huge history buff, and anytime I watch a movie or read a book that I really enjoy, I have a compulsory urge to dig into the circumstances of what brought that particular piece to fruition and also the background of the creator... maybe I should have been a biographer.

Some interesting highlights from Murnau’s life: Faust was his last German film before heading to America. He went on to direct Sunrise (1927), which the British Film Institute named the seventh-best film in the history of motion pictures in 2002. Murnau did not see the premiere of his last film Tabu (1931); he died the week before in a car accident. Only 11 people attended the funeral, including Greta Garbo, Emil Jannings and Fritz Lang. Garbo requested a deathmask of Murnau be made, which she kept on her desk during her years in Hollywood.

Faust has certainly renewed my interest in the very talented visionary, F.W.Murnau.

Pulp Spotlight: Norbert Davis

Norbert Davis is one of the great pulp writers whose name has fallen by the wayside, overshadowed by giants like Hammett and Chandler. But thanks to Otto Penzler's The Black Lizard Big Book Of Pulps, two great stories by Davis have been revived, The Price of a Dime and You'll Die Laughing, and received with great enthusiasm.

Norbert Davis, sitting, right;
Dashiell Hammett, standing, right;
Raymond Chandler, standing, second from left.

Penzler explains in the forward to Dime that Black Mask editor, Joseph T. Shaw, published only five stories by Davis because Shaw didn't appreciate Davis's Thurber-esque approach to hard boiled fiction. Yet, it’s the whimsy mixed with violence that gives Norbert Davis his signature style. A perfect example is in Sally’s in the Alley (1943) where the protagonist, detective Doan, gets into a tussle with a good-looking Hollywood actress, and her concerned agent calls out:

“Hit her in the stomach!”
“What?” said Doan, startled.
The shadow jiggled both fists in an agony of apprehension. “Not in the face! Don’t hit her face! Thirty-five hundred dollars a week!”

But Davis also proves he can keep up with Hammett and Chandler in stylistic cynicism. In Sally:

"The Mojave Desert at sunset looks remarkably like a painting of a sunset on the Mojave Desert which, when you come to think of it, is really quite surprising. Except that the real article doesn’t show such good color sense as the average painting does. Yellows and purples and reds and various other violent sub-units of the spectrum are splashed all over the sky, in a monumental exhibition of bad taste. They keep moving and blurring and changing around, like the color movies they show in insane asylums to keep the idiots quiet."

It’s this combination of gifted prose, hard boiled action, sprinkled with humor that has compelled me to read Davis. However it can be difficult to find his work. His major novels and the Max Latin anthology are available from Amazon and I have ordered some of them. Still, there are many short stories from Detective Tales, Black Mask, Phantom Detective, etc. that have yet to be compiled.

So what happened to Norbert Davis? Perhaps, success came a little too quickly and at an early age. Davis began selling stories while attending college at Stanford. During a writing class, an instructor criticized one of Norbert’s efforts to which Norbert stood up and countered, “Sir, this is a check for $200 from Argosy. The editor didn’t find much fault with my story.” But the professor derided Davis by saying they were there to learn ‘literary merit.’ When Davis finished college, he continued to pursue his writing. His stories quickly turned to gold and his potential seemed limitless. In the mid 1940s, he left the pulps and exclusively wrote for magazines like The Saturday Evening Post where he could make more money. But that success was short lived and the ‘slicks’ began rejecting his work. John D. MacDonald pointed out that even though Davis produced some exceptional writing, it was mixed with segments that were lackluster. He goes on to say Davis could have learned more if he had stuck longer with the pulps. [Rue Morgue Press]

From what I found online, there seems to be some confusion concerning his death, but it's known that Davis was going through several stressful events. He was grieving over his son who was stillborn, he was increasingly frustrated with his career and he had received a diagnosis of cancer. On July 28, 1949, Norbert Davis, the man who had brought humor to the world of hard boiled writing, committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. He was only forty years old.

Novels:
The Mouse in the Mountain (1943)
Sally's in The Alley (1943)
Oh, Murderer Mine (1946) ...
Murder Picks the Jury (1947; written with W. T. Ballard)

Collections:
The Adventures of Max Latin (1988)...

See also http://www.mysteryfile.com/NDavis/Wit.html

Tank Girl

My charmer in front of the Veterans Memorial in Elton, LA.

Batman: The Complete 1943 Movie Serial Collection

All the hype about Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight backfired on me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s a great film and I’m grateful Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan have rejuvenated a franchise that was in serious danger of imploding, but all the Ledger worshipping and long movie lines discouraged me.

Instead, I opted to reboot the Batman saga my own way by going back to the beginning. Not by the way of Michael Keaton or Adam West but further back to 1943 when Lewis Wilson played the Caped Crusader. If you haven’t ever heard of Wilson, don’t worry, neither had I, even though I was aware of the old serial.

My opinion is mixed; but first, my gripes, starting with the cover art for this 2005 dvd release. Columbia Pictures chose to use a scene that, while eye-catching, could very easily be confused with a current animated Batman feature. I realize their motive is to sell extra copies by creating a connection to the current Batman, but I feel this is a bit of a misrepresentation to snag the unsuspecting.

The biggest detraction is the racism. Early in the first episode, an empty Japanese community is explained as being evacuated by a “wise” (US) government. The main villain, a Japanese scientist who is working for Emperor Hirohito, has a henchmen turn on him, saying, "That's the kind of answer that fits the color of your skin." Other offensive remarks such as "shifty eyed Japs", "twisted oriental brains", and "squinty-eyes" are tossed in the narrative and dialogue. Considering the internment and treatment many Japanese Americans experienced during WWII, these cringe inducing moments might not be appropriate for younger viewers, and while I understand the film reflects the feelings of a nation drawn into WWII following Pearl Harbor, that doesn’t make it any easier to watch in 2008.

The low budget and formulaic plot add to the show’s silliness. All 15 episodes center on Batman and Robin thwarting the attempts of the one and only villain, Dr. Daka, who is out to annihilate America with his radium-powered death ray and a mind-control device to transform people into "zombie" servants. Columbia Pictures, with a reputation for being cheap, saved beaucoup bucks by buying a 1939 Cadillac for the Batmobile which doubles as Bruce Wayne's personal car – it’s surprising the Gotham City PD never made the connection. Not to mention the ill-fitting costumes of the dynamic duo are distracting, and in a hilarious scene, Batman loses his cape while fighting, but it mysteriously reappears before the fight is over.

On the positive side, this serial uses the old cliffhanger clichés relatively well. There is plenty of "fist-a-cuffs" with the bad guys and director Lambert Hillyer keeps the action brisk. Lewis Wilson makes a good first Batman/Bruce Wayne and at times he manages to rise above the campy action. One noteworthy item, this serial introduced the bat cave to the mythology, even though the fake bats on strings are a hoot.

True fans and collectors should not pass up this historical Batman but casual viewers should probably skip it and head off to the theater instead.

Friday’s Forgotten Books: A Trap for Fools

I'm in the process of polishing up my latest story and so my wife has kindly agreed to sub for me today on FFB.

A Trap for Fools by Amanda Cross

It’s actually been a number of years since I read A Trap for Fools. My grandmother, who is every bit the feminist and political activist, not to mention mystery enthusiast, tossed it in my lap and said, “You might like this.” As usual, she was right.

The story follows Kate Fansler, a professor of literature and amateur sleuth. With a lawsuit looming over the university after the peculiar death of an unpopular colleague, the administration looks to Kate to investigate. She soon begins to feel she’s been set up to fail, but she remains persistent in putting the pieces together, even if it means naming someone she cares about as a murderer.

Trap (1989) is the ninth out of fourteen Fansler mysteries written by Carolyn Gold Heilbrun. The Fansler character shares a lot in common with her creator, both being professors of literature and feminists. When the first Fansler novel, In the Last Analysis, was published in 1964, Heilbrun did not want to risk her untenured position at Columbia University, so she chose the pen name Amanda Cross. Heilbrun confirmed her identity only after she received tenure, the first woman in Columbia’s English Department to do so.

Despite critical acclaim and several awards, Heilbrun was only moderately successful. Some critics rebuff the Fansler series for spending too much time painting a cynical portrait of rivalry and sexism in academia at the expense of the plot. However, most of her books were well received by readers.

Sadly, Heilbrun committed suicide in 2003. According to her son, she was not ill, but felt that her life had been completed. In her final note, she wrote: "The journey is over. Love to all." In a 1997 book, The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty, she refers to taking her own life.

Maybe it’s because I read this when I was young and easily impressed or it’s my own affinity for the academic life that gave this novel much of its appeal, but from what I remember, it was an entertaining whodunit. If I ever get my belongings out of storage (long story), I plan to give this book another read. -- Denise M.

Western Pulp: Ranch Romances

At a flea market, I recently picked up several old EQMMs, AHMMs, and a lone copy of a western pulp, Ranch Romances. Not knowing much about the series, I decided to buy the old May 1966 issue.

Some of the longest running pulp fiction magazines were dedicated to the western story, and Ranch certainly fits into the longevity category. This western-romance hybrid was the first of its kind created by Harold Hersey in 1924 and survived into the early 1970s after converting to entirely reprint in 1967. It’s been described by some as the "last of the pulps."

This issue features six stories with the most recognizable name being Giles Lutz with his novelette No Second Chance. Will McCann's Ex-Gunman stands out as a typical example from the compilation in a Shane-esque tale of a family man who straps on his guns one last time to cleanup a corrupt town. I expected the stories to feature Harlequin style romance, but interestingly, none of these did. They were straight forward action pieces.

--No Second Chance, Giles A. Lutz
--Big Man From Montana, W.J. Reynolds
--The Sunday-Horse Rider, Gordon Redmond
--Ex-Gunman, Will McCann
--One Of The Wild Bunch, Lester W. Merha
--Wild Kid's Sister, Sally T. Smith