Ed Gorman's Blog, page 247

My apology to Bob Byrne; Forgotten Books: The Beats by Seymour Krim

My apologies to novelist Bob Byrne who wrote the fine Donald E. Westlake remebrance I wrote last night. I forgotten to list him as the writer. Very sorry, Bob.

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Forgotten Books: The Beats by Seymour Krim

To me Seymour Krim was one of the most interesting figures in the rise of Beat culture. He was more of a traditional literary man than a Beat and was thus able to be bridge between the followers of Jack Kerouac and the skeptics who disdained th...

Donald E. Westlake; End of It All

Ed here: This should've run a long time ago. Obviously. But it's still well worth reading.

Don Westlake, Amazing Writing Machine

On New Year's Eve, 2008, a friend of mine was on his way to dinner with his wife. He never made it. He complained of not feeling well, sat down on a bench, and then collapsed, dead of a heart attack.

Don Westlake was a writing machine, turning out 100 novels under ten pseudonyms. He's best known for the comic caper novels written under his own name and featuring a...

A surprise: Video Games $$$ decline

As someone who has never played a video game and who has no interest interest in doing, I was surprised to read the following article in The Wrap this morning. Surprised because I assumed that has the technology grew more and more technology video games' hold on the public would become indomitable. Will they rebound?

From The Wrap:

Video Game-Over? Industry Sales Plunge, While Innovation Beckons
Games saw a 9 percent sales plunge in '09, January was worse - some blame a music genre that has peak...

Smart Money

By coincidence yesterday afternoon I reread Lucky At Cards, one of Hard Case Crime's Lawrence Block reprints from the early sixties. I like books about poker, especially poker "mechanics," guys who cheat at the game and generally get away with it. Bloch creates a believable mechanic and the story has a number of nicely placed twists in the last act.

I mention coincidence because this morning Turner Classic Movies ran the 1931 Smart Money, a movie about a smart Greek barber named Nick Venezelo...

So you want to be a movie reviewer

Below, thanks to Box Office Mojo, we have the top three movie grossers of the weekend.

1 N Valentine's Day WB $52,410,000 -
2 N Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief Fox $31,100,000
3 N The Wolfman Uni. 30,627,000

And grossers is to have at least two meanings if you believe the movie reviewers. Valentine's Day was savaged far and wide as a cynical, empty, dull picture that only morons would see. Reviewers of The Wolfman couldn't even summon up much scorn for this--it was...

Hey baby how's about me'n you...1759 personal ads

The Daily Beast ran an interesting article yesterday on how personal ads date back to at least Colonial times. Here is an excerpt:


On April 23, 1722, the latest edition of the New England Courant hit the streets of Boston. There on page two, nestled in between an article about smallpox inoculation and news of a new Russian translation of the Bible, could be found the following ad:

--Any young Gentlewoman (Virgin or Widow) that is minded to dispose of her self in Marriage to a well-accomplish'd ...

A Woman of Affairs

As I've mentioned here several times, I've developed an interest in silent films and watch them whenever possible on Turner Classic Movies. This morning I saw a 1928 silent called A Woman of Affairs with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert and Lewis Stone and one John Mack Brown who would later be known in B-movie western circles as Johnny Mack Brown.

This is a film that must be held dear in the hearts of soap opera writers. Maybe even a benchmark of some kind. It starts over-the-top and works upward...

Knox Burger by Bob Byrne

A literary lion roars no more
The tough-guy image was misleading

Knox Burger, whose long career made him a legend in the literary world, died in New York City on January 4, 2010, at the age of 87. He was a colorful character who walked with a cane, a curmudgeon with a sharp sense of humor. Before the end, his worsening medical problems led him to remark: "My Golden Years are showing a bit of tarnish."

He was my literary agent. With his help I was able to avoid getting a real job for thirty-f...

Forgotten Books: Resurrection Row by Anne Perry

Forgotten Books: Resurrection Row by Anne Perry

Between the ages of ten and fourteen I probably read a hundred or more traditional mysteries. In those days, the Fifties, the type I preferred leaned heavily on plot and atmosphere. The ones that dealt with the mysteries of adulthood offered the titillation of modest sexual references but I was too young to understand the emotional underpinnings of all that smart intriguing adult behavior.

I've never outgrown the enjoyment some traditional myst...

Cinema Retro; Ron Goulart; End of It All

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One of my all-time favorite magazine scores again with issue #16. What I like especially about Cinema Retro is that its writers always find a new slant on material, even if it's a subject that's been dealt with many times before. This issue is packed with those kind of surprises. One caution: Cinema Retro frequently sells out. It's best to subscribe s you're sure not to miss an issue.



---------------------------Ron Goulart



The vigor and economy of Ron Goulart's writing has always fascinat...