Ed Gorman's Blog, page 75

Why today’s most exciting crime novelists are women from Salon

SUNDAY, SEP 7, 2014 05:00 PM CDT
Why today’s most exciting crime novelists are womenThe hard-boiled detective tradition is getting tired. Here are some genre- and gender-bending alternativesLAURA MILLER   Follow
 Share 157   261      17    TOPICS: MYSTERIES, CRIME FICTION, LAURA LIPPMAN, KATE ATKINSON, TANA FRENCH, LAUREN BEUKES,SARA GRAN, WOMEN WRITERS, BOOKS, FICTION, EDITOR'S PICKS, ENTERTAINMENT NEWS “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean,” Raymond Chandler wrote in “The Simple Art of Murder,” which could be called the manifesto of the American hard-boiled detective novel. This man, the detective, “is neither tarnished nor afraid. … He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it and certainly without saying it.”It’s a worthy aesthetic, and Chandler was certainly the master of it, even back in 1944, when he wrote “The Simple Art of Murder.” The essay was a repudiation of the English school of murder mystery — best represented by Agatha Christie — or, more specifically, the countless American knockoffs thereof, genteel, stilted puzzles set in “Miami hotels and Cape Cod summer colonies,” rather than manor houses. Chandler held up Dashiell Hammett as the exemplar of what he referred to as the new “realist” school of crime fiction, yet Chandler was Hammett’s equal, if not his superior in the style that would also become known as noir.Still, every genre gets tired after too much repetition; take the western, which (although Chandler doesn’t acknowledge as much) provided the pattern for the hard-boiled detective novel. I may not ever get bored with Chandler, but too often lately, I’ve picked up a much-praised new crime novel to read about some tough, tough guy, usually in a car, with a gun. Pretty soon will be more guns, some fistfights, assorted criminals exchanging snarling threats of various degrees of scariness and wit.If the hero is police, then he’ll be the departmental maverick, too honest and decent to engage in office politics yet laser-focused on nailing his perp. Often there’s a murdered relative, almost always female, to juice this crusader’s motivation. His marriage will have fallen apart because he’s too stoic and too devoted to the Job to sustain a real relationship. But he’ll be devoted to his kid and a one-woman romantic at heart, even if hardly anybody ever gets near that heart. He’ll brood a lot and go home alone. He’ll have a temper, but a righteous one. He might drink too much or be too ready with his fists, but that just makes him a bit of antihero, that familiar figure from cable TV dramas. And he won’t even necessarily be American; the Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole might have been ordered up from whatever factory cranks out these guys.for the rest go here:http://www.salon.com/2014/09/07/why_t...

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

Dog 'cleaned' in washing machine sparks anger...

Police arrest Delaware teens seen in online video beating mentally
challenged man

Donald Trump: ‘Political correctness’ made NFL go easy on
woman-punching player
(huh?

Fox hosts giggle that NFL player’s abused girlfriend should learn to
‘take the stairs’
(there was a camera on the elevator when he punched her and knocked her
out)

Wash. state megachurch closes branches after founder is caught calling
women ‘penis homes’

BUS BANDIT:Pajama-Clad 9-Year-Old Steals City Bus

Naked, Stick-Wielding Carjacker Gets Hogtied By Highway Drivers: Cops

John Oliver: Massive student debt is just like an STD, it ‘will follow
you the rest of your life’

Man Jailed After Calling, Texting Ex-Girlfriend 21,807 Times

WATCH: NYPD officers take turns beating Bronx man after search turns up nothing
(finest cops money can buy)

Syracuse University soccer player suspended over video calling
classmate ‘f*ggot-*ss n*gger’

Texas boy shoots himself in the face with a shotgun during hunting trip

CHECK HER PRIVILEGE
White teen in BMW hits three cars, assaults cop in Pennsylvania and
doesn’t get shot

Israeli cult ‘brainwashed’ Jewish women into having sex with non-Jews
for ‘redemption’

Democrats to observe one-year anniversary of ‘Bridgegate’ with ad
poking Christie

Teacher Pleads Guilty After Giving Student Lap Dance In Class

Suspected Drunk Trespasser Proves He's Superman By Jumping Out Window

Facebook Photos Show Inmate Drinking, Getting High In Prison

FORGOTTEN SUSPENSE: PATROL by PHILIP MACDONALD

FORGOTTEN SUSPENSE: PATROL by PHILIP MACDONALD 
 by Fred Bloseer
Philip MacDonald is justly acclaimed for THE RASP and other novels from the pre-World War II Golden Age of detective fiction.  Outside the mystery genre, PATROL (published in the U.K. in 1927, American edition following in 1928) was equally popular in its day, but probably little read now.  While the details of the story firmly place it in the realm of historical fiction for today’s readers, its geopolitical underpinnings still resonate with the catastrophic events in the Middle East that unfold daily on the TV and web news outlets. 
“A romance of the desert.”   So says the blurb on the dust jacket of the U.S. First Edition from Harper & Brothers.  I wonder how many unwary readers in the 1920s, on the strength of that description, expected to plunge into an exotic, Boy’s Own adventure story along the lines of THE FOUR FEATHERS and BEAU GESTE?  If any there were, they must have been startled to encounter, instead, a stark, unremittingly downbeat suspense novel about a doomed British cavalry patrol in the hostile Mesopotamian desert during World War I.  
Now, the area is called Iraq.  Then, it was part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, a battleground where the British Army fought the Turkish allies of Germany, with raiders from hostile Arab tribes hovering to pick off outriders and stragglers for loot and sport.  MacDonald himself served in that theater, in a war where tanks and jeeps had not yet made mounted reconnaissance obsolete, so the novel has the gritty air of authenticity.
MacDonald sets an immediate mood of danger and disquiet.  An Arab sniper has just shot dead the lieutenant commanding the 10-man cavalry patrol.  The troopers gather around the body, less distressed by the officer’s death (“Muriel’s got his,” one of them says dismissively) than by the dilemma in which the death leaves them.
Command of the troop falls to the Sergeant (no name given).  The lieutenant knew the purpose of their patrol, and where they would rejoin their main detachment, but no one else was privy to the orders.  “I know the Brigade was movin’ yesterday after we left ‘em,” the Sergeant muses.  “I know we were to join ‘em.  But I don’t know which way they were goin’, or where we were to strike up with ‘em.”
Lost and isolated, stalked by the unseen enemy, the patrol holes up in an oasis as the Sergeant puzzles what to do next.  A green recruit, Pearson, assigned sentry duty, is knifed to death during the night, and all the horses are stolen.  Tempers flare under stress, and the soldiers fight among themselves.  The Sergeant dispatches two of the men to cross the desert as best they can and bring help.  Another trooper becomes increasingly unhinged with religious mania.  One by one, the soldiers are picked off by the lurking enemy.
MacDonald relates the story in brittle, clipped sentences that have the terse style of an unadorned military report.  Death strikes suddenly and brutally.  The soldiers have disparate backgrounds -- Cockney, Irish, Jewish, and so on -- and the growing tension mostly divides them further rather than bringing them closer together in their common predicament.  There’s a fair amount of talk about women and sex.  One of the troopers remembers the prostitutes in the red-light district of one of his past billets, Bombay:    “[T]hat first one, she was Kelly’s Eye . . . All the time I kept thinkin’: bloody queer to find ‘er there . . .didn’t seem to fit like . . . Funny colour she was, too: sorta cross between coffee and lemon.  Young, too! in Blighty you’d have put ‘er down as eighteen . . . s’pose she was on’y about fourteen reely,”
As that quote suggests, MacDonald writes the characters’ dialogue mostly in phonetic dialect, a common style then.  The soldiers also slather their sentences with the British slang of the day, and with Arabic and Hindi words.  Sometimes, MacDonald represents an obscene word with a string of dashes.  All of this is not as daunting as it may seem.  MacDonald provides a handy glossary at the end of the book, and once you get into the rhythm of the dialect, the sentences flow along relatively easily.
Under the lingo and patois, the dialogue has a modern bluntness.  I was reminded of the sharp, cynical dialogue by today’s premiere war novelist, Derek Robinson (GOSHAWK SQUADRON, PIECE OF CAKE), in an exchange between the jaded sophisticate Brown and the religious zealot Sanders:
“ ‘Brown,’ said Sanders at last: his voice was controlled now; low and urgent.  ‘Brown, have you ever heard of Christ?’
“ ‘Christ? Oh yes,’ Brown said.  ‘Name’s often mentioned.’  He lay once more upon his belly  and was elaborating his design in the earth.
“ ‘Brown,’ said the low, almost choking voice, ‘He was the Son of God.’
“ ‘Not necessarily,’ said Brown.  ‘Most improbable.’ ”
There were two movie versions.  The second, released in 1934, was titled THE LOST PATROL, directed by John Ford, with Victor McLaglen as the Sergeant, Reginald Denny as Brown, Boris Karloff as Sanders, Douglas Walton as Pearson, and the cast rounded out by Wallace Ford, Alan Hale Sr., Billy Bevan, and other 1930s character actors.  The casting is good but Ford never fully captures the abrasive tension between the characters that MacDonald described.  No one talks about relations with fourteen-year-old prostitutes.  Come to think of it, that line probably wouldn’t pass today’s censors either.  

Cool interview with that most excellent writer Jay Bonansinga

The Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe: Jay BonansingaTOR.COM















Welcome back to The Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe, a recurring series here on Tor.com featuring some of our favorite science fiction and fantasy authors, artists, and others!Today we’re joined by Jay Bonansinga, New York Timesbestselling author of twenty books, including the Bram Stoker finalist The Black Mariah (1994), the International Thriller Writers Award finalist Shattered (2007), and the wildly popular Walking Dead novels (based on the original series created by Robert Kirkman). Jay’s work has been translated into eleven languages, and he has been called “one of the most imaginative writers of thrillers” byChicago Tribune. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife, the photographer Jill Norton, and his two teenage boys.Jay’s upcoming novel,  The Walking Dead: Descent , follows the events of The Fall of the Governor, and Lilly Caul’s struggles to rebuild Woodbury after the Governor’s shocking demise. Look for it October 14th from Thomas Dunne Books!Please relate one fact about yourself that has never appeared anywhere else in print or on the Internet.I wrote a speech once for the CEO of Phillip Morris tobacco company—it was a nightmare. Maybe my taste for horror was honed by that experience.You wake up tomorrow morning as the antagonist in your book series: what do you do to change the ending for yourself?Oh… uh… wow. The villains in The Walking Dead books are nasty, nasty, nasty… they don’t deserve happy endings. I would probably change the ending to me killing myself out of shame and guilt.What is your favorite short story?“Paladin of the Lost Hour” by Harlan Ellison—a moving parable that makes me cry every time I re-read it, which is often, it inspires me.Describe your favorite place to read/write?A cool little Bohemian dive just north of Chicago called Bagel Art.If you could choose your own personal theme song to play every time you enter a room, what would you pick?“Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk. Monk was an insane genius, and I put him in the same league as Beethoven or Mozart. But he was also almost childlike in his artistic choices. One of my inspirations.Do you have a favorite unknown author?Thomas Tessier, Jeff Osier, David Schow, Martin Mundt, Nancy Collins, and Joe Lansdale.Battle to the death, which weapon do you choose: A) Phaser, B) Lightsaber, or C) Wand?Phaser.Do you have a favorite phrase?Favorite preface: “I know this is going to sound crazy but…”Strangest thing you’ve learned while researching a book?The quickest way to kill somebody (which I won’t divulge for obvious reasons).If you could name a planet after anyone (other than yourself), who would you choose and why?Planet Jilly. (My wife is the coolest person I ever met)Name your favorite monster from fiction, film, TV, or any other pop culture source.Hannibal Lecter.If you had to choose one band or artist to provide the official soundtrack to your new book, who would it be?Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails.for the rest go here:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/09/the-...

Dick Lochte is writing a mystery-Brash Books

Ed here: Dick Lochte is one of the most readable and inventive crime writers of our era. Brash Books is making his work available again.
Dick Lochte:My guess is that most writers become novelists in the usual way. Their muse convinces them to buy writing software. They use it to complete a manuscript. They’re lucky enough to find an agent and an editor who like what they’ve done. That’s not how I did it. The words “Chapter One,” hadn’t even occurred to me when I parlayed several essays that appeared in the Los Angeles Times into a weekly column in the paper’s Book Review section.The editor of the Book Review, Digby Diehl, had established a policy of running a short biographical line at the bottom of each article. I suggested “Dick Lochte is working on a screenplay,” which was the truth. But Digby didn’t like that.“Everybody out here is working on a screenplay,” he groused. “This is a BOOK review. Aren’t you working on a book?”I told him I could be, adding, “Make it a mystery,” since that was, and is, my favorite genre.So, every week my column was tagged, “Dick Lochte is writing a mystery novel.”About six months passed and I was surprised to receive a phone call from Alfred Knopf editor Ashbel Green who was in Southern California to meet with his writer Ken Millar (Ross Macdonald). Digby had mentioned my “mystery novel” and he was eager to see it.I explained that the manuscript wasn’t quite ready, but that I’d be happy to send it to him as soon as it was. The moment I replaced the phone is when I started working on a storyline that I hoped to turn into a 70,000-word novel. I was a professional journalist. I figured I’d knock it out in a month. It took me that long just to finish the outline. Which I didn’t even use, by the way. I spent the better part of a year writing the manuscript for Sleeping Dog, which I then placed it in the hands of a top NYC agent. He sent it to Ashbel Green at Knopf and . . . Ashbel Green sent it back, saying it was too talky. I’d barely had time to slump in my chair when the agent called me with a very nice offer from Arbor House. It wasn’t Knopf, but I wound up a published mystery writer, sharing Arbor House’s fall catalog with the likes of Elmore Leonard.Sleeping Dog and Laughing Dog  are comedy-noir thrillers featuring the team Leo (The Bloodhound) Bloodworth, a hard-drinking middle-aged Los Angeles private eye suffering from hypertension and a low tolerance for precocious teenagers, and Serendipity Dahlquist, a bright and strong-willed schoolgirl of fourteen who’s been raised by her actress grandmother. The books are narrated by both Leo and Serendipity. The justification for what was then a fairly unique device was that they each wrote separate accounts of their adventures that a bottom-line publisher insisted be jumbled together. I like to think of it as a mashup of Raymond Chandler and Judy Blume. Humorous, but with some pretty dark elements.Sleeping Dog won the Nero Wolfe Award and was short-listed for every other crime award that year. The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association named it as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century.Laughing Dog went into four printings. I should note that of all the covers the books have had in this country and internationally, the ones gracing the Brash editions are by far the best I’ve seen.

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

Kentucky man pours gas on Hispanic neighbor’s house: ‘KKK wants you to
burn’

Police detain Rep. Gwen Moore at fast food workers protest outside
Wisconsin McDonald’s

OOPS: College Exams Already Had All the Answers

Surgery on Ailing Great Dane Yields 43 ½ Socks

Woman Accused of Shoplifting $144 in Eye Shadow

Cobra That Bit Dog on the Loose in SoCal Neighborhood

Judge Orders Attorney to Wear Socks in Courtroom

Fake Massachusetts License Plate Fools No One

Penn State Student Gains Rep as Squirrel Whisperer
(bet he gets the babes)

POLICE: Utah Suspect Swallows Stolen Ring

‘Duck Dynasty’ star urges Christians to convert atheist friends with
Nicolas Cage movie

Baton Rouge cop resigns after he’s caught texting desire to ‘pull a
Ferguson’ on ‘n*ggers’

Florida school forces new student to wear ‘shame suit’ after skirt
deemed too short

Lawsuit: Teacher fired after being forced to raise grades for college
president’s lovers

Ted Nugent uses Facebook to warn of ’4th world allahpuke zombie’
attacks on 9/11/14

Cops detain man 8 days for posting band’s lyrics about school shooting
on Facebook

Christian activist calls for holy war: ‘Islam has no place in civilized
society’

Day care that duct-taped kids to floor may have withheld water to avoid
diaper changes

Colorado GOP: Demon-obsessed ex-Navy chaplain has ‘no business in
public office’

Artist intends to display hacked Jennifer Lawrence nudes in Florida art
exhibit

Kirkus reviews Raiders On The Storm

This sequel to Sam McCain's eighth case, Ticket to Ride (2010), originally announced as his last, has got to be great news for fans of the sharpest investigator in yesteryear Iowa.An accident's sent Sam back home from Fort Hood and boot camp. Though he's spent months recovering in a hospital, he's one of the luckiest young men of 1971. He didn't make it to Vietnam; he didn't come home in a body bag or minus his legs, like Greg Egan, or minus an arm, like Ted Franks. And he didn't accidentally kill a Vietnamese girl like Will Cullen, who's retreated into a trauma zone all his own. When Will joins John Kerry in opposing the war, his position puts him squarely in the path of Steve Donovan's fists on the night Donovan's patron, hawkish Sen. Patrick O'Shay, presents him as a promising Congressional candidate. The next morning, Donovan is found beaten to death, and in the blink of an eye, deceptively friendly Police Chief Foster ("call me Paul") arrests Will for murder. Sam, who's as certain as Will's wife, Karen, that Foster's holding the wrong man, turns over other rocks in Black River Falls to see what's hiding under them. His suspicions fall on Lon Anders, Donovan's rapacious new business partner, and on Valerie Donovan, a widow who's one piece of work. As usual, there are plenty of other guilty secrets to discover. The final revelation, however, will take most readers by surprise, even if some of them are still scratching their heads after the curtain comes down. The Vietnam War era puts the damper on Gorman's usual generosity in strewing period detail but engages a deeper passion: "The war was not only destroying people overseas, it was destroying them back in my hometown." 

headlines that shouldn't be true but are

Pentagon gave cops 12,000 bayonets
WTF?

Fox Panelist: Rape Victims Have A 'Personal Responsibility' To Prevent
it

Texas cops shoot mentally ill man armed with pellet gun until ‘he had
no face’

Minnesota cop: Decapitating 5-year-old boy’s pet chicken was ‘like
taking care of any rodent’

Oklahoma GOP to Christians: Be ‘wary’ of Muslim Americans — they’ll
‘decapitate you’

Armed Border Militia Mistakenly Confronts Group Of Bat Conservationists
(yes they are brainiacs)

Classmates dump urine, feces, and spit on unwitting autistic teen in
ice bucket ‘prank’

New study finds 99.999 percent certainty humans are causing global
warming

Conservative site wipes Michael Brown story after murder charges prove
untrue

NYC cops arrest human rights lawyer waiting outside restaurant while
her kids used restroom

Man Stabs Roommate For Being Loud During Threesome: Cops

Man Shoots Himself Hiding Gun During Traffic Stop: Cops

Walmart Robbery Suspect Leaves Behind 1-Year-Old Girl

Vegas Trio Hid Stolen Rolexes In Vaginas: Cops

Federal judge upholds ban on gay marriage while sneering at other
courts as a ‘pageant of empathy’
(claims it leads straight to incest-huh?)

Cops Say Couple High On Meth Posed For Selfies With Dead Friend
(weekend with bernie lives)

Sandy Hook 'Truther' Tells Mother Her Daughter Never Existed

NY Senate candidate praises Ugandan anti-gay law: ‘Godly people are in
government’

Ohio’s attorney general fights release of video from Walmart shooting:
‘Trust the system’
(flat out cold blooded murder-several witnesses)

Pennsylvania teen in KKK hood arrested for harassing black college
students

Pat Robertson to 80-year-old who can’t pay bills: Keep tithing, get a
job, sell your stuff on eBay
(this is one of the richest people in our country--what a pig)

Fox News guest: Medical use of marijuana creates ‘criminal minds’ in
poor people

Stephen Colbert mocks Fox pundits for wishing foreigners ruled America

Ohio police charge ex-Navy SEAL for lying about being shot by three
racist black men

Hard Case Crime to publish lost Gore Vidal crime novel

LOST GORE VIDAL CRIME NOVEL DISCOVERED

Hard Case Crime to Publish THIEVES FALL OUT in 2015 –First Publication in 60 Years, First Ever Under Author’s Real Name
New York, NY; London, UK (August 14, 2014) – Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of vintage-style crime fiction from editor Charles Ardai and publisher Titan Books, announced today that it has discovered a lost pulp crime novel by Gore Vidal, one that has been unavailable for more than 60 years and has never been published under the author’s real name. THIEVES FALL OUT, the story of an American trying to smuggle an ancient treasure out of Egypt on the eve of a bloody revolution, will be published in hardcover in April 2015.
In 1953, when he was 28 years old and already enjoying the combination of literary esteem and scandal that would mark his career as one of the major authors and intellectual figures of the 20th century, Gore Vidal wrote a pulp crime novel under the name “Cameron Kay” (the name of his great-uncle, a Texas attorney general).  THIEVES FALL OUT has never been reprinted.
“This novel provides a delicious glimpse into the mind of Gore Vidal in his formative years,” said Charles Ardai. “By turns mischievous and deadly serious, Vidal tells the story of a man caught up in events bigger than he is, a down-on-his-luck American in Cairo at a time when revolution is brewing and heads are about to roll. THIEVES FALL OUT also offers a startling glimpse of Egypt in turmoil – despite having been written over half a century ago, it feels as current as the news streaming from that region today.”
Gore Vidal was one of America’s greatest and most controversial writers.  The author of twenty-three novels, five plays, three memoirs, numerous screenplays and short stories, and well over two hundred essays, he received the National Book Award in 1993.
THIEVES FALL OUT will feature a new cover painting by Glen Orbik, one of Hard Case Crime’s most acclaimed painters. Orbik’s previous covers for Hard Case Crime include JOYLAND by Stephen King and BINARY by Michael Crichton (writing as John Lange).
About Hard Case Crime
Called “the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade” by Neal Pollack in The Stranger, Hard Case Crime has been nominated for and/or won numerous honors since its inception including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Barry, and the Spinetingler Award.  The series’ books have been adapted for television and film, with two features currently in development at Universal Pictures, a TV pilot based on Max Allan Collins’ Quarry novels in development by Cinemax, and the TV series Haven going into its fifth season on SyFy.  Recent Hard Case Crime titles include Stephen King’s #1 New York Times bestseller, Joyland; James M. Cain’s lost final novel, The Cocktail Waitress; a series of eight lost novels written by Michael Crichton under the pseudonym “John Lange”; and Brainquake, the final novel of writer/filmmaker Samuel Fuller. Hard Case Crime is published through a collaboration between Winterfall LLC and Titan Publishing Group. www.hardcasecrime.com
About Titan Publishing Group
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981, comprising three divisions: Titan Books, Titan Magazines/Comics and Titan Merchandise.  Titan Books, nominated as Independent Publisher of the Year 2011, has a rapidly growing fiction list encompassing original fiction and reissues, primarily in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror, steampunk and crime. Recent crime and thriller acquisitions include Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins’ all-new Mike Hammer novels, the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton, and the entire backlist of the Queen of Spy Writers, Helen MacInnes.  Titan Books also has an extensive line of media- and pop culture-related non-fiction, graphic novels, and art and music books. The company is based at offices in London, but operates worldwide, with sales and distribution in the U.S. and Canada being handled by Random House.  www.titanbooks.com  

Len Levinson

http://glorioustrash.blogspot.com/

          Glorious Trash
Trawling the depths of forgotten fiction, films, and beyond, with yer pal, Joe Kenney

Ed here: Reading Joe Kenny's Glorious Trash has become one of my favorite past times.

Joe reviews all kinds of forgotten items and uses the only honest measure you can--does this piece achieve what it set out to so? A surfer adventure can't be expected to provide the same nuance as A Farewell To Arms and Joe doesn't expect it to. It's a cool if you're interested in the lower rungs on the publishing ladder. A rung I put my size twelve on many times.

Len Levinson is pro who has managed to survive so many publishing upheavels he probably can't remember them all. He's a good solid pro and sometimes a little more; I enjoy his books. And I'm also fascinated with his autobiographical pieces. The one below is an especially good one. Based on what I've read from him so far I'd have to  say that he's one hell of a nice guy in addition to being a master craftsman. Here's Lev:

Hype! was intended to be my big breakout novel. I wrote it after the success of The Bar Studs which sold around 95,000 copies. I wanted to build on the success of The Bar Studs and perhaps sell 250,000 copies. Someone reading this might be tempted to comment: “What a crass, mercenary writer. No wonder he failed. Evidently all the wretch cares about is money.” 
Please allow me to point out that I never was independently wealthy. No devoted wife was supporting me. I didn’t have a day job such as teaching English at a prestigious New England liberal arts college. I was never good-looking or charming enough to be a gigolo. And NYC landlords have this thing about the rent. They want it or they’ll throw your ass into the street without any qualms. 
No one becomes a novelist to make money. People write novels because they’re driven. And perhaps I was more driven than most because I’ve always been and continue to be mildly to moderately nuts. 
I wondered what to write after The Bar Studs. But I didn’t need to wonder long. Because the premise had been in the forefront of my mind for a long time, a Harold Robbins-type show biz novel based on my ten years as press agent in the entertainment industry. I’d worked for Paramount Pictures, 20th Century-Fox and a PR agency named Solters and Sabinson, which means I’d seen the underside of show biz, not the glossed over crap one finds in the media. 
I’m not Harold Robbins. He and I have experienced different facets of the biz. We have different worldviews. I don’t even try to imitate other writers because I know it’s impossible. I am what I am for better or worse. 
I wrote Hype! in a rackety cabin without electricity or plumbing in a remote forest in New Brunswick Canada, around 40 miles north of the provincial capital, Frederickton. What the hell was I doing in such an unlikely place? Let me take you back to circa 1974. I was living in Greenwich Village and my second wife was driving me out of my mind. I thought it might be wise to put a national boundary between us. My old buddy Bill Kotzwinkle and his wife Elizabeth had relocated to that part of Canada. Both were writers and we understood each other. That’s how I ended up in a rundown cabin, sitting beside a wood stove, writing on a manual typewriter during a fierce Canadian winter, using an outhouse. Sometimes I felt like the Jewish Jack London. 
I believed that I saw NYC more clearly in that cabin than when I was living in NYC and drowning in it. Distance and a change of surroundings provided an interesting new perspective that I hoped would add substance and verisimilitude to the novel. 
To the best of my recollection, I wrote The Bar Studs the first year I was there, Hype! the second year, and The Bandit And The Ballerina the third year. The latter never was published and I don’t know what happened to the manuscript. 
Anyway, Hype! is about a hustling unscrupulous press agent based loosely on me. His boss, Larry Walters, was based loosely on my last boss Lee Solters, one of the great legendary press agents. If you don’t believe me, check Wikipedia. Other characters also were based loosely on real people, some of them very famous.  
All my churning emotions, feelings and observations about show biz were poured into this morally atrocious novel. I held nothing back. Let me be clear: I had seen close-up and personal the squalid underbelly of show biz in addition to glitter and glitz. I met big stars who turned out to be ordinary screwed-up people like you and me, but they were rich and loved by millions. I also met many egomaniacs and once worked for a producer/director named Radley Metzger whose arrogance and cruelty were almost beyond human comprehension.*  I also ran into lots of struggling would-be stars who never made it and had to live with the bitter taste of failure. 
I called the novel The Shucksters. After completing and editing the text, I mailed it to my then literary agent, the very wonderful Elaine Markson. Eventually she sold it to Fawcett, same company that published The Bar Studs. Fawcett changed the title to Hype! My editor Harvey Gardner explained that most Americans probably didn’t know what a shuckster was. I wasn’t very happy with the murky cover that didn’t stand out against other novels in bookstores. The graphic artist used a strange kind of typeface that made Hype! look like Hypel. Talks with Harvey left me with the impression that Fawcett execs hadn’t liked the novel. After several months it became clear that Hype!was a big flop. I think it only sold around 20,000 copies, very little for a mass market paperback.It was one of the greatest professional disappointments of my life, but I didn’t realize that even greater disappointments were to come. 
Joe Kenney asked me to write something to accompany his review of Hype!. So I read the novel for the first time since completing the manuscript circa 1975. 
To my immense satisfaction, I thought it very good and quite possibly one of the great American show biz novels of all time. However I must admit it’s as sleazy as the subject itself. And it’s also kind of vicious, definitely not a pretty novel. Evidently I was an angry man when I wrote it, making uncomplimentary observations about all sorts of people and institutions, and especially contemptuous of the hypocrisies of the then-new Women’s Liberation Movement, which probably explains why Fawcett execs, many of them women, disliked Hype!. Such a novel probably could never be published in today’s politically-correct climate. 
Hype! was one of my early novels, written before I really understood my craft, not that I’m such a great expert now. Its worst flaw, in addition to my nasty point of view, was too much description of unimportant activity such as characters walking here and there, or taking elevators , riding in taxicabs, or eating a corned beef sandwich. 
Not long after writing Hype!, I had a conversation with my buddy Bill Kozwinkle. He’d noticed and disapproved of my pointless descriptions of activity, and gave me advice which I wrote into my notebook as he spoke. He said, “Fiction isn't a movie. You needn't show every movement and twitch. Fiction is the realm of inner mind, the second level of reflection.” 
I really thought about that comment and took it to heart. It made a big difference in how I wrote afterwards. For context, Bill Kotzwinkle wrote what some critics consider the greatest novel of 60s, The Fan Man, now available as an e-book. He also wrote the novelization of E.T. The Extraterrestrial, best-selling novel internationally of the 80s. 
One of my readers informed me recently that paperback copies ofHype! are selling for $400 on the internet. It’s not available yet as an e-book. I’m not gonna pay to e-publish it myself. That’s not my game. If somebody else wants to e-publish it, he or she will find me most reasonable.
*Radley was no saint, but did make some very sexy movies. My favorite was Therese And Isabelle. And there are two sides to every story. If you asked Radley about me, he probably wouldn't remember me, or would call me incompetent, although I'm the guy who arranged for him to lecture at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, which probably was the high point of his life.Posted by Joe Kenney at 6:30 AM 3 comments: 

Labels: Book Reviews, Fawcett Books, Leonard Levinson