Lost in Time and Space With Lefty Feep

by Robert Bloch, John Stanley (Editor), Kenn Davis (Illustrator)

Robert Bloch. SIGNED/LIMITED. Lost In Time and Space with Lefty Feep. Volume I. Pacifica: Creatures at Large, [1987]. First edition, limited to 250 numbered copies. Signed by Bloch. Octavo. 258 pages. Publisher's binding, dust jacket, and slipcase.

276 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1987

About the author

Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer. He was the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884, Chicago-1952, Chicago), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880, Attica, Indiana-1944, Milwaukee, WI), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.

Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle; Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent.

He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville, and tried to break into writing for nationally-known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the 1960's, he wrote 3 stories for Star Trek.

Reviews

[Karl]

This slip cased hard cover is numbered 153 of 250 copies published and is signed by Robert Bloch.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lefty Feep was a character who starred in a couple of dozen Damon Runyon pastiches by Bloch that appeared in the very pulpy Fantastic Adventures magazine in the 1940s. The first eight stories in the series are included in this volume, reprinted from the April to November 1942 issues where they had appeared consecutively. They're over-the-top tall tales with a strong fantasy element, in the tradition of, for example, Howard's Breckenridge Elkins. They're very much products of their time, with the slang and attitudes and humor of those early days of World War Two very much in evidence. They're certainly not examples of great literature, but they're fun if you remember their origin. If you ever wondered what your great-grandfathers picked up for light humorous reading, here you go. This book is labeled Volume One and was intended to be the first of three, but unfortunately this is the only one that ever appeared in a corporeal edition. The book was a labor-of-love publication, filled with photographs, illustrations, long interviews with the author by editor John Stanley, an introduction by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (?!), and testimonial quotes from Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Richard Mathesons (Christian and non), Richard Lupoff, William F. Nolan, and Harlan Ellison. It's hard to believe that the same man who gave us Norman Bates started out with Lefty!

[James Hold · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have a bucket list for the simple reason once I reach the end of it there's nothing left to do but lay down and die, and dying is the absolute last thing I want to do. One thing though I had always wished was to read the Lefty Feep stories of Robert Bloch. I'd heard so much about them but all those reviews said they'd never translate to today's scene and would remain out of print. Well it turns out that's not true. There's this volume you can buy new for about $160 or used for $4.00. Guess which one I took out.

Lefty Feep is always described as Runyonesque. I've no idea what that means since I never read Runyon or ever cared to. What I can say is Bloch's character has a habit of talking in rhyme like an early Yogi Bear cartoon and eventually I started hearing the voice of Daws Butler in every story. The stories themselves involve some wildly improbable situations and some clever dialogue. I had no problem with the slang or the puns so why some say it won't get across is a mystery. Maybe it's that today's audiences want things to happen slam-bang fast without putting a lot of thought into it and these are not something you can skim through.

That said, this was supposed to be the first of a three volume collection but for me one was enough. The first few tales are interesting but the formula tires quickly. It doesn't help that the editors keeps putting in their own two cent opinions between chapters. Had they left out all this needless crap they could have squeezed in another tale.

In any event I know now what the big deal was and can cross it off my list. Bloch occupies a special spot with other favorites like Lovecraft, Howard, and Bierce, but similar to Howard's Breckenridge Elkins character a little goes a long way. So now it's time to get back to the good stuff.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the tales in this book are very dated [even the "new" one written in the 1980s], they're still very readable and a lot of fun, once you decipher the jokes, rhymes, puns and 1940s slang terms. Lefty Feep is a remarkably strange character, a cross between Ferdinand Feghoot and someone out of a Damon Runyon story. Lefty tells outrageous stories to a character that is sort of Robert Bloch himself, and these stories appear to be outrageous lies with a gaping hole in them, and every time the hole is challenged, there is an explanation that mostly works, so no one can prove that he's lying.
Lefty also wears outrageous clothes, mostly of the cheap-and-loud-fabric-suit variety, while hanging out in bars, pool halls and much stranger settings. Most of the stories in this volume are based on weird mixtures of older fantasy stories, folktales and life in New York City, mixed in a truly odd fashion. Thus, two of the tales are sequels to a Washington Irving classic, another vaguely related to the Arabian Nights and yet another related to German folklore and history, as well as then-current politics and warfare.
The editor and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro both added long introductions to the book, perhaps a bit too long, but still fairly interesting. The editor's was mostly about how the book came to be, which had some great little anecdotes.
The real heart of this collection is that each story is accompanied by the 1980s memories of Robert Bloch, if he had any, and the whole thing was edited by John Stanley, a horror show host turned publisher. There were tributes to Bloch and to Lefty from an interesting variety of other authors, and the artwork of Kenn Davis was just strange enough to go well with the stories.
This was supposed to be part 1 of a trilogy reprinting the Lefty Feep stories, but it looks like the rest never came out, which is a real shame. The Lefty stories are not great literature, but are a lot of fun.

[David Macpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are stories written in the forties by Bloch, making money at a penny a word. These are really fun stories about a New York gambler, Damyon Runyan guy, who has fantasy adventures. These are lively and wonderful. One of the stories is about a guy who answers magazine ads and everything they promise comes true for him instantly, terrific and weird. I would give it my highest praise but the book production is lousy. There is interviews between the editor and Bloch and you can tell how annoyed Bloch was in the process, it was annoying and useless. Also, Robert Bloch wrote a new 1988 story about Lefty Feep and blew it, he ignored his own good formula and filled it with lame satire. Just awful. Too bad that great greasy pulp writing had to be finished with a lame piece of fiction that he didn't probably want to write in the first place.

[Chris Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frigging tragic that they never released vol. 2,
Bloch at his peak of humor and appreciation of the human condition,
Lefty Feep just rocks as a character.
Love the hip cat language.
Just read this if you enjoy vintage humor,
not horror at all btw SFish.