Girls reading about vampires. (Hat tip to Sandra).
Jeff Pierce (THE RAP SHEET) and I have agreed to take off Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks. But we'll be there for all of the others. I will be happy to post links for anyone who still plans to carry on.
Jeff Vande Zande lives in Midland, MI and teaches English at Delta College. He is the author of Emergency Stopping and Other Stories (Bottom Dog Press) and the poetry collection Poems New, Used, and Rebuilds (March Street Press). His two novels are Into the Desperate Country (March Street Press) and the recently
released Landscape with Fragmented Figures (Bottom Dog Press). Very soon, Whistling Shade Press will release his novella and stories, Threatened Species and Other Stories. He maintains a website at www.jeffvandezande.com and loves to sell signed, discounted books to people who email him at jcvandez@delta.edu.THE SIDELONG GLANCES OF A PIGEON KICKER, David Boyer
Having read it two times back to back, I think I have some things to say about David Boyer’s 1968 novel The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker. I am convinced that it is a significant piece of literature . . . especially in the disillusioned protagonist genre.
Jonathan, the main character, a college graduate, finds himself in a world that doesn’t make sense to his sensitive intelligence – reminiscent of Holden Caufield (though he doesn’t go on and on about people being phony). Instead, he finds himself surrounded by two cold cities and their inhabitants . . . Philadelphia and New York. The people around him are self-centered, callous and, in a word, crazy. Despite his behavior, Jonathan might be the only sane person in the book . . . even though all the rest are simply going about being ordinary people . . . or, when seen through Jonathan’s eyes, crazy people. It’s refreshing though that Boyer doesn’t have Jonathan think and think about the madness of others. He just experiences it, and we experience it with him.
If Jonathan experiences little that is good from ordinary people, he finds no solace when surrounded by intellectuals and artists, either. For instance, at a party . . .
“I wandered around the apartment drinking beer and listening to people talk. I learned that ‘Kubla Khan’ was actually an account of orgasm, that Martin Luther had anal fixation, and that Lot’s wife had conversion hysteria . . . the fruit in Genesis could not be an apple, because an apple has no symbolic meaning; thus the fruit must be a banana because the banana is an obvious symbol of the phallus. Eve ate it. Then Adam ate it . . .
‘That’s a lot of horseshit,’ I said, and went into the bathroom.”
In John Updike’s Rabbit Run, Rabbit Angstrom, Updike’s disillusioned protagonist, turns to sex when modern life smothers him. It’s a tired theme. Benjamin of The Graduate pretty much does the same thing – though it’s more out of boredom than anything else.
It’s refreshing that Jonathan has access to sex with both a nymphomaniac and a rich mistress, but it doesn’t do much for him. Given a chance to escape with his mistress to the Bahamas, he changes her plans so they can go to the Poconos. There, they stay in a cabin, shut off all the power (including the furnace), and live for a few days in front of the fireplace – cooking food, making love, and keeping each other warm. It’s Jonathan at his happiest. He enjoys the simplicity of chopping wood.
But, their return to the city brings Jonathan back to his cold reality. Things that used to help him escape don’t do much for him – like spray painting the glass windows on parking meters or having fake sword fights on the subway. He withdraws from everyone, lives in his apartment, and picks through the trash to see what he can discover about his neighbors’ lives.
In the spring, hearing his neighbors fighting about the nuisance of their little boy, Jonathan offers to take the kid to the zoo.
Jonathan sees something important in the way the boy appreciates the zoo . . .
“We visited the birdhouse, and he got so involved in a sulfur-breasted toucan that I started to get nervous. How could he, when the deities of his life were tyrants and fools, become so absorbed in a ridiculous-looking bird from South America? . . .
In the small-mammal house he got hooked by the sloth, and I began wishing that I could creep into the boy’s skull and examine the world with his vision. My own seemed more and more shaky."
In a rather touching moment on the walk back from the zoo, Jonathan asks the boy in earnest if he will be his friend.
“He looked at me and nodded. We walked a ways in silence, and then I said, ‘I need someone like you. I haven’t any equilibrium of my own. It’s sort of a makeshift arrangement, and I’m somewhat lost without my gadgetry. But you seem pretty solid to me. You know what I mean?’ He shrugged. ‘I guess you don’t, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I borrow some of that solidness of yours. Okay?'"
The boy is agreeable, but that night the father phones Jonathan and calls him a pervert and tells him to stay away from his son.
So, there’s a little Catcher in the Rye . . . the beauty and innocence of the child.
From here, Jonathan’s descent into despair goes much faster. I wouldn’t want to give away the ending, other than to say that it’s entirely satisfying.
If you can get your hands on a copy of The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker . . . do. It’s a really interesting read that more people should be talking about.
I think I might actually read it a third time.
Having read it two times back to back, I think I have some things to say about David Boyer’s 1968 novel The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker. I am convinced that it is a significant piece of literature . . . especially in the disillusioned protagonist genre.
Jonathan, the main character, a college graduate, finds himself in a world that doesn’t make sense to his sensitive intelligence – reminiscent of Holden Caufield (though he doesn’t go on and on about people being phony). Instead, he finds himself surrounded by two cold cities and their inhabitants . . . Philadelphia and New York. The people around him are self-centered, callous and, in a word, crazy. Despite his behavior, Jonathan might be the only sane person in the book . . . even though all the rest are simply going about being ordinary people . . . or, when seen through Jonathan’s eyes, crazy people. It’s refreshing though that Boyer doesn’t have Jonathan think and think about the madness of others. He just experiences it, and we experience it with him.
If Jonathan experiences little that is good from ordinary people, he finds no solace when surrounded by intellectuals and artists, either. For instance, at a party . . .
“I wandered around the apartment drinking beer and listening to people talk. I learned that ‘Kubla Khan’ was actually an account of orgasm, that Martin Luther had anal fixation, and that Lot’s wife had conversion hysteria . . . the fruit in Genesis could not be an apple, because an apple has no symbolic meaning; thus the fruit must be a banana because the banana is an obvious symbol of the phallus. Eve ate it. Then Adam ate it . . .
‘That’s a lot of horseshit,’ I said, and went into the bathroom.”
In John Updike’s Rabbit Run, Rabbit Angstrom, Updike’s disillusioned protagonist, turns to sex when modern life smothers him. It’s a tired theme. Benjamin of The Graduate pretty much does the same thing – though it’s more out of boredom than anything else.
It’s refreshing that Jonathan has access to sex with both a nymphomaniac and a rich mistress, but it doesn’t do much for him. Given a chance to escape with his mistress to the Bahamas, he changes her plans so they can go to the Poconos. There, they stay in a cabin, shut off all the power (including the furnace), and live for a few days in front of the fireplace – cooking food, making love, and keeping each other warm. It’s Jonathan at his happiest. He enjoys the simplicity of chopping wood.
But, their return to the city brings Jonathan back to his cold reality. Things that used to help him escape don’t do much for him – like spray painting the glass windows on parking meters or having fake sword fights on the subway. He withdraws from everyone, lives in his apartment, and picks through the trash to see what he can discover about his neighbors’ lives.
In the spring, hearing his neighbors fighting about the nuisance of their little boy, Jonathan offers to take the kid to the zoo.
Jonathan sees something important in the way the boy appreciates the zoo . . .
“We visited the birdhouse, and he got so involved in a sulfur-breasted toucan that I started to get nervous. How could he, when the deities of his life were tyrants and fools, become so absorbed in a ridiculous-looking bird from South America? . . .
In the small-mammal house he got hooked by the sloth, and I began wishing that I could creep into the boy’s skull and examine the world with his vision. My own seemed more and more shaky."
In a rather touching moment on the walk back from the zoo, Jonathan asks the boy in earnest if he will be his friend.
“He looked at me and nodded. We walked a ways in silence, and then I said, ‘I need someone like you. I haven’t any equilibrium of my own. It’s sort of a makeshift arrangement, and I’m somewhat lost without my gadgetry. But you seem pretty solid to me. You know what I mean?’ He shrugged. ‘I guess you don’t, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I borrow some of that solidness of yours. Okay?'"
The boy is agreeable, but that night the father phones Jonathan and calls him a pervert and tells him to stay away from his son.
So, there’s a little Catcher in the Rye . . . the beauty and innocence of the child.
From here, Jonathan’s descent into despair goes much faster. I wouldn’t want to give away the ending, other than to say that it’s entirely satisfying.
If you can get your hands on a copy of The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker . . . do. It’s a really interesting read that more people should be talking about.
I think I might actually read it a third time.
Ed Gorman writes crime, westerns, anthologies and a blog here.
A Memory of Murder, Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury's first collection, published in 1947 by Arkham House, contained so many memorable and lasting stories it has become legendary. A single book by a young writer including true masterpieces such as "The Lake," "The Small Assassin," "The Homecoming," "Uncle Einar" and many, many more--just about unthinkable. A fair share of these stories were later included in The October Country, a collection that is for me the equal of The Martian Chronicles.There's another collection that in the scheme of Bradbury's career is far less important but equally interesting. When Dell published A Memory of Murder we were given our first look at the crime and suspense s
tories Bradbury wrote for such pulps as Dime Mystery Magazine and New Detective Magazine. Most of the stories appeared between 1944 and 1946. I've probably read this book four or five times over the years. It has the energy and inventiveness of all good pulp with the bonus of watching a young writer struggle to find the voice that is really his. In several of the stories we hear the voice that Bradbury will later perfect. He's often proclaimed his admiration of Cornell Woolrich and here we see the dark Woolrich influence, especially in the excellent "The Candy Skull" (Mexico has long fascinated Bradbury; here it's nightmare Mexico), "The Trunk Lady" and (what a title) "Corpse Carnival." One of Bradbury's most famous stories is here also, "The Small Assassin," written for a penny a word for Dime Mystery Magazine in 1946.The most interesting story is "The Long Night." I remember the editor who bought it writing a piece years later about what a find it was. And it is. A story set in the Hispanic area of Los Angeles during the war, it deals with race and race riots, with the juvenile delinquency that was a major problem for this country in the war years (remember The Amboy Dukes?) and the the paternal bonds that teenage boys need and reject at the same time. A haunting, powerful story that hints at the greatness that was only a few years away from Bradbury.What can I tell you? I love this book. At its least it's a pure pulp romp and at its best it's the master about to change science fiction forever. And making a memorable pass at making his mark on crime fiction as well.
tories Bradbury wrote for such pulps as Dime Mystery Magazine and New Detective Magazine. Most of the stories appeared between 1944 and 1946. I've probably read this book four or five times over the years. It has the energy and inventiveness of all good pulp with the bonus of watching a young writer struggle to find the voice that is really his. In several of the stories we hear the voice that Bradbury will later perfect. He's often proclaimed his admiration of Cornell Woolrich and here we see the dark Woolrich influence, especially in the excellent "The Candy Skull" (Mexico has long fascinated Bradbury; here it's nightmare Mexico), "The Trunk Lady" and (what a title) "Corpse Carnival." One of Bradbury's most famous stories is here also, "The Small Assassin," written for a penny a word for Dime Mystery Magazine in 1946.The most interesting story is "The Long Night." I remember the editor who bought it writing a piece years later about what a find it was. And it is. A story set in the Hispanic area of Los Angeles during the war, it deals with race and race riots, with the juvenile delinquency that was a major problem for this country in the war years (remember The Amboy Dukes?) and the the paternal bonds that teenage boys need and reject at the same time. A haunting, powerful story that hints at the greatness that was only a few years away from Bradbury.What can I tell you? I love this book. At its least it's a pure pulp romp and at its best it's the master about to change science fiction forever. And making a memorable pass at making his mark on crime fiction as well.Bill Peschel is a mystery writer, book reviewer and working on a book of essays, Writers Gone Wild. You can find him here.
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril. By Paul Malmont
In the 1930s, the heyday of the pulp era, magazines like "Thrilling Detective," "Amazing Stories" and the like kicked ass, took names, and shaped the morals of millions of American readers. The writers who created the heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow worked under impossible deadli
nes for pennies a word to give us tales of the fantastic, of Oriental criminal gangs, dens of vice and iniquity, weird villains, two-fisted heroes and dames to be ornamental and rescued. At its height, as a pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard reminds us in "The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril," 30,000,000 pulps were bought every month. It took the paper shortages of World War II to knock them down, and they were finished off by television in the ‘50s, but they left us a legacy of heroes that include Conan and Tarzan, cult favorite H.P. Lovecraft, and provided the seed that spawned science-fiction and fantasy.Return with me, now, to those thrilling days of yesteryear, with the help of Paul Malmont, who, according to his bio, works in advertising and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids.I'm firmly convinced that, at night, he slips out of his brownstone in Park Slope and roams the wilds of Manhattan, battling the forces of evil with mad crimefighting skillz he learned in the mountain fastnesses of Bhutan.Either that, or he's a pulp fiction fan who did a wonderful job of researching the era, and clever enough to cast as his heroes the writers Walter Gibson, Lester Dent, Hubbard (known as "The Flash" because he was quick at the typewriter), with guest appearances by Lovecraft (oh, how I want to tell you how he appears. It's so appropriate!), E.E. "Doc" Smith and Orson Welles.As for the story, well, the title gives it away, and I'm not going to say more. If you're going to read this, it would just spoil the fun. But if you're still on the bubble, I'll say this:
Malmont writes about the pulp fiction world, but the story is told straight. Neat. No purple prose.
The plot makes sense. It's creepy and scary, but doesn't rely on the supernatural.
The writers may have created two-fisted heroes, but they aren't. That's part of the fun.
Malmont plays fair with Hubbard. I'm no fan of Scientology, but I was glad that Hubbard is presented just as you would expect him to be at the beginning of his career. He's ambitious, proud, something of a blowhard, but great sidekick material.
To say more would give away the fun, so let me just say that, if you have any affection for the pulp era, if you smile at the thought of a "GalaxyQuest"-type story set in New York of the Depression-era, or just want a rousing tale without the literary baggage, check out "The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril."UPDATE: Thanks to Kaja Foglio, the co-creator of the fabulous "Girl Genius" comic, I found out that Lester Dent's Zeppelin tales are being republished.
Paul Bishop
Michael Carlson
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Ray Foster
Libby Fischer Hellman
George Kelley
Randy Johnson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/David Vineyard
Todd Mason
Eric Peterson
Laurie Powers
Richard Prosch
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Kerrie Smith
R.T.
nes for pennies a word to give us tales of the fantastic, of Oriental criminal gangs, dens of vice and iniquity, weird villains, two-fisted heroes and dames to be ornamental and rescued. At its height, as a pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard reminds us in "The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril," 30,000,000 pulps were bought every month. It took the paper shortages of World War II to knock them down, and they were finished off by television in the ‘50s, but they left us a legacy of heroes that include Conan and Tarzan, cult favorite H.P. Lovecraft, and provided the seed that spawned science-fiction and fantasy.Return with me, now, to those thrilling days of yesteryear, with the help of Paul Malmont, who, according to his bio, works in advertising and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids.I'm firmly convinced that, at night, he slips out of his brownstone in Park Slope and roams the wilds of Manhattan, battling the forces of evil with mad crimefighting skillz he learned in the mountain fastnesses of Bhutan.Either that, or he's a pulp fiction fan who did a wonderful job of researching the era, and clever enough to cast as his heroes the writers Walter Gibson, Lester Dent, Hubbard (known as "The Flash" because he was quick at the typewriter), with guest appearances by Lovecraft (oh, how I want to tell you how he appears. It's so appropriate!), E.E. "Doc" Smith and Orson Welles.As for the story, well, the title gives it away, and I'm not going to say more. If you're going to read this, it would just spoil the fun. But if you're still on the bubble, I'll say this:Malmont writes about the pulp fiction world, but the story is told straight. Neat. No purple prose.
The plot makes sense. It's creepy and scary, but doesn't rely on the supernatural.
The writers may have created two-fisted heroes, but they aren't. That's part of the fun.
Malmont plays fair with Hubbard. I'm no fan of Scientology, but I was glad that Hubbard is presented just as you would expect him to be at the beginning of his career. He's ambitious, proud, something of a blowhard, but great sidekick material.
To say more would give away the fun, so let me just say that, if you have any affection for the pulp era, if you smile at the thought of a "GalaxyQuest"-type story set in New York of the Depression-era, or just want a rousing tale without the literary baggage, check out "The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril."UPDATE: Thanks to Kaja Foglio, the co-creator of the fabulous "Girl Genius" comic, I found out that Lester Dent's Zeppelin tales are being republished.
Paul Bishop
Michael Carlson
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Ray Foster
Libby Fischer Hellman
George Kelley
Randy Johnson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/David Vineyard
Todd Mason
Eric Peterson
Laurie Powers
Richard Prosch
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Kerrie Smith
R.T.
14 comments:
Very interesting cover to PIGEON KICKER. And, more importantly, it sounds like an interesting story.
I agree with David on that one. Thanks for these reviews. Another great week.
I have "A memory of Murder" but have not read it. I read some of Bradbury's later mystery pieces and didn't like them as much as the SF/fantasy pieces. I'll give it a try though.
October Country is definitely a great collection, my favorite of Bradbury's.
That Paul Malmont has been sitting on my shelf for a year crying out to be read. Maybe now I'll listen.
I thought I'd read a lot of Bradbury, but I've never heard of Memory of Murder. Must check out.
Bradbury still resonates with me, and, like Asimov, is better known for his speculative work than mystery or crime. I think both were (or could have been) masters of just about any genre.
The Malmont has not pleased most people who actually know something about pulp fiction and its writers. I haven't tried yet, but will probabl opt for Richard Lupoff's or Bill Pronzini's or Loren Estleman's pulp-era or pulp-related fiction first, or reread Joe Gores's HAMMETT...
In fantastic fiction (sf, fantasy, and horror), Bradbury's first great model was Theodore Sturgeon, his mentors included Leigh Brackett...as Ed Gorman notes, Bradbury was clearly using Cornell Woolrich as a model for some of his early crime fiction. Wise choices.
todd:
Strangely I didn't hear a lot of negative reaction to the Malmont book. I found it to be a fun affection tale that felt to me like a book that should have been next to Kaliver and Clay on people shelves in capturing the spirit of adventure and intrigue the pulps of the pre-war era were sell.
I have his newest book Jack London in Paradise hovering around the top of my TBR pile.
I have to say that I enjoyed CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL immensely. I don't care if it doesn't square with the actual people behind the characters in the book (and I'm sure they don't). It was an awful lot of fun.
Iren, Graham...I could point you toward, say, Bill Crider's reaction on his blog, or Richard Lupoff's on his segment of his Pacifica Radio book review/discussion show; I might be wrong, but I think Jon Breen wasn't so bowled over in EQMM, either. I mostly didn't come across anything but negative reaction to the book, and not so much for fictionalizing the characters as doing so badly, not a claim too many are making about the Chabon. But I haven't read the DEATH CLOUD PERIL yet, so can't say for myself nor for sure.
I for one was very disappointed in Malmont's book, but only because he didn't know what to do with his characters. Is it a suspense/adventure novel or a novel about writers? It was better, when it was about being a writer. I think I dropped the book somewhere after the middle.
And I was very, very sorry for that, because I really wanted to like it.
Hubbard was evil, dishonest, and a monumental liar. Picturing as anything else is unacceptable to me.
David Boyer was my English teacher at the Worcester Alternative High School, Worcester, Mass., in the early 1970s. He was a soft-spoken, droll and friendly man who was most encouraging to us would-be writers. His hobbies included ragtime piano, woodworking (I think he had a boat works on his property outside Worcester) and printing (he had a hand-powered press at the school). He spoke very little about PIGEON KICKER and wasn't too happy about the movie version. Sad to say, I lost all contact with him after I graduated in 1975--the school itself closed the following year.
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