Pulp Poem of the Week

she thinks you’re a grown man;
either go down and do it,
or go up and tell her that she’s wrong

          Charles Williams
          Aground
          1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

I’m not Rebecca
of Sunnybrook Farm.

I’m thirty-four and

I’ve been married twice.

          Charles Williams
          Aground
          1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

there ain’t nothin’
as aggravatin’
to live with as
a disillusioned hawg

          Charles Williams
          Uncle Sagamore and His Girls
          1959

Book Review: Charles Williams, Aground (1960)

Aground is the sixteenth Charles Williams novel that I have read, and it is my least favorite. I found the characters flat (even by standards of the genre), and the dialogue was unusually wooden. But my big problem—and this is my problem, I must emphasize—is that I know nothing about boats, and most of the novel’s action is narrated in sentences such as this: “The mainsail was jib-headed, so there was only one halyard.” Had I taken pains to decipher every such sentence using appropriate resources, Aground would have taken me ages to read, and I do not know that I would have enjoyed it any more than I did. Aground’s plot centers around our hero trying to get a yacht ungrounded before the bad guys kill him. If you know about boats, you may love this book. For me, it was just a bad match. Grade: D+

Pulp Poem of the Week

Don’t fire, men,
until you see
the roots of their hair.

          Charles Williams
          Man on the Run
          1958 

Book Review: Charles Williams, Uncle Sagamore and His Girls (1959)

The second of Charles Williams’ two novels chronicling the adventures of peckerwood savant Sagamore Noonan, as seen through the eyes of his seven-year-old nephew, Billy. The first in the series, The Diamond Bikini (1956), does not seem to have sold very well (judging from the scarcity of copies on the current second-hand market), but Williams gave it one more go before he was done with this sort of thing. Uncle Sagamore and His Girls deals with Noonan’s efforts to keep his moonshine business going while also controlling the outcome of the sheriff’s election, and the result is highly entertaining. Recommended for anyone with a taste for light-hearted backwoods comedy. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

all
the logic
of
gonorrhea

in

a convent

     Charles Williams
     Girl Out Back
     1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

don’t run
when nobody’s
chasing you

          Charles Williams
          Man on the Run
          1958 

Pulp Poem of the Week

the attrition of honesty
varies inversely
with the square of the distance
and directly
with the mass of the temptation

     Charles Williams
     Girl Out Back
     1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

I awoke during the night
and she was gone.
Switching on the light,
I looked at my watch.
It was shortly after 3 P.M.

          Charles Williams
          Man on the Run
          1958

Book Review: Charles Williams, Man on the Run (1958)

Man on the Run begins with a man on the run for a crime that he didn’t commit. Russell Foley is his name, and he has the more-than-good fortune to break into the home of Suzy Patton, a stranger who is willing to help him. This is absurd even for a novel of this type, and the book’s ham-handed plotting as Russell and Suzy try to clear his name only heightens the absurdity. If I had not known that Charles Williams wrote this book, I would never have guessed it. I expect much, much better from him. Grade: D

Pulp Poem of the Week

She climbed to her feet,
watching me warily and
trying to back away.
I said nothing, and
merely slapped at her again,
feeling a little sick at my stomach.
She was about eighteen.
But it had to be done.
This was the method
they’d left us.

     Charles Williams
     Talk of the Town
     1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

Now that bust-line architecture
has become a basic industry,
like steel and heavy construction,
all the old pleasant conjectures
are a waste of time
and you never believe anything
till the lab reports are in.

     Charles Williams
     Girl Out Back
     1958

Book Review: Charles Williams, Girl Out Back (1958)

Barney Godwin, a typical noir Everyman, discovers that a local swamp rat has lucked into the proceeds of an infamous back robbery, and he schemes to make the money his own. Girl Out Back should have been better, but author Charles Williams makes little effort to explain the motivations of his first-person narrator, especially early in the novel, and he introduces major plot elements in a lazy hey-guess-what-I-just-remembered fashion. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

This was the way it
ended. You learned
everything there was
to learn, you took care
of every contingency,
you memorized,
you rehearsed—
and then some kid
locked a dog in a safe
a thousand miles away
and you were done.

     Charles Williams
     All the Way
     1958  

Pulp Poem of the Week

like a
blonde
with a
pet skunk

     Charles Williams
     Talk of the Town
     1958

Book Review: Charles Williams, All the Way (1958)

Noir believes in love at first sight—or at least that men are capable of love at first sight—or at least that men are capable of lust at first sight, which they convince themselves is love. Case in point: Charles Williams’ All the Way, in which narrator Jerry Forbes falls at once for Marian Forsyth, allowing her to manipulate him as she sees fit. As is often the case, readers will have difficulty accounting for Jerry’s obsession with Marian, who is not the typical noir sexual bombshell, beyond the fact that the plot requires it. Marian’s plans hinge on the fact that Jerry’s voice is indistinguishable from that of her former boss and lover, and therefore Jerry can impersonate him on the phone as per Marian’s instructions. The first half of All the Way is somewhat slow; the book establishes its premise quickly, but the plot takes a while to get moving. The second half is fairly intense as Jerry encounters unexpected obstacles in pulling off his impersonation. On the whole, this one is well worth seeking out. Grade: B+

Book Review: Charles Williams, Talk of the Town [a.k.a. Stain of Suspicion] (1958)

Talk of the Town is an Everyman noir-cum-whodunit via a damsel in distress with occasional patter tossed in from a screwball comedy. The premise is vaguely similar to an earlier Charles Williams novel, Go Home, Stranger (1954), as both feature amateur outsiders attempting to solve crimes (though Bill Chatham, protagonist of Talk of the Town, is a former professional). The plotting of Talk of the Town is thin, largely because so many of Chatham’s decisions are based on there-was-a-small-chance-but-it-was-the-only-chance logic. Nevertheless, Talk of the Town is somewhat more engrossing than Go Home, Stranger because Williams does a better job of making his protagonist a participant in (rather than an observer of) the plot. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

A man’s either got to

be young and full of sass

and vinegar and ready

to tackle anything,

or else he’s go to

have a lot of money.

Charles Williams

The Diamond Bikini

1956

Book Review: Charles Williams, The Diamond Bikini (1956)

Start with Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Remove the Duke, the King, and Huck, and transplant them into an Erskine Caldwell novel. Have the Duke and the King be a little bit smarter. Cut Huck's age from fourteen to seven, and make him the Duke’s son. Throw in a striptease dancer on the run from the mob, and throw in some killing, but all in fun. This is what happens when Charles Williams needs a vacation. Grade: B