Pulp Poem of the Week

With my luck,
I’d be the one
to eat the hearty meal
while the warden’s private line
stayed as quiet
as the grave.

          Don Tracy
          Last Year’s Snow
          1937

Pulp Poem of the Week

some women can sing
and
some can paint
and
some can dance
and
some can be faithful

          Don Tracy
          Last Year’s Snow
          1937

Pulp Poem of the Week

When a man
has his head
cut off,
he’s never
bothered again
with sinus trouble.

          Don Tracy
          Last Year’s Snow
          1937

Pulp Poem of the Week

I’ll remember
what you said
when I’m half
way to heaven
on a roller coaster.

          Don Tracy
          Last Year’s Snow
          1937

Pulp Poem of the Week

You have
a couple
of hours
of fun.
And then
you have
a lot
of hell.

          Don Tracy
          Last Year’s Snow
          1937

Book Review: Don Tracy, Last Year's Snow (1937)

Last Year’s Snow is the third of four novels published by unsung noirboiled pioneer Don Tracy in the 1930s. This everyman noir complètement enneigé tells of a love quadrangle—femme fatale, current husband, ex-husband, new paramour—trapped together in a hunting camp. Not brilliant, but worth reading to see Tracy working out tropes of the genre. Notable as well for being the second American novel (and fifth overall) published in Gallimard’s Série Noire. Grade: B-

Book Review: Dave Zeltserman, Pariah (2009)

As an example of noir, Dave Zeltserman’s Pariah, the second installment in his man-out-of-prison trilogy, is a cross between Don Tracy’s Round Trip (1934) and Jason Starr’s Fake I.D. (2000). Like Round Trip, the structure of Pariah is episodic. There are several plot elements in the first three-quarters of the novel (including a revenge plot, some family psychodrama, a kidnapping, and a trial), any one of which could have been the foundation of a thriller with a conventional plot arc. But, as in Round Trip, the plot wanders, trading narrative tension for a heightened sense of realism. The major difference between Round Trip and Pariah is that the protagonist of Tracy’s novel, Eddie Magruder, is basically a sympathetic character, while the protagonist of Zeltserman’s novel, Kyle Nevin, is fairly loathsome from the moment the novel begins. Thus, like Jason Starr with Tommy Russo, the unsympathetic protagonist of Fake I.D., Zeltserman takes a chance that he can make readers care enough about the fate of an unlikeable character to keep reading. Combine this risk with the risky plot structure, and Pariah becomes a noir high-wire act. But if Zeltserman gets you across the wire, you will be rewarded at the other side. Grade: B-

Pulp Poem of the Week

You look like
you've just seen
your great-grandmother
driving a taxi.

Don Tracy
Criss-Cross
1934

Pulp Poem of the Week

All right.
I'll tell you.
When I'm with you I love you.
Sure.
I might as well be honest,

see?
If it was somebody else I was with,
somebody who thought as much of me as you do,
I guess I'd feel the same way about them.
Maybe it's love.
I don't know.
After it's all over and you aren't here,
I don't love you,
see?

So it can't be love.

Don Tracy
Criss-Cross
1934

Pulp Poem of the Week

My wife was squawking
the other day about kidnapers,
and I told her we could
set the three of our kids
out on the front porch
with a ten-dollar bill
in each one's hand and
they wouldn't be touched.
That's the kind of kids we got.

Don Tracy
Round Trip
1934

Book Review: Erskine Caldwell, The Bastard (1929)

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner warned of the writer who "labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands." In The Bastard, Erskine Caldwell writes of the glands. Viewed through the lens of noir history, Caldwell's debut novel seems a precursor to the episodic realism practiced by P. J. Wolfson and Don Tracy in their novels of the early 1930s, but Caldwell's characters are, if anything, even more unrepentantly savage. Perhaps Gene Morgan, The Bastard's title character, is meant to have our sympathy, yet he thinks nothing of raping a young runaway who is being held in the local jail. In this world of the glands, such events are treated as so unremarkable that when we finally get a glimpse of Gene's heart, we cannot help but wonder if it is a gland in disguise. Noir doom is often driven by the glands. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

When you're afraid of a man,
he doesn't have to be
a better fighter than you.
You beat yourself.
I've seen men in the ring
who could take the other guy
twice a week without
getting up a sweat,
but for some reason they'd be
scared of the other fellow and
they'd get beat up bad.
It seemed as though fear
made them forget everything
they'd ever known about fighting.

Don Tracy
Criss-Cross
1934

Book Review: Don Tracy, Round Trip [a.k.a. Too Many Girls] (1934)

If you want a shining example of a noir novel (re-)marketed in a misleading way, look no further. Published in hardback as Round Trip (a much more appropriate title than Too Many Girls), Don Tracy's 1934 novel tells the up-and-down life story of Eddie Magruder, a newspaper photographer in Baltimore. The book's mode is episodic realism; its highest drama comes when Eddie stands trial for manslaughter. In a novel with a more conventional plot structure, Eddie's trial might have provided narrative arc for the whole affair. As presented, however, the trial is merely one in a string of events that define Eddie's life. The nature of the book's overall drama is indicated by this passing comment from Edith, Eddie's wife: "It would be nice if we could always be happy like this, wouldn't it, Eddie?" This line comes a bit more than one-quarter of the way through the book, and it leads readers to suspect (if they did not already) that Eddie and Edith will not always be so happy. As a whole, then, Round Trip's drama comes in waiting to see what will be their ultimate (and inevitable?) undoing. (And good luck finding all those pin-up models the paperback reprints promise you!) Grade: B

Book Review: Don Tracy, Criss-Cross (1934)

Don Tracy's Criss-Cross was published the same year as James M. Cain's debut novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice. If Criss-Cross had been written two decades later, it would have fit easily into the Gold Medal line. Narrator Johnny Thompson, an ex-boxer who works as a guard for the Laird Armored Car Agency, wants nothing more than the love of femme fatale Anna Krebak, who dates Johnny when he has money, ignores Johnny when he is broke, and makes no effort to hide her desires and motivations: money, money, money. Johnny is no fool—he sees Anna for what she is—but he is still a fool—he cannot leave Anna well enough alone. Anna soon marries an acquaintance of Johnny's, a local hood who has money enough to keep her satisfied, and when the hood becomes ambitious for a big score, his thoughts turn, naturally, to Johnny and the Laird Armored Car Agency. The first half of Criss-Cross is a bit leisurely in pacing, but its second half is strong. Especially worth reading for those interested in the early development of noir. Grade: B+