Pulp Poem of the Week

If I had anything

left to lose,

I couldn’t remember

what it was.

John D. MacDonald

The End of the Night

1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

I felt too young.

I felt like a child

being bathed

by an evil nursemaid.

I felt that some

unspeakable thing

was coiling and vomiting

in her mind.

John D. MacDonald

The End of the Night

1960

Book Review: John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night (1960)

Having recently read Weep for Me (1951), which John D. MacDonald identified as the worst of his early novels, I felt obligated to follow up by reading The End of the Night (1960), which was his favorite of the early books. The End of the Night chronicles the so-called Wolf Pack, three young men and a young woman who go on a cross-country crime spree. Given that JDM thought so highly of The End of the Night, I was expecting a great read. I did not stop to consider that there is a compelling reason for suspecting that JDM may not have been the best judge of his own work. To wit: Many readers, myself among them, find that JDM’s novels are aging poorly because of his habit of interjecting sociological lectures into his narratives, and these are precisely the sections of his books that JDM liked the best. Therefore, I should not have been surprised to find that The End of the Night is dominated by a pair of pretentious first-person narrators, both of whom are more interested in understanding the world than telling a story. Of course, this is not to say that noir fiction cannot be a vehicle for understanding the world—in fact, this is what distinguishes much of the best noir. But when JDM indulges his love of pontification, he fails to recognize that a well-told story can be not just a sufficient but a superior way of deepening readers’ understanding of the world. Grade: C+

Book Review: John D. MacDonald, Weep for Me (1951)

Weep for Me is one of two novels that Gold Medal let go out of print at John D. MacDonald’s request. (The other was 1963’s I Could Go on Singing.) So part of the exercise of reading it is trying to figure out why MacDonald disliked it so much. The set-up is standard Gold Medal fare: Narrator Kyle Cameron is a bank teller . . . actually, that’s probably all I need to tell you about the set-up . . . you know the rest. But the book takes a strange turn in its final act, and its ending is downright embarrassing—I don’t doubt that JDM hated it. He probably found much of its prose embarrassing too. Sample sentence: “They knew that the loins of this dark girl beside me were a trap that had closed on my soul” (98). But you might want to read it simply because JDM doesn’t want you to. Grade: C-

Top Ten Novels Reviewed in 2009

1. Bill S. Ballinger, Portrait in Smoke (1950)
2. James M. Cain, Double Indemnity (1936)
3. James McKimmey, The Long Ride (1961)
4. John D. MacDonald, Soft Touch (1958)
5. Gil Brewer, The Brat (1957)
6. Bill S. Ballinger, The Tooth and the Nail (1955)
7. Marvin H. Albert, Devil in Dungarees (1960)
8. W. R. Burnett, High Sierra (1940)
9. Harry Whittington, Hell Can Wait (1960)
10. Paul Tremblay, The Little Sleep (2009)

Book Review: John D. MacDonald, One Monday We Killed Them All (1961)

For me, a major disappointment. Perhaps my expectations were too high, as I have seen this novel raved about in several notable places, but I really had to work to get through it. I found its first half slow and ponderous, weighed down by lectures on American law enforcement . . . and our judicial system . . . and our penal system . . . and so on . . . lectures of the sort that I would expect to hear in a bland freshman-level sociology class. But the crowning disappointment, once the narrative quickens, is that the novel's title, One Monday We Killed Them All, is not an accurate description of the Monday in question, no matter how you interpret it. Ah, John D. MacDonald. At least we'll always have Soft Touch. Grade: C-

Book Review: John D. MacDonald, Soft Touch (1958)

When you read piles of noir PBOs (or piles of any fictional genre), many of them do, of course, start to seem the same, but this only heightens your appreciation of the ones that are really good. When the formula has worked its way into your DNA, you can see which writers are innovating and pushing boundaries and which ones are just going through the motions. In the early chapters of any genre novel, it is generally difficult to tell which kind of book you are reading. Is it one whose every move you will be able to predict, or is it one that will surprise you? Suffice it to say, this one surprised me. Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

A one-dollar bill has

a humble and homely look.

A five-dollar bill has

a few meek pretensions.

A ten is vigorous and

forthright and honest,

like a scout leader.

A twenty, held to the ear

like a seashell

emits the far-off sound

of nightclub music.

A fifty wears the faint sneer

of the race track.

It has a portly look

needs a shave,

wears a yellow diamond

on the little finger.

And a hundred is

very haughty indeed.

John D. MacDonald

Soft Touch

1958