Pulp Poem of the Week

A little man—
a clerk or a butcher—
he can hide for a while,
but a guy so dumb
he can only make dough
writing words on paper—
he ain’t got a chance.

          Steve Fisher
          I Wake Up Screaming
          1941

Pulp Poem of the Week

Always living in the garbage cans
of somebody else’s life.
I scavenge old souls.

     Steve Fisher
     I Wake Up Screaming
     1941   

Pulp Poem of the Week

I remember that
the fresh earth beside the grave was brown
     and wet,
and that
the black coffin was shiny in the sun.
I remember that
I did not cry, but just stood there,
even when the men with the spades went away,
and then, after that,
I do not remember all the things I did that day.

     Steve Fisher
     I Wake Up Screaming
     1941

Book Review: Steve Fisher, I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

Steve Fisher wastes a truly memorable character, noir cop Ed Cornell, in this name-dropping Hollywood whodunit, which is amateurishly plotted and overrun with italics and exclamation points. When the excitement builds, you will know it for sure! Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

New York and Hollywood

is full of her, she is

everywhere you turn,

and when you have reached

the ripe age of thirty-six,

you have learned it is

useless to try to warn

her of the pitfalls.

Because nothing can daunt her--

nothing except time,

years of batting her pretty head

against too many disappointments,

and her firm white fanny

against too many mattresses.

Steve Fisher

No House Limit

1958

Book Review: Steve Fisher, No House Limit (1958)

There was one thing about No House Limit that bugged me and bugged me and bugged me such that it really interfered with my ability to enjoy the novel: the portrayal of the gambler Bello and his craps expertise. On the one hand, No House Limit presents itself as an insider's look at Vegas and crapshooting: most of the chapters begin with short tutorials about Vegas and/or craps, and in an afterward he wrote for this Hard Case Crime reprint, one of Steve Fisher's sons mentions the research that his father did for this book. But the portrayal of Bello playing craps is all wrong. Bello, we are told, is a legendary craps player with a betting system so mathematically complicated that onlookers are helpless to understand what he is doing. But this is nonsense. Saying that someone is a great craps player is like saying that someone is a great slot-machine player. In both games, the house always wins over the long haul. That's the point of casino games! So Bello has developed a complicated system of placing bets . . . that all favor the house! Fisher should have done more with the loaded dice angle (which does figure to some degree in Bello's success), and he should have left the idiocy alone. Grade: C