Pulp Poem of the Week

pinch-hit

for God

Horace McCoy

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

1935

Pulp Poem of the Week

fear was a small

bright-eyed rodent

in my bowels

Gil Brewer

A Taste for Sin

1961

Book Review: Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935)

In reading a novel about a marathon dance contest, is it wrong to want to see the end of the contest and thus find out who wins? Or is the fact that there is no winner—among the dancers and the readers—part of the point? Grade: A-

Book Review: Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)

Edna Pontellier: A femme fatale whose victim is herself. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

Why is it that we

rejoice at birth and

grieve at a funeral?

It is because

we are not

the person involved.

Mark Twain

Pudd’head Wilson

1894

Book Review: Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the wellspring of the American vernacular novel; as a result, Twain is sometimes cited as the father of the hardboiled novel—never mind the fact that there’s nothing much hardboiled about Huck Finn, especially by the time that you reach its famously weak ending. Much darker, though less vernacular, is a later Twain work, Pudd’nhead Wilson, whose laughs counterbalance the book’s ultimately noir impulse. Grade: A-

Book Review: Taiyo Matsumoto, Blue Spring (1993)

I have been searching for a manga to pair with with Charlie Huston’s The Shotgun Rule in a juvie noir unit in my Japanese/American noir class, and I think I’ve finally found it. Taiyo Matsumoto’s Blue Spring is a collection of seven interconnected stories from the lives of burned out seniors at Kitano High School. Seasoning gritty realism with the tiniest dash of surrealism, this book, I suspect, will grow in my estimation when I revisit it with a class. Possible pedagogical bonus: There’s a movie, too. Grade: B

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: Otsuichi and Kendi Oiwa, Goth (2003)

This mangafication of the Otsuichi novel of the same name features a pair of death-obsessed teenagers who have a knack for stumbling upon serial killers in their midst. As a result, though horrifying scenes abound, this horror is couched in a world of coincidental whimsy. Perhaps this is a personal failing, but I prefer my serial killers without whimsy. Grade C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

Calm down,

will you?

Have a

tangerine.

Osamu Tezuka

MW

1976-1978

(translated by Camellia Nieh)

Book Review: Osamu Tezuka, MW (1976-1978)

A young boy, Michio Yuki, is accidentally poisoned by MW, a top-secret hyper-powerful chemical weapon, which turns him into a sociopath. As an adult, his life’s ambition becomes to find a hidden stockpile of MW, which he hopes to use to kill pretty much everybody. Michio is a remarkably uninteresting sociopath because of his origins: His soul has literally been poisoned, and that’s that. Nothing else to talk about here. More absurd than uninteresting is his foil, Father Garai, a pedophile turned priest who seduced the young Michio. Priests must do what priests must do, but Father Garai’s insistance that he must try to save the soul of a hardworking serial killer rather than turn him over to the police does not play well. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

She was a virgin,

and things took

some doing.

Gil Brewer

The Tease

1967

Book Note: Lawrence Block, Afterthoughts (2011)

Afterthoughts collects the many afterwords that Lawrence Block has written mostly for his out-of-print works that have become available as ebooks. Not surprisingly, given Block’s recent popularity, these works skew toward the beginning of his career. Because Block chose not to take the time to turn Afterthoughts into a coherent memoir, he offers it for 99 cents and makes no bones about what it is: an extended advertisment for his backlist. In return for that bargain price, you are not allowed to complain that you hear certain stories over and over again, sometimes verbatim, as they are repeated in the afterwords to different novels from the same time period. Everything is informal and chatty and reads quickly, and you will be consistently entertained (if you can put up with the repetition). On top of that, the book serves Block’s stated purpose well: You will likely finish Afterthoughts with a good idea of which Block ebooks you want to buy.

Pulp Poem of the Week

Fellas that yells

that loud

ain’t hurt much.

Jim Thompson

Bad Boy

1953

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Tease (1967)

Wes McCord is a skirt-chaser with a marriage to match. One night, when his disgusted wife leaves him to stay at her sister’s house, a naked nymphette appears on his doorstep with an incredible tale of murder and money. For reasons that are never explained, Wes believes that money will solve his marital problems, so he agrees to help the nymphette flee her pursuers and secure her hidden loot. If all goes well, she will give him half of her $300,000. Brewer may be going through the motions with this one, but at least he knows the motions to go through. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

Somehow we just don’t see

how it is with other folks until—

something comes up.

Susan Glaspell

“Trifles”

1916

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

Pulp Poem of the Week

marriage

is

a

lottery

Emily Hawley Gillespie

April 25, 1887

Top Ten Novels Reviewed in 2011

1. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1930)
2. Gil Brewer, Memory of Passion (1962)
3. Gil Brewer, A Taste for Sin (1961)
4. Dave Zeltserman, Outsourced (2011)
5. Richard Stark, Plunder Squad (1972)
6. Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note (2003-2006)
7. Donald E. Westlake, The Ax (1997)
8. Richard Stark, The Sour Lemon Score (1969)
9. Otsuichi, Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse (2000)
10. Richard Stark, Lemons Never Lie (1971)

Book Note: Dave Dickerson, Japanese Serial Killers: True Tales of 13 Notorious Murderers (2011)

With an interest in Japanese noir, I couldn’t resist a cheap eBook about Japanese serial killers. My instincts said it looked like a piece of self-published crap, but the price was only $2.99. Unsurprising moral of the story: Trust your instincts. Most of the write-ups in Japanese Serial Killers: True Tales of 13 Notorious Murderers read like underdeveloped Wikipedia entries. Favorite moment in the book: the sentence that ends [citation needed]. FOOTNOTE: Just got curious and checked . . . they are Wikipedia entries! Ha!

Book Review: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note (2003-2006)

Tsugumi Ohba, author of the Death Note story, admits that he is no good at keeping plots going. Therefore, every time he has an idea for a new plot point, he immediately sticks it in. The upside to this strategy is that it gives Death Note a real sense of unpredictability; the raggedly constructed narrative arc will frequently surprise you. The downside is that the plot eventually feels arbitrary, sort of like a season of 24. Heroes and villains come and go, and sometimes it does feel that the author has no purpose other than to keep the damn thing afloat till the end of his projected 108 chapters. Fortunately, most of the time the upside outweighs the downside. Favorite thing about the art: the hilarious reaction shots of the Japanese police force. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

Burglary, I thought,

and the more I thought

the more I liked it.

It seemed somehow akin

to writing—

you set your own hours,

you avoided human contact,

and, if you were successful,

you managed to touch the lives

of people you never even met.

Lawrence Block

Introduction to The Burglar Who Quoted Kipling

1999

Pulp Poem of the Week

You couldn’t trust

anything she said,

colored as it was

with her personality.

Gil Brewer

The Hungry One

1966

Pulp Poem of the Week

the safe,

the god,

crouching,

embedded in the wall,

squat and somnolent,

with its triple lock,

its massive flanks,

its air of a brute divinity

Èmile Zola

The Kill (La Curée)

1872

(translated by Brian Nelson)

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

The cheaper

the crook

the gaudier

the patter.

Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon

1930

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Hungry One (1966)

Herb Forrest and his wife Wilma are traveling to Tampa, where a new job awaits Herb. They stop for the night in perhaps the world’s sleaziest motel, and, in the novel’s most memorable scene, find their room invaded by Danny and Joy, a couple of speedfreaks. Danny/Joy kidnap Herb/Wilma and force them to participate in the fake kidnapping of Joy, an effort to get a suitcase of loot from Joy’s rich father. On the whole, not bad when one is running out of Brewer novels to read. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

the ponderous machinery of the law

grinds the sausage of circumstance

into links of evidence

Damon Runyon

“The Eternal Blonde”

1927

Pulp Poem of the Week

Dying
in the line of duty
is heroic,
but dying
while unemployed
is just stupid.

Tsugumi Ohba

Death Note

(2003-2006)

(translated by Pookie Rolf)

Pulp Poem of the Week

College is fun

as long as

you don’t die.

Tsugumi Ohba

Death Note

(2003-2006)

(translated by Pookie Rolf)

Book Review: Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Maybe it’s sacrilege to be thinking of John D. MacDonald while reading The Maltese Falcon, but that’s what I’ve been doing. In 1981, when asked if he were an admirer of Hammett, JDM answered in part, “The prose style of Hammett is certainly a more solid and a more artful style than that of Chandler. But he was an idiot as far as plots are concerned. If you want to drive some high school or college kid nuts, make him do an outline of the plot of The Maltese Falcon. It’s incredibly mixed up and nothing ever happens the way it’s supposed to. But the flow of the narrative is such that you’re caught up in it and you believe it. But you can’t believe it if you try to dissect it.” What I kept thinking as I was reading was how strange it was for JDM to criticize Hammett’s plotting of The Maltese Falcon in the same breath that he was mentioning Chandler. Worse than being “mixed up,” I find the plot of The Maltese Falcon to be patently uninteresting, but Raymond Chandler sets the standard for incomprehensible hardboiled-detective plots. The thing about it, though, as JDM does seem to know, is that with Hammett and Chandler plots may well be beside the point. Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

Apples taste

so much better

indoors.

Tsugumi Ohba

Death Note

(2003-2006)

(translated by Pookie Rolf)

Pulp Poem of the Week

more relieved

than bereaved

Koushun Takami
Battle Royale
1999
(translated by Yuji Oniki)