Been reading Donald E. Westlake (aka Richard Stark aka Tucker Coe). Louis XIV over at Existential Ennui has an ongoing focus on the various editions of Westlake’s many novels. Also check out The Violent World of Parker.
Westlake is both a master hardboiled writer (as Stark) and an amusing comic novelist (under his own name). He wrote about 100 novels. This month I’ve read the following:
Bank Shot (1972) and the novella ‘Walking Around Money’ (2005) are parts of the Dortmunder series of comic heist capers. Very funny. Flashfire (2000) is a late Parker novel – taut, brisk, well-constructed, with a hilarious cameo appearance by the Christian Renewal Defense Force. Adios Scheherazade (1970) is a very rare non-crime novel based on Westlake’s days writing stuff like this -
Apart from its fascinating insights into the soft-core porn racket of the late 50s-early 60s, and some expected Westlake belly-laughs, Adios Scheherazade isn’t that great. I recently read Barry N. Malzberg’s Herovit’s World (1973) and it’s the same set-up. Westlake and Malzberg both did hackwork for the Scott Meredith Agency. Their plots are the same: after dozens of quickly-typed hack novels, a self-loathing author starts to crack up and cannot push through his current manuscript. His family life falls apart. With the wife gone, the man hits the streets and fucks a prostitute. The difference is that Malzberg’s protagonist writes schlocky (and asexual) science fiction. I preferred Herovit’s World. Edgier.
Anyway, Earl Kemp has a nice article on Adios Scheherazade and the soft-core racket called ‘Nobody Can Write This Shit Forever’. Lots of quotations.
Sounds like I need to read that Kemp article, given my own professional background (as touched upon in the “Ghost Land” essay reprinted in the London anthology); in 1999, when I was strugling to get out of the soft core (and hardcore) porn racket, I discovered that a great many of name writers did their time in what a colleague — now a best-selling writer of political detective thrillers — called “The Porn Ghetto.”
I read the Kemp article. Wow. The segment about the formula for writing the books almost precisely mirrors the formula I used for writing soft core and hardcore films, just enough plot to justify the sex so it could not be conceived as gratutious or “pandering to prurient interests” (the language of the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Miller vs. California pornography case). Now I have to see if I can find a copy of Westlake’s “Adios, Scheherazade”!
Yes, the writing-to-the-formula passages are some of the best bits of the novel. I’m sure you’ll find Adios interesting. Here Westlake follows the soft-core format – 10 chapters of exactly 5000 words or 15 pages. But the book seems a little too improvised. I wouldn’t be surprised if DW typed it out in the requisite 10 days. Nevertheless, some funny passages. And some sex, too.
You’ll have trouble finding a copy of that book cheaply, RJ. It’s long out of print and even the crappiest old paperback goes for a small fortune. I was able to get a copy through inter-library loan at my university. Herovit’s World comes cheaper.
Lawrence Block also wrote his Scott Meredith soft-core hackwork novelised memoir – Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man. So did Hal Dresner – The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books.
When can we expect yours, RJ?
People have been asking for that book from me for years, Matt. Maybe. Someday. Some of my history in that business was passed on to Trace, my fictional alter ego, in the unpublished novel, The Furthest Palm, but the stories that formed the novel are still available at my old website, 8763 Wonderland — in fact, here’s a true-life behind-the-scenes story from 2006 April called “The Misfits” (with apologies to Arthur Miller), which is one of my favorites:
http://8763wonderland.wordpress.com/2006/04/26/the-misfits/
Gracias for the link, sir. And great blog. I thought I had eclectic tastes…