Shutting it down

I guess it is time to move on. Sad to say that this will be the last post on this blog. After this, I am shutting it down. As much as I have loved keeping it up, it has become too cumbersome and I find Tumblr much more user friendly. Those 8 who have followed me, thank you, Look up whit howland on Tumblr.

The Inside Job, by Len Levinson

The Inside Job is a strange beast. On balance it is noir and it almost takes the notion too far. One of the things that makes noir a viable genre is a morsel of redemption in the main character. In this novel, the main character has none. You don't like him from start to finish. He represents everything I remember about the ugly 1970's male. I can  picture the shaggy side burns, poorly styled hair and the ill fitting suits with fly away collars. And that is where this novel really works and makes it enjoyable.


Levinson, despite breaking some rules of story telling had me captivated from beginning to end. He has an uncanny ability to set scene and atmosphere. He also had a keen eye for the grittiness of New York in the 1970's. You felt the danger, the grime and the lawless nature of the time and place. This is what makes The Inside Job a great book. If one wanted do research about the era, this is the story to read.


I also liked the piece for the same reason I liked the movie Thief in that it is about a low tech blue collar heist. Again, Levinson takes it a step farther and has the main character and his crew a bunch of angry, desperate, dumbskies. It just goes to show that back in those days it was a lot easier to do crime and get away with it.


If you like the work of George V Higgins, especially his classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle, then you will like this book. I loved this book and as for Len Levinson, I love this "freakin" guy. He writes books that I want to read. He is pure escapism and his writing is on par with my all time favorite Mickey Spillane. So, as you can see this is really not a review of his book because I am more of a cheerleader. Get The Inside Job and all of his other books from www.amazon.com

Shemp from The Three Stooges

Shemp Howard who was born Samuel Horowitz was one of three of the third stooges. The others were Curly and Joe Derita. Shemp was my favorite. His stooge character was a lot more subtle than Curly. I find a lot of similiarities between he and Michael Richard's Kramer on Seinfeld. I think Michael Richards studied
and imitated a lot of Shemp's mannerisms.

Give Em Hell Malone

Give Em Hell Malone was directed by Russell Mulcahey and stars Thomas Jane, Ving Rhames, and Elsa Pataky. It's a riff on Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, namely Kiss Me Deadly, right down to the mysterious case.

I am in a weird place with this one. The movie was sold to me as being set in an alternate fifties very similar to Sin City, and on that point alone, it had me wanting to see it. In actuality, the film was definitely set in the present with the main character wearing a fedora and trench coat which made it hokey instead of cool. This might not have bothered me if I was forewarned.

What disappoints me the most is that a movie like this had real potential and it could have been a lot better if they had spent the money and gone full retro with the look. I was half expecting something like Streets of Fire which had a hybrid look as well.

But  Give Em Hell Malone looked cheap in a very bad way-- like a total parody of the genre.  Again that would have been ok if I had known what to expect. But it was advertised as more.

The other thing that bothered me, and I think we need to retire, is the stereotypical Asian babe Martial arts assassin. It was great in Sin City, but it was a lazy construct in this one and made it more cliché.

The more I write and the more I think about this opus, it has all the worst elements of a Roger Corman movie and none of the charm. Skip this one and check out the real stuff.

Len Levinson and Doom Platoon

With Doom Platoon you are in war pulp heaven. Penned by Len Levinson under the name of Richard Gallagher, the book is a nonstop tilt a whirl hurl and churl actioner. On top of that, it has a cover to die for. Usually I read these kinds of books to see if I can incorporate some of the style into my own writing. But not this one. This one is pure pleasure and I have decided that I'm going to read all of Levinson's work for enjoyment only.

The plot is a loose bucket of bolts. It is about an army platoon in WWII that is assigned by the brass to hold off a German Panzer division on the road to the town of Dillendorf Germany. It is a suicide mission and the men know it. But since they are the dogface soldiers they are, they grit their teeth and take it.  The story takes another turn after the battle and then another.

The novel is also crude and bawdy. The characters are the typical stereotypes you find in war flicks: the New Yorker, the Texan etc-- and the SS and German characters are comic book evil. But clichés aside, Levinson does an excellent job of making the American characters likeable even when they are throwing insults at each other. Len's prose style is very visual and very cinematic. You can picture yourself up there on the hill taking German mortar rounds and butt-stroking a German soldier with your rifle.

The book does have its flaws and at times it gets a little hokey-- especially the scenes with Mazursky, Dexter and the German Baronesses. But that's all part of the fun. If you are a pulp and men's adventure nerd then Doom Platoon is one you should check out, as with Levinson's other books. Like I said, I definitely will.

Quotes from authors who have inspired me

I thought I would share quotes from authors who have inspired me. I would be remiss not to quote from Mickey Spillane.

"Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt."

Mickey Spillane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Always do sober what you would do drunk. That'll teach you to keep your mouth shut."

Ernest Hemingway

 

Story Flow

A friend at breakfast quoted Elmore Leonard as saying "you should spend as much time with your characters as possible, and if you do, they will write the novel for you..." Good advice from a master. It's what I am doing with these two stories I am working on. Not only am I spending time with the characters, I am also spending time with the plot and the setting. There is no need to crank these babies out and I can just take it easy and be inspired. Then, when I am ready the story will flow like a wild rushing river.

The other thing that is on my mind is memories. I am one of those people that has a photographic memory. I can remember things all the way back to when I was five, and I am also one of those people that can look at pictures and not ask this question :"What was I wearing and what was I thinking when I was wearing it?"

I know what I was wearing, and I know why, and know that it was appropriate for the time and place. So how does this all tie into writing? Memories of my own life are what I use to make my characters more real and personal.  In other words, they help me inject some of my own self into my characters which makes it easier to tell the story because it is a lot more personal.

Huey Dusk(my first official review)

My first review of the original Huey Dusk was Luke warm. Here are some excerpts.

The world Whit has created is pretty fantastic, in every sense of that word. A world where clowns are real people, not just guys in make-up doing a job. You cut a clown, he bleeds white. A world where mimes really don’t speak.

By definition, a novella has less time than a novel to pull the reader in, and thusly it is imperative that the reader is captivated within the first half a page. Unfortunately I didn’t find Huey Dusk quite achieving that. This was in no small part due to the very choppy nature and static prose of the opening scenes. Nonetheless, there was still something in these scenes that made me want to know more. A clown who’s taking drugs just seconds before entertaining the children… Not your normal opening scenes, but certainly the kind that makes the reader want to plough on. I’m glad I did.

Due to the word count there’s a little less story in this novella than I would have liked. Indeed I felt it was a story with more promise, so much more I’d not been privy to. The world Whit has created is pretty fantastic, in every sense of that word. A world where clowns are real people, not just guys in make-up doing a job. You cut a clown, he bleeds white. A world where mimes really don’t speak.

What I liked about this review was that it was honest and picked up on all the parts that I hoped one would pick up on. He said the prose was static and choppy; I might have added dreamlike. When I originally wrote the story it was only meant to be a one paragraph piece of flash fiction. But I just kept adding to it paragraph by paragraph. It was intended to be expressionist art, so to speak, designed to be unsettling.

He also alluded to a paper thin plot. Again I started writing this story as a series of vignettes and realized I had something more. So, to me, the thin plot again makes this minimalist art and gives the story a very cultish vibe.

In subsequent stories, Huey has changed quite a bit, and I have never been able to recapture the magic of the original-- I'm not sure I want to. For those who want to form their own opinions about this story they can buy it either at www.untreedreads.com  or at www.amazon.com.

Thoughts about my new work in progress.

I loved the last story I wrote so much I thought I would do a spin off of. It could be classified as a prequel because it covers the younger years of a minor character in Trouble Follows. The piece will be a nod to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. Yes, this has been done before, but I feel there can't be enough Red Harvest knock offs. So I am going to contribute yet another to the literary and pulp market place.

I find the setting of the country, especially the Northwest, an intriguing backdrop for a gangster novel.  It gives the yarn a very surreal touch to see fedora wearing gangsters in Montana surrounded by snow-capped peaks and evergreens. One just doesn't equate those things.

Emmett Kelly

Emmett Kelly was a circus clown in in the 1930's who took on the persona of "Weary Willy". Weary Willy was  a sad sack, and what made him distinct was that he did not wear white face, and was modeled after the Depression Era hobos. At the time this was unheard of since clowns were supposed to be happy. But Willy was not. He'd be the one sweeping up after the circus. His most famous schtick was trying to broom away the circus spotlight.

I really like the Emmett Kelly type  of clown, and I unknowingly did a nod to Weary Willy in my first Huey Dusk story, with my character Moppy.  Moppy was a janitorial clown.

Moppy's act was to dance on stage with a mop and then scrub the air with a giant squeegee. I think the major difference between Willie and Moppy is that Moppy will slice you with a straight razor if you cross him.

Eating Poetry

Eating poetry is the title of a Mark Strand poem. As of lately that is what I have been doing. I have been reading it and writing and as Mark Strand put it, I am letting the ink dribble down my chin.

Oh and Happy New Year to all!!!

Paul Walker

The good ones always leave us too soon. I liked Paul Walker as an actor. I can't say I knew him as a person because I didn't. But  I got great vibes based on what I saw of him on screen. Apparently I was right. In his IMDB biography here is what I discovered.

March of 2010 he went to Chile and helped the victims of the earthquake.

He wanted to enlist in the army when the first Gulf War broke out.

His organization Charity Reach Out Worldwide was created to help disaster victims and the night he died, he was coming from a benefit sponsored by his organization.

And one anecdote that I heard about him was that he anonymously paid for an engagement ring for a military couple who could not afford it.

These are the things I would like to remember him for and not the fact that he died in a fiery car crash. But I have many more points to make about this guy.

Paul Walker was primarily an actor who played in action movies. In most of those movies you got just enough back story about his character to justify his credentials for what he needed to do to overcome the obstacle before him. I guess the reason I was drawn to his characters and his acting dovetails with my love for true pulp.

In true pulp there is no emphasis on character. Who the heroes and villains are come out in their actions. Off screen, the majority of Mr. Walker's actions defined him as a hero. Again, see the examples above.

I will say this even though I'm out of the loop, but I really didn't hear too much about what he did. As exemplified by his actions at the jewelry store, he acted and conducted himself off screen in a quiet manner. No pun intended, he walked the walk-- and knew how to wield the influence he had for good and obviously had genuine motives.

Again, based on IMDB, often times the Hollywood intelligentsia didn't think much of his acting. According to reports, he was once nominated for a Razzie award. I am not in that camp. I think he always played the parts that he sought to play very well. They were not deep performances, but they were solid and credible; very much the way he was in real life.

Thoughts about being a hack

Good morning all! It has been awhile so I thought I would begin the day with a post. So, let's talk about being a hack.

What is a hack? A hack was a writer who was paid to crank out low grade literature, be it true crime novels, or pot boilers. They got paid by the word. As a result, the writing had a reputation for quantity taking priority over quality( this according to Wikipedia)

Their emphasis on word count also caused a very interesting writing style that was somewhat disjointed, due to mixing ten dollar words with ten cent ones. Needless to say, it is a prose style I have grown to like and slightly imitate.

Are they any hacks today? I would answer that by saying no. It is a derogatory term for authors these days and we often times refer to popular writers as hacks when we think they are just churning things out. Trust me, if hack writing was prevalent, myself and a lot of writing partners in crime would be doing it.

Update on where I am as an author

Right now I feel I am living in the golden age of my writing career. A lot of good things have happened that I believe have transformed the game for me. I am starting to feel that this endeavor is moving from a hobby to a job. It's a little scary but at the same time it is exhilerating. To think that one day I might make some real money at this!

When things like these happen in your life, it makes you certain that you are pointed in the right direction.

Dan Fowler G-man Vol.2

I am over the moon to see the public domain pulp hero Dan Fowler G-man revived in recent literature. With that said, let me steer you again to Airship 27, a publisher helmed by Ron Fortier. To me he and his subsequent writers have truly done justice to this amazing character of rough literature.

Dan Fowler G-man is a two-fisted FBI agent of the J Edgar Hoover days. Although he uses investigation, his methods lean more toward fisticuffs and gun work. In "the four gun blazing cases" from Airship 27's entry Dan Fowler G-man Vol. 2, you are treated to a cornucopia of action. As I said in an Amazon review, each author brings something different to the table.

• Derrick Ferguson in "The Undercover Puzzle" brings us a straight crime story full of solid action.
• Aaron Smith in "Monkey Business" gives us a weird supervillian that pays tribute to Chester Gould's bad guys in his Dick Tracy adventures.
• Joshua Reynolds gives us a team effort matching up the fearless FBI agent with Jim Anthony Super Detective. In this story there is a great shoot out scene at a bank that is right out of the movies.
• B C Smith's "Feasting on the predator's corpse" is a terrifying tale about a hit man named Chuck Dudka.  Dudka was modeled after the real life Mob torpedo Richard Kuklinski, alias "The Ice Man."  Now to be fair, some might say that Smith's depiction was too derivative of the real thing. I would disagree. I think this was a smart move and made the story easier to visualize since I have also read up on Kuklinski. Along with that, it had more commercial appeal.

Let me say again I thought all of these authors did a great job and I plan to check out their other stories. Dan Fowler G-Man Vol.2 can be purchased at www.amazon.com either in print or for your e reader.
      

Pulp, by Charles Bukowski

He dedicated his last book to bad writing. Pulp is truly bad writing. Or is it?

The  plot takes Nick Belane,the protagonist private eye, on a weird and wild journey through the streets of LA searching for the writer Celine who is supposed to be dead. He is working for none other than Death in the form of a voluptuous femme fatale in a red dress too tight due to as Belane puts it, to too many chocolate malts. The story degenerates from there and throws everything as well as the kitchen sink at you.

As I mentioned earlier, Bukowski is satirizing writing. On the surface he is mocking pulp fiction detective novels, hence the title Pulp. However, I also think he is poking fun at pretentious literature as well; the type that you are suppose to glean deep meaning from.

What is funny is that he beats you over the head with metaphors and double entendre. Again, this is very much how a bad writer would write; the word self indulgent also comes to mind.

Being one of the first Bukowski novels I read, it is a real favorite of mine. I can laugh a lot more  now that I am writing stories in the genre he is ridiculing.

His prose is purposely hammy and perfect for what he is trying to achieve. I think subconsciously I have taken cues from this work and a page from his playbook and started hamming a little in my prose, especially with my Huey Dusk stories.

I would also add that this novel reads more like Richard Brautigan than it does his other works-- and that is not a bad thing either.  If you are new to the works of Charles Bukowski, I would recommend this one. It is quite entertaining and a real page turner. True fans should also get this one to round out their collection.

Working feverishly on a new story.

Hi folks! Wow!! Ideas for stories are coming in on a whirlwind. But, I now have focus and am concentrating on one piece. All I can say, it is the type of story I 've been wanting to do for a long time. Looking forward to this journey and it is bound to be a pulpy one! Will keep you all posted.

The Ruby Files Volume One

If you're are in need of a hard boiled, pulp, private eye fix, look no further than The Ruby Files Volume One, published by Airship 27, the top drawer printer and purveyor of all things New Pulp.

The Ruby Files Volume One showcases stories about the rugged shoofly Rick Ruby. Now, if you are like me, you'll automatically use Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer as a reference point-- or, maybe Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Although, you wouldn't be far off the mark, those two examples are among quite a few influences. As one of the authors of a Ruby story pointed out, the series  also draws heavily on Blake Edwards's  Peter Gunn.

I would back that assertion up by saying there's a celluloid cool about the gumshoe and he makes a seedy den of smoky, sultry jazz his home. Along with that, Ruby is also one sardonic shamus who is always cracking wise; as opposed to  a PI  like Mike Hammer, who broods and has an ultra violent temper.

Being the true slewfoot he is, Ruby never resorts to vengeance or vigilantism, which would also separate him from Hammer and pull him closer to Marlowe or Spade. But like Hammer, he is very much on the side of right and has a keen affection for his lady friends; that includes a fierce loyalty to Edie, his voluptious, but, very religious receptionist -- not unlike the famous Velda who is the one that keeps Mike Hammer grounded.

What I  also like about this collection of stories is that while the setting is the pitiless streets of 1930's New York, and there is some blood and gore, the mood is breezy and the dialogue droll. Again, very much like Blake Edwards. 

The style of prose ranges from purple and dramatic, to very spare. Hard boiled slang abounds and that is fine by this afficionado of the "roughie". With that said, the creators employed the leathery pidgin with a deft hand and light touch.

"Every story a gem..."  is what the tagline reads--and you will find much truth in that shibboleth. The Ruby Files Volume One can be purchased at www.amazon.com.

What makes a poet edgy

It's been a long time since I have written a poem-- at least a year. These days I am so caught up in pulp fiction that poetry has taken a back seat. Yesterday, a long time friend posed the question, "What makes a poet edgy?" I'm not sure I have a definate answer to that question and I am not sure he was looking for one.

All I can talk about is what I have learned about poetry through writing it. In order to be a good poet you have to be obsessed with something in life.  All your poems should be about that very thing, whether it is a question, feeling or thought.  For instance, if you are writing about a barn, the images could be metaphors about love or the loss of love and as a result, you will have created a very unique and lasting picture of that barn.

Also, as put to me by another great writer, your poems should be about watercolor moments. Or, if you are edgy, they might want to be tacky velvet art moments.

When I was younger I used to think a poem did not have to have simile, symbolism or metaphor. But I have learned that poems without those elements, while well written, are like cotton candy. They are good for the moment and satisfy your immediate sweet tooth, but disolve very quickly and leave you in the same place you started.

Poems with all the poetic conventions are like biting into a medium rare filet mignon; so much richer and so much more flavor.

Update on Scandalous Silence

I am nearing the end of the first draft of my latest Huey Dusk story titled Scandalous Silence. This is the closest to being a Mickey Spillane piece because it features a vengeful Huey Dusk. In it he, like Hammer, maims the bad guys and does his best to take a stand for goodness. But, unlike Spillane, the lines are blurred and we are not sure if what Huey is fighting for is worth it; noir in a nutshell--and I will be bold and say this is the David Goodis strain of noir.