skip to main |
skip to sidebar
New Pulp Press's latest offering, Bad Juju by Jonathan Woods has made New York Magazine's approval matrix. You can't buy that type of publicity (especially if you're a small press. It's cost prohibitive.) This makes me feel bad about not picking up this collection sooner. It's been sitting on my dresser for a while now.
Robert Staples is, to put it bluntly, shit out of luck. A washed up B-movie actor he has landed in the sun blasted landscape of South Florida, where he ekes out a living being a generic "celebrity." As Lynn Kostoff's A Choice of Nightmares (New Pulp Press, 2010), opens he has even put that tenuous living at risk by chucking a barking dog into an alligator pit during a mall opening. His agent gives him a chance to redeem himself through the simple task of delivering an envelope, but Staples screws that up, and quickly finds himself pulled into the world of cocaine smuggling, where he bumps up against decadent, dangerous, and depraved characters. And he finds himself loving it. For a man with few options and fading dreams, the world of cocaine and easy sex offers what he needs: Escape.
Escape, however, is something that's not easy to come by. It's easy to run, but no man can hide, and Staples is eventually forced to confront himself, decide who he is, and see if he can the ultimate luxury: a way out alive.
First published in 1991, A Choice of Nightmares, sank without making many ripples in the publishing pond. New Pulp Press has scooped the other reprint houses by scoring the rights to this one. Although Hard Case usually reprints old novels, Charles Ardai ought to be kicking himself for not putting his imprint on this novel. It's certainly more than good enough for that imprint. Kostoff's story takes off from the first line of the first chapter, and his characters are well drawn. His femme fatale, Denise and his psychotic hitman Barry from Palm Springs, who could easily have been cardboard cutouts, turn out to be unexpectedly deep and very disturbing. Denise, in particular, is an enigma that proves resistant to analysis. In the end, it's the ambiguity that Kostoff maintains throughout the story that makes it such a compelling read. He refuses to give in to the temptation to provide simple answers, making the story all that much more satisfying, at least for readers who eschews easy answers and pat endings.
Well, damn. I would have never predicted this in a million years. While I liked Nate Flexer's debut, The Disassembled Man, it never entered my head that someone would option the film rights. I ended my review thusly:The Disassembled Man is remarkable for its ugliness. It's hard to think of a book with a character as despicable as Frankie Avicious. It turns out he has valid reasons for being as twisted as he is, but his unapologetic homicidal mania may be difficult for some to stomach. It would be very hard to imagine this movie as even a hard R, provided of course it ever gets out of development hell. Still, good on Nate. Hope it works out.
Gil Brewer’s mini-revival (is the prefix even appropriate anymore?) continues with the republication of his 1952 Fawcett novel Flight to Darkness (New Pulp Press, 2009). The book represents the new publisher’s first foray into reprints, and it seems like a worthwhile effort. Brewer’s work usually follows a fairly straightforward formula: A desperate guy meets a bad girl and proceeds to make questionable decisions until bad things happen, and it’s too late to fix them. It’s easy to accuse Brewer of being repetitive, and it’s true, he was, but his books have a certain desperation about them which makes them seem more immediate than the countless other mass market paperbacks of the era that depended on the same basic plot. Brewer’s effortless conjuring of desperate heroes is because his own life was so full of desperation.
Still, he had his faults. His books often seem rushed, probably because he was under duress to crank something out to get paid and because back in those days no one wanted a hundred thousand word manuscript. The fact that he was an alcoholic probably didn't help.
Flight to Darkness aspires to be more than the average Brewer novel, and it sometimes succeeds, but it still suffers from its ending. Darkness is the story of Korean War vet Eric Garth, who has acted heroically in battle, saving an injured man while under heavy fire. The incident took its toll on Garth, though, and he suffers from what would now be called post traumatic stress disorder.
Eric, a sculptor, is constantly haunted by the thought that he murdered his estranged half-brother Frank with a sculpting mallet. As the novel opens, Garth is being released to return to Florida with his fiancee Leda, a nurse he met while hospitalized, to claim his half of the family business from his half-brother Frank. The happy couple's trip is derailed in Alabama when Garth is accused of a hit and run. Garth has no memory of the incident, and when his brother shows up, local law enforcement is only too happy to institutionalize Garth indefinitely.
When he finally escapes, he finds out the charges were dropped long ago, so he sets out for Florida, where he discovers that Leda has married Frank, who has conspired to screw him out of the family business. Matters are further complicated by Eric's old flame, Leda's professed desire for him, and the not insignificant fact that Frank soon turns up dead, his head bashed in with a mallet.The desperation that pervades Brewer's stories works especially well in this novel, since the protagonist is not merely broke (as is often the case in Brewer novels), but of questionable sanity. It is a little difficult to dismiss some of Eric's actions late in the novel, however. After a good, if a little long setup, Brewer has his hero ignore about ten million red flags as the novel rolls toward its inevitable conclusion, and the conclusion is way too convenient. Flight to Darkness is missing the final part of Brewer's formula. At the end, everything turns out all right, which is just way too pat to be satisfying, especially considering the fact that Eric Garth spends ninety-nine percent of the novel doing his thinking below the waist. As is often the case, it seems like Brewer knew the necessary word count was close, so he just put a bow on it. A little more effort would have served this story well. The book has a rather well done pulp climax, but a little denouement would have fleshed it out just enough to make it have the resonance it should have had. It would have pushed this book from a good example of classic paperback fiction to an excellent one.
After reading The Disassembled Man (New Pulp Press, 2009), I was pretty sure the author, Nate Flexer was a pseudonym. (Nate Flexer is a pseudonym for John Basoff, proprietor of New Pulp Press. My instincts were right See comments). His author’s bio identifies him as a high school English teacher, and I’m pretty sure The Disassembled Man isn’t the type of book your typical school board member would take to bed with them. Flexer doesn’t appear to be a pseudonym, however, so maybe he teaches at a private school or has tenure or is married to the school board chairman or something because this is the sort of book that would make your average local politician go crazy.
Frankie Avicious has a pretty lousy life. He has a job slitting cows' throats at a slaughterhouse. He's in love with a stripper. His wife is fat, and her dad is rich, but he won't kick loose with any money. He's also a raging alcoholic who pukes more than a supermodel (there is more vomiting in this book than in any other book ever written). When Frankie receives a visit from a mysterious old acquaintance, he decides to get his life together. Instead of enrolling in community college, however, Frankie decides to kill his father-in-law for the inheritance. From there, it's off to the races, as the body count mounts, and Frankie's tenuous grip on reality becomes even more tenuous.
The Disassembled Man is a little rough around the edges, but it's a first novel, so roughness around the edges is to be expected. Flexer's main character is a little bit of a mystery, though. For a character with a bad (and I mean bad) background who has no education or interest in self-improvement, he's remarkably articulate. The fact that he's deeply, deeply crazy and has trouble keeping in touch with reality doesn't help either. It's entirely debatable, in my mind, if the last third of the book happens anywhere outside Frankie's head.
The Disassembled Man is remarkable for its ugliness. It's hard to think of a book with a character as despicable as Frankie Avicious. It turns out he has valid reasons for being as twisted as he is, but his unapologetic homicidal mania may be difficult for some to stomach. This Jim Thompson on mescaline story is not for the faint of heart.
