Lawrence Block Discusses Donald Westlake at the Mysterious Bookshop

Interview with Darwyn Cooke

Darwyn Cooke's The Hunter

I finally got my copy of Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of The Hunter this week. It's nice. I mean, really nice. I was expecting something like your usual graphic novel, but this is more like a nice hardcover book in both dimensions and quality. This presentation is perhaps fitting given the new respectability of graphic novels. I remember when the term was used to describe several issues of a comic book series cheaply slapped together to bring in a few extra bucks. Cooke's The Hunter is anything but cheap, and it certainly bears all the hallmarks of a labor of love. There's no attempt to fancy up the source material, or make it more modern. It's set in 1962, when the original book was set, and, with the exception of the ending, it hews closely to the original story. I suspect the bit Cooke saw fit to cut will actually show up in his planned adpatation of the next novel, The Man with the Getaway Face. The graphic novel's ending allows it work as a stand alone story, which strikes me as the author hedging his bets. The remaining three adapations showing up on store shelves is probably contingent on how well The Hunter sells, so a cliffhanger might leave people hanging forever.

Cooke's Parker inhabits a world that is black, white and blue. The choice works very well. Full color would have been too much, and black and white would have been a bit too stark (no pun intended). The color and the artwork, both complement the tone of the story. Cooke's Parker, who the reader does not see from the front for the first twenty or so pages. All in all, I was very pleased with this book. I hope it will turn some people on to some of these Stark reprints.

An Unpublished Westlake and Burying the Lede

Good news for those who thought the latest Dortmunder novel was going to be the late Donald Westlake's last published novel. In April, after taking a three month hiatus, Hard Case Crime, will return with Memory, Westlake's final novel.

From the desription:

It's a beautifully written, heartbreaking story about a man who suffers an assault (after being caught in bed with another man's wife) and wakes up in a hospital bed suffering from a peculiar sort of brain damage that doesn't make him unable to function but does make it hard for him to form new memories or retain old ones. Stuck far from home (and struggling even to remember where home used to be), paranoid about the attentions of the police, and desperate to reconstruct his lost life, Paul Cole sets out on an extraordinary private investigation: a missing persons case in which he himself is the missing person.


And I can't help but feel that the latest Hard Case newsletter has sort of buried the lede. Down toward the bottom, after announcing Westlake's book and teasing the still unnamed second December title, Ardai announces that Hard Case is going to go to bimonthly publication instead of monthly. He tries to spin, saying it will provide time to drum up more interest and allow readers to get to the books, but the message between the lines is, "If you like these books buy more of them. Times are tough all around, but they're still half the price of movie ticket."

The Jugger

With the realization that the next set of Stark reprints are imminent, I figure I'd better say something about the latest batch if I'm going to say anything, and I am, so here it goes.



Earlier, I touched on what it is about Parker that makes him such an enduring character. I concluded that a large part of his appeal was due to his persistence and determination. Parker soldiers on relentlessly know matter what sort of setbacks he runs into. Now, it would be possible to base an entire series on an underworld ubermensch who is constantly overcoming working to overcome the treachery and incompetence of others, but Westlake is more skillful than that. Parker isn't a superthief. He's just a thief, and he sometimes, despite his best efforts, makes mistakes.



The Jugger, which is certaintly the strongest of the reprints yet, is the story of a mistake. When Parker receives correspondence from an acquaintence that makes him wonder if his cover is about to be blown, Parker decided to take action. When Parker arrives in town, he finds his acquaintance dead under suspicious circumstances, so he feels obligated to investigate to make sure his identity is protected. Little does he know that every action he takes is actually bringing him closer to being exposed to the authorities.



The Jugger, like The Hunter, shows Parker as a man of stone with feet of clay, and it is that added depth which, along with Westlake's remarkable prose and storytelling ability, that allow the character and the series to endure. Parker is at the mercy of a set of rules that make it impossible for him to to trust anyone, and yet he must trust them, and this tension results in much flailing about in an information vacuum where bad intentions must be assumed by everyone. In a situation like that, everyone is going to make mistakes. It's a long way from Raffles, Gentleman Thief, that's for sure.



(Image shamelessly ripped off from The Violent World of Parker).

The Third Set of Parker Reprints from U of Chicago

Messing around on Amazon today, I discovered the covers for The Seventh, The Handle and The Rare Coin Score, the next three novels to get reprinted by the U. of Chicago Press. The official publication date is August 15, but if the first two batches of reprints are any indication, they will be available a month or two early.

Preview of Darwyn Cooke's Adaptation of The Hunter

There is a 20 page preview of Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of The Hunter available here. The book is due in July. It's available for pre-order from Amazon, and it's going to be a hardcover, something I didn't know before. It looks pretty good. If you can't wait until July, there is a used copy for a cool grand. Somethow, I think I'll manage for three more months.

New Stark Reprints in the Wild

The Mourner, The Jugger and The Score from the University of Chicago Press are now available for purchase from the vendor of your choice.

The next three books, The Seventh, The Handle and The Rare Coin Score are scheduled for August, and will have a foreward by Luc Sante. I guess this means they're skipping the Grofield Stark's since The Damsel was published between The Handle and The Rare Coin Score, according to The Violent World of Parker.

The Violent World of Parker Redesign

The only site on the Web dedicated to Donald Westlake's alter ego's greatest creation has relaunched with a much improved design. (You can see the old design here.) Be sure to catch the tribute page, which has a good collection of links to Westlake obit pieces. The page also has great collections of covers for each novel, including the Grofield novels. It's a good way to kill an hour or so.

The New Parker Covers

From the U of Chicago Press. Scheduled for May 1 publicaton.

Dancing Aztecs

When Donald Westlake died I picked up Dancing Aztecs at the library because I wanted to read something of his, and I enjoy his comic novels. I finished it a week or two ago, and I've been meaning to post something about it, but James Reasoner has beat me to it, so I'm just gonna link to his post. The lesson here is that, no matter how obscure the topic you're going to write about, don't procrastinate because, in the Internet age, someone will beat you to it.

More Westlake

Given yesterday's sad news, I thought it might be appropriate to revisit some of my recent posts on Westlake's work as Richard Stark. First off, there was already a significant surge of interest in his older Parker novels before his death. The U of Chicago Press has already reprinted the first three in the series; The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face, and The Outfit. The next three, The Jugger, The Mourner and The Score are being released in May. The new editions will have a foreward by John Banville, who has called Westlake one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.

Darwyn Cook is also working on a graphic novel adaptation of the first four Parker novels, and Hard Case Crime will soon reprint his first novel under his own name.


If there's any such thing as a silver lining to someone's death, in this case it's the fact that the world loves a dead artist. Their should be an even greater interest in Westlake's work now that he's gone, so hopefully these projects will get the attention they deserve.


I ponder the appeal of a bastard like Parker here.

And, for the record, this is my favorite non-Stark Westlake novel.

Donald Westlake is dead.

Depressing news. He was 75, so one can't say it was unexpected, but depressing nevertheless. Westlake had it. He really had it. He could tell a story so effortlessly that it made you think novel writing has to be a cinch. Wrong. He was just that good. The always on the ball Sarah Weinman has a roundup of links. His next book, Get Real, a Dortmunder novel, is due in April. I'm going to go have a drink.

There's Something About Parker

If you follow this blog, you know that Donald Westlake's best known creation, professional thief Parker, has been on my mind of late. In the last two weeks I've read the first three Parker novels' The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit, and I've also watched the director's cut of Payback, director and screenwriter Brian Helgeland's adaptation of The Hunter featuring Mel Gibson.

Helgeland's film is much different than the film that made it to the screen. It has a third act that follows Westlake's book much more closely and the overall tone of the film is much more in keeping with Westlake's vision of Parker. The theatrical version of Payback made Porter (the Parker character) accessible via a wisecracking voiceover (voiceovers are almost always a bad sign in a movie) and provided a happy ending. I liked the theatrical version well enough, but the director's cut was much better. With the voiceover gone, Gibson's character was much more self-contained and mysterious. The DVD had a documentary about the making of the film, and how the suits and Gibson (who was a producer) had second thoughts about the level of violence, ambiguous ending and the very nature of the character. The director's cut Porter hits his ex-wife and shoots people in cold blood. He's not a psycho, but he's not exactly a thief with a heart of gold either.

Now, it's not surprising that the movie version of Westlake's hard ass character would be watered down. That's what Hollywood does. They need to reach as many people as possible to make as much money as possible. The result of trying to please everybody is usually an inferior product, and I think you can make that argument with Payback, but, on the other hand, there is a validity to the concerns of the suits in this case. Parker is unlike most fictional characters in that he has no redeeming qualities. He is not nice to dogs and children. He does not have any interesting hobbies. He does not give the money he steals to the poor. He has no friends, just associates, and he'll kill them the minute he thinks they might trip him up, and he's not tortured or tormented either. The people he kills and the violent acts he commits never cause him to lose a moment of sleep.

Westlake intended for Parker to get caught at the end of The Hunter, figuring the guy was just too mean for more than one novel, but the editor at Crest, the outfit that bought the book, wanted a series based on the character, so Westlake obliged. So, what is it about Parker, who has now traipsed through around twenty novels, that appeals to people? Is it Parker's complete amorality? Is it his professionalism? Is it his lack of emotion? For me, I think it's his tenacity. In the opening page of The Hunter Parker is walking across the George Washington Bridge. He is broke. A guy offers him a ride and Parker's response is to tell him to go to hell. He then proceeds to go into the city and steal enough money to begin his campaign of revenge. I think that's why I root for him. He's always coming from nothing and pulling himself up out of the gutter. Every time he thinks he's got a problem solved another one comes up and he's got to start all over again. It never gets him down and he never gives up, and that's a good quality to have even if you are a thief.

Sundries

You already know about Fifty-to-One, the fiftieth book in the Hard Case Crime series, but Bookgasm is reporting that there's going to be a special leather bound edition of only 5o copies, each one autographed by multiple Hard Case authors. It'll only cost $750. Who's going to volunteer to buy one for me?

Bleak House Publisher Ben LeRoy and author Nathan Singer (In the Light of You) have put their heads together to come up with the 32 most Rock and Roll Rock and Roll songs.

Over at Behind the Black Mask Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards interview George Pelecanos.

Continuing my fascination with all things Parker, I present to you an interview with Donald Westlake from the University of Chicago Press Web site.

And to bring it back to rock and roll, the two best bands in the country will be touring together this fall.

The Coming Stark Resurgence

Donald Westlake is one of the best crime writers to ever put pen to paper, and he may be one of the best writers of the last century period. The literary historians will have to argue over that assertion, but with his broad range and his prolific output it is easy to say Westlake has written something for just about everyone.

While his Dortmunder novels are well thought of and he has earned critical acclaim for his stand alone The Ax, his reputation, in large part, rests on his Parker novels written under the pseudonym Richard Stark. His first Parker novel, The Hunter, published in 1962, has been filmed twice. The first adaptation, Point Blank, released in 1967, starred Lee Marvin as Parker (although he was renamed Walker). The second adaptation, 1999's Payback, starred Mel Gibson as Parker (this time renamed Porter). As Stark, Westlake has, by my count, written 24 Parker novels and another four featuring Parker's sometime partner Grofield, a thief who uses his ill gotten gains to finance his passion for community theatre.

Twenty-four books in a series is an extrodinary run for a character. Series books can get bogged down with backstory and history, but Westlake never let that happen with Parker, who has very little in the way of a history or personal allegiance to slow him down. He does, over the course of the novels, gain a girlfriend and house in Jersey, but he's not really the stay-at-home type. And while there are those who argue that the later Parker novels do not match the quality of Westlake's earlier books, even the critics must admit that mediocre Westlake is better than a the best that a lot of other authors have to offer.

The early Parker novels have been in an out of print for as long as they've been around. More recently they have been hard to find, but that is about to change. Westlake's most famous character is getting some attention from two very different parts of the publishing world. The University of Chicago Press is going to reprint three Parker books a year until they've covered the entire series. The reprints begin this September with The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face, and The Outfit. It's a long way from the paperback racks in drugstores to the world of academic presses, and U of C Press' decision to pick up Westlake's series certaintly goes a long way toward validating the opinion of many that Westlake, with his Parker novels, has earned a place in hard boiled fiction up there with Hammett or Chandler, both of whom have been considered worthy of academic attention for some time. (Whether all the academic attention these authors have received is, in final analyis, worth anything, is a question open to debate.)

On the flipside of the coin, Parker is getting the graphic novel treatment from IDW and artist Darwyn Cooke. The first of four graphic novels, which should hew closely to their source material, will hit shelves next summer. (Bear in mind, however, that comic publishing dates are notoriously unreliable). According to Cooke, Westlake has been closely involved in the project, which is a good sign.

Surely, the fact that Westlake's work can receive attention from both an academic publisher and a comic book publisher at the same time says a lot about the enduring nature of Parker, who has been around for 46 years. Westlake has created a character who has truly taken on a life of his own, and his story will continue to reach people in many media for years to come. If that's not success, I don't know what is.