Reading California Fiction

THE AVALANCHE: A MYSTERY STORY

    One of the surprising entries in the biographical section of The Columbia History of the American Novel is a brief discussion of Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948). She wrote more than fifty novels over her long career, many of them set in the San Francisco area. Her work, however, consisted mostly of romances for the popular market. I read one of them, American Wives and English Husbands, awhile ago. I wasn’t all that impressed with it but thought I might have missed something. So I decided to try again. The title seems excessively dramatic, by the way.

    The Avalanche: A Mystery Story by Gertrude Atherton. Frederick A. Stokes (1919), 229 pp.
    A rich, handsome but stuffy San Francisco businessman, Price Ruyler, senses unusual tension in his relationship with his lovely young wife, Helene. He aims to find out what’s wrong and looks first at Marie Delano, his wife’s large and cold mother. Madame Delano had arrived from France after the 1906 earthquake without even a letter of introduction. Only Price’s marriage to Helene had gained her mother a place in the city’s upper crust. Could she be hiding something that was causing Helene’s unhappiness?
    This might be considered a the-rich-are-like-us story. Although we probably don’t have posh suburban estates and rubies the size of golf balls, we may be dealing with marital communication issues, unpleasant mothers-in-law and family secrets. But even readers who identify with the problems of the wealthy may ultimately be disappointed by the novel’s structure. The story is entirely told from the point of view of Price Ruyler. All the other characters, including his wife, are seen through his eyes. Since he lacks perspicacity and imagination, he views Helene primarily as a socially acceptable bit of arm-candy who needs a few years to mature. As Price learns more about his wife, it becomes clearer that her story is more interesting than his. The author, in short, has written about the wrong character. Nevertheless, the book is of some historical interest, though it probably does not show Atherton at her best.

PROWLER IN THE NIGHT

    The internet has failed me on this one. I suspected that Prowler in the Night was based on the crimes of a real serial killer in Los Angeles, someone earlier than the Hillside Strangler. The best I could get out of Google was the name of Henry Bush, who was once labeled the Hollywood Strangler. I couldn’t discover the dates and circumstances of his crimes. Not even the online resources of the local library helped. Sometimes there’s just no substitute for looking through actual books or, perhaps in this case, actual microfilm.

    Prowler in the Night by Jack Matcha. Fawcett Gold Medal (1959), 144 pp
    In the third assault in a single week, an attractive young woman is murdered in the Hollywood hills. LAPD detectives Abe Goldberg and Jim Farley have no clues, but they suspect they’re seeking a quiet, ordinary looking guy with severe sexual problems. Pretty ad-writer Vita Reynolds isn’t concerned - - yet. She’s worried about choosing a boyfriend from two candidates: a married fellow worker, John Palmer, whom she thinks she loves, and a strait-laced boy from home, Hubert Buhler, who is her mother’s favorite. But when Vita starts getting weird phone calls late at night, however, she becomes more apprehensive.
    This is one of those stories that would probably work better as a movie than as a book. Readers have more time than viewers to think about the action. So what may be surprising in a film comes to seem obvious in a novel. Take Vita, for instance. Even though she doesn’t know it, and the police don’t know it, Vita must be a target. And she must go on being one until the book is out of pages. The author works pretty successfully within these limitations. He puts in plenty of plot twists, throws into question the sexual proclivities of several male characters, and hides the killer’s identity until the end. And he employs the simple, straightforward writing style that typifies the Gold Medal series. Readers who like suspense stories and don’t mind some violent scenes are likely to enjoy the book.

WHITE NIGHT

    I liked the first book by Forrest Rosaire (1902-1977), East of Midnight, quite a bit. So I decided to try another of his novels. As far as I can tell, he wrote only three books, of which White Night is the last. In addition, some of his magazine fiction is of novel length. The rest of his literary career, which lasted more than thirty years, seems to have focused on short stories. He wrote many of them under the unlikely pseudonym “J.-J. des Ormeaux.”

  

    White Night by Forrest Rosaire. Jonathan Cape (1954), 224 pp.
    Cole Morgan, an angry and confused fifteen-year-old, is heading to Pasadena to spend the summer of 1947 with his aunt, Claire Trehearne. He blames her for indirectly causing the recent death of his mother and is looking for a chance to retaliate. On the bus west he meets another teenager, Maureen Halvorsen, who is escaping her predatory stepfather. Cole explains that his aunt and mother had a falling-out after the disappearance of his cousin Nancy in the Long Beach earthquake of 1933. Claire, meanwhile, does feel guilty about her treatment of her sister and nephew. She hopes somehow to make amends to Cole during his visit, but her fondest wish is that her long-lost daughter would reappear.
    It’s a shame that this book doesn’t quite work. The writing style is clean and sharp. The two teenagers are well drawn and sympathetic. The several episodes depicting adolescent angst are vivid and knowing. But what sets the story in motion, an incident during an earthquake fourteen years before, seems too far from the action. Cole’s animosity toward a long absent aunt defies ready belief. And Claire's abiding sense of guilt remains unexplained until the final pages. In fact, her character is never well defined and is often seen through the eyes of her ineffective would-be boyfriend. In the end readers may find themselves carried along with the story without always understanding why events are happening. Although the book is not entirely successful, it does have much to recommend it.

LOST DAUGHTER

    For all I know, Lost Daughter may be an unusually early entry into the search-for-the- birth-mother subgenre of romance fiction. Stories of this sort are still popular today, as, for example, in the new Helen Hunt movie. So the book may deserve more recognition than it has received. Louise Redfield Peattie (1900-1965) wrote nearly a novel a year between 1928 and 1943. The last four are set in California.

    Lost Daughter by Louise Redfield Peattie. Putnam (1938), 238 pp.
    Jinny Gilder, beautiful and popular, lives with her doting parents, Consuelo and Chase, on a hillside estate in Montecito. Like many nineteen-year-olds, she wonders what she must do to create an authentic life. Especially puzzling is a recurring vision of herself as a child in another place with another name. Her parents deny that she’s adopted, but in fact she was - - or at least she was obtained from a disabled woman who claimed to be her mother. While Jinny contemplates marriage to the smarmy but socially acceptable Kellem Nye, Chase Gilder pursues the truth about the origins of his daughter.
    This novel has a surprisingly complicated structure. There are a half-dozen major characters, several points of view, important flashbacks, and some surprising plot twists. But the book is hemmed in by the conventions of romance fiction. The characters are no edgier than cream puffs, running from kind and self-sacrificing to well-meaning but oblivious. The narrative style too often drifts into the florid - - descriptions of landscape are a favorite - -  while the stilted dialogue sounds little like actual conversation. And the reader will know the identity of Jinny's true soulmate long before she meets him. Of course, these characteristics of the novel may not be considered shortcomings by many readers of romance fiction. They might like the book a lot.

OAKLEY HALL

Oakley Hall (1920-2008) died on May 14. He wrote some two dozen novels over a period of nearly fifty years. He is best known today for his ground-breaking western, Warlock (1958). Hall’s earlier books were set in California, where he lived his entire life. With the exception of the semi-autobiographical Corpus of Joe Bailey, the stories took place at the time they were written. (Last year Hall revisited his Joe Bailey days in Love and War in California.)

Here, for the record, is a list of Hall’s pre-1960 California novels:

Murder City [as O. M. Hall] Farrar, Straus (1949), 223 pp.
So Many Doors. Random House (1950), 302 pp.
Corpus of Joe Bailey. Viking Press (1953), 479 pp.
Too Dead to Run [as Jason Manor]. Viking Press (1953), 186 pp
The Red Jaguar [as Jason Manor]. Viking Press (1954), 184 pp.
    paperback ed.: The Girl in the Red Jaguar. Popular Library (1955).
Mardios Beach. Viking Press (1955), 282 pp.
Pawns of Fear [as Jason Manor]. Viking Press (1955), 184 pp.
    paperback ed.: No Halo for Me. Popular Library (1956).
The Tramplers [as Jason Manor]. Viking Press (1956), 181 pp.

NOW AND ON EARTH

     In the last couple decades Jim Thompson (1906-1977) has come to be regarded as one of the masters of noir fiction. Most of his thirty-odd novels from the 1950s and 1960s are back in print. Thompson began writing stories of crime and violence in the 1930s, but he hoped to create serious, mainstream fiction. So it was that his first novel, Now and on Earth, focused on ordinary people facing typical problems. The book, which is strongly autobiographical, got good reviews but made little money. It was only after a second attempt failed to dent the market that Thompson returned to crime writing. His first novel in the genre appeared in 1949.

    Now and on Earth by Jim Thompson. Modern Age Books (1942), 306 pp.
    Jimmie Dillon’s life is falling apart. His hopes for continuing his writing career have crumpled, and he’s just taken a job in a San Diego aircraft plant. He works in the stockroom, where he’s learning the names and functions of hundreds of small parts. He’s not yet sure how to cope with his colleagues: Moon, his enigmatic boss; Gross, the bullying bookkeeper; Vail and Buskin, the mean jokesters; and Murphy, who might be a Mexican. Things are no better at home. Cash is tight, and everyone is feeling the pinch. Jimmie’s wife, Roberta, has just spent the rent money on shoes for their children. His increasingly absent-minded mother helps out with the food, but only one dollar at a time. His married sister, Frankie, avoids responsibilities. In addition, Jimmie’s mind is often clouded with thoughts of his unhappy childhood, especially experiences with his now institutionalized father. All of this is leading Jimmie to drink heavily.
    Readers will need to begin by discarding most of their preconceptions about Thompson’s work. As in his later crime novels the protagonist and narrator feels alienated from those around him. But the sources of Jimmie’s unhappiness -- frustrated ambition, brainless job, oppressive family -- are clear and specific. And his responses are ordinary and understandable. Jimmie is a decent and responsible guy, someone not all that different from millions of other people whose hopes for a better future are crashing against the realities of American life. Thompson not only gets the reader into Jimmie’s head but into his environment as well. Scenes at work and at home are vivid and painfully familiar. Ancillary characters are plausible and well rounded. Some readers may find the book’s flashbacks confusing and its viewpoint too bleak. Even so, the novel deserves a wide audience.

THE CHASED AND THE UNCHASTE

    It happened occasionally that fictional series detectives from other parts of the country would take a case in Hollywood. Thomas B. Dewey (1915 - 1981) had featured Mac, the protagonist of The Chased and the Unchaste, in a half-dozen novels, mostly set in Chicago, before sending him west. (I’m not actually sure of this, since Dewey’s Every Bet’s a Sure Thing [1953] opens on a train for California.) Dewey wrote more than two dozen mystery stories altogether, beginning in the 1940s and ending in the 1970s.

    The Chased and the Unchaste by Thomas B. Dewey. Random House (1959), 185 pp.
    Mac, the Chicago detective, goes to Hollywood at the request of film producer Julian Porter. Someone has sent Porter a note threatening to kidnap his adorable young daughter, Linda. Mac’s job is to protect the girl and find the culprit. He moves into Porter’s house and begins looking for potential kidnappers. Many are on the list: Porter’s gorgeous but unhappy wife, Carol; his dedicated business manager, Bernie Wolf; his disgruntled ex-wife, Gen Richards and her boxer brother, Paulie; his housekeeper, Louise Reilly, once an actress, and her wannabe writer son, Garwood; Linda’s spinsterish governess, Alice Rummel; and some of the household help.
    As mystery stories go, this one does not quite make the grade. Mac is pretty tough, all right, but less than exciting. He doesn’t make wisecracks, he doesn’t objectify women, and he’s violent only when necessary. In short he’s a sensible guy - - appropriate to hire but not so much fun to read about. The novel’s structure is routine. Suspects are presented one by one; eventually Mac finds the right one. Most important of all, the story’s premise doesn’t really make sense. Kidnappers rely on surprise. They don’t send warning notes. The book has several well-written scenes of menace (though the one that opens the story seems irrelevant). Otherwise, it’s a disappointment.

A VIEW OF THE BAY

    It’s pretty typical today for novelists to be college professors. But that was not true fifty or sixty years ago. English professors taught undergraduates, fiction writers scrambled to find outlets for their work, and the two groups seldom crossed paths. As far as I can tell, this began to change in the 1940s. In the vanguard of California’s academic novelists was Richard Scowcroft (1916-2001), who had a Ph.D. from Harvard and arrived at Stanford in 1947 to direct (with Wallace Stegner) the writing program there.

    A View of the Bay by Richard Scowcroft. Houghton Mifflin (1955), 218 pp.
    Leonard Shaw, a thirty-something San Francisco businessman, discovers he’s been bequeathed a large sum by Craig Robertson, a former prep-school roommate who has recently committed suicide. Also named in the will is Robertson’s small literary magazine, which will now continue under the auspices of his assistant, Audrey. Soon Robertson’s sultry sister, Nora, shows up to challenge the will. All this brings to Leonard’s mind his previous experiences with Janet, his now pregnant wife, and with the Robertson family.
    Well-crafted prose proves insufficient to bring this book to life. The portrait of the main character, Leonard Shaw, lacks precision. The reason for his unhappiness, the hopes he has for the sister, and his problems with his wife are all vague. Even the nature of the inheritance is unclear. The other characters are presented more sharply, but none is sympathetic. It’s possible that fifty years ago stories of men (or at least of veterans) coping with women, money, and careers automatically sparked interest. That is not the case today. So modern readership is likely to be limited.

THE SELF-ENCHANTED

    Spoiler alert! I try to avoid revealing any information about a book that might be considered a spoiler. My general rule is to limit my discussion of plot to the first 15 percent of the book. The idea is to encourage readership rather than present thorough analysis. But rules are made to be broken, right? There’s no better candidate for spoilers than The Self-Enchanted. First, the full flavor of the book can’t be appreciated from the initial forty-five pages. And second, the number of prospective modern readers is very, very low. The book, incidentally, was never published in the United States.

    The Self-Enchanted by David Stacton. Faber and Faber (1956), 304 pp.
    Christopher Barocco, a dangerous and self-contained man from San Francisco, decides to build a house on the eastern slope of the Sierras south of Reno. He hires an architect, Curt Bolton, and a crew of local workers to do the job. He has contempt for most people but makes friends with Sally Carson, the twentyish daughter of the project's mason. Neither he nor Sally cares much when her father falls from a ledge and dies. Christopher goes to Santa Barbara to visit his dying mother, whom he hates. She demands to see his new house but dies before they arrive. He then decides he must marry Sally to forestall loneliness. Their marriage is a series of trips, none of which diverts attention from his impending death from cancer. Christopher dies, but his spirit will live on because Sally is pregnant.
    Stacton is trying to concoct a modern-day Gothic melodrama. He throws in a house on a cliff, an isolated village, a mysterious stranger, a naive young woman, and an evil mother. Characters are always in turmoil. Emotions, which run from hatred to loathing, constantly burst forth. Unfortunately, Stacton has little ability to elicit sympathy for his characters or probe their motivations. It's unclear why Barocco and his mother are so vicious and why Sally decides to marry a man who despises her. And it’s less clear why anyone should care. Readers are likely to find the whole thing pretty silly.

SOMETHING WONDERFUL TO HAPPEN

    Darwin Teilhet (1904-1964) is one of those under-the-radar novelists who for decades turned out book after book. Teilhet’s career extended from 1931 to his death in 1964. During that period he published some two dozen novels under his own name and two pseudonyms. He wrote several more books with his wife, Hildegard Tolman Teilhet. He’s best known for his mystery stories, especially those featuring Baron von Kaz. But Teilhet also published at least ten non-genre novels, of which Something Wonderful to Happen is the only one I’m sure is set primarily in California.

    Something Wonderful to Happen by Darwin L. Teilhet. Appleton- Century-Crofts (1947), 275 pp.
    Barney Higgs, publisher of the local newspaper in a small town south of San Jose, seeks to provide security for his family. He invests in a shady real estate scheme concocted by well-connected developer Arthur Slinker. Barney’s wife, Sally, is outraged but might be mollified if the couple were officially married. As communist students in the 1930s, they had casually ignored convention. Now with four children they are more worried about their reputations. The kids have their problems as well, especially thirteen-year-old Saraphine, who needs Barney’s help to complete a poster for school. Resolving these issues turns out to be more complicated than Barney expects.
    This is a mildly amusing look at family life in the period just after World War II. The story is told from Barney’s point of view. With the lightest touch possible, the author wants to scrutinize Barney’s belief that the welfare of his family can be divorced from the good of society as a whole. Barney is no ideologue here -- just a well-meaning bumbler with bad judgment. If he drank less and had nothing unusual in his background, he might have been the prototype for a 1950s sitcom. The book probably dwells too much on Saraphine’s poster. The comic moments are perhaps not funny enough. And the crucial drunk episode with Slinker’s wife drifts into the incredible. Even so, the novel is sufficiently ingratiating to attract modern readers.