Reading California Fiction

THE SIREN SMILED

    My foray into magazine fiction begins with the first novel of H. Vernor Dixon, who turned out a stream of paperback originals in the 1950s. The story, published in a mainline general-interest magazine, lacks the punch of his later work. I wonder whether he would have come up with something more noirish if the novel had been published as a book rather than a magazine serial. The story, incidentally, runs a book-like 70,000 words.

    “The Siren Smiled” by H. Vernor Dixon. American Magazine, Jul - Nov, 1940, 60 pp.
    When their fathers die in an underwater accident, Jo Kelsa and Mike Ryan become owners of their parents' lucrative salvage firm. Neither knows much about the business. Jo is part of San Francisco's horsey set. Mike is a successful novelist. Pat Carmichael, owner of another salvage company, offers to buy them out. They refuse, and Carmichael threatens to drive them out of business. Meanwhile, Mike catches the eye of wealthy socialite Myra Chase. When her father's ship sinks with millions in gold bullion, the rivalry between the two salvage companies heats up.
    Dixon has concocted a fairly engaging yarn tailored to readers of magazine fiction. The story appears to be thoroughly researched. Action sequences provide convincing descriptions of deep-sea diving and salvage operations. Business decisions are rendered plausible. The novel's romantic entanglements are less believable, largely because the characters lack depth. Some familiar themes from Dixon's later work appear -- the flying of light planes (Jo is a pilot), the corrupt tendencies of the rich, even the disastrous results of rough sex on virginal brides. The first-person narrator is unusual, however, since he spends most of the story as an onlooker. Dixon's prose here lacks its later edge, but his ability to construct a story is much in evidence.

MAGAZINE FICTION

   We all know that not all books are novels, but it is also true that not all novels are books. I’m not thinking so much of novels in electronic form (even if they call themselves e-books) as novels that appear in magazines. The dictionary defines a novel in part as “a relatively long fictional prose narrative.” That’s exactly what magazines supplied in abundance in the first half of the last century. Some contained only fiction; others were general interest publications. Both included what they called novels.
    The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has come up with some useful definitions to distinguish novels from shorter works. The group considers fiction of more than 40,000 words a novel, between 17,500 and 40,000 words a novella, and between 7,500 and 17,500 words a novelette. Under these definitions nearly all of what appeared in magazines were novellas or novelettes. The exceptions were serials – stories that began in one issue and continued in later ones. These usually reached the novel threshold.
    Serials seem to come in two varieties. The first is a serial that is published in connection with a book release. Sometimes it’s a condensation (with or without additional editing); sometimes it’s the full text. Sometimes it appears before the book and sometimes afterward. The second is the serial that stands by itself and never shows up in book form. I think most serials fall in the latter group.
    Novels and novellas that appeared only in magazines have fallen into greater obscurity than paperback originals. They may be getting recognition some place, but I don’t know where. The prejudice, of course, is that if long magazine fiction were worthwhile, it would be published in book form. But how does anyone know that?
    The magazines themselves are difficult to find. If WorldCat is right, no library is systematically collecting the pulps (Battle Stories, Detective Tales, et al), and few have complete runs of mainstream publications such as Liberty. Examples are available for sale on the internet, but finding a specific issue pretty much requires dumb luck.
    Libraries may have bound copies of the more popular magazines. The Sacramento City Library has long runs of Collier’s and Cosmopolitan, for example. But these sorts of volumes are unlikely to circulate, and reading stories in the library is inconvenient. Copy machines don’t seem to be the answer. They may not capture an entire page in one swipe or clearly reproduce text near the binding. The best I’ve come up with so far is photographing the stories one page after another and reading them at home on the computer.
    Of course, I’m not just reading randomly here. I want to use the same limits for magazine fiction as for the book-based variety (set in California during the author’s adult life but not before 1890 or after 1959). The FictionMags Index has been a big help in tracking down works by authors who have published books that I’ve read for the project. Its coverage is not complete, however. So eventually I may need to go through volumes one at a time and just see what I can find.

WAY OF A WANTON

    I was hoping to compare the sales of Richard Prather's novels those of other California writers. But I haven't been able to find the numbers. In fact, they may not exist. So let me just say this: Prather (1921-2007) sold more than 40,000,000 copies of his three dozen Shell Scott novels. That may not be as many as Erle Stanley Gardner and his Perry Mason series, but it is quite a few. The Prather/Scott website has more information on the author and his work.

    Way of a Wanton by Richard S. Prather. Fawcett Gold Medal (1952), 144 pp.
    Private detective Shell Scott is enjoying the scenery at a Hollywood party given by a movie director friend, Raul Evans. Others in attendance are connected with Evans's latest film, Jungle Girl. They include the worried producer, Louis Genova; the snotty writer, Oscar Swallow; the two stars, gorgeous Helen Marshall and combative Douglas King, and a trio of alluring extras. Talk no sooner turns to Swallow's missing secretary, Zoe Townsend, when the woman's stunning roommate and replacement, Lola Sherrard ("Sherry"), arrives. Scott's leering and flirting are interrupted when Zoe's body is found in the pool. When he's later hired to find the killer, Scott figures one of the party-goers must be the culprit.
    Shell Scott does not share the alienation of his fellow L. A. detectives, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer. As the story's narrator, he'll toss out a wry comment once in a while. But mostly his interests run to penalizing perceived insults and ogling women. Here's his first impression of Sherry: "She was cute and curvy and a highly jiggly tomato." Luckily for him his brawny good looks prove endlessly attractive to the opposite sex. The murder story itself is no more than serviceable. Early action episodes are implausible and the killer's motives are weak. The zany Tarzan sequence later in the novel suffers from a cumbersome set-up. Even so, the book offers an acceptable light read that fans of detective fiction -- male fans, anyway -- are likely to enjoy.

MARRIED AT LEISURE

    One thing about Hollywood novels: You never know when you'll run into an author connected to a celebrity. Virginia Lederer is a good example. Her first husband was Orson Welles. Married in 1934, they stayed together through the New York phase of his career. If Married at Leisure has husbandly influences, however, they probably come from her second husband, Charles Lederer, who wrote the screenplay for His Girl Friday and other famous comedies.

    Married at Leisure by Virginia Lederer. Doubleday, Doran and Co. (1944), 213 pp.
    After going together for five years Chubby and Marilyn are finally married. Chubby grew up in Boston. Soon after arriving in California he had invited "Grummy," his manipulative grandmother, to live with him. Chubby liked to dance but was otherwise boring and undemonstrative. Somehow he won the heart of the pretty and vivacious Marilyn, who lived with an elderly movie producer while trying to launch a film career. With Grummy opposed to the relationship and Chubby wary of any kind of change, marriage seemed unlikely. Marilyn's best friend and accomplice, Susie, the wife of a screenwriter, tells of the maneuvers and misadventures that took place on the way to the altar.
    The tale of Chubby and Marilyn is reminiscent of screwball comedies of the 1930s. Among the wacky events: Susie's disastrous New Year's Eve party, Marilyn's brief rise to stardom, and a bogus suicide attempt that goes awry. What makes the book funny, however, is the droll narrator. Alternatively frank and naive, she describes her Hollywood friends and the lives they lead. The title refers not to the marriage of her friends but her own. Susie is the one at leisure. She squanders her time in gossip, shopping and tiresome social events. Her obsession with Chubby and Marilyn, a couple of pretty vacuous characters, shows the emptiness of her own life. The author drifts away from this point at the end of the book, but by that time readers will know what she's up to.

WILD WIVES

    The distinguishing feature of this novel is its length. At 30,113 words (I downloaded a copy and Wordperfect did the counting), it might better be called a novella. Its convenient size is ideal for readers seeking nearly immediate gratification. Couple the brevity with an eighth-grade readability level (I ran a Flesch-Kincaid test), and you've got a very speedy read. The novel, incidentally, was originally published in a single volume with the reissue of High Priest of California.

    Wild Wives by Charles Willeford. Beacon Books (1956), approx. 100 pp.
    San Francisco private eye Jake Blake is sitting in his run-down office doing nothing. A teenage girl, killing time while her brother visits a man upstairs, enters and threatens Jake with what turns out to be a squirt gun. He flirts with her a bit then sends her off on a bogus stake-out. Next to arrive is Florence Weintraub, a hot number in her mid-twenties. She says her father, a famous architect, has hired two goons to follow her everywhere and curtail her social activities. She wants Jake to lose the bodyguards for a while so she can enjoy an unguarded evening. He figures he can do that without much trouble. He figures wrong.
    This is a pretty familiar noir story. A man of little distinction becomes involved with an alluring woman, cannot control is lust and greed, and sees the situation get out of control. It's a bit different because the protagonist is a detective and should know better -- trouble is supposed to be his business, after all -- and because the ending has an ironic twist. All in all, Jake is not as dark a figure as the main characters in Willeford's previous novels, High Priest of California and Pick-up. True, he's not a happy guy, in part because he's been unable to shake off his combat experiences in World War II. But he's not mean and he hasn't lost hope. Fans of Willeford's later detective fiction will probably enjoy the book.

PICK-UP

    All three of the California novels by Charles Willeford -- High Priest of California and Wild Wives as well as Pick-up -- are now back in print. Willeford (1919-1988) apparently wrote at least drafts of them while on active Air Force duty in Northern California. He had already been reassigned to a base in Florida by the time Pick-up was published. Willeford remained there after leaving the military, but it wasn't until his first Hoke Moseley detective story, Miami Blues (1984), that he gained fame as a Florida writer. Pick-up was later included in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s (Library of America, 1997).

    Pick-up by Charles Willeford. Beacon Books (1955), 191 pp.
    Harry, a one-time art student, now does odd jobs and drinks heavily to forget his failures. One evening, while serving drinks in a San Francisco bar, he meets a nice-looking but penniless blonde. She's Helen, a bona fide alcoholic who has just arrived from a beach community down the coast. They have a few drinks, then Harry finds her a hotel room and goes home. He knows she's bad news but can't get her off his mind. When Helen shows up at the bar the next day, he dumps his job and goes off with her. They begin a relationship, consisting mostly of sex and drinking, that soon leads to a sort of shared depression. Their futures, separate or together, remain in doubt.
    The clipped noir style of narrative may not be able to carry the psychological baggage of this story. The characters are too flat to allow Willeford to generate much interest in their problems or their fate. Harry, the first-person narrator, is not insightful enough to provide an analysis of what's going on. So bad stuff just happens. The story needs to focus fully on the relationship between the main characters, but Willeford uses a full third of the book just to set up an ironic ending. The author gets points for trying to stretch noir fiction to include more than criminals. Even so, the novel, although it reads quickly and provides a grim picture of life's underside, is something of a disappointment.

THE GOLDEN SORROW

     Fawcett began its Red Seal line in 1952. The books were longer than the usual Gold Medals (nearly 300 pp.) and more expensive (35¢). I'm not sure if they were meant to be more literary. The Golden Sorrow is at least unusual for paperback originals. The book has plenty of sex but no crime, no suspense and no action sequences to speak of. Its downbeat story offers a sharp contrast to Pratt's other Hollywood novel, Miss Dilly Says No, a cheerful satire of movie studios.

    The Golden Sorrow by Theodore Pratt. Fawcett Red Seal (1952), 282 pp.
    As the story opens, young leading man Danny Rattigan is about to face reporters at his San Fernando Valley ranch. They've come to hear his account of the previous night's brawl, one in which Danny was badly beaten. Neither his attractive business manager, Patrice Durant, nor his endlessly disapproving sister, Maureen, is willing to provide moral support at the meeting. But his agent, Maxie Rosen, calls to reassure him that the studio won't give him grief over the bad publicity. The story then flashes back to Danny's boyhood on Long Island, his teenage crush on Patrice, the beginnings of his acting career, and his exploitative relationships with women.
    By the time this book was written, stories bebunking the glamour of Hollywood were old hat. So Pratt is not primarily interested in exposing Danny's faults -- his numerous sexual liaisons, his drinking and his brawling. Instead, the author wants to shed light on his protagonist's shortcomings by hearkening back to Danny's upbringing in a motherless family from the wrong side of the tracks. Pratt does not quite trust his readers to figure all this out , so at one point he has a character explain Danny's subconscious motives in detail. Although published in 1952, the book is discouragingly up to date. Its tale of a young man unable to cope with celebrity has been repeated many times in real life over the past fifty years. The book uses a simple style and moves quickly. Fans of Hollywood fiction are likely to enjoy it.