Reading California Fiction

LOVE AMONG THE CANNIBALS

    Two novels by the once acclaimed Wright Morris (1910-1998) had me reaching for my calculator. A rule for including a book in this reading project is that most of the book must be set in California. The Huge Season (1954) has many scenes of college life based on Morris’s experiences at Pomona College. But the novel warrants exclusion because 62 percent of it (by page count) is set out of state. Love among the Cannibals, on the other hand, stays on the list because only 48 percent of the book is set in Mexico. And yes, I’m pretty compulsive about all this.

    Love among the Cannibals by Wright Morris. Harcourt, Brace (1957), 253 pp.
    Pop lyricist Earl Horter is working on a Hollywood musical with his writing partner and roommate, Irwin “Mac” Macgregor. They’ve been friends for fifteen years, since their time as pilots during World War II. One day at the beach they meet Billie Harcum, a young singer hoping for a career break. She and Mac hit it off at once. That evening they attend a posh party at which Earl briefly flirts with mind-numbingly beautiful Eva Baum. He doesn’t even learn her name, but he’s soon planning to get together with her.
    It’s an open question what Morris intends readers to make of narrator/protagonist Earl Horter. Just over forty without any record of long-term success with women, Horter relates every event with a smug sarcasm that signals his unhappiness with himself and everyone he knows. He’s a pretty pathetic guy, though critics fifty years ago may not have known it. According to the blurb in the front of the paperback edition, they found the book witty and outrageous, “sprightly yet profound.” Modern readers, however, may find the novel unbearable unless they view Horter as a case study of displaced anger.

STRIPPED TO THE HIDE

    Stripped to the Hide is as close as I’ve come to a so-bad-it’s-good novel. The book is absurd in several respects, but the author is deadly serious. It’s a tale, he tells us in his introductory note, of a man facing a crescendo of adversity and a woman transcending standard morality to express her love. I’m not sure why he subtitled it “A California Story.” Perhaps he thought such goings-on could only happen in the Golden State. Herman Edwin Mootz, incidentally, published two other novels, but I suspect (hope, in fact) that writing was not his main career.

    Stripped to the Hide by Herman Edwin Mootz. Roxburgh (1925), 274 pp.
    Frederick Herbert, wealthy young real estate trader, is about to marry his true love, Juanita Endres, when he meets irresistibly alluring Maude Grayson on a trip to Kansas. Against his better judgment dumps Juanita and marries Maude. Frederick knew that Maude was something of a party girl. Now he discovers that she’s a killer as well, having unintentionally poisoned a man during a robbery. After the couple returns to California, Frederick arranges lucrative land deals and Maude fools around with just about everybody. Soon Frederick wishes he had the willpower to unload Maude and get back together with Juanita, whom he impregnates during a brief affair. Maude has more concrete plans for Frederick.
    It’s difficult to judge what’s silliest about this book -- the characters, the plot, or the narration. Frederick is preposterously stupid. He keeps returning to Maude no matter what terrible thing she does to him. Maude, meanwhile, unaccountably changes from greed and promiscuity to unadorned malice. The story consists of one zany episode after another, as Maude tries to murder Frederick, tries to get one of her boyfriends to murder him, then gets him sent to jail on trumped-up charges to which he freely admits. The narrator does not intend for readers to make their own interpretations of events. Everything stems from Maude: “She was the most monstrous exemplification of treachery, dishonor and ingratitude which one can conceive.” (p. 126) Similar passages abound. In few twentieth-century novels does a narrator become so angry with one of his creations. Which is perhaps the best that can be said for the book.

A STRANGER CAME TO PORT

    A Stranger Came to Port by Max Miller. Reynal and Hitchcock (1938), 210 pp.
    Dave Hardson is laid up on his San Diego houseboat with a punctured leg. He abandoned his life as a successful Minneapolis businessman a year before at the age of fifty. Keeping up the entrepreneurial spirit had become too difficult because of high taxes, pushy unions, and public animosity toward commerce. Until now no one has known where he was. The accident has blown his cover, however, and his laid-back lifestyle is in danger.
    Since Hardson can’t move without assistance from his friend Lobster Johnny, the story is something less than action packed. Most of it consists of his thoughts -- observations of the environment, ruminations about life, stories about Johnny, and memories of the ill-fated stint on a tuna boat. Sometimes Harden has visitors, all of whom turn out to be pleasant and undemanding. The novel itself has those same qualities, though it does end with an ironic twist. The book is short and reads quickly. It may well appeal to those who dream of spending their lives hanging out at the beach.

WIVES AND LOVERS

    Wives and Lovers by Margaret Millar. Random House (1954), 308 pp.
    Hazel Philip, fortyish, overweight and divorced, works as a dental assistant for Gordon Foster in the coastal town of Channel City (think Santa Barbara). She lives with her cousin Ruth Kane, too high-strung to teach any longer, her truck-driver brother Harold and his pregnant wife Josephine. Hazel maintains a friendly but bickering relationship with her ex-husband, George Andrews, who manages a restaurant on the wharf. Gordon, her boss, has a successful practice but has been beaten into self-abnegation by his domineering and contemptuous wife, Elaine. Hazel doesn’t imagine that Ruby MacCormick, a routinely pretty young woman whom Hazel has recently helped find a job at George’s restaurant, is other than a friend of Gordon’s niece.
    Millar presents a large cast of characters in this story of middle-class life in the 1950s. She draws them all with care and insight. Even those on the periphery - - the local judge, Ruby’s landlady, Hazel’s gardener -- receive thoughtful attention. Most fear that life is going to get further out of their control. They are suffering one or another sort of disappointment, often enhanced by the feeling that all should be wonderful in one of America’s garden spots. Millar’s narrator, frequently sardonic but always understanding, moves gracefully in and out of the heads of the characters. The book’s time frame -- everything happens in less than five days  -- heightens tension in what is otherwise a fairly leisurely narrative that occasionally seems to digress too much. Readers who like character-driven fiction are almost certain to enjoy the novel.

THE GIRL CAGE

    The Girl Cage by Charles Mergendahl. Popular Library (1953), approx. 160 pp.
    Martha Gwynn has been waiting nine months for her husband Phil to return from the war in Korea. She lives with four other military wives in the guest house of a posh estate in a San Diego suburb. Her roommates employ various strategies avoid boredom -- one volunteers at a hospital, one sleeps around, and so on. Martha has so far remained faithful. Yet she allows herself to be picked up in a San Diego bar by hyper-masculine naval officer Hank McKellar. She rebuffs his advances, but he continues to hang around. She’s lonely. He’s attractive. What will happen?
    This book does not realize its potential for sleazy entertainment. Mergendahl’s main problem is his use of Martha to tell the story. Her voice is not convincingly feminine, and her observations never go beyond the insipid. She and her roommates see themselves only as vehicles of love and sex. They think of nothing else. Martha doesn’t question Hank’s persistence, so she can’t explain it to the reader. Sometimes Mergendahl tries for melodrama -- in the contrived ending, for example. Sometimes he lets the dialog get out of control. Here’s Hank explaining his behavior to Martha: “You don’t get it, do you? Well, get this! I’m in love with you! That’s why I smacked you!” (p. 117 of the 1959 edition) Readers can safely skip this book.

RIPE FRUIT

    Ripe Fruit by John McPartland. Fawcett Gold Medal (1958), 128 pp.
    Reeves Buchanan, a handsome engineer in his mid-twenties, returns to his home in the Central Valley to attend his father’s funeral. Reeves, shocked that his feared and respected father had committed suicide, is further startled to find the family ranch in disrepair and its holdings heavily mortgaged. So at first he pays little attention to Rena Burke, the beautiful and high-sprited daughter of his mother’s maid, Maria. Rena alienated many of her friends by marrying outside the Mexican community only four months before. Now she longs for her ultra macho husband, Hardin, who is stationed in Japan and having a fine time without her. Sparks of various kinds are going to fly.
    Easily visible beneath the surface of this tale of sex and violence is a trenchant portrait of ethnic conflict in an agricultural community.  Anglos have the money and power. They feel superior without thinking much about it. Mexican-Americans do the work, suffer discrimination, and seldom get ahead. Even though they need jobs on the ranches, they hold Anglos in boundless contempt. The younger generation shows no deference and is sometimes eager to fight. All of which is not to say that McPartland has written a sociological study. His characters are sharply (perhaps ferociously) drawn and face their problems in idiosyncratic ways. The book is well worth reading. Prospective readers should not look for it, of course, at their local libraries. Only one circulating copy is available in the United States -- and it’s nowhere near California.

THE WILD PARTY

    More often than nearly any author, John McPartland wrote of large, muscular men and their appeal to women. Here’s an example from The Wild Party. In this passage Erica London, a strong but still virginal young woman from the upper class, makes an appraisal of strapping Tom Kupfen, ex-football player: “Big male with the smell and the feel of the male to him. You knew this was a man of hard, supple muscles, a possessor. This was a man. Good, bad, stupid, foolish, careless, reckless -- none of that mattered except as qualities that might in the end destroy him. He gloried in himself, and he lived only for that magnificent body of his, to use it, to satisfy it. A girl could understand a man like this one.” (p. 41 of the 1968 reprint) Not even Cormac McCarthy could make himself write something like that.

    The Wild Party by John McPartland. Fawcett Gold Medal (1956), 128 pp.
    Tom Kupfen, a brawny former pro football player, is down on his luck. He has no job, no money, and few prospects beyond petty thievery. His once large array of friends and admirers has dwindled to three lost souls: his girlfriend Honey, pothead and jazz lover; piano player Kicks, too unreliable to get steady gigs; and Gage, a small-time crook with an ingratiating manner and a ready blade. Gage finally concocts a scheme to befriend some truly wealthy people at a posh Santa Monica hotel, entice them into the night, and rob them. He soon finds a likely couple: Erica London, a tall and proud blonde looking for adventure, and Arthur Mitchell, her unimaginative boyfriend and Navy pilot.
    McPartland sets this story in that part of L. A.’s nether world where beat culture meets crime and poverty. Tom and Gage are desperate and keyed up; Honey and Kicks are beaten down and zonked out; Erica and Arthur are too removed from ordinary life to sense danger. Readers will know that something worse than a robbery is going to occur. But, because there are so many possibilities, they won’t be sure what will happen -- or who it will happen to. By refusing to reveal his own sympathies (or those of his third-person narrator), McPartland succeeds in keeping the tension high. Fans of suspense fiction are likely to enjoy the book.

BIG RED'S DAUGHTER

    Big Red’s Daughter by John McPartland. Fawcett Gold Medal (1953), 156 pp.
    Jim Work has just been discharged from the Army and is planning to attend college in Monterey. In a minor car accident he meets tall and beautiful Wild Kearney and her belligerent boyfriend, Buddy Brown. Jim is invited to Wild’s house in Carmel, where he meets some of her artsy friends and is beaten up by Buddy. Wild knows that her father, Red Kearney, a big-time operator flying in from the East Coast, won’t approve of the sleazy Buddy. So she asks Jim to take his place and pretend to be her boyfriend for a few hours. Jim has fallen hard for Wild and is happy to oblige. Fooling Wild’s father turns out to be only the first of Jim’s many problems.
    McPartland reworks some of the ideas from his first novel, Love Me Now. Once again he offers an average-Joe protagonist/narrator, an alluring love interest, and a formidable rival. Here, however, the story has more coherence. Jim’s troubles aren’t foreshadowed - - he gets into one unexpected bad situation after another - - but they are not implausible either. As in McPartland’s other novels, the characters can barely the control powerful emotions that are bubbling just below the surface. The men are prone to mayhem and the women (though they know better) are attracted to violence. All in all, this is a lively read that should satisfy fans of noir fiction.

LOVE ME NOW

    Love Me Now by John McPartland. Fawcett Gold Medal (1952), 184 pp.
    John McPartland (1911-1958) began his career as a novelist with this ordinary-guy-gets-into-trouble story. The guy here is Bill Devine, a married Army sergeant at Fort Ord, who is soon to return to his civilian job as a journalist in Los Angeles. At a Monterey bar he breaks up a fight between two women and escorts one of them outside. She’s Rye Dean, slender, alluring and (as Bill soon discovers) more than a bit mysterious. He’s quickly smitten. When he meets some of her creepy friends, however, he wonders what he’s getting into.
    This novel has a curious (and serious) flaw. The characters are engaging. The hyper-tough style commands attention. But the plot goes awry. Halfway through the book the story line makes a jarring twist that effectively detaches the first part of the narrative from the second. New and less complex characters show up; old and more interesting ones drop away. The setting changes. The protagonist (and narrator) faces a different array of problems. McPartland apparently wrote himself into a hole and couldn’t find a coherent way of getting out again. The book is entertaining enough, but it’s not up to his later work.

NO DOWN PAYMENT

    No Down Payment by John McPartland. Simon and Schuster (1957), 312 pp.
    The Sunrise Hills development near Redwood City is the new home of four young couples with adjacent houses: David and Jean Martin -- he’s a smart but restrained electronics engineer for a Hewlett Packard-like firm, she’s a sexy sophisticate trying to become pregnant; Herman and Betty Kreitzer -- he manages an appliance store, she’s a religious zealot worried that Herman’s unorthodox religious beliefs will endanger the upbringing of their two children; Jerry and Isabel Flagg -- he’s a car salesman who chases women and drinks too much, she hates her marriage and can’t manage their constantly screaming son; Troy and Leola Noon -- he manages a gas station and longs for the discipline of the Army, she’s just a kid who belongs back in the Tennessee hills. Everyone has troubles, some of which will come to a head over an eventful weekend.
    This is quite a book. McPartland has a lot to say -- about love and sex, about achievement and masculinity, about work and class, about the conditions of the moment and the forces of history. He moves the viewpoint around so that readers can get into the heads of all the characters. They turn out to have a welter of goals, schemes and rationalizations, some bizarre, some disreputable. Occasionally, they think too much. Mostly, though, McPartland keeps the story humming along on his punchy prose. In the last analysis the inhabitants of his suburbia are a rootless lot, struggling to find the proper place for themselves but fearful they may be on the wrong track. The book, which offers a startling revision to the Ozzie and Harriet version of the 1950s, deserves a wide audience. Fans of McPartland’s other novels, incidentally, will not be surprised by the final scene.