Reading California Fiction

COMRADES

    When Thomas Dixon (1864-1946) published Comrades in 1909, American socialism was becoming increasingly popular. In the next presidential election the Socialist Party candidate received a disquieting 6 percent of the vote. The election, however, was won by Dixon’s old friend, Woodrow Wilson, who shared many of Dixon’s beliefs - - not only about politics but also about race relations. Although he had a long writing career, Dixon is best known today as the author of The Clansman (1905), which was later made into one of Wilson’s favorite movies, The Birth of a Nation.
    
    Comrades by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Doubleday, Page and Co. (1909), 319 pp.
    Colonel Worth, a San Francisco mining tycoon, is having a heated discussion about socialists with his son Norman. The colonel wants to shoot them. His son, however, is curious and decides to attend a rally led by famed agitator Herman Wolf and his “affinity wife” Catherine. There he is won over by the featured speaker, beautiful and eloquent Barbara Bozenta. Norman concocts a scheme to set up a socialist colony on one of the islands off the Santa Barbara coast. His father, pleased that his son is showing some initiative but convinced the plan will fail, secretly funds the project.
    Dixon doesn’t care much for the “to each according to his need” half of the socialist slogan. But he focuses his attack on “from each according to his ability.” Regulating the labor market will lead to slavery, he believes, or at least it will in a socialist system without democratic governance. Which is just what Norman and his associates set up in their island utopia. Readers will easily see what’s going to go wrong. And weirdly that’s what did go wrong in the Soviet Union. The story could be a parable of Leninism and Stalinism, except those isms didn’t yet exist when it was written. As much as Dixon dislikes socialism, he is fairly sympathetic to the socialists themselves. The book, in fact, is balanced enough to warrant a place on supplemental reading lists for American history courses.

YOUNG MR. KEEFE

    After struggling through Andrew Sean Greer’s excruciatingly clever Confessions of Max Tivoli (2004), I was glad to return to a story about realistic characters facing imaginable problems. Sadly, these days authors just don’t write ’em like Young Mr. Keefe anymore. The book launched the long literary career of Stephen Birmingham (b. 1932). He wrote five novels (though no other, I believe, set in California) before turning to the non-fiction for which he is primarily known.
    
    Young Mr. Keefe by Stephen Birmingham. Little, Brown (1958), 369 pp.
    Jimmy Keefe, just out of college and seeking independence, has left his wealthy New England family and come to California. His new job in Sacramento is coming along fine, but his spur-of-the-moment marriage to Central Valley native Helen Warren is falling apart. Jimmy is lonesome, confused, and drinking too much. He longs for a strong relationship like that apparently enjoyed by longtime friends Claire and Blazer Gates. They seem to have it all - - a glass-walled apartment on Russian Hill in San Francisco, a new sports car and an enthusiasm for giving lavish parties. Jimmy will take a while to learn what’s actually happening and to understand the impact of family ties on his marriage and that of his friends.
    This is one of those big, widely reviewed novels that try to put its story in a larger social context. In this book California represents all that’s different from the East Coast - - weather, landscape, people, and especially social contacts for the rich and well born. The three immigrants from New England cope in different ways with their new environment. Their choices, though sometimes dubious, remain understandable. Middle-class readers will get an idea of how money works and when it fails. The third-person narrator keeps the story moving by shifting the setting from one place to another and alternating viewpoints among the characters. The plot may get a little ragged at points but the narration itself remains straightforward throughout. This book could find a contemporary audience.

IT'S MY FUNERAL

    Peter Rabe (1921-1990) was an interesting guy. He was born in Germany and came to the United States just before World War II. After the war he earned a Ph.D. in Psychology. Rabe began publishing his fiction in 1955 and completed some thirty novels in the next two decades. All but one were paperback originals. Then when writing opportunities dwindled, he became a psychology professor. It’s My Funeral is the third of his novels featuring Daniel Port.
        
    It’s My Funeral by Peter Rabe. Fawcett Gold Medal (1957), 143 pp.
    Ex-mobster Daniel Port has just arrived in Los Angeles. He has a sporty new car but no long-range plans. His main goal is getting together with adorable lounge singer Tess Dolphin. Then he meets an obnoxious con man from his past, Joko Mulnik, who is now something of a Hollywood talent agent. Mulnik has obtained some film showing megastar Ella Anders in the nude. He wants Port to join him in blackmailing Anders and her studio. Port turns him down flat but  is drawn into the scheme anyway.
    This is a fairly entertaining book. Port, the protagonist, is a bit of a disappointment. Despite his former association with the mob, he doesn’t have so much as a mean streak. The two female characters are dissatisfyingly nice. Mulnik, on the other hand, is amusingly single-minded and amoral. The story has some implausible turns but moves along smartly. There’s quite a bit of action but not a lot of violence. It’s possible that other novels by Peter Rabe show off his talents to better advantage. All in all, however, fans of crime fiction from the 1950s are likely to enjoy the book.

TAKEOFF

    C. M. Kornbluth (1923-1958) had a successful writing career notable for its brevity. In the 1940s he wrote innovative short stories for science fiction magazines under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. In the 1950s he began to write novels - - mostly science fiction but a few paperback mysteries as well. His career was in full swing when he died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-four. Takeoff is, I believe, his only book set in California.
    
    Takeoff by Cyril M. Kornbluth. Doubleday (1952), 218 pp.
    Ceramics engineer Michael Novak quits his job with the Atomic Energy Commission and takes a position with the often ridiculed American Society for Space Flight. The organization’s president, James MacIlheny, is an amateur space enthusiast. Its business manager, Joel Friml, knows nothing about science. And its chief engineer, August Clifton, has never been able to hold a job. Still, it’s somehow getting nearly all the resources it needs to build a rocket ship at its facilities outside Barstow. What’s missing is an engine that uses atomic energy, the only power source that can be used for a moon flight. Novak’s suspicions are aroused, but he has no idea what’s really going on.
    This is science fiction that’s actually fiction about science. Kornbluth sets the story in the near future (around 1957) when people feared that nuclear weapons might soon put an end to civilization. The book focuses on the relationship of science and government - - and especially on the manner in which government scientists should act to fulfill their duty to advance the national interest. Fortunately, weighty issues only become clear at the end of the novel. In the meantime Kornbluth keeps the readers guessing about the rocket - - and later about the murder of one of the story’s main characters. The ending may seem a bit silly with fifty years’ hindsight. Even so, the book provides thought-provoking entertainment.

DRAGNET

    I dropped by the Friends of the Library book sale last week with low expectations. Finding unread pre-1960 California fiction is not so easy. But I was happily surprised. One of the books I found was Dragnet, Case Stories from the Popular Television Series. I wasn’t even sure the book was aimed at grown-ups. But for a quarter, what did I have to lose? Richard Deming (1915-1983), who published some sixty books over a long career, also wrote three Dragnet novels. I’m now wondering if they too can be read as parodies of hard-boiled fiction.
      
    Dragnet by Richard Deming. Whitman (1957), 282 pp.
    Detective Joe Friday and partner Frank Smith investigate cases in various divisions of the Los Angeles Police Department. They may work on a burglary one week, an armed robbery the next, and a con game the week after. Usually the culprits commit a series of crimes. The detectives methodically interview victims and accumulate evidence. Friday narrates the seven stories in this book, each of which recounts an investigation from its initial assignment to its successful conclusion. All end with the assurance that the story was true but names were changed to protect the innocent.
    This collection of stories is striking in its own way. The author takes the simple, flat style of noir fiction and carries it almost to the point of inarticulateness. Conversations have very short sentences, often containing only one or two words. (“Uh-huh” is a favorite.) Attempts at humor are amusing only in their feebleness. The stories themselves are almost devoid of excitement. Friday and Smith just grind out the work. They don’t face clever criminals and seldom deal with violence. Youth gangs and drug dealers are police problems for the future. Fans of the television show may get a kick out of this book. Others may not know what to think of it.

THEY CALL ME CARPENTER

    I have no idea what impact They Call Me Carpenter would have on religious readers today. They might be intrigued by the subtitle, “A Tale of the Second Coming.” But would they be engaged by Upton Sinclair’s effort to bring issues of Christian ethics into the modern-day struggles of rich and poor? If they were, the Obama campaign could do worse than printing up a few million copies and sending them to out church groups across the country.
    
    They Call Me Carpenter by Upton Sinclair. Boni and Liveright (1922), 225 pp.
    Billy, a man-about-town and narrator of the story, is beaten by an anti-German mob after seeing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari at a downtown theater. Barely conscious, he stumbles into a nearby church. There Jesus descends from a stained-glass window to give him aid. The two then begin walking through the commercial district of Los Angeles (called Western City here), where people assume the long-haried man in a robe has arrived from a movie set. At a beauty parlor they encounter film star Mary Magna and producer Abey Tszchniczklefritszch. Jesus, introducing himself as Carpenter, turns down a lucrative movie contract. Then at a posh restaurant he tries to intervene on behalf of striking workers. Billy gets him out of trouble on this occasion but will have difficulty in the future keeping Jesus from the poor and downtrodden.
    Sinclair’s vision of Los Angeles contains none of the usual displaced Midwesterners and Hollywood hopefuls. What he sees instead is a cauldron of class conflict. Sinclair pursues some easy targets - - women’s fashion, movies, college kids - - with good-natured satire. He saves his heavy fire for the forces of injustice: rich businessmen (at one point called out in church by Jesus), police goon squads, marauding bands of American Legionnaires, and the red-baiting L. A. Times. Sinclair lightens the tone with a perplexed first-person narrator and several comic episodes. He reinforces his argument by inserting many paraphrased quotations from the Gospels. All in all, the book offers an odd mixture of politics and religion. It’s chattier and less plodding than the usual Sinclair novel but no closer to literary greatness.

THE HOUND OF EARTH

    I avoided The Hound of Earth for a long time because I thought the summaries had given away the main plot point. But what’s meant to be discovered at the end of the book is not whether the protagonist gets captured but why. And the author is so determined to focus the reader’s attention in the right direction that he announces the capture in the book’s tenth paragraph. Vance Bourjaily (b. 1922) has had a long and well-regarded literary career. This, I believe, is his only novel set in California.
              
    The Hound of Earth by Vance Bourjaily. Scribner's (1955), 250 pp.
    Army atomic scientist Al Pennington is at last in federal prison. Harboring feelings of guilt and betrayal, he had walked away from his work and family after the bombing of Hiroshima, of which he had known nothing in advance. By changing his name to Al Barker, taking only short-term jobs, and moving around the country, he had long eluded capture by G-man Casper Usez. During his last month of freedom he works as a stockroom clerk at a San Francisco department store. As the Christmas rush burgeons,  Al becomes involved in the lives of his fellow employees - - Finn, more a salesman than a manager; M’nerney, Finn’s disgruntled MBA-laden assistant; Dolly, the sadistic overseer of the floor staff; Nickie, the wealthy and alluring salesgirl; and Tom, Al’s ingenuous helper. As a result, he abandons his usual caution.
    This book works in a way that the author may not have intended. Bourjaily presumably wants to comment on the McCarthyist pursuit of his harmless protagonist. But Al’s backstory is so sketchy that he comes across more as a detached English professor than a disillusioned physicist. Where the novel shines is as a story of the workplace. The hopes, schemes and neuroses of Al’s co-workers bring the toy department to life. Despite newly filled balloons and an occasionally sober Santa, it’s not a happy place. But it is a believable one. Bourjaily is careful to depict each character sympathetically - - the frenzied shoppers get less compassion - - and to show that job sites have room for outbreaks of humanity. All in all, it’s an involving book that many readers are likely to appreciate.

LOVERS ARE LOSERS

    You would imagine that any author who published more than forty novels in a career that spanned nearly a half-century would be best known today as a writer of fiction. But in the case of Howard Hunt (1918-2007) you would be wrong. Long after his novels are forgotten - - and most of them are already forgotten - - he will be remembered for his role in the Watergate burglary. Hunt, incidentally, throws in a few passages showing disillusionment with postwar America in Lovers Are Losers but stays away from any reference to communists and McCarthyism.
  
    Lovers Are Losers by Howard Hunt. Fawcett Gold Medal (1953), 160 pp.
    Engineer Chris Powell arrives in Los Angeles after two years in the remote countryside of Bolivia. He has come at the request of Dick Barden, once his college roommate, now an ineffectual drunk living off the family money and hoping to marry movie star Angela Carling. Dick wants help straightening out his teenage sister, Diana, who has gotten involved with a friend of her stepmother, sometime actor Laszlo Kardos. Chris agrees. In breaking up a sexual encounter between the two, he is stunned by Diana’s unclothed beauty. He soon learns that Diana, to keep embarrassing pictures from becoming public, has been paying large sums to a charity run by her stepmother’s lawyer, Roscoe Follins. Chris decides to take on all of Dick and Diana’s adversaries.
    This is a fairly successful entry into the sub-genre of tough-guy novels in which the protagonist is not a professional crime-fighter. Chris Powell is hard boiled - - and also loyal, energetic, determined, and a bit perplexed by the behavior of rich Angelinos. He is not quite a convincing lover, however, so his relentless pursuit of everyone threatening Diana seems unmotivated. None of the characters, including Chris and Diana, is likeable or especially interesting. Some of their behavior, which might have been shocking in 1953, hardly seems worth mentioning today. But the story moves along quickly and should hold the attention of fans of noir fiction.

THE CHASE

    I’m not sure if this represents muddled writing or faulty reading, but it certainly diverted my attention. On the first page of The Chase, Richard Hubler describes dawn on the southern California coast like this: “The sun reluctantly came out of the sea.” Doesn’t that sound like the sun is rising over the Pacific? Hubler (and his editor) must have known that couldn’t happen unless the Earth reversed its rotation. Maybe I’m just misinterpreting the passage. Anyway, I began the book wondering if the author had actually seen what he was describing.
  
    The Chase by Richard G. Hubler. Coward-McCann (1952), 250 pp.
    Twenty-year-old reporter Jennet Marvell has a tip that a reclusive doctor, Ralph Bock, is working on a cure for polio at a secluded house in the hills above her small coastal community. She asks John Talmadge, the paper’s owner and editor, to send her for an interview. When she arrives, she learns nothing about Bock’s work but does agree to mail a letter for him. Bock is murdered soon after Jennet leaves. At a hamburger stand on the way home, a truck plows into Jennet’s car. The driver, Big Martz, apologizes, then lifts the doctor’s letter. A follow-up altercation ends when a man calling himself only Marco punches out Martz. Marco offers Jennet a ride back to town. They pick up a hitch-hiker, Steve Chalmers, on the way. Jennet cannot imagine what will happen next.
    This adventure story has the appropriate ingredients: a naive protagonist, plenty of suspicious characters, lots of plot twists, and a Hitchockian MacGuffin. There’s also quite a bit of violence. The first part of the book, which focuses on Jennet and her growing fears, sustains a high level of tension. Once the scope of the story expands and the nature of the bad guys becomes clear, the story works itself out in an expected manner. There are still action sequences and plot revelations, but the ultimate outcome is not in doubt. (In fairness, what happens to Jennet after the malefactors are defeated is surprising.) Readers who enjoy adventure novels are likely to enjoy this one. They may also sense in it a certain paranoid strain that is familiar today.

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.