Good news! Stark House Press has just reprinted two novels by H. Vernor Dixon, Cry Blood and Killer in Silk. They were the last of nine books that Dixon wrote in the 1950s for Fawcett, the country’s most prolific publisher of paperback originals. Their appearance now is especially welcome since their first editions, produced in print runs of perhaps 250,000 copies, have become worryingly scarce. How scarce is that? you ask. My favorite used book site, ABE, shows only three booksellers with copies of Cry Blood and one with Killer in Silk. WorldCat is no better: two libraries with copies of the former book and four with copies of the latter. Now, just in the nick of time, Dixon’s brand of detectiveless noir has returned from oblivion to entertain a new generation of readers. Amazon has copies. I won’t say much about the introduction except that I did appreciate the chance to put information about Dixon in one fairly coherent narrative.
MORE ABOUT PAPERBACK ORIGINALS
Let’s return for a moment to paperback originals, that is, paperback books that are not reprints of earlier works. As I’ve pointed out before, the literary world takes almost no account of these books -- no reviews, few mentions in bibliographies, systematic collection by only a handful academic libraries. If the books receive any acknowledgment at all, it’s usually for their salacious covers. And these are pretty much the same for originals and reprints.
A few years ago I looked at the output of paperback originals in 1955 and came up with some data about their number, publishers and genre. Last week, having nothing better to do, I decided to try to figure out how many paperback originals were actually published. It’s worth saying that this task was only possible because Graham Holroyd’s Paperback Prices and Checklist has a special designation for paperback originals. To bring the tabulation into line with the whole California reading project, I limited the count to the period from the 1930s to the end of 1960. I also excluded certain categories: non-fiction, anthologies, books of cartoons, books printed overseas, and later editions of books that began as originals.
With all those restrictions in place, the count (fairly accurate, I believe) came to 3,350. Nearly all of that total was from the period after 1950. Something like 90 publishers printed at least one paperback original. Fawcett topped the list with about 700 titles. Ace was runner-up with around 450. Other publishers in triple digits were Popular, Avon, Dell, Beacon, Pyramid, News Stand, Ballantine and Lion.
You have to wonder about the impact of paperback originals. They weren’t “best sellers,” of course. That honor was reserved for books with hard covers. But they did sell. I couldn’t find specific numbers for print runs, but I did learn that Fawcett printed at least 200,000 copies of each title. Presumably other large publishers had similar runs. Popular titles went into second and even third printings. Some paperback originals sold more than a million copies. A few paperback authors (e.g., Richard Prather) racked up tens of millions in sales. Some probably dubious math led me to conclude that the total number of copies of all paperback originals through 1960 exceeded a half-billion. Which seems like too many books to ignore.
KAYO
If you’re looking for old paperbacks, there’s no better place in northern California than Kayo Books in San Francisco. The store carries thousands of titles, arranged by genre on floor-to-ceiling shelves. I hadn’t been there for awhile, so last week I decided to make another visit. Nothing had changed in my absence. I was seeking paperback originals written in the 1950s and set in California. Usually just glancing at the publisher and the series number was enough to satisfy the first two criteria. But the setting required actually looking through the book. Some authors like to establish location in the first few pages. Others, unfortunately, only drop clues here and there. I wound up browsing straight through lunch and had several bookcases to go when I had to head back to Sacramento. Here’s what I found:
Carnal Greed by Pauline C. Smith (Newstand Library U-127, 1960)
The Censored Screen by Brian Dunn (Newstand Library U-125, 1960)
Decoy by Michael Morgan (Ace D-9, 1953)
The Fraudulent Broad by James Rubel (Newstand Library U-102, 1958)
Hard and Fast by U. S. Andersen (Popular EB-72, 1956)
One for Sleep by Frank Bonham (Fawcett GM 988, 1960)
Rusty Desmond by Steve January (Avon 553, 1954)
She Made Her Bed by Evans McKnight (Beacon B 324, 1960)
Temptress by Michael St. John (Kozy K116, 1960)
The Yellow Press by H. D. Spalding (Newstand Library U-121, 1959)
The Censored Screen was the only one I had hoped to find. The other books were unknown to me. I wasn’t familiar with any of the authors either, largely (it turned out) because most of them hadn’t published much.
Just before I had to leave, I ran across a couple stacks of digest-sized paperbacks. They produced an unexpected bonus, two Florence Stonebraker novels, Stolen Love and Passion’s Harvest. And I discovered that the setting of two more of her books is not in California.
All in all, the trip was a big success. Kayo, in case you’re interested in checking it out, is at 814 Post Street. The store’s only open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I got there via BART. If you do the same, I would recommend walking from the Powell Street station. It’s about seven blocks.
RETURN OF THE NORTH BEACH GIRL
It’s always good news when California fiction from before 1960 returns to print. And that’s what has happened with a new edition of North Beach Girl from Stark House Press. I reviewed the novel nearly two years ago, when fewer than a dozen copies were available for sale at internet bookstores. As it usually does, the publisher has put two novels by the same author in the same volume. In this case the second novel by John Trinian is Scandal on the Sand, which I haven’t read yet. Stark House specializes in largely forgotten novels from the 1950s and 1960s. Just for the record, here are the other ones that I’ve reviewed.
Do Evil in Return by Margaret Millar (paired with An Air That Kills)
Framed in Guilt by Day Keene (paired with My Flesh Is Sweet)
Kitten with a Whip by Wade Miller (paired with Kiss Her Goodbye)
Nothing in Her Way by Charles Williams (paired with River Girl)
Shake Him Till He Rattles by Malcolm Braly (paired with It’s Cold Out There)
A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT THE FAMOUS FIFTY
Most of this page is a reposting of a piece from 2011. I thought I’d begin, though, with a few ideas about the new title of the list. The previous name, “California Canon,” suggests that the entries meet established standards of artistic merit or cultural importance. Of course, such standards don’t exist for California fiction any more than they exist for American fiction generally. So “California’s Famous Fifty” comes closer finding the quality that ties the list together. The idea is that libraries keep books on the shelves because patrons have heard of the books and might want to read them. So the larger the number of libraries retaining a book, the greater the book’s renown. (Okay, there are flaws in this thinking, but it does have some objectivity.) The argument applies less to academic libraries, which collect books using various criteria and are more likely to bury unpopular titles rather than tossing them out.
Compiled in this way, the list holds up well. Starting with Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the Famous Fifty include the most prominent authors and most recognized books. I’m fairly confident that exceptions occur only in categories I’m not reading. If I included historical fiction, for example, Ramona and maybe a couple other books would make the list. Otherwise, the chances are pretty good that anyone who has read a work of California fiction published before 1960 has read one of the Famous Fifty.
It’s clear from first glance that this list, like other inventories of important books, is skewed toward works by well known authors. John Steinbeck appears ten times, Raymond Chandler six times and Jack London four times. James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Frank Norris, William Saroyan and George R. Stewart check in with three books each. Add F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Kerouac with two apiece and you have ten authors producing 78 percent of the listed books.
A check of authors’ first names reveals another skewing. Although women wrote about 25 percent of the California fiction I’m reading, only two books by female authors appear on the list. Since male authors almost always write about men, female protagonists -- or even important female characters -- don’t show up very often in the Famous Fifty. Their absence may give the erroneous impression that serious fiction necessarily focuses on the thoughts, experiences and problems of men and that female protagonists are found only in romances, cozy mysteries and other light fiction. I’ve read more than 130 books that don’t fit this stereotype.
Here’s my final complaint about the Famous Fifty. It, even with its pseudo-populist rationale, gets validity from the notion that its entries have greater merit than whatever it omits. If the books weren’t in some sense good, why are they still in libraries? Add to that a halo effect and readers may come to believe that only a handful of authors has produced nearly all the worthwhile California fiction. Which is wrong in two ways. First, several of the listed books are not all that terrific -- and even those that clearly possess literary distinction may not impress some readers. Second, the list does not represent the body of California fiction, which includes around 3,000 titles from before 1960 and offers great variety in subject, style and intent. Many, many of those books are worth reading. Which, of course, is one of the points this blog is trying to make.
MAX LATIN: DETECTIVE FROM NOWHERE
This small project got off to a good start with W. T. Ballard’s Hollywood Troubleshooter, a fairly entertaining collection of stories featuring a single character, Bill Lennox, and settings clearly in California. Next up was The Adventures of Max Latin by Norbert Davis, a prolific pulp writer who spent most of his career in Los Angeles. The quirky hero of these stories, Max Latin, is a private detective who works out of a sleazy restaurant. Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers assured me that the restaurant is in L. A. and the stories were like other Hollywood comedy thrillers (p. 78). So I confidently shelled out an unusually large amount of money for a recent paperback and looked forward to its arrival from an internet bookseller.
The book showed up with no problem. I started in on the first story and was reading along happily until I realized something was missing. There was no mention (or even hint) of Los Angeles -- or of anyplace else, for that matter. The other stories were the same. I don’t know whether Davis routinely omitted geographical specifics from his short stories or whether he deliberately avoided them only for Latin’s adventures. Either way, I’m scratching Max Latin from my list of L. A. detectives. It’s possible, of course, that I’ve missed arcane associations known only to true Angelenos. If so, I’d love to know what they are.
BUSCH ASLEEP
It’s not that often that one of the authors I’ve been reading makes the news. So I was surprised to see a photo of Niven Busch in this week’s Time magazine. Busch, you’ll recall, wrote They Dream of Home (1944), Day of the Conquerors (1946), The Actor (1955) and several other novels -- as well as more than a dozen screenplays. He died in 1991. So what’s he doing in Time? He’s sleeping and, so the accompanying story suggests, revitalizing his creative juices. The picture is from 1937, so maybe Busch was working on In Old Chicago when he dozed off.
CALIFORNIA NOVELS FROM OVERSEAS
I like to think of each of the books I’ve been reading as a kind of primary source. The plot and characters are products of the author’s imagination but the ambience (even when settings are fictionalized) reflects his or her own real-life experiences. A historical novel, no matter how well researched, lacks the immediacy of a first-hand account. Sometimes the problem is an erroneous detail; sometimes it’s anachronistic thoughts or actions. So to get reliable information about the past, I’ve limited my reading to works set in times that the authors can remember.
What hadn’t occurred to me until last weekend, when I cam across this fascinating site, was that the same standard needed to be applied to setting. That is, I needed to make sure that the author actually had experiences in California. I knew that a few novels translated into English had authors who probably never spent time in California. Edward Stilgebauer’s geographically garbled The Star of Hollywood (1929) was an example. And I thought that the multitude of Carter Brown detective novels, often set in Los Angeles although the Australian author seldom visited the United States, provided only a rare exception to the rule that California novels were produced by writers who resided in the state.
Actually, however, what made Brown’s novels unusual was not the use of California settings by an author unfamiliar with them. Instead, it was their reprinting in huge numbers by an American publisher. Starting in 1958 Signet distributed millions of copies of Brown’s books in the United States. His books are still difficult to miss in bins of used paperbacks.
I hadn’t realized that many other English-language writers (mostly British) were setting pulp-fiction novels in the United States. Using what they learned from books, magazines and movies, they imitated as best they could American speech and attitudes. Hundreds of titles appeared in the years after World War II. Like their American counterparts, the books featured lurid covers and pseudonymous authors.
New York and Chicago were apparently the favorite settings, but California made some appearances as well. So we had Rex Richards’ San Francisco Dame (1952), Al Bocca’s Ticket to San Diego (1953) and Nat Karta’s Los Angeles Be Damned. Maybe the first to put his stories in California was famed mystery writer James Hadley Chase. In 1949 and 1950 he produced a three-part series featuring P.I. Vic Malloy: You’re Lonely When You’re Dead (1949), Figure It Out For Yourself (1950) and Lay Her Among The Lilies (1950). Malloy had his office in the town of Orchid City, vaguely located somewhere between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Only occasionally did one of the British-American novels make it across the Atlantic. The first two of the Malloy novels were reprinted in the United States, for example. Another was Payoff for Paula, produced in 1951 by the hyper-prolific pulp writer Stephen Francis and issued under the popular pseudonym “Jeff Bogar.” It’s apparently a femme fatale tale set in Hollywood. Later that year Lion Books reprinted the novel as The Tigress. I had been thinking that I wanted to read the book. But now that I know the author never resided in California, I think I’ll skip it.
I have already been fooled at least once. It turns out that Sex Gantlet to Murder (1955), ostensibly written by “Mark Shane” was actually the work of Victor Norwood, a British pulp writer best known for jungle stories. I haven’t found any evidence that the book was ever published in England. How Norwood got together with Fabian Books, the fledgling publisher in Fresno, is anyone’s guess. In any case, I should have been suspicious when I read the book, since some of the addresses mentioned didn’t quite make sense.