Reading California Fiction

YOUNG WIDOW

     Matt Harding was one of more than twenty pseudonyms used by Lee Floren (1910-1995) during his long and prolific career. Floren was born in Montana and had moved to California by the early 1940s. He published his first short story in 1939 and his first novel in 1944. He specialized in westerns but wrote in other genres as well. "Matt Harding" first appeared in 1960 and went on to produce a couple dozen books for the sleaze paperback market. In all, Floren wrote about 220 books and even more short stories.

    Young Widow by Matt Harding. Beacon (1960), 154 pp.
Auto dealer Jim Watson, in his mid-twenties and not long out of prison, realizes that things aren't going that well. The business, which he cares little about, has trouble meeting routine expenses. Still worse, he's not satisfied with the women in his life. His wife, Janet,"dumb as grass" and hoping to start a family, may be withholding needed money from him. His girlfriend, Rowena, server at his favorite restaurant, wants to expand the relationship beyond rental payments. And Mabel, his office assistant, is making sexual demands that exceed his desires. When he meets a potential customer, recently widowed Cynthia Adams, he's instantly smitten. Exotically gorgeous, she's his age, exudes wealth and seems interested in getting together with him. She may be the solution to his problems.
    The author, using a third-person narrator, spends a lot of time in his protagonist's head. It's not a pleasant place. Jim cares only about himself. He obsesses about his female companions and their shortcomings. In doing so, he continues to lay out his relationships with them even after Cynthia, the novel's source of dramatic tension, shows up on the first page. The book tells enough about selling cars and running a small business to put the story into larger context. The sex scenes -- the publisher specialized in sleaze -- consist of little more than descriptions of women with the clothes off. The author furnishes a quick read, but he may hedge a bit as the novel comes to a close.

YOUNG WIDOW

    Matt Harding was one of more than twenty pseudonyms used by Lee Floren (1910-1995) during his long and prolific career. Floren was born in Montana and had moved to California by the early 1940s. He published his first short story in 1939 and his first novel in 1944. He specialized in westerns but wrote in other genres as well. "Matt Harding" first appeared in 1960 and went on to produce a couple dozen books for the sleaze paperback market. In all, Floren wrote about 220 books and even more short stories.

    Young Widow by Matt Harding. Beacon (1960), 154 pp.
Auto dealer Jim Watson, in his mid-twenties and not long out of prison, realizes that things aren't going that well. The business, which he cares little about, has trouble meeting routine expenses. Still worse, he's not satisfied with the women in his life. His wife, Janet,"dumb as grass" and hoping to start a family, may be withholding needed money from him. His girlfriend, Rowena, server at his favorite restaurant, wants to expand the relationship beyond rental payments. And Mabel, his office assistant, is making sexual demands that exceed his desires. When he meets a potential customer, recently widowed Cynthia Adams, he's instantly smitten. Exotically gorgeous, she's his age, exudes wealth and seems interested in getting together with him. She may be the solution to his problems.
    The author, using a third-person narrator, spends a lot of time in his protagonist's head. It's not a pleasant place. Jim cares only about himself. He obsesses about his female companions and their shortcomings. In doing so, he continues to lay out his relationships with them even after Cynthia, the novel's source of dramatic tension, shows up on the first page. The book tells enough about selling cars and running a small business to put the story into larger context. The sex scenes -- the publisher specialized in sleaze -- consist of little more than descriptions of women with the clothes off. The author furnishes a quick read, but he may hedge a bit as the novel comes to a close.

KISS HER GOODBYE

    Kiss Her Goodbye by Wade Miller. Lion Library (1956), 191 pp.
    Ed Darnell and his sister, Emily, are driving east into the desert in response to a stabbing incident in Bakersfield . Ed, at twenty-eight and looking nothing like Emily, has taken complete responsibility for her care. She’s ten years younger and very pretty but suffers from a mental disability that has lowered her intelligence. Although she wants to be a normal teenager with normal responses to other people, she doesn’t always understand their motives and reacts violently when touched by strangers. She and Ed stop at Mr. Tubbs’ run-down motel in a small town outside Barstow. Ed decides to stay and lands a job driving a truck for Cory Sheridan, who also employs an attractive bookkeeper, Marge Wayne. When Cory gets his eyes on Emily, Ed worries that trouble may be on the way.
    The story unwinds entirely from Ed’s point of view. He’s in every scene and only his thoughts are recounted. Other characters reveal their ideas in conversations with him. Ed defines his dilemma: Either he ships Emily off to an institution, where her dream of a somewhat normal life will be smothered, or he tries to keep her under his control indefinitely, which will narrow his future and probably won’t be possible anyway. Even though the relationship between Ed and Emily is odd, the authors quickly take incest off the table and hide it in a cupboard. Emily may not be as slow-witted as Ed thinks; she made it through ninth grade before he took her out of school, for example, and he must rely on commands rather than persuasion to get her to do anything. So how does the protagonist solve the problem that drives the novel? He doesn’t. The authors do it for him.

NORTH BEACH NYMPH

    North Beach Nymph by Lew Lessing. Kozy Books (1960), 160 pp.
    Ed Morgan is in his early thirties and starting a new life. He’s moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco, abandoned the hardware business for a chance to become a professional photographer, and needs to wait less than a year before his divorce becomes final. But thoughts of Myrna, his cold and cheating wife, have made him doubt that he’ll experience love again. His psychiatrist, Dr. Porter, encourages him to keep working on the issue. Ed, lonelier than ever, finally gets up the nerve to make a pass at Connie, an attractive young woman he sees at a café. He tells her how much he needs her and how wonderful their relationship would be. He’s stunned when she believes him and shows up at his apartment for hours of passionate sex. Soon feeling more confident around women, Ed hopes to meet someone more his type than Connie. She, however, does not intend to disappear.
    Publishers like Kozy Books appeared around 1960 to provide mildly erotic stories to male readers. But because they were novels and not merely pornography, they needed to provide context for the parade of sex scenes. They needed to have a larger point. North Beach Nymph furnishes a good example. The author shows that marriages aren’t over when they’re over. A break-up may lead to dysfunctional changes in attitudes and behavior that continue long after a couple has separated. Ed continually recalls incidents in which his wife deceives and humiliates him. He is so fearful that he’ll never be able to trust another woman that he hires a psychiatrist to get his feelings back on track. The rest of the story may be implausible, but the point it raises is not.

MISTRESS OF SIN

    Mistress of Sin by Dan Elliott. Nightstand (1960), 190 pp,
    Kevjin Lyle, in his mid-thirties, works as the key assistant to big-time movie producer Lee Naumann. Kevin recommends novels for film adaptation, attends meetings with agents, and sometimes recruits young women for acting roles. Kevin dislikes the last task –he considers his boss a “lecherous skunk”– but has a more pressing concern, negotiating a divorce from his wife, Donna, which will allow joint custody of their two children. To maximize chances for Kevin’s success but add to his unhappiness in the meantime,, his lawyer, Ben Monterale, has advised him to avoid sexual relationships. But soon Kevin gets involved wtih gorgeous twenty-year-old dancer Lorayne Winant. Her zeal for rough sex leaves him stunned. Her main interest, however, is launching her film career. She wants Kevin to introduce her to Naumann and is unconcerned that the producer may expect her to participate in strange sexual activities.
    Although Robert Silverberg wrote quickly, cranking out eight previous Nightstand novels in 1960, he took a surprising about of care in putting together this book. The main characters, Kevin and Lorayne, are fairly well rounded. They have other interests beside sex, engage in thoughtful conversations, and view Hollywood with clear-eyed realism. Even Naumann, lascivious though he may be, has qualities that explain his power and high status. Other details about movie-making are convincing. The sex scenes, all featuring Kevin, show up with regularity and probably are as explicit as the government allowed in 1960. The author keeps the narrative moving quickly, at least in part because the story takes place in less than a week. The brief time frame has a signal disadvantage, however, because it also renders implausible the life-changing decisions at the end of the book.

BITTEN APPLES

    I haven’t been able to learn much about Ramsay Williams (1917-1981). He never published another novel or any short stories. His sporadic acting credits in film and television suggest that he may have shared some of the job-hunting experiences of his protagonist in Bitten Apples. Curiously, although Williams was an American, the book was published only in England. My copy had a career in the Skelmersdale branch of the Lancastershire public library and as a rental in the day-by-day service of W. H. Smith.

    Bitten Apples by Ramsay Williams. MacGibbon & Kee (1960), 223 pp.
    Conrad Eldred, a stage actor pushing 40, arrives in Hollywood to begin a movie career. He contacts Luke Barney, a friend from earlier days in New York who has become a major film star. Luke works hard at his job and enjoys its benefits, his large home in the hills, his plentiful liquor supply, and his unlimited access to beautiful starlets. Conrad isn’t attracted to any of this, particularly its belittlement of women. He’s focused on acting, and although competition is stiff, the studios are fading and he doesn't even have an agent, he’s confident he’ll find steady work. He also has a less salient goal. If an attractive woman, one who’s not hustling to get ahead in Hollywood, should show up, he’s readier than he realizes to begin a relationship.
    The author then puts Conrad’s thespian job quest on hold for awhile and turns the story away from the movie business and toward Conrad’s lifetime search for a soulmate. This redirection is handled fairly smoothly but may make readers wonder whether the plot is straying off track. It’s not. Williams keeps everything under control, and the novel works as intended. He sometimes employs stereotypes (the minor characters at Hollywood get-togethers are uniformly shallow and self-interested) but he handles the friendship between Luke and Conrad with knowing sensitivity. Readers may wish for more action -- less telling and more showing. And they may ultimately ask themselves if they missed some crucial foreshadowing when they get to the book’s surprise ending.

THE DEER PARK (REVISED)

    I've been trying to put together a book about California fiction in the 1950s. That's has caused me to revise some of my previous comments by adding information about the authors and details about the books. Here's an example:      Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was one of the most famous literary figures of the twentieth century. In addition to eleven novels, he wrote poems, screenplays, political reportage, autobiographies, and dozens of magazine and journal articles. Mailer came to Hollywood after the success of The Naked and the Dead (1948) to write for the movies and gather material for a Hollywood novel. Apparently, neither the work nor the locale did much to inspire him. The Deer Park was such a critical failure that Mailer did not try another novel for eleven years. Even so, it is available today in more than 800 libraries in the United States and 300 more overseas. So it deservedly wins my award as the most overrated California novel of the 1950s.

    The Deer Park by Norman Mailer. Putnam (1955), 375 pp.
    A former Air Force pilot, sometimes called Sergius O’Shaugnessy, arrives in a desert resort community after the Korean War hoping to end a spell of sexual impotence. There he meets various displaced Hollywood types. The group includes Dorothea O’Faye, a wealthy former showgirl and gossip columnist who presides over a “court” of hangers-on; Marion Faye, her resentful son and small-time pimp; oil magnate Martin Pelley, her current boyfriend; Jennings James, her publicity man from twenty-five years before; and Charles Eitel, a washed-up director fighting the blacklist. As the story continues, they and others O’Shaugnessy meets become involved in diverse sexual interludes.
    This was Mailer’s third novel and the one that presumably inspired him to become an essayist and literary personality. He seems to trying to show the dissipation of those connected to the movie business by chronicling their sexual relationships. None of the characters is sympathetic or especially interesting. Their affairs are more tedious than exciting. Adding to readers’ detachment is Mailer’s use of O’Shaugnessy as the first person narrator. He puts nothing resembling excitement in his recounting of events. In addition, he is often telling stories second-hand or simply making them up from sources he could not know. Mailer fans may have some interest in this book. Others should probably look elsewhere for a serious Hollywood novel.

NAKED IN BABYLON

    I’m not sure whether readers knew it at the time, but several characters in Naked in Babylon were based on real people: James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Dennis Hopper and even the author herself. Gwen Davis (b. 1936) was finishing her master’s degree at Stanford when the novel was published. She’s gone on to write twenty-two more books, the latest in 2012.

    Naked in Babylon by Gwen Davis. NAL Signet (1960) 222 pp.
    Fresh out of college, Jill Miller moves to California to launch a film career. She attends a party on her first evening in Los Angeles and encounters some people who will impact her new life. With the exception of gossip columnist J. P. Melvin, all are actors connected in some way to screen idol Johnny King, killed in a car crash two years before. Weary star Jason Stone acted as Johnny’s mentor; stage performer Stephen Ryder is touted as his successor; randy starlet Robin McKay was his lover; teenager Linus had a part in his final movie; and a former TV host named Carla has become unusually nasty since his death. Jill likes hanging around with these folks, but her quick wit, cautious behavior and high moral standards do not make her an easy fit.
    This is one of those paperback originals with serious literary aspirations. Davis doesn’t rely on snappy sentences and action sequences to sustain readers’ attention. Instead, she focuses her picture of the movie business directly on the participants of most interest to the public. Producers, directors, writers and the details of filmmaking are missing. So are married people and any sense of domestic stability. The characters are pretty much at loose ends. The successful ones feel insecure and crave publicity. Those nearer the margins smoke dope and show little interest getting real jobs. The author sometimes just hints at what’s going on. Thus modern readers could be more likely to pick up on the drugs (and the sexual proclivities of gay characters) than those of sixty years ago. Davis may not quite fulfill her ambitions. She loses track of Jill in the middle of the book, for example, and doesn’t put the obsession with Johnny King in clear perspective. But she moves the story right along, has an ear for dialogue, and writes nothing that seems implausible. Fans of Hollywood novels are likely to enjoy the book.

RIDERS TO THE STARS

    As far as I can tell, Robert Smith (1914-1988) had a two-part Hollywood career. He began in the mid-1940s as a screenwriter, sharing his first credit with Ayn Rand in 1945 and working steadily until 1960. By that time had switched most of his attention to art direction, working first for television and then for the movies. Riders to the Stars was his only novel -- and it wasn’t entirely his, since he “novelized” a screenplay by Curt Siodmak rather than starting from scratch. Only attentive readers will find his name in the book.

    Riders to the Stars by Robert Smith. Ballantine Books (1953), 166 pp.
At a desert army base east of Los Angeles, Don Stanton leads the team taking the next step in America’s space program. Assisting him are second-in-command Paul Dryden, psychologist Keith Delmar, and space medicine researcher Jane Flynn. Their problem is discovering why meteors survive entry into the lower atmosphere but rockets burn up. Their proposed solution involves selecting pilots well qualified to fly a mission in thermosphere, 400 miles above the earth’s surface. A dozen men are asked to volunteer for the assignment. Among them are bored mathematician Jerry Lockwood, high-strung physicist Walter Gordon, and metallurgist Richard Stanton, son of the project leader.
The story reads like an amalgamation of Winged Victory, a play and movie about pilot training during World War II, and the real-life process of selecting and readying Mercury astronauts, which was still five years away when the book was published. The author operates on the realistic fringe of science fiction. The overall project may be a bit far-fetched and the time frame way too short, but the setting, testing procedures, and technological details seem plausible. And the characters have personality traits that could have been convincingly fleshed out if the novel had gone on longer. As it is, the book is a quick read that might find an appreciative modern audience. Incidentally, folks interested in gender representation could be in for a treat. All the men in the story have Ph.D.s and are usually called “Doctor.” The only woman has an M.D. but is routinely referred to as “Miss Flynn.”

THE SEEKER

    Allen Wheelis (1915-2007) had a long career as a psychotherapist. After the requisite training and a stint as a medical officer during World War II, he moved to San Francisco in 1954 and set up a private practice which continued until his death. He wrote more than a dozen books, including four novels, which focused on psychological issues.

    The Seeker by Allen Wheelis. Random House (1960), 242 pp.
    Oliver, a successful psychoanalyst at the Harrington Foundation in Vermont, is growing increasingly dissatisfied with his life. He has lost interest in his research, which his colleagues consider ground-breaking, and is coming to believe that psychoanalysis itself is either hoax or delusion. He finds no joy in his sexual relationships, neither with wife Aggie or lover Sonya Hartman. Oliver resists the idea, broached by his supervisor and mentor, Stanley Nichols, that his search for meaning should be directed inward through therapy rather than outward through changes in attitudes and behavior. He soon decides that his quest should be made in California.
    In the remaining two chapters, “The Narcissist” and “The Sojourner,” Oliver ponders important questions. Can meaning be found in existing ideologies? Is selfishness a satisfactory response to a purposeless life? Is contributing to the advancement of society merely a source of ego gratification? And so on. Readers may find that Wheelis spends too much time exploring big issues and not enough humanizing his characters. As a result the book may sometimes be a tough slog. But it is a novel after all. So the thoughts of the first-person narrator (as all psychotherapists will avow) do not provide the ultimate explanation of his behavior. Oliver, for example, never takes any responsibility for what happens to his wife. It remains an open question whether the book, which Wheelis based to some extent on his own life, offers a tale of spiritual inquiry, rationalization, or perhaps even deception. In any case, readers with an interest in psychology may get caught up in the book.