William Denton wrote:
> On 14 April 2000, Dick Lochte wrote:
>
> A while back Eddie Duggan gave me a copy of Erle
Stanley Gardner's article
> "Getting Away with Murder," and I put up an excerpt
at
>
> http://www.miskatonic.org/gooseberry.html
>
> which talks about "gunsel," "gooseberry lay" and so
on.
>
Thanks for the Gardner excerpt, it was great fun to read it
again.
Erle Stanley Gardner had the longest run of any author in
Black Mask, and wrote more stories for the magazine (some
under a few pseudonyms) than any other author. He probably
created more characters, particularly continuing characters,
for the magazine than any one else.
He and Hammett were pals in California in the early days of
the magazine
(1920's), and both lived rugged, on the street lives as young
men. Gardner was a small time lawyer famous among the Chinese
community, from which he developed some long-standing
friendship, and learned much about that subculture. Chinese
characters, not just stereotypical villains of the time, but
also loyal friends of the hero, continued to appear in his
magazine fiction all through his career.
Gardner, according to conversations I had with Henry Steeger
(Popular Publications' great publisher/editor) was a reliable
source for anything he wrote about.
Steeger told me he would wait with great expectation for a
Gardner tale to come in to Popular. According to Steeger,
Gardner always presented his fiction on a distinctive blue
paper (may be a good strategy if you are a great tale
teller), and it got so that when those blue pages crossed his
desk, Steeger would put aside whatever he was doing and read
what he knew would be another Gardner contribution.
Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, first appeared in Black Mask
way before Steeger was in magazine publishing. The Crook's
last appearance was, I believe, in the mid 1960's in Argosy
Magazine--where Gardner continued to appear after 1951 when
Black Mask and most of the other classic pulps were
gone.
Although many critics felt that Gardner was not a very good
novelist, per se,
(Rex Stout said the Perry Mason novels were not even novels!)
Gardner was one of the best selling writers of all times.
Steeger told me that if they put Gardner's name on the cover
of any magazine, they always increased the print run.
Steeger, a mild-mannered genius with a very tough streak,
spent a lot of time with Gardner on outdoor adventures.
Steeger told me that Gardner knew more about more things than
any one he'd ever met.
All of which leads up to my conclusion that whatever Gardner
reported about Hammett and underground argot of the 1920's is
probably accurate based on his own experience as a criminal
attorney at the time Hammett was writing, Gardner's
friendship with Hammett at that time, and Steeger's very
ardent vouching for Gardner's trustworthiness as a reporter.
(By the way, Hammett was "reportedly" a stern editor of
reporter's during his stint in the Army in WW11).
One caveat: this is not to say that either writer may not
have made up criminal slang for their fiction. As Gardner and
Fred "Ellery Queen" Dannay (another Hammett pal) have
written, Hammett enjoyed playing jokes with slang. Near the
beginning of his career pulled a fast one on the editors of
Black Mask with a pseudonym (Peter Collinson, as i recall)
that was once in current thug slang as a
"nobody."
Dannay told me that despite Hammett's sense of word play and
punning, he rarely played in his fiction writing and
reporting--which he took very seriously. But I love the way
he made icons of the characters in the Maltese Falcon with
their names "Wonderly" and "Gutman," and "Cairo," and, of
course "Spade"---who just would not stop digging into the
twisted relationships until he found out, and punished, the
person who killed his partner. A guy who calls a spade a
spade, so to speak. Even "Archer" might be a sly play on the
character's weakness for "shooting" his load in any dame he
could!
Thanks again to Mr. Denton for the Gardner excerpt. And don't
miss Denton's link on his miskatonic web site to Lester
Dent's formula for writing any five to ten thousand word
fiction story. It is a revelation.
Keith
keithdeutsch@earthlink.net
>
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Apr 2000 EDT