After the Hoke Moseley books I tooks I break by starting ACT
OF FEAR, the first of Michael Collins' (aka Dennis Lynds) Dan
Fortune books, which was toughish stuff, but so sedate I had
to get back to Willeford. I stopped half-way through and
picked up THE WOMAN CHASER (1960) , which I'd first read
about six years ago and had mostly forgotten
There's some pretty weird stuff in this book, in a Jim
Thompsonish vein. Richard Hudson is a car salesman, and is in
L.A. setting up a new lot for his boss. He stays with his
mother, who sleeps twelve hours a day and dances in the
basement of her mansion, and who is living with her newest
husband and his young daughter, who Hudson tries to French
kiss the first time they meet. Minutes later he's kissing his
mother and chatting with her while she's half-naked.
Hudson wants to create something, and is full of scorn for
the Feebs who do nothing with their lives. He decides to make
a movie, and ends up getting a deal with a studio and making
one (about a truck driver who runs over a little girl), which
turns out to be damned good. (By this time he's completely
abandoned the cons he'd pull on the Feebs on the car lot,
he's busy making the movie and left the business to a retired
Army man.) The movie ends up at 63 minutes, too long for TV
and too short for release. The studio wants to edit it, but
he won't let them. The book ends with Hudson in a rage as he
slashes a painting, punches a woman in the stomach, sets fire
to a film vault, gets drunk and picks up a Salavation Army
woman. It makes a lot more sense if you read it, but still,
it's not your average book, especially given the movie script
techniques Hudson uses to tell his story.
Willeford puts in comments about society, art, creativity,
used cars, the Army, the working life, and a lot else, some
of which is very reminscent of the later books (I noticed
there's a line about Thurber and Matisse being similar; Hoke
mistakes a Matisse for a Thurber in SIDESWIPE). People could
go on at length about, say, the Salvation Army woman episode.
I'm sure some people on the list have read it recently and
will comment.
Last year's movie adaptation (http://www.womanchaser.com/)
didn't hit Toronto, and I haven't seen it on video or had a
reply to the e-mail I sent. People here said it was very
good, though. How did they handle the movie Hudson makes, THE
MAN WHO GOT AWAY? Was much of it shown? How was Chet Wilson,
the actor who plays the truck driver?
Here's one particularly nasty bit from near the end,
representative of Hudson, but not of the book overall:
| The timing was terrible on Laura's part. At another time,
another
| place, I would have handled the situation differently;
given her a
| check, or I might have sent her to a doctor I know in
Stockton. If
| she had wanted to keep the baby, I would have paid the
bills, and maybe
| I would have set up a little monthly allowance for child
support. I
| don't know exactly how I would have handled it. But this
way ... she
| picked a bad time.
|
| As I straightened up, I brought my fist up hard. My fist
caught Laura
| squarely in the soft part of her rounded belly and sank in
wrist
| deep. Her breath whooshed audibly as it left her lungs. She
bent over
| forward, almost falling, took two short backward steps and
then sat down
| hard upon the floor. I lifted her to the couch,
straightened her
| legs. Laura clutched her stomach with both hands and slowly
began to
| breathe again. Tears of pain and anger flowed down her
swollen cheeks.
|
| 'Breathing okay now?' I asked. Laura nodded her chin
| tremulously. 'You'll be all right now, kid. That ought to
do it for
| you. There'll be a couple of bad days, I suppose, but they
can't be
| helped. The next time you get layed, you'd better use some
kind of
| precautions. I may not be around to help you.'
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 25 Jan 2001 EST