Did Ted Lewis, author of the great Get Carter and GBH, ever
even visit the US? It's certainly not evident he did from
Boldt, his only book set in the States.
Most of his mistakes about the US are minor enough I doubt
they'd be noticed by any Brits reading it who had also gotten
their impressions of America from books and movies. I mean,
he didn't have the cops drinking tea, though he kind of
overdid the drinking of coffee to signify Americanness (not
done ironically like, say, David Lynch -- just saw he now has
a signature brand of coffee). It was mostly little stuff.
Several times, Boldt tells someone to piss off; no Americans
except affected Anglophiles said piss off in '76. They once
go up the stairs to the first floor, which is the second
floor over here. There are several long scenes of all of the
men drawing tubs and taking baths, never showers. Although
the city is fictional, Des Moines is once referred to as
being the closest big city, which would put it much further
than a couple hour drive from abandoned ranches in the
desert. As I said, small stuff, but it adds up.
Ironically, he describes a British-themed bar in his unnamed
midwestern US town:
"Murdock take a left and then another and stops outside a bar
called Swinging London. Of course it's topless and of course
its decor is America's idea of what the British Travel
Association wants America to think of Britain, . . ."
While Lewis's is not the US any travel agency would promote,
it is the US that cheap exploitation movies and TV shows of
the time were projecting. The cover of the 1980 US paperback
of the 1976 book promotes it as being "In the Bullet-Hard
Tradition of Dirty Harry." It's actually far closer to
Starsky & Hutch. Clark's, a neutral zone criminal, mostly
black bar where corrupt white cop Boldt hangs out, is
straight out of a Blaxploitation film. Boldt swings back and
forth between being one of the corrupt, racist cops in the
background of one of those films, now the main character, and
a lone wolf cop whose corrupt boss gets in the way of his
doing his job. This central hypocrisy of Boldt constantly
complaining about his boss taking money from the same people
he's taking money from is never really addressed. The same
goes for his racism. He seems fine in general with blacks,
screwing whores of all races, hanging out and getting along
in black bars, but gets really out of sorts that the black
hit man he is stalking
(against his boss's wishes) is screwing a white woman he
wants, constantly referring to him by the N-word, but never
using it in regard to any of the other numerous blacks in the
book. This could have been handled as his true racism coming
out when it affects him directly, but this seeming disparity
is never recognized, much less dealt with.
Eventually the mistakes, but even more so the extreme
reliance on cliched stereotypes became too much for me. And
that's kind of a shame, since there is a plot with promise
underneath it all, with a nicely handled turnabout at the end
of Part I. And Part II, the last 30 pages of the 200 page
book, a tight little short story of the aftermath, shows how
well Lewis can write when he gets down to it. Oh well, guess
I'll stick with his Brit books. Still have three of those to
read.
Oh, there was an interesting thread running through the book.
I've never thought of Lewis as being particularly Chandlerian
-- Carter only read Farewell My Lovely in the movie, not the
book -- but he must be a fan. There are a lot of passing
references to his work: Chandler Hotel, Florian, Sternwood
Estates, plus a character named Hammett.
Mark
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