Unearthing buried treasures from pulp literature’s yesteryear!
We bookgasmics enjoy nothing more than rescuing a book from the discard bin of literary history and writing about it. There’s always the hope that it will make a new fan. But many of those we want to tell you about are no longer in print, or may be hard to find. Here’s the good news: There are gazillions of old books available online. Most of you probably know this already and may even have considered buying a digital e-book reader so you can read some of these titles more conveniently than off your monitor.
I got a reader on my birthday last year and love it. Within a week, I had downloaded around 50 titles, so I now have handy reading for whatever mood I’m in at the moment.
I looked around for some hardboiled crime writing. (It’s my only vice.) I pretty quickly located Horace McCoy’s tough-as-leather Hollywood novel from 1938, I SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME. McCoy was one of the original Black Mask Boys, writers for the pulp-crime magazine BLACK MASK. He didn’t write many novels, but the ones he gave us are mostly gems, with THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? and KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE among them.
I SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME isn’t a crime story. It’s about Ralph Carston in Hollywood. Carston, a Georgia boy with a thick accent and just enough acting talent to be hopeful, is living with Mona Matthews, who is also seeking Tinseltown success. Their relationship is strictly platonic: They’re just sharing rent.
When a friend of Mona’s goes on trial for shoplifting, Mona loses her temper in court and the resulting fracas lands her in the newspaper. Suddenly a celebrity for the wrong reason, she — who otherwise couldn’t get her toe in society’s door — is invited to a swell party and takes Ralph with her.
There, Ralph meets Ethel Smithers, a rich, older dame who collects handsome young men like a cougar collects sheep. And it’s all downhill, professionally and morally, from there.
McCoy moved west from his native Tennessee to become a film actor. Nuh-uh, but he writes beautifully about the hard knocks and desperation that come with the territory. Some of these fresh-faced kids wash out and go home; some hit the streets and their undiscovered genius is the last thing of interest to the prowling night-feeders.
The book is grim and bitter with a two-pronged ending that is either quiet and sensible, or insane and nihilistic, depending on which way you look at it.
E-readers can find it here. —Doug Bentin
Related posts:
- The Way Home
- The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Get Animated!: Creating Professional Cartoon Animation on Your Home Computer
- The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> High Adventure
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My Kindle let me discover many wonderful out of print writers such as Ross Thomas and Norbert Davis. And if you are interested in a funny spoof of the action melodrama try “Winsome Winnie” by Stephen Leacock.