The SFFaudio Podcast #776 – READALONG: God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #776 – Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Cora Buhlert talk about God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
1967, pretty sure I haven’t read this before, just assumed, “nephew novels”, explicitly a nephew, second great uncle nephew, saying things in contradiction of the rules, the quiz for you: where does the title come from?, from Shakespeare, a marks as pointed out, a conman wants to con, the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, what she is saying, please forgive me, I hesitate to say, the death of Tybalt, he’s got a hole in him now, during a midwifery session, a “birthmark”, birthmarks are defects, it needs to be bless so as to avoid cursing the child, subtle things here and there, incapable of resisting talking about literary stuff, research for work, a lot of jokes that are not obvious, well over half a century later, what does he do for fun?, makes crossword puzzles, particularly proud of, the answer is frost, Robert Frost, Oliver Wyman’s great narration, the great, wait a second, dropping these things all the time, red herrings, a murder mystery, some of them are just for fun, a joy ride, a lot of fun, a theory 3 hours in, possibly wrong but possibly right, a question, what was in the oven other than naugahyde, the bible!, a vital clue, just another scam, a madcap movie from the 60s (or 1979), a great cartoon, a likeable narrator, like a breeze eating it, a weird mixed metaphor, a humour to it that is delightful, shouldn’t we be frustrated with him, how hapless he was, a crime novel, Mickey Spillane, this cac thing, you’re not going to end the book this way, Jesse was conned, too cynical to believe in CAC, CAC is shit, very cynical about government, the one Donald Westlake thing, Jesse will go down in history for, insurance, complete coverage, the character stand-in, independent research, crime and cons, South America, one with Lawrence Block, sex book, where they end up going, like a badman, from the New York Times, a pot-belly, he’s the character, Maissa’s theory about this whole book, on the phone with Wilkins and Grant, ok, he can’t be this, this whole book is a con, this guy is a conman, he didn’t, but then at the very end, he gets together with Gertie, Westlake is the conman, it’s his con now, on Discord, 2010, a chameleon, his main hapless guy voice, sounded familiar, screen time, the murderer, the elevator operator, it was Christopher Walken, a black man, train conductor, very funny stuff, Karen and Gertie, great characters, the doctor, slight of hand over and over and over, very cartoonish, Wile E. Coyote, we’re kinda lucky, the main character was gonna be played by Bill Cosby, Cora never liked him, how wholesome does it look now?, comedy chops, creepy actors, Woody Allen, very New York, the right stature, Hugh Grant, too handsome, it coudn’t be set in London, New York of the sixties, relistening to the beginning, a signature Westlakism: the hands, a fun prop, the shrimp on the folk, who put this shrimp on my fork?, the ink-stained wretch, such a Paul book, the book is hilarious, with airpower, he utterly conquered the Gauls with airpower, Fred thinking maybe I should give him the money, self publishing to start up, the vanity was another scam, everybody was scamming everybody, scammed her bunko squad boyfriend, he’s never going to divorce his wife, you know what they say about the staff of life, a sex book, Gertie: the body secular, the Artillery Club, she’s a bombshell, you haven’t tried her mayonnaise yet, the Edgar is the Nebula for crime writers, an Ira Levin book, Rosemary’s Baby, once you’re in the club you’re in the club, which is a better book, they’re so different, this is a comedy book that’s a crime murder mystery conartist book, the formula for Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, a winning recipe, our hero, he stole that bicycle, the bicycle chase, back pedal brakes, the bicycle stopped on a dime and gave 4 cents change, he’s got such good control over the reader, there isn’t a misstep, his agenda is there but so subtle, such people are everywhere and what can you do?, do you’re best, probably won’t, 100%, you’ve inherited money, email, casting a much wider net, Clifford, COD roommate, a responsibility, once they’re in the hallway, not answer the door, not have cash on hand, this is fuckin terrible, there are people in need, to scam you, it’s called The Red Cross, Haiti Relief, that’s the Red Cross, massive giant agencies are there to scam, a homeless person on the street, it’s really everywhere, you can’t imagine doing that yourself, con little old ladies out of money, you think of them as marks, it’s not like you’re hurting them, very different from mugging, kidnapping, he’s hit a real target, con operations, making a valuable point, everybody’s a scammer, half-con-man himself, a big bushy black mustache, he’d be a criminal if he wasn’t a cop, confess, the homicide duo, we are manipulating into thinking they are corrupt, caricatures characters, confidence man, “grifter” on twitter, a superhero, WILDCATS, based on the Jim Thompson novel, The Grifters, a hard movie, Angelica Huston is John Cusak’s mom, you wanna go where you’ve been, Annette Bening, Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), J.T. Walsh, beat’s Angelica Houston with a bag of oranges, this is a cozy, Agatha Christie but funny, flip it, brutal horrible, incest but mean, in smut novels, he goes into a smut shop, three guys standing around a table in the back room, anatomically improbably photos, a movie rather than a serial, an animated version, too far, the soundscape, boings, wheeep, full of sound effects, bedsprings, he’s so good, the ending, fixing it, not getting together with Karen, getting together with Gertie, an interesting funny and silly promising ending, gullible, she get’s the romance of the situation, she doesn’t need a husband if she doesn’t want one, Greenwich Village, bongo player, Brownstone houses, if the two incidents of street groups of kids together, indeterminate gender, all talking about different things, a comment and a commentary, the judgement is minimal, the homosexuals, I knew what gender they were but they didn’t know, altered books for much less, altered German children’s books, deleted a book from the series, WWI, changed the setting, Eastern Prussia or Silesia, Russia, Poland, Hanover instead of Leipzig, we’re safe, Aunt Gisela, early 20th century language, really really offensive term, not so bad N word, Pippi Longstocking, he was the king of the negros, a South Seas king, Ian Fleming, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, sexually harassing our hero, drag queens or something, high school kids, the price of sandwiches, 67, pre-Watergate, birth control pill, the sexual revolution, a time capsule, not just an entertaining book, it doesn’t make any sense to change, reading it in 2023, this other quality, a really fun book, in a sense riding, he’s a little smarter than Jesse, his life, through the narrator’s mind, everyone is a con-artist except for him, Times Square, largely commercial, red light district, Amsterdam, in the middle of the city center, Antwerp, a good sense of it, Westlake and Block, what it is like to walk through these street, weird beards, Samuel Delany’s book about Times Square, turned it into Disneyland, corporatized, a rainbow sidewalk crossing, a congregation place for weirdos, a lot of gays, weird poets, Reichstag, rainbow and Ukrainian flags, irritating, the New York Post, a political reason for it, off topic, Murray Bookchin, Liptick Traces, 60s groups and The Sex Pistols, the dominance of capital in cities, cities less and less livable, that’s people’s jobs, the mafia was people’s jobs, do people feel bad, take their shower and get on the phones, horrible things at their jobs, non-violent, taking money that the people don’t need, books about con-games, very interesting, the tools that they have, words, to convince people to give people freely something, The Sting (1973), Robert Redford, Better Call Saul, the fifty was a real and the 100 was a fake, a Rolex, a lawyer too, behind the psychology of it, Saul is childless, the family, he says he’s doing it for his family, being prideful and being a man, he’s smart and they’re dumb, it’s fun to do this scam, she loves it, it’s too addictive, it does hurt people, so cool to have that much power, ads for Ukraine on B.C. Ferries, what the fuck are were doing?, all the politicians are wearing Insane Clown Posse makeup, Insane Clown President [by Matt Taibbi] a bottom up group, Detroit guys, drinking pop, religious beliefs, tattoos, singing, they like their girlfriends, guys dressed in business suits with the face makeup, Lord Buckethead, Anarchist Pogo Party, “work is shit”, a serious critique vs. seriously running to win, Rhinoceros Party, Reaganomics, Republican in name only, stepped out of a time machine from 1967, it would look as stark, LBJ wore a suit, these guys wore a suit, the politics in here, the senator who was a real senator, not offending anybody, step lightly with the politics, everyone agrees that senators are corrupt, the Senator from Coca-Cola, campaign contributions, buy my son’s paintings, taking the frame on this, is this a political book?, he does do politics in his books, no solution other than being aware of it, politicians are products of their material conditions, Gertie’s political stance, cynicism, no idea of collective action, if Jesse was Will, terrible politicians, Germany’s chancellor, War Measures Act, we gotta stop authoritarianism, literal bombs going off and foreign ministers being kidnapped, we got it bad up here, there’s this guy in the mountains of Arkansas who can teach me some skills, healthcare, barring collective action that’s going to work, infiltrated, to not feel so horrible all the time, We Own This City, David Simon, gun task-force, the institution is so corrupt, a pessimistic cynical look, straight up robbing people, top to bottom corruption, plainclothes units, we gotta stop crime, every David Simon story is the same one, this is really rough what can you do, The Wire, drug enforcement free zone, reduced deaths, we’re not as completely corrupt here (in Canada), universal programs, if you’re as cynical as Donald E. Westlake, people can equate cynicism with being depressed or blackpilled, stoicism, expect pain, how do you deal with that pain, maintenance of your individuality, not a call to action, not a whole confection, political observations, challenging, a very Westlakian point of view to have, a very American take, and church leaders, Tommy Douglas, weird Christians in the prairies, Christian values, the Catholic church, kill the priests, Central America, in the DNA of this kind of crime fiction, The Continental Op, essentially a Pinkerton, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, the solution is to drink, no call to action, have enough grifts happen to you in the course of five minutes, when you’re in the Black Iron Prison, don’t you remember promising me that letter in camp, a way to get money, it could be really sad, conning me out of my shoelaces, I waited, finally I’ve decided, I’ve got an uncle who is a judge, this stuff actually happens, kids can’t make promises, this is all silly, a philanderer of the greatest kind, you can’t enforce a contract on a child, an expiry date on these letters, high school reunion, when Cora was 13, former fiances, are they millionaires now?, oh yeah, I have leverage now, lottery winners, the lottery is a scam, a tax on the stupid, quite poor, thousand marks, save the money a little bit, conpeople prey on old people, grandmothers scammed, this is your grandson, I’m in jail, twice, in the past five years, grandchild scam, court translations, a lot of money, somewhere in Africa, the really horrible thing, the Nigerian Prince scam, as soon as email became a thing, used to do with letters, because it’s free, there is a scammer who sells scam kits to people desperate for money, lower themselves, take money from grandmothers, sold a list of people to call, a bad list, the scammers scam themselves, buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo, long cons, short con, the phonecall from the lawyer wasn’t a con, long cons are relatively rare, House Of Games, a David Mamet movies, The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon, FTX, bitcoin investing company, biggest donor to the Democratic party, they can’t arrest him, in reality long cons are everywhere, they’re not elaborately planned, how long can we keep these balls in the air?, develop into actual countries, how the Hudson’s Bay Company?, Queen: how much do I get?, an investor group, the profits are so big, spanning a continent, the relationship between long cons and history, the most famous one would be the Netherlands Tulip frenzy, Beanie Babies, Magic the Gathering cards, people don’t want to know who gets hurt by their Wall Street investments, by not looking into it, Bernie Madoff, William H. Macy and his wife were put on trial for a university scam, you have to not see how the game is played, scammed too many people, as soon as you start researching it, am I gonna outsource my trust to these people, constantly question is the only way, such dire situation, their critical faculties, and they have savings, lack social contact, loneliness, a friend wants me to invest in his business, total scammer, I hate this guy, traumatic for Cora, trying to sink a ship he was supposed to sell, an old friend, sign on for a six month contract to do all Westlake in future, this book was a long con in and of itself, the murder of the uncle, we all got conned, happy to have gone for the ride, Evan’s dad outsmarted a con-artist recently, the gift card thing, they gave up, super common, Chinese, what the scam is, you’re Chinese there’s a problem, a tenuous situation somehow, as an immigrant who doesn’t speak English, elderly Chinese woman at home, house sitting, solve this using this credit card, all automated, why email is so broken, since calling, Skype sexy ones (maybe not a scam?), catfished, automated spam calls, very profitable, so persistent a problem, Will’s scammy world, Kentuckyian scams, strange text messages, Rhode Island, selling property, have you sold your house yet?, strange sexy Whats App texts, emojis were racy, heart emojis, sad story, people want to be loved, lived in public housing, this woman in the Philippines, is it a scam if providing emotional comfort over the internet, both people can sell it on both ends that way, after he died, online girlfriends, older people who are vulnerable, directly addressing Will with a name that is not his own, grifter, that guy is just a grifter, this guy wrote a book, crowdfunded the book, didn’t write the book, didn’t sell the book, Spare, why do I even care about this idiot, people who care about royals, curious, the Barbie thing, it’s pretty good, you can fake that interest, flexing and exerting power, extract publisher by being a legislator, merger, when he’s sitting down to fake write the book, I killed 29 guys in Afghanistan, the ghost writer, Taliban killed themselves out of despair, 25 enemy fighters, during 2 tours in Helmand, you can hear the ghost writer in the room, that’s a scam, buying an actual book they actually receive, drugstores, oh my sad life, rags to riches, he sold his book at his drugstores, shoved into your face, H.P. Lovecraft, birthday today, 7 months now when people are listening to it, scammed by August Derleth, he’s not a liar, shade the truth, opposite of a scammer, desperate for money, starts a business with Frank Belknap Long, Adolphe De Castro, offended, Weird Tales wasn’t paying, slowly, not on time, later, half, if you’re the editor of Weird Tales, Hugo Gernsback, the company doesn’t have the money, a compromised person, didn’t want to move to Chicago, you kind of have to be a scammer to work through this horrible capitalist system we have, a nobleness in the way Westlake handles this stuff, I didn’t lie to people, gave them some entertainment, his son Paul is working hard on his website, the son, he’s the only one who was doing something for the estate, the next six months of Westlake, the Donald Westlake podcast, every week twice a week, chronologically, too fun to read, not enough meaty material, when you read Heinlein, this formula works, doesn’t make for dense meaty material, a grand unified theory of Westlake?, after Evan unmutes himself, numbered episodes, book club, about Robert E. Howard too, Lovecraft, Stephen King at 100 pages at a time, so thick, other American science fiction writers, Asimov isn’t very American, Philip K. Dick is a weirdo and also an American, Joe Haldeman is American but not very American, he’s a good writer, Cora held the door open for him, Evan’s prejudice for America is wrong, Evan has to wrestle with this country he’s not in, a flux, a change, class awareness, the nature of the class, more static in British lit, race and slavery, women’s lib by Americans is great, those groups, Clark Ashton Smith is too literary, serious political thought, Howard can be super-political, a great adventure story, stylist, very rich, The Black Diamonds is very easy to read, get behind some sex book, just the Westlake Smut podcast, fun and funny, vintage sex books, John Lange’s The Venom Business, the sex makes it worse not better, funny silly sex books, a serious book, Harold Robbins, Peyton Place, gossip, nobody reads it anymore these days, weirdos interested in old books, finding out what books were shit, go to Abebooks, the most famous book of 1970, an obscure book, all over every used bookstore, Swedish family saga, no one can even read this stuff these days, romance novels lose their value instantaneously, 2 for $1, disposable in the same way a pulp used to be, hardcovers, 8 hours felt like 4, he’s gonna run out of space, a perfectly executed thing for what it is, it’s perfect, spot on, a mater professional writer, not clouded, just pure, so distinctive with the hands, that’s pure Westlake right there, their hands, their voice, so good, sold on Westlake, putting my money on Westlake, Bothers Keepers, monks trying to save their monastery, Call Me A Cab, thrift shop Hard Case Crime, asleep yesterday, infinite amount of time to read, Christa Faust’s book, in a year or so, the Norton Anthology of American Literature, deep dive into literature in the historical and material context of that period, 1770-1780, The Turn Of The Screw, The Great Gatsby, N.K. Jemisin and Ursula K. Le Guin, Hawthorne vs. Edgar Allan Poe, Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, The House Of The Seven Gables, drill down on The Gold Bug, The Black Cat is super-American, bogged down, something more scripted, Henry David Thoreau, feed Cora’s father, material realities of America, big picture, scripted, a leftist a Marxist, Caleb Maupin, got in trouble for spanking, an American nationalist, a Christian communist, borderline MAGA communist (whatever that’s supposed to be), a video about Michael Crichton, State Of Fear, when books are taboo it makes Jesse want to read them, global warming is going to destroy us all, work hard play hard regular liberalism, something we need to degrowth with, never means closing military bases, you gotta not have babies, you gotta eat these bugs, Naomi Klein, do a survey, do your carpets need cleaning?, reducing our greenhouse emissions, rebuild, dismantling the military, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, the democrats are not on the left, that guy’s Right, ok whatever, she say’s shes a socialist, so is Bernie Sanders, a co-person, he reads books, he’s a tankie, sounds like a slur, a well deserved slur, what defines somebody as a fuckface?, leftist circles, expressing support for one party communist regimes, fascism, Nazi, although Zelenskyy has Nazis all over and around him, he doesn’t have the sonnenrad around his face, doing the sieg heil, “white power” on the backs of her legs, doing the salute, the standard anarchist position, a tension, some North Korean Instagram girl’s account is deleted, this is wrong, not all starving to death all the time, humanizing them, should North Korean model be embraced, Jesse doesn’t believe in Canada, the western powers never left, China’s doing its best to make the world more Chinese, talk to local conditions, arguments are in the canon, to talk about socialism, mmmm Jack London, friends with the @ sign of library of America, Sam Glanzman, The Law Of Life by Jack London, he bought story ideas from people, he’s doing Jack London, North-West Romances, Jack London is writing literature, ok there’s a prospector, western civilization, what it is to be indigenous, LibriVox, Louis L’amour, what it means to be American, class struggle, cattle baron vs. small proprietors, Swag, The Big Bounce, swag bag full of cash, that was a punch and I didn’t see that coming, 3:10 To Yuma, late in the Western game, people in the middle, Max Brand, they’re the Heinlein and Clarke and Asimov of American Westerns, Markie Post, Glitz, lady falling from a high window in her underwear, Justified, 85 novel, serial rapist, Jimmy Smitts, psycho-mama-boy, beautiful Peurto Rican hooker, A.C. dazzle, random Elmore Leonard plot with a movie, Out Of Sight, never done an Elmore Leonard, don’t read Tishomingo Blues, Pronto, Ezra Pound stories, retiring to Italy, Peter Falk, Riding The Rap, Jennifer Lopez and the E.R. guy who lives on Lake Como, Out Of Sight (1998), mutual attraction, kinda or really sexy, Luis Guzman, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Teddy Roosevelt, the Cuba war, George Guidall narration, The Moonshine War, The Sopranos, hilarious, David Simon back to back, The Plot Against America, the Philip Roth novel, Charles Lindberg becomes president, that 1940-42 period, the Jewish community, a selling feature?, the response of the Jewish community would have had, generational stuff, Ed Burns, out of the HBO loop, All The Way, Lyndon Johnson, Bryan Cranston, shitting on the toilet scene, jumbo didn’t make an appearance, got a lot of tail, more killed than JFK, he didn’t get Marilyn, presidents were way hornier, FDR, she was gay, open marriage, very modern, religious stuff, Reagan, Nancy, maybe not even her, Jeb, The Revengers (1972), we’re talking Hollywood mainstream film, Tarantino movies, Jackie Brown (1997), Pam Grier movies, Sheba Baby (1975), Coffy (1973), the ketchup and mustard and thing, Jesse’s seen all the big westerns, William Holden, The Seventh Dawn, quite quite good, Malaysian war of independence against the evil British, reverse surprise, symmetry, a rip-off, The Wild Bunch (1969), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Dirty Dozen (1967), you like what they do, a revenge movie, it’s simple, he’s got principles, the criminals don’t, Jesse likes westerns, The Shootist (1976), the end of the West, the greatest gunslinger ever is now dying of cancer, set in 1901, electricity, The Grey Fox (1982), Ron Howard, Scatman Crothers, reserving judgement, an upcoming hurdle, if the cancer just takes its course, Woody Strode, a football player he became a movie star, super-teacher of the year, does it come with money?, a certificate, no promotion, headcanon, not incompetent enough to be promoted, not lackey enough, spewing all over AI, interesting, gonna fuck up a lot of people’s businesses, a book emote, as in read a fuckin book, Evan move, enhancing the library, awesome social studies library, bought em all, endless budget, a decent library, the key to the library, just read some books, the whole point, the whole system has been gamified, the whole reason is because they have to, read a little bit, how’m I gonna get my kid into this school?, things students can and can’t use AI for, we have to prepare them for the future, teach them how to write prompts, he’s trying to help the kids cheat, you’re trying to help the kids learn, pirouette around it, guilty until proven innocent, here’s how we can improve your teaching, how to use AI, embarrassing to read, email, using chatGPT as an educator, a whole paragraph prompt, a mini assessment, submit, could you guide me with a prompt?, he thinks he’s being helpful, he’s trying to do his job, how to cheat through their classes, everybody’s in on this scam and you’re refuse, we’re here to make money of the requirement by law, get with the program, that’s your job, you wanna play baseball because you love the game, runs batted in business, now everyone can moneyball, [Moneyball (2011)] the worst team in baseball, it can’t be stopped, sabermetrics, is the baseball bat the saber?, SABR, this dude who was a doorman, Bill James, kept stats, we’re making choices about players wrong, Wayne Gretzky, stadium, rink, new stats, dieting, Zero Cool, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, Colorado Kid, he’s a congressional medal honor winner from the Civil War, any senator can nominate, son seems fine, goes out for some reason, massacred his dog, evil comancheros, buys six slaves, tie em up, outfitted, they all turn on him, they get to talking, he’s his dad, he has blue eyes, the cavalry, one young officer, Mexican kid, claims William Holden is his dad, structural things, really well written, makes a big difference, High Plains Drifter (1973), a Clint Eastwood one, out of Spaghetti Westerns, December death hoax, yet another example of fake news, still alive, took his money and started making his own movies, Malpaso, mayor of Carmel, California, two spouses and three domestic partners, at least 8 children, great film actor, good film director, great on screen, not all westerns, Cry Macho (2021), they didn’t de-age him, action scenes, a boy and his rooster, the pirate area, too much Mission: Impossible, always trying to overthrow governments in Mexicos or Easters Blocks, romanticizing, minimizing harms, different from the movies where it’s some vague internal threat, commercial for the planet, rogue Russian nukes, trying to release in China, The Peacemaker, John Cena and Jackie Chan, plays Splinter, in Iraq?, John Cena lives there, mercenaries from China?, white guy living in a small village in Iraq, vague badguys, John Cena’s brother involved with other mercenaries, tryna not offend anybody, buses full of people, if you increase the number of people in danger you make the , two bums fighting over $10, nobody can empathize with $10, big stakes, structure, it’s fun, writing exercise, made it part of Jesse’s job, be like Jonathan and get paid by wealthy old ladies who worked in Hollywood, a ghost writer, prurient, Sunset Boulevard (1950), 36 years and not have seen…, William Holden!, dude!, dude!, Billy Wilder, The Major And The Minor (1942), Five Graves To Cairo (1943), woke shame, film shame, Double Indemnity (1942), Raymond Chandler, Barbara Stanwyck in a wig, Edward G. Robinson, oh my gods!, Soylent Green (1973), I haven’t seen Soylent Green!, I don’t even see how ironic this is!, while scraping you off the pavement, alcoholic movie, a black comedy, real life old time silent film movie guy, that trope, ghost writer, a retainer, fun, you only have to please the one customer, worried about perception, being a ghost writer, under an NDA, talk about everything, Jesse envies Will, watch some good movies because it spoils you for bad movies, better and better caffeine, a tolerance for heroin, searching for a higher high, any old shit that has animation, appreciate genre stuff, I heard about this Russian movie called Come And See (1985), I can see why they said that about this, Spaghetti Western, weird euro-trash with sweaty Spaniards and Frenchmen and the occasional American, Lee Van Cleef, great eyebrows and then he’s balding, actors like Lee Van Cleef, a karate movie with Bruce Lee, kun fu movies, John Saxon, you’ve seen his face, man with eyebrows, then he goes bald, sad story, even when he was bald, John Woo movies, he was so hot in Hong Kong, cheesy shit, when he does it in Hong Kong, pure shit, Chow Yun Fat is Humphrey Bogart but Chinese, too ohs, Face/Off, Mission Impossible 2, The Killer (1989), Chinese laserdiscs, corny and bad, so handsome of screen, reinvents techniques, churches and doves, Hard Target (1993) with Jean-Claude Van Dame, Christianity, doves are very deep, this is what a handsome man does on screen, you just fall in love with him and melt on the floor, shoot guns at each other, drive cars around Hong Kong, archive.org, how good for how low trash, A Better Tomorrow (1986), subs are the way to go, dubbing is not the way to go, just so charismatic on screen, it was a huge deal before the changeover, hardcoded English subs, cast media with chromecast, in the TV buying business, the ideal is you get a dumb tv, Nvidia Shield, google is better right now, Fire TV is the second best, Roku is eating everybody’s lunch, ability to do anything, a thumbdrive hole (a USB hole), a file explorer program, VLC, hook a laptop up, more wires, Playstation 3, Nintendo Switch, from ’99, a nostalgia thing for Meg, Final Fantasy, SquareEnix, zaniness, gunsword, computer games were more forgiving for poor people, computer games were cheaper, a 3DO, 1993, Road Rash for 3DO, a Wii, competitive Tetris, so ignorant, not enough time, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto on horses, shooting people while on the stagecoach, shooting is the default, RPGs, isometric, when Doom hit, everything turned into a first person shooter, can see the appeal, go over to somebody and ask them about their day, criminals over there, a life simulator, a quest where you have to stop a stampede, westerns are fun, pretty dedicated to PUBG, guy in Senegal, a good chat about being colonized, the French are fuckers, a lot of Americans, generally sad and smoking weed all the time, such is the state of the situation, large part a lot of people are opting out, playing games all the time, not a random sampling, Chinese guys, weird ideas, strategy, how dumb people are, all very safe, they’re not going to ask you for money, the strategy of the game, chunks, there’s no natural way to get off of Red Dead Redemption, more self-discipline, Paul plays a lot of games like Age Of Wonders, Civilization, Civ is like crack, why are you doing it again?, rule a fantasy realm of your own design, a tabletop RPG about being a cowboy, Cowboys and Cattlebarons, Cowpokes, then you get girls, Blades In The Dark, a weird west mod, sorcerers in my Ranch Romances, Indians and iron horses, some big medicine from the Piute, the module is the big eastern white faces say they’re going to give our land to their settlers, how many scalps are we gonna collect?, turn them against their evil government, Mormon Utah, Dogs In The Vineyard, DMd for students, kinda weird as adults, kinda immature, I’m an elf, you’re a guy who works at the video rental store, it was fun tho, that’s really sad, autistic or what, they got the problems Jesse doesn’t need more of in his life, a module of Edgar Allan Poe Dungeons And Dragons, they do their best, they don’t know it’s a dungeon hack, you have a phone with a flashlight, a troll, owls, ghouls, a house with a big crack in it, everybody should make their own rules, d20, damage points and rolling up stats, you forgot your glasses, not a normal roleplaying game, I get in the boat, roll D20, sorry you drowned, a big outlet, cool ideas, Paul’s life is a lot of that, a good hobby, staying out of the casino and not doing too many cracks, filling time before you die, giving away your money you don’t think you earned, baccarat, you buy the shoe, James Bond, he’s not pulling the lever on the one armed bandit, the saddest movie ever, a sexy lady across the one armed bandit from him, betting against the bad guy, a collection of cards, like blackjack, there is no dealer, they win all ties, a bidding round, there is a minimal amount of skill involved in 21 or blackjack, poker, playing against a particular player acting like the house, sad and pathetic, quickly lost $75, there’s no person you’re giving your money to, socializing, roulette, craps, luck involved, sad kinda socialness, happiness from them, it made a lot of noise, a lonely person less unhappy for a moment, something to do with your friends who don’t read books, evil because of what it does, smoke dope all day while playing games all day to escape their terrible life, Jesse has killed Will, accidentally muted himself, try to DM a role playing game in a western setting, make up a shopping list of things for people to buy with their coins, pick a movie you like, you’re family has been slaughtered, in order to get your revenge, you are a convicted criminal of rape of 17 women all over the age of sixty, and yet you’re not gay, that’s a heavy backstory, you want redemption, gets shot, gets redemption, redeemed in the end, ranch romances, a bordello instead of a tavern, a cathouse, Klondike goldrush, claim jumpers, lots of opportunities to freeze to death, You Are A Wolf, not enough about being a deerchild, about philosophy, how weird people were a long time ago, Hoboes & Harlots, pulp style painting, everbone is knocking about, converted burlap sack full of, used garters suitable for sniffin, a fake award, achievement in gaming, what modules will be like, tutoring 2 days a week, 1 class a week, 4 classes a week, 3 hours is fine, Jesse loves his job, would still do it if not being paid, showin up, I’m in, stone soup, a snip of parsnip, looking for sex and food, run that for your students, 7 to 18, a broad range of South Koreans, east and west and north Koreans, Dok Do Koreans, PyongYang Koreans, a very interesting history, the United States is very very bad, the Soviets and the Chinese, not set up a country there, very bad in Asia?, yes, maybe the Japanese were worse, numbers matter, did you steal?, did you lie?, how many did you kill?, not caused by communists, caused by imperialists, make the case the soviets were expanding their empire, look at the geography of it, assisting, freedom from foreign rulership, being in the way of larger nations, very aggressively European for an Asian country, militaristic, we’re gonna do the Euro thing in Asia, what’s the United States doing there?, not geographically adjacent, foreign adventurism, what was Canada doing there?, best friend to the big bad bully, pleased with her farming, your teaching license has expired, still thinking about it, who’s going to take care of your animals when you’re away teaching, she still wants to have the paperwork, she enjoyed being a teacher, sister still teaching?, she seems to have money, something like a job, this problem with paying for things, the thing to do is to have a job, get apprenticed by an Appalachian back to the woods herbalist, limousine from the airport to the hotel, everything’s fine, what’s going on in the community, enlightening, the guy looks like a druid or a wizard, lived off grid for 50 years, Chinese gardens, tinctures of herbs, if you’re conspiracy minded, how the AMA defeated herbalists, it happened, herbalism stuff, grows his own food, orders seeds, mailing away for seeds, still work you just don’t get paid, it is a lot of work, your work is based on what you need rather than what you need money for, a job that’s not real, only things you really need, a lot of the work that’s going around, a nursing home inspector, needs to be done, a shortage of nursing home inspectors, anti-psychotics, the long and short of it, random inspections in the middle of the night when you’re awake, nursing homes are kind of unfair, how scared I should be about ending up in a nursing home, better in British Columbia than Kentucky, a guy who was trying to get out, why he shouldn’t be getting out, his body is good but his brain is bad, whereas this druid guy, 80 year old man’s body, more of a wizard’s staff, like RFK Jr., human growth hormone, Marianne Williamson, her new book’s out, good “values”, you have to know what the scam is in order to not be scammed, that’s no way to get the right answers to things, considering how fuckin dumb Trump is, goes with his gut, they’re scammers like movies, shirtless pushups go viral, 69, unflattering on purpose, Curb Your Enthusiasm wife, used to be a heroin addict, being RFK’s child, my dad was assassinated by the government, I’m a rich boy, become a lawyer like he said he did, Hunter Biden has really struggled in life, having a liar for a dad, don’t you listen to the president, listen, fat!, I write all my own speeches, speaking truth to power, interviewed on Jimmy Dore, totally unprepared, Hillary wants war, she’d get tricked into doing it, the biggest of all time?, how they sold it to him, a tiny little thing, a tiny little thing Biden making a North Korea deal, move the troops out, let the South Koreans work it out, get assassinated along the way, he likes bad ideas, nobody has done it before?, it’s unprecedented, you’re speaking my language, she says nice things, a poetess, a self-help guru more than anything, what’s her background, twang, New England private school accent, how she got on the stage at all, born in Houston, conservative Judaism, author, teacher, politician activist, theater and philosophy in California, wasted decade, lived in a geodesic dome, live in a pyramid too?, a cabaret singer, distracted by bad boys and good dope, existential despair, lost soul, A Course In Miracles, a great sweeper of things aside, torches and pitchforks, we’re gonna mediate our way to health, everybody gets free meditation, facebook live.

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark - Cosmopolitan, May 1967

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake - PAPERBACK

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #773 – READALONG: Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
a very accurate copy of Terence, go by Jonathan, Asimov’s, February 1985, Silverberg has a problem, his skills, he loves literature, doesn’t know much about science, loves history, children, all of his stories are about marriage basically, not every story is a marriage story, I think my dog knows aliens, that doesn’t involve relationships, an inversion of Passengers, The Roller Coaster by Alfred Bester is more Passengers than Passengers, Jesse’s focus and primary point of interest is ideas, cuz I’m a dude, gender stereotype this, as far as Jesse is concerned, once upon a time, came to understand and appreciate, still immature, pleasure and value, idea first and foremost, when characters are pushed, the high point of the book, that he is an android, Jonathan is smarter than Jesse apparently, the known simulacra won’t obey him, did you command it?, that’s good, the other hint, I remember New York, that’s because he’s Robert Silverberg, Dark City (1998), programmed that way, rented on Laserdisc, Director’s Cut, too crazy to be released in cinemas, narration in the beginning, inferior product, Charlez Philips, Yankees, hot dog, presumed this was another in the tradition of C.M. Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons, William Morris, the revelation, internal thinking, what he’s thinking about what this guy’s saying, the opening description is repeated three times, it’s beautiful, description of the dawn in Alexandria, the writing is beautiful, the concept is solid, The City In The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, what the plot is, guy has girlfriend, guy loses girlfriend, guy searches for girlfriend, the writing… so good, perfect length, I read a piece of literature and I have something to say about it, Downward To The Earth, Heart Of Darkness, the Yates poem, responding to the poem, his one trick, he’s a guy who loves literature and science fiction, knows a lot about ancient cities, Gilgamesh The King, Silverberg is really good, Up The Line, a tourist book, tourism, The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding, the novel not the singer, a Tom Jones of timetravel, not trying to hide it, hey I’m doing this thing, The Secret Sharer, I read this amazing thing let me respond, very solidly, William Coon, I got an iPhone with GPS, childless, there’s no children in this world, there’s no adults in the world, our main character is the adult, go for characters, Paul try to defend her, she’s an Eloi, there’s mostly all Eloi, a little more conciousness, the robots are the Morlocks, you can’t be here, the unpaid proletariat of the society, money is meaningless, who is actually fixing these robots, other robots, this doesn’t need any addition, a very small idea, deconstruct it as well as a scientificly plausible future, a new person for the city, a guy from the 1960s who wakes up in 2023 and finds out his phone has GPS, how a post scarcity economy becomes a society of spectacle, where we had Mark Twain on, Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another, Innocents Abroad is about the invention of tourism, modern tourism, nice and stable, Americans going to Europe, travelogues, vacations vs. tourism, you build things for the tourists, Paris needs the Eiffel Tower, everything becomes insubstantial, you need to see the centaur grazing, tourism is a negative, taking the tour vs. living somewhere, some ad man, the Seven Wonders of the World, sex tourism, let’s go get some slaves, tourism is about the middle class, getting lots of bums in seats, tourist facilities, at the airport to take you to a hotel, the hotels haven’t been invented yet, Evan is in Thailand, a vacation destination vs. tourism, their whole lives are vacations, the only thing that dies in this world is the cities, Rome is the Eternal City, Paris, see the thing that Hitler and Hemingway looked at, a touchpoint on a checklist, the particular theme, the actual plot, we broke up a little bit, we’re back together, a very cynical take on what immortal people are like, they’re very shallow, juxtapose it, Ian Bank’s Culture novels, self-actualized, we’re in China, the emperor sitting on his throne waving his hand being fanned, impossibly drunk, wakes up having sex, conspired, he’s being raped by her, here’s my problem with the scene, emotional consequences, oh well that happened to me, they haven’t programmed him to have, pre-neanderthals, sexy cave woman sidles up to sexy cave man, people are people, people are not even people, a robot with personhood, glands and hormones and emotional reactions, he’s a primitive, coasts along, acculturation, like an Eloi, a strange lack in the programming, violent, goes with the flow, his love is real, he’s a robot that can be programmed to be drunk, cultural expectations, he’s just a very 20th century man, the hidden robots, this place is closed, it’s not a place anymore, his creator, mobile tourist attractions, his future, New Chicago era, don’t you know you’re a robot dude?, I’ve been bewitched, what you’re saying is witchcraft, imagine if Philip Jose Farmer wrote this book, more sex, Tarzan lives 10,000 years ago and lives all of time, historical character to spend time with, Elizabeth and Drake and them, what am I gonna do with my life, just a guy living in a world, his girlfriend’s run away from him, they’re indistinguishable, one is worried about getting old, he’s just riding that, the call to action is the girl leaving him, the catalyst, he doesn’t know he is, he doesn’t know he has that problem, the plot requires him to have a problem, what is his solution?, you become immortal like me and become a robot, just a way of ending the book, the plot is not important to this story, Downward To The Earth, Congo planet, say sorry to the elephants, the elephants sometimes get violent, checking in on people he used to know, meditating on a good book, the poem, 3 minutes, 4 stanzas, Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yates, on reading Silverberg’s novella length discussion of this poem…, making it the setting for this poem, a secular heaven, where the movie and the book got it from, the ending of the novella doesn’t go far enough, they should have gone to Byzantium to find the planners and become planners again, you need imagination and curiosity to recreate all these ancient cities, that is what would absolutely happen, a very modest tired science fiction story, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, sad and meditative world, illiteracy is the center of the book, it should be a satire, university professorships and everybody is illiterate, if this goes on…, doing drugs all the time and experiencing a new media, a couple of people who don’t fit, live near the zoo, the journey to find the truth of their world, you need to go into the tunnels and find the planners, a big computer program, an explanation will be a letdown, the way Arthur C. Clarke gets out of it, everybody’s an artist and an art critic, very chaste, how did these people predict the future so accurately, go to other planets, only one city now, in the same universe, this could be a period of The Forever War, Forever Peace, Forever Free, struck to close to home, connected with people long enough your brain changes, it did not work for Paul, very unrealistic, a priori, connecting to and using drones, the drones thing is very solid, his solution to peace, about the peace thing, any plan to achieve world peace is going to be a nightmare, mind-control, manipulation, Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman, he didn’t write as much as Silverberg, inactive, confusing somebody, Camouflage, Buying Time, Work Done For Hire, makes them horny for each other, this sounds good, won the nebula, they like the fancy writing, reward each other for fancy writing, has a little bit of fancy writing, you’re a guy and you wake up in the future and everybody’s gay, it’s the 70s, he’s the pervert, I’m the only heterosexual man in the universe, why it’s a good book, different from Heinlein, an answer, a riposte, an echo, with a different brain doing the work, we have started on reading half of Tor Doubles, Gene Wolfe, that’s a problem, hit Jesse with the “it’s a problem” stick, that’s a problem for this podcast, there are too many books to do, best decisions Jesse’s life, a great formula, Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe, is the writer reliable?, a 19th century story, a Norman Spinrad story, visit the fallen New York, the Brooklyn Bridge, a big stack of Tor Doubles, A Meeting With Medusa, mature Arthur C. Clarke, Nightwings, Greg Bear’s Hardfought, went off the rails, no be like H.P. Lovecraft die of cancer from eating beans, Eye For Eye by Orson Scott Card, no, Hawksbill Station, Color Of Neanderthal Eyes by James Tiptree Jr. and Michael Bishop, the ideal podcast, in some cases, he’s not likely to give permission, refuse to do a book by someone who is so anti-queer, his religion is bullshit, he can have it, Salvation Army bucket, a 19th century spinoff of the temperance movement, they really are an army, charity thing only now, rope people in with their homeless shelters, where they indoctrinate you, when Orson Scott Card dies will it be okay?, Ender’s Game and other things, a cigarette pack that says cancer kills, as a part of the canon, weird and distorted people, Nancy Kress, find traces, they way Heidegger was a Nazi, resistance from Heidegger scholars, finding ways to prune that list, Pugnacious Peacemaker by Harry Turtledove, a sequel, The Saliva Tree by Brian Aldiss, The Wheels Of If by L. Sprague De Camp, Saddam Hussein’s fantasy novels, required reading in Iraqi schools, rushing to finish his latest book, very passionate author, Bill Clinton’s espionage thrillers, two branches we can go down, somebody did this, back to Silverberg, see something, tweet it at me, very good but not super controversial book, visiting over the shoulder, Asgard, so impressed with Silverberg, you’re clearly not an ancient astronaut guy, Hindu nationalists, very weird western dudes, Born With The Dead, French language SFFaudio, a collection, soon to be a motion picture, The Silent Invaders, A Time Of Changes, that’s the thing with the pronouns, obscene I, coming to a consensus, a famous one, a first contact one, Thorns, tourism but not ancient, all around the universe, super-depressing, Kurt Vonnegut, life is meaningless, Vonnegut is funny, Thorns is not funny, a depressed version of Vonnegut, it’s Liggoti, I cried with Born With The Dead at the end, saddening or depressing, aliens disfigured him, a recluse, people look at him weird, donating 100 of her eggs, she’s got 100 babies she’ll never see, Mark Zuckerberg, emotional vampire, across known space, inability to form a real relationship, Letters From Atlantis, mind in other people sort of thing, ancient Atlantis, it has Silverberg’s strengths, A Hero Of The Empire, a Roma Eterna story, a Paul book, the consensus I’m hearing, worried about being depressed, this pronoun is forbidden, a powerful mind altering drug, a message of liberation, a cult favourite, 1971, October 22, some troll was in my schedule, Scott is listed there, maybe Scott was trolling, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, a fantasy book, semi-erotic fantasy novels, Tolkien’s level, cool looking ace cover, bear with an eyepatch, time of the Etruscans, Cirsova submission, sexually explicit, pornography on this podcast, imagine Piers Anthony was a serious author, how these prompts work, the female characters show the most growth, male water sprite is kidnapped, an actor who is travelling through, go to my girl in the waterworld, oh are you a virgin?, what no maybe I don’t know, have you been to an orgy, I’m horny now, you’ll be horny later, 5 hours, thank you, very enjoyable book, I like the short, more depth to it, more going on, different ideas, characters, concepts, weird aquatic animals, a safari vs. tourism, spend time with the natives, Thorns is like a space-cruise, Up The Line, from a poem?, pretty obscure, Up The Line by Robert Silverberg, Paul Boehmer, a time courier, a lusty Greek, a sex book, uber eats guy, goofballs goofing off, the Time Patrol, labour stuff, sex with my ancestor, I’m gonna go make myself, I’m gonna become rich, a weird attitude, you can’t break the rules, they’re managers, serialized in Amazing, has good art, a sex comedy, Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), very deep, as a man, a feature or a bug, definitely one or the other, straightfaced is weird, commentary on the 1980s, also our world, people create avatars for themselves, playing with real people and NPCs, Skyrim with AI companions, go kill that big bear over there, says something snarky, people are normally playing against NPC with scripted conversations, NPC companions helping you to kill other NPCs, barely real, scene fillers, one of the amazing things, follow that person, see where they’re going, where reality takes us, business and agenda, I’m going and buying the thing I was told to buy, I’m wearing my mask, make the dog poop, buy a newspaper, early 20s in New York, ticket scalper, rich people buy $1000 Broadway tickets, a concierge at a hotel, people walking by, Grand Theft Auto, The Truman Show (1998), functions there, the same people going back and forth, very educational, a weird form of nature, being inside of somebody’s spleen, catch on fire, speaking of firetrucks, is Will still covered in cats?, dog is having seizures, an intercranial disease, it was joyous, cheeseburger for my dog please, not permanent, new cats coming in all the time, covered in its own feces, it was like that, what does this have to do with making money for capitalism?, acquiring capital, conceivably, put em up on some website, record it, God Save the Mark by Donald E. Westlake, should be fun, very relationship oriented, more than year, he’s gotta educate people, nun’s business, she’s good, she’s got some meanness in her, all about the kindness, Jason Thompson was tweeting about cruelty, honesty is something you need in your life, cruel and not honest, cruel and honest, at least with words, ideas are potentially cruel, The Screwfly Solution isn’t an indictment of men, subject fleshy creatures, let’s all play nice, when Paul says “no, Jesse”, is the pope raping children by not shutting down his empire?, pedophile priests are a thing, we should be suspicious, do I look fat in this dress?, no, you look fat in every dress, cruel truths coming out of fiction, does that help answer your question, it’s important, is The Colorado Kid a western?, set in Maine, a Hard Case Crime book, illustrations, real bad man, such a shitlib, occasionally make a mistake, when the drugs went the talent went, the Trump derangement drug, much better as a cruel mean drunk, The Running Man is so good, reading for meanness, Lord Tyger, Philip Jose Farmer, Tarzan Alive, A Feast Unknown, 150 pages-ish, short Stephen King with a great cover and interior illustrations, a concept, Mr. Mercedes, Cell, he does characters really really well, really good book, on a lot of things, not substanial in the way science fiction can be, his fantasy is his own construction, peripherally crime book, crime books are good, Lawrence Block, Raymond Chandler, formula, Jim Thompson, cruel guy, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, Westlake wrote the script, a great movie and great book, harrowing, the paperback on the spinner wrack, gut punch on page one, waiting for your bus, getting off the bus, you finish it that night, character driven literature, crime is an interesting situation, how can I get the police involved, the police are a new invention, they’re a bad thing, why Breaking Bad is very interesting, empire building, the wife is there to say what you’re doing is wrong, that was always inherent with that show, what were the bad things he’s doing, killing people is bad, he has cancer, disrespected, no health care, accepted his buyout, wealthy billionaire, a man’s dignity, it’s not about Walter White or Heisenberg, that ain’t what Star Trek is, what Star Trek really is, fuckin terrible, crime is the philosophy of how to be, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain, a little bit of outside of society, chess pieces, the criminal mind, moral dilemma, I’m going to lower myself, he knows that he’s doing wrong, he’s the weakest character, Jesse Pinkman is a much stronger character, he’s just a dumb guy, yo, he thinks of himself as very high, he’s brought low, he destroys the things that he loves he says, the show is trying to moralize at the end, he has to be brought low and feel bad about what he’s done, Better Call Saul, all the characters are strong, a better show because it doesn’t have the wife and kids aspect, to setup the fall, Jimmy McGill, at sea on his own, stupid and lucky vs. smart and unlucky, really interesting American stories, Double Indemnity, so greasy, he never did anything nice to me, I guess I’ve got to kill him, they betray each other, super-short, makes you love reading, a good movie, Fred McMurray and a lady with a wig, Edward G. Robinson, Mildred Pierce, so good, very successful, Jim Thompson, a Greek tragedy, they also cut each other up with knifes, his writing is bloody, turn the page and cut your arm, movies that went underground, This World The The Fireworks, Billy Zane and Gina Gershon are lovers and brother and sister, Flowers In The Attic, a funny stream of pro-incest propaganda, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore aka ‘Tis Pitty Shee’s A Whoore, forbidden love, go with your heart, okay enough, daughter, suitor, dorks, if I can’t have you sister, nobody can, not as flowery as Shakespeare, has sex with his sister, pulls her heart out with a dagger, a huge monologue with a beating heart, and on that note Terence leaves, Farnham’s Freehold, Pirates Of Venus, subsequently shownoting in, Ill Met In Lankhmar, add Scott to the conversation, it’s X now, Elon pictures, Twitter building with an X on top, very Christian, a sideways cross, Brave New World, he wants twitter to be like We Chat, Space X etc., the hub of their social credit system, editing up a whole other podcast, might be too fresh, John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Step, spy fiction, weird fiction, Algernon Blackwood, a very competent upperclass guy, later Governor General of Canada, his weird fiction is pretty cool, how’s Connor doing these days, since he went to Germany, pretty active for an inactive guy, lost his twitter account for a while, Moon Of Skulls, already confused, The Warriors, plus movie, the original version of the movie, re-edited, 7 hours, 19 minutes, a lot of books we want to read, how do I winnow the books I can read, read more books, consider leaving twitter, there are many options, Facebook groups to join, being controlled by evil giant corporations, how they get you trapped, same story, going to Burger King, never read Donald E. Westlake, he’s also known as Richard Stark, puttin’ you down, fancy spellings, he won an Oscar for that, he wrote a script for a James Bond movie, a fifth of Hard Case Crime in the early days were Westlakes, a real life coup, comedy and crime books, Brothers Keepers, Somebody Owes Me Money, Anarchaos, also about insurance, Lee Marvin, Mel Gibson, love his series, so good, Might Sons Of Hercules anthology, communists vs. conservatives, can we agree on that, throw each other out of helicopters, the bad takes, full of bad takes, get into tea about, the showing up for the podcast, Mirko (the German guy), @MrLovecraft, I was browsing through our messages down to 2016, mostly take pictures of random stuff, a bowlful of tools, I know what he smells like, I need to sniff it everyday, his whole cowboy hat collection, archives, complete access, archive.org, the secret, mostly all the time, look for pulps, only processed stuff on the PDF page, so much good writing in one magazine from April of 1899, Guy De Maupassant, Maurice Level, a successor to Maupassant, weird mean stories, the first translations into English, horrible syphilis, The String aka A Piece Of String, string collection, the cops come by, did you steal a wallet, somebody saw you, and yet you refuse to explain, dropped it into my other pants, too embarrassing, The Necklace aka The Diamond Necklace, Bel Ami, dissatisfied with her life, she could’ve married much higher, the governor’s ball, kinda like Cinderella, saving up money to buy a gun, trying to save money, you have that friend, you’re brilliant, the event goes swimmingly, she’s lost the necklace, they retrace their steps, what are we gonna do, mortgage and borrow and replace it, 20 years go by, just finally paid off the debt, scrub maid, looking elderly now, so proud, cost me all these years of work, walk away bleeding from the page, he’s just so mean, a social climber, corruption in the third French republic, why don’t you just become a reporter?, that’s okay it doesn’t matter, get a good wife to do the writing, love triangles, meanspirited, a really good portrait, impressionism or naturalism, what’s right in front of us right now, rejected, jotting down descriptions of people, it can be very powerful, a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel, one of the vampire guys, Uma Thurman, so good, in school, Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini, no Westlake, no Sabatini, pirate books, Captain Blood, a contemporary of Johnston McCulley, huge in their day, lasting influence, a lot of Stephen King is loving Westlake, TV writers, to survive after you die, to champion in, Lovecraft, Kafka, C.L. Moore, her second husband, Philip K. Dick is trying to suppress, Charles Burnett Swan, why is he unknown now?, a little dirty, a little embarrassed, their are no heirs, his publishers, Space Viking, Little Fuzzy, Omnilingual, very off, posting more, pulp collection, Alan Muller, The Skull, Black Priestess Of Varda, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, the secret is Will’s been in hiding in South America, not knowing what to say, come up with a brilliant thesis that everybody hates, she’s secretly transgender, everybody accepts this, double novel sucker, remaindered, Tor business, I might read half of it, Ace Doubles, just in case, Ace Doubles, there’s no time, The Sioux Spaceman, And Then Town Took Off, Conquest Of The Space Sea, insane cover, reading glasses, go back far enough in Luke Burrage’s podcast, audiobooks, what are those?, only does audiobooks, almost exclusively audiobooks, washing dishes, scrubs toilet, how can you not want to do it all the time, slow reading, a DAW Yellow Spine, to be sitting and staring at a piece of paper, I’m done, Riders Of The Purple Sage, Zane Grey, gonna be sparky, a weird writer, antiquated, everybody’s having all these emotions, the phenomenally successful author, the Ohio Valley, violent opposition, turbulent, Lewis Wetzel, Girdy Bros., seems a little long, more cattle rustlers, Tales Of The Lonely Trails, Elmore Leonard, good but not deep, dialogue is so good, Out Of Sight, the other Batman who lives on Lake Como, Clooney/Lopez, a TV show, Karen Sisco, a test story, Justified, expand the idea and keep the character, colour splashing, the same recipe, Quentin Tarantino championed Elmore Leonard, nothing else is an adaptation, Robert Forster and Pam Grier, revisiting with Sam Jackson, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci is not in Heat, Rum Punch, set in Florida, Florida books, shallower and deeper, more style, Get Shorty, it’s fine, more of his own thing, Florida writers, Carl Hiaasen, cat lady books for men, character descriptions, superficial writing for rich people, their character description is their bank statements, Mario Puzo, Fool’s Die, big sprawling book about a guy and his story, I am the master of magic, a tour de force of writing, Grover Gardner, Grover’s voice is much like this, Paul hates it, don’t let self-doubt hold you back, thesis optional, see you in cyberspace, a ghost writing gig, a really big one, famous celebrity?, chat GPT, people don’t understand what a writer does, done their research for them, in 7 months, do it!, nobody listens, she died a long time ago, research for her historical screenplay, large famous Hollywood family, it’s Sunset Blvd. (1950), she was a hasbeen, Griffith Park pit bull, two writing assistants, lying bed and dictating to her, writers are very disposable, it’s a set of skills, mercenaries, there’s art, technical skill, ask questions, answer questions, fill places, plumbers, it needs to be plumb, a lot of writing is going to change, you can’t replace Westlake with chat GPT, entry level positions, assistants and help backing them up, people coming in, hide their assistants, George R.R. Martin has six assistants at at time, Elmore Leonard had one, sometimes writer dry up, Silverberg, a burning problem, Lawrence Block’s newsletter, he’d retire and come back from a vacation with another novel, they flow out of him, those people are pretty rare, a mental illness, a compulsion to write, a letter to CBS about Burt Lancaster as Moses, grad students he wants to fuck, Roger Zelazny, Ursula Le Guin, paranoid navel gazing, hypergraphia, a brain thing that’s happening, I need to understand, I need to question, Rosicrucian organization, you can’t read that all day long, people’s brains are different, Tishomingo Blues, Piers Anthony, so dirty, very entertaining, not great, A Spell For Chameleon, there will never be a movie, sad, leering, misogyny is fundamentally integrated, Paul won’t like it, she changes according to the phases of the Moon, full/beautiful/dumb, new/hideous/smart, all theses are fun, some theses are better than others, the lady who invented wifi they always say, smart beautiful woman, Hedy Lamarr, weird sex jokes, Satyr, female centaur, centauress, reaches over grabs her boobs, she gets angry and embarrassed, boob armour?, kids enjoy sex stories, girls are gross, girls are boring, you wanna play with dolls, jumps on motorbikes, weird period, why they were popular, Robert Lynn Asprin, paranoid, Christian parents, he wasn’t allowed to be the DM anymore, not allowed to watch The Simpsons anymore, people were a little looser, the end of free range kids, H.R. Pufnstuf, Jim Henson, 17 seasons, sidewalk sale, a guy singing, Uncle Floyd, an old soul, old stuff, L.A. for ten years, Marilyn Monroe, an empty movie theater?, a library?, 1 screen movie theater, new-fangled building, arcology?, they all have movie theaters, all the new buildings have movie theaters, Jesse is very out of touch, news to Jesse, a big screen TV size, home theaters, laserdisc, bigscreen TV, people make fun of Jonathan, a tiny tiny gym, gyms are standard, everybody is elderly, an amenity for elderly people, your dog’s already been pooped, Scarlett Johansson is a Russian spy, ballet and sex, Red Sparrow (2018), Joker (2019), the old people loved that.

Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg - art by Hisaki Yasuda

Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

TOR DOUBLE - Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #398 – Cat Killers by Donald E. Westlake

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #398

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Cat Killers by Donald E. Westlake

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Cat Killer was published in Shock—The Magazine of Terrifying Tales, September 1960

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #736 – READALONG: Blaze by Stephen King

Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe talk about Blaze by Stephen King.

Talked about on today’s show:
Richard Bachman, the intro and/or an interview, 170 pages and rewriting the first 100, a lost book, kind of a cool story, the least interesting Bachman books, the original when he dies, 300 years later, they’re going to find that the book is radically different, Thinner, Stephen King wrote that book and not Bachman, the reason he was outed, it was easy for people to tell, 8 hours 15 minutes, Ron Mclarty, obvious it was written by Stephen King, so pessimistic, gangsters, Roadwork, optimism in the novels, 35 years, 1972/73, 2007, Rage, The Long Walk, The Running Man, the things that he’s done to make it updated are very odd, The Smurfs, the updated version of The Stand, when a new Donald Westlake book comes out, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, updating the dates, the estate doing it, adding in cut pages, it’s inconsistent, the world seems of the 1970s, what year is it set?, set in the present day, all the profits from this book are going to a charity, sad house for boys, rich guy who wants to do good, Hard Case Crime, they don’t pay on time, maybe he cares?, why does he have to update it?, he needs to update it, something changed, salvageable material here, saleable, contemporary radio announcements, to make it more present, orphanages, the backstory vs. the frontstory, the present vs. the past, a fifty year gap, a kidnapping plot, Child Heist by Richard Stark, Jimmy The Kid by Donald E. Westlake, Parker, Dortmunder, Stark does the dark, Dortmunder finds a novel, follow this recipe, George created the plan, Blaze fulfilling the plan, the old Richard Bachman vs. the new Richard Bachman, redeeming Blaze, he loves the kid at the end, good question, very King, he almost kills the kid a few times, Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck, is it supernatural?, his son is smart, he shines, he’s actually not dumb, he’s been convinced he’s dumb, Charlie from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, George is the superego, don’t masturbate, displayed intelligence, there’s a wisdom in wash your hands, he’s not retarded, he’s just slow, bad at math, the hand of Stephen King vs. the original hand of Richard Bachman, he gives his full name, slow vs. stupid, why did he do that, you wanna get caught, raising the kid, keeping the money, going to someplace warm, we’re going to Disneyland!, that marketing phrase didn’t exist in the 70s, a much grittier book, afraid to think about it, the kid dies, the rewrite that saves the kid, comparing it to Mice and Men, George kills Lenny, too damaging to rabbits and ladies, he doesn’t know his own strength, the dustbowl, hobos, interesting characters, this only exists because of the rewrite, page 49, a pile of newspapers, raged about the redneck republicans, the republicans hated poor people, that goddamn wet in the Whitehouse, page 160, dumb shit, the republican national committee, page 125, a republican senator who had taken a bribe, 173, rich asshole republican millionaires, page 161, replacement republican, fuck those rich republicans, page 80, how the republicans fuck the poor, fat stupid republicans, “right wing”, who are we supposed to root for, we feel sorry for Blaze, he can’t be doing it to help the story, throw in HIV, the feeling is still in the 70s, the whole counter-culture narrative, hippies vs. the man, no need to think too much about it, he couldn’t resist, it doesn’t help the book, at the end of the book, the baby name, another junior, a cut on his forehead, forehead damage, trying to make some connections between fathers and sons, how a state raises a child, what we should do, what we should think, this little baby’s not going to have a scar, Blaze is snuffed out, especially for Lenny, if the town gets to him, Lenny is dangerous, societal problems, Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester, a disabled person, George tells him so, he’s sympathetic to the kid, raise him right, he’s incapable of it, this book’s message is unclear, he’s doing it AGAIN, a recurrent drumbeat, the politicians are taking bribes, campaigning for the Democrats, he can’t help himself, organized crime, in the machine, more cynical, zone out that stuff, like the boobs in Philip K. Dick, it has a woman therefore it has boobs, this is a tremendous tragedy, social programs, the orphanage, the schools, the prison programs, Bluenote the farmer, very Bachman, our institutions no longer function, that’s how capitalism works, The Running Man, why the society broke down, the best part of the book, at the local town meeting, they’re having sex!, it’s consensual, stealing stuff, leads to babies like Blaze, good upstanding Republicans, don’t beat your children, I’m going to take you on, not being a kidnapper, stealing sweaters, kidnapping is wrong, Bluenote is actively trying to fix society, his lecture about capitalism, the god of this book kills him off, direct message, The Philosophy Of Stephen King, positive reviews, of course, 50% is Dark Tower content, 25% shining related, nothing about IT, big into philosophy, the philosophy of Donald E. Westlake, in setting patterns, in some certain details, resignation is a kind of philosophy, how to be an individual within a society, Bluenote is the most Stephen King like character in the book, he kills him, why?, Bachman writing the story, in the end, a tragedy, if Blaze had stuck on the farm, his adopted son, a nice spot at the table, the farm supervisor, no poker, he’d be good at it too, that closes that door to Blaze, for this book to exist, to have him go down the path, wrong ideas in the history of humanity, evolution is a ladder, evolution is a bush, technology is progress, trying to make things less worse for some sometimes, what went wrong?, no social programs for people like Lenny, full of social programs!, you can’t own this kid anymore, send me a picture of you, major tragedy, trying to get his shit together, if I can get that money, a big hammock for me, a little hammock for him, the stereotype of the Democratic answer: throw money at welfare queens, he kills off the characters he can’t fix, an inheritor of capital, that Lovecraft trope that Evan identified, hide the past, kinda bleak, mostly right, King would have been better off, Bachman is dead, The Regulators is basically a King book, he shouldn’t have rewritten it, he should have published it with Hard Case Crime, a very 70s book, ever cover is shit, Blaze carrying the kid, the girl in the blueberry fields getting fucked, the saleswoman at the baby store, he’s fucked up this book, break into the university library and make a photocopy, more authentic, this feels inauthentic, because it was a Bachman books, more short stories, very brutal, very Bachman, what does that society mean, an allegory for life, not my life, live longer than me or not, it’s horrible, almost too easy, a baby being spoonfed, we don’t feel like Blaze is wrong, he kills the dog, he kills the old lady, when he kills the FBI agent, a movie agent, play up the FBI angle, the George angle, supernatural, the movie of Thinner, a gypsy curse, curses the lawyers, nice body horror, lizard skin, fuck you man, they meet with him, pass the curse on to someone else, cursed cake, fuck it I’ll eat the pie too, a bleak ending, Friday The Thirteenth: The Series, Red Letter Media on Creepshow and Creepshow 2, Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen, The Raft, a very different thing than a novel, for an anthology series, a Twilight Zone with a harder edge, isn’t that strange, isn’t that a reversal, the worst part of The Mist, the religious lady, King’s point, we can’t actually get along, but is he wrong?, in The Stand too, once the government is gone we’re all going to kill each other, ruined for King by Bachman, The Running Man, They Live (1988), a politically active story with a solution to the problem, operating on instinct, George is an inconsistent character, when he’s a ghost, kill the kid, I don’t want what Bachman wrote, George is not mean to the kid, George is a different kind of dumb, what can you do?, this book offers no solutions, one of those Fugitive movies, he was innocent the whole time, I don’t care that you’re not guilty, Blaze goes to the paupers field, his kid is gonna be a football player, very dissatisfying, Stephen Kinged out, Fairy Tale, the pictures, the reviews are quite good, not very many good reviews, Pauline Kael, what Evan is doing on his podcast, a bunch of theories, what exactly is Evan doing, reviewing vs. writing a review, this podcast is not a review podcast, a two hour discussion of a book is not a review, some amazing insights, It is too long, The Stand is longer, 7 books, 4000 pages, an investment of time and energy, another one like Revival, it dug pretty deep, Firestarter, a daddy daughter adventure, the mom’s dead, kinda sweet, The Night Flier, The Mist, Rage, Roadwork, Revival, Everything’s Eventual, Danse Macabre, the big house book: The Shining, Pet Semetary, 90s stuff, playing with ideas, before he was injured, high concept stuff, Dolores Claiborne, Bag Of Bones, his twitter account, people he’s following, he doesn’t follow many people, defunct TV shows, using twitter as a way of journaling and sending messaging, you can’t read that many things, what does it really even mean, Stephen King plays Bachman on Sons Of Anarchy, he’s the cleaner, 80s preferably, he’s a cool motorcycle man, fun character fun scene, off the air for years, he’s not interacting with probably half the people he would see, people who tweet at him, is it not a bubble, Jesse is in a bubble, 24/7 interested in rescue animals, desert running, 10,000 or more following, 10,000 or more followers, dog about to be put down send money now, actively trying to save the world of rescue dogs, vote and give money to charity, clearly what Jesse is doing is not solving it either, drink more beer, smoke less cigarettes, in the genre space and as a person, sentimental and squishy, fun fact, very disciplined, eating less is hard, other sins, Evan found food kinda boring, half Polish and Ukrainian, cautiously exploring the food of Vietnam, how was it Paul, [TIME TRAVEL HAPPENS], the changes didn’t help, what Smurfs?, an issue with King, Cell, engaging with the ideas of cellphones, stupid but kind of interesting, Samuel Jackson, a zombie movie with cellphones, transmit the virus by having a phonecall with somebody, a new collective consciousness, a science fictiony idea, no tech, a payphone, he fucked this book up, he’s gonna wait five years, I can fix Rage, I can fix the school shooting book, he can’t fix that book, a pretty funny project, make Stephen King fix rage, Misery, Cujo, I’m going to break your legs unless you fix Rage, I need sequels, writer friends, writers being threatened by fandom, Misery is pretty good, the captivity and the torture he endures awakens creativity, a very meta book, hardcover Misery, a Hard Case Crime, there’s life in this character, if you bully the author enough, appreciated, send Evan an email, a genuine listener to Evan’s actual podcast, a quiet listener, a year of Mark Twain coming up, a total Mark Twain readthrough, 7 or 8 volumes, Cosmic Computer/Junkyard Planet, regular time, a [Larry] Niven story, a political point about the lefties, Stephen King and Larry Niven should write a book, the Dungeon series created by Philip Jose Farmer, he can’t even write with himself, Bachman’s dead, Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, The Many Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Skull by Philip K. Dick, jetlagged and no wifi, The Story Of Civilization, the origin of capitalism, Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard, Prince Alberic And The Snake Lady, Bartleby The Scrivener, Black House by Peter Straub and Stephen King, to honour him, Ghost Story, they’re all 22 hours, he bulked it up, thin volumes, writing in the modes of [James M.] Cain, [Jim] Thompson, and [Richard] Stark, Wisconsin people like long books, Sinclair Lewis, highest per hundred person presence of bars, not a lot to Wisconsin, man, the scenery, the longest most brilliant books of the 70s, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, is Joe Hill the baby in this book?, literally the kid in Creepshow, Cabinet Of Curiosities, like an issue of Weird Tales, the new you skin, a horror story for girls, body horror, she kills her supportive husband, so bleak and dark, based on a webcomic, the Lovecraft adaptations, the Pickman, Popeye’s accent, they fucked it up, The Dreams In The Witch House, a bad choice, Gilman, The Graveyard Rats, The Hound, the practical effects, relies on CGI, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, necromancer, cliche Lovecraft, they’re all period pieces, Lot 36, a new star even tho he’s old, Tim Blake Nelson, a Cohen Brothers actor, Watchmen, punished, traditional, The Autopsy, Michael Shea, infodump is bad, exposition is good, The Outside, a comedy, so gruesome, morally disturbing, putting the goop on, The Murmuring, The Walking Dead, The Viewing, a 70s period piece, how big Black Mirror was, two stories from Weird Tales, movie based horror, weird fiction, the whole point of the weird, Lovecraft [isn’t] a horror writer, a science fiction writer, a good example of weird fiction example, the relationship between students, “Dicky”, a class based thing, an age based thing, the colloquial language, “dropped him”, Arkham, the subways, Boston, Salem, that annoying plot, the immigrant woman, her families heirlooms, cliche end, EC Comics is not weird fiction, a realm of knowledge beyond you, the way it was done, the hopping never pays off, NOTHING, focusing on the can of TAB, bad direction, bad editing, a prisoner in Vietnam, the class analysis was fucking awful, this guy is racist so he should die, listening to right wing radio, hate listening, “right on”, we’re supposed to hate this guy, after that monster kills him, the whole thrust of this story is to see a deplorable destroyed, having debts, spite, selling him lots on the sly, he’s punished for being an asshole, in a Lovecraft story, punished for his ancestors, Jesse is politicizing the story, they had the same problem, physically attacked for debts they owe, a gambling problem, David Hewlett, this is very cool, most people wouldn’t do it that way, chopping up rabbits, I’m glad I’m not a woman, try to appreciate it, Brown Jenkin, underrated masterpiece, see you in two weeks, don’t disturb me.

Blaze by Stephen King

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #658 – READALONG: Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #658 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, and Trish E. Matson talk about Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
mid-1970s, questions, longest novel, why it is so weird?, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1965), Westchester, Pennsylvania, a bold claim, a huge collection, Rat Race (2001), this quasi-genre is called “epic comedy”, The Cannonball Run (1981), Aston Martin DB5, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., a diocese in California, a really stupid movie and really good, atypical for Westlake, a huge cast, funny as heck, ever scene is very Westlake, overall the picture is unWestlakian, 40 people and a hawk, omniscient point of view, chapter titles, the structure, he’s a master at this terrible genre, entertaining, light, Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake, a problem somewhere in New York, Westlake showing us New York, a member of this neighbourhood, everybody in New York is looking for something, the second day of the search, fifteen hours from South America to New York, the inferred bar fight, so good, you could put this right on film, Westlake movies, very filmic stuff, in novels characters would never do this, the master of the novel form, at the height of his writing powers, he’s using his powers for simplistic movie comedy, Cannonball Run is trash, super-cute, he’s enjoying himself, self-indulgent, Farrah Fawcett, they’re inherently bad for you, The Good Place, The Cannonball Run II (1984), Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies (1965), Wacky Races, Dick Dastardly, a plague we’ve gotten through and over, the Harlem Globetrotters on Scooby-Doo, mid-60s into the 80s, the Scary Movie series, parody movies, a cast of famous actors in Airport, the airport sequels, Airplane!, big cast novels, The Gods Must Be Daring (1997), a wonderful assemblage, leaning on ethnic stereotypes, bigoted stereotypes, n-words and other ethnic slurs, how it was back then, we should do better now, Harlem, in the parade of truckbeds going by, a chapterlets from the point of view of the two kids watching the parade, in dialect, the Brer Rabbit stories by Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, Brer Fox he lay low, Brian Holsopple, dynamism, no restrictions, all out zany, so wide so broad, hanging out with Pedro is a book by itself, ravished, so many people end up happy, there’s only one winner, they all had fun in the race, all in the journey, the best episode of Deep Space Nine is about a crew of Vulcans and the Deep Space Nine raggamuffins, they don’t win they declare victory, go back to Quark’s and have a raktajino and enjoy they’re muscles being sore, the familiar plot, the setup, The Fugitive Pigeon, The Maltese Falcon, the Westlake Review blog, The Mourner by Richard Stark, how Westlake often does something, how he created Dortmunder, a comedic scene, derailing your hardboiled protagonists, cozy versions of Stark plots, back to Paul’s poll, side series, sidekick heisters, a criminal job at the airport, he’s a wonderful guy, only the hawk isn’t criminal, so much meta writing, as a professional writer, always looking for ideas, when he hits on an idea, how the aztecs are genuine, how many scenes where suddenly the action stops, a Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons, the strange circumstances that brought about these events, a squash court for a certain park, congratulating themselves, “I believe my subject is bewilderment”, bewildered by reality, how it could possibly be, sixteen Dancing Aztecs, why are they moving like that, they have a reason, heisted from an ATV by Americans, a British coup in Antigua: Under An English Heaven, Kahawa, a coffee train heist book?, hustling, gritty, only New York, decades ago, Robert Moses, a sense of place, Westlake’s job is to go out in the city and observe and say “wow”, two travelers, places to go in New York, amazing experiences you can have, the real treasure of Westlake, a sanitation worker with a big route, the park on the weekend, the beach in the winter, a billion corners of New York, how many nooks?, various spots that need pooping on, an archaeologist looking at the mid-1970s, the father in Somebody Owes Me Money was always working on the insurance papers, gimme twenty books and only one was written by Westlake I could find it because of characterization, the bewilderment scenes, he must be a private eye, the private eye said, weird glomming on, the mom smells like a tomato, at the park with his kite (on fire), he’s got a B.B. gun, almost like magic realism, you can’t say no to it, the wry affection he holds for most the characters, gentle fun, Jane Austen, “the hero”, he likes them all, gold, how all the different statues got broken, a twist at the ending, 150 pages earlier, the wrong statue, a sleight comic novel of skill and craft, Westlake at the height of his powers, an unreliable narrator, the Westlake review writer is very expert, an FBI agent who had been fired years ago (but thought he was under very deep cover), throw a monkey wrench in, create scenes, Robert Redford is a thief, The Hot Rock (1972), Sidney Potier as an agent trying to stop him, absolutely zany, a filmic only genre translated into a book, something that is difficult to do in a book, the power of his amazing characterization, Westlake showing off, the answer is yes, pretty impressive, Bank Shot, Smoke, The Spy In The Ointment, in dialogue with other authors, Lawrence Block, past comic novels, Art Dodge’s greeting card company, Two Much (1996), Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, the V.S. Goth Cab company, like Edgar Allan Poe the French love Donald E. Westlake, an unauthorized Stark adaptation, big in France, Drowned Hopes is Westlake’s retelling of The Colour Out Of Space by H.P. Lovecraft (kinda, not really), Smoke by Donald Westlake, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, audio doesn’t get archived on the Waybackmachine, ground out of the internet, forever is not as long as we though it was, Travelers Far And Wee by Donald E. Westlake, this explains all the traffic in New York, something that’s easy to miss in Westlake is that he’s very philosophical, he’s surprised he’s an author, the fake publishing agency, its a fuck book, Westlake wrote those, the market’s not there (the Science Fiction market), they all have day jobs, less and less reliant on getting that publisher, where there’s a demand to be an author there’s going to be a scam, these comic crime capers are all about himself, they’re all getting scammed, the wonder, the absolute bewilderment, its unbelievable what people ill trick themselves into doing, calmer and calmer the more they fight, he likes being a cuckold, the other Oscar, best adapted Screenplay, Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me, one of the joys of this podcast, re-reads, the secret of what podcasts are for: its , The Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, everybody needs a good excuse, Larry Niven, allowable as long as it is homework, a mental block, assignments for podcasts, how many podcast has Scott got going?, two readalongs per month, all in good fun, a Luke Burrage show, Amazon and Google searches have greatly degraded, use an adblocker, adblocker browsers (Brave), the central Andes, the maximum extent of the Aztec Empire, a fictional South American country, what research did he do? his whole life, a Richard Stark novel set of the coast of Cuba, Lawrence Block’s novel Killing Castro, a very political time, he’s really good at hiding the politics, his weird personality, very different from most SF writers, Robert J. Sawyer makes his full time living as an SF writer, wife with a job, lives in a condo, no kids, hundreds seeming thousands of TV writers writing terrible shows and making very good livings, seemingly no interest in books, the history of the 20th century, the Teapot Dome Scandal, all the other people in the family that amounted to zero, billionaire, Elon Musk did something interesting with his money, putting a car in orbit of the earth is stupid but cool, Joachim Boaz writing about Larry Niven’s inheritance “at least he’s honest about it”, stuff on the moon, expanding the Dortmunder world, the recent film adaptation of The Colour Out Of Space, the HPLHS, The Voluminous Podcast: The Letters Of H.P. Lovecraft, little Auggie Derleth, C.L. Moore, the redemption we all wanted him to have, mea culpas, his political transformation, if this is what a conservative sounds like sign me up, economic philosophy, more people of the elite class need to have that feeling in order to change, he thinks he’s better than everyone else, and he’s failing at school, writing a newspaper column as a teenager but can’t finish high school, straight from the source biography, the destruction of Uncle Hugo’s bookstore, the website, H.P. Podcraft has a patreon, Houdini, more professional than premier prestige podcasts, what a triumph their podcast is.

Dancing Aztecs (ITALIAN) by Donald E. Westlake

A New York Dance by Donald E. Westlake

A New York Dance [interior dustjacket] by Donald E. Westlake

Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #214 – Blood From A Turnip by Jim Thompson

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #214

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Blood From A Turnip by Jim Thompson

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Blood From A Turnip was first published in Collier’s, December 20, 1952.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson