Reading, Short And Deep #562
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Hobbyist by Fredric Brown
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.
The Hobbyist was first published in Playboy, May 1961
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Tag: murder
The SFFaudio Podcast #909 – READALONG: A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton
Jesse, Maissa Bessada, and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton
Talked about on today’s show:
a 2026 novel, Michael Crichton, evocative, the narrator, Ray Porter, sorta simple, which detective he’s modelling, a theory, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, H.P., except for the egg part, fussy, bragging about how great he is, a good beach read, fast paced, well told, Hollywood insight, the document we’re reading is supposed to come from, I can bring up those details if you want?, supposed to be talking, a recorded conversation, an after action report, seduce some co-ed, self-aggrandizing, in a bar with a double scotch, exactly where he is, who actually did the murder, second reveal, not a full reveal, the title, an accident in Hollywood, why are there ten more pages, oh the murder, film sets, kinda know what a gaffer is, was a film director, in 1973?, even while in medical school, The Andromeda Strain, the people at med school learned he was writing, the book is Binary, A Case Of Need, made by Blake Edwards, didn’t age well, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, A Shot In The Dark, The Great Race, The Pink Panther, Westworld is filmed in the west, like a period piece, set in a fictional old west town, already a meta of the thing, when did Michael Crichton go to Arizona, a 1959 article by Michael Crichton in the New York Times, the forward to this book, wow!, 13, pesky kids, prodigious kids, he had a typewriter, when Clark Ashton Smith hit the newspapers he was very your, California boy writes poetry, a big deal, thick thick, Lovecraft was all over his newspaper, a column on astronomy, what’s going on in the skies right now, arguing with astrologers, can all this novel be explained by Michael Crichton being a Scorpio, way to simple, throwing that in there, not supposed to make that character look good, our narrator is kinda like Dr Watson, A Study In Scarlet, it doesn’t quite fit, the least popular Sherlock Holmes thing ever written, a fakeout at the core of the murder scene, RACHE, written in blood, German for revenge, a lot of stuff like that, trying to solve the mystery, taking note of the camera, and the repeated mention of the nitrogen ram, fell and hit his head, the window open, for the insurance, Sherlock Holmes cares about justice, Perkins, I’m not the police, reporting to the studio heads, so thorough and so Sherlock Holmesy, I like to think no, dismissed Clete so thoroughly and quickly, Alex is right, he’s also a mercenary, the very first line of the book, we’ll make it right, how you gonna keep Clete out of it?, what he was hired for, very damning of Hollywood, everything is corrupt, those girls at the airport, fancy meeting you here, our hero is the cut-out, how are we getting this text, it doesn’t matter what’s real, renovating his place, painted to look like real wood, in the 70s, such a modern complaint, obviously been on a movie set, shadowing Robert Wise, if this was from 1973, if he was going to publish it as John Lange, hurt him a little bit, so revealing, lost in the shuffle, switched to writing as Crichton, finished book, super-polished, nice and concise, it can get quite ponderous, a hefty paperback, it’s not more than what it is, almost reads like a novella than a full length novel, very tightly written, dwell on a lot of things, red herrings to distract you from an important, this girl is crazy, a lot of characters, keeping all the names straight, the names in this, distinctive and memorable, map them to real people, who’s the Yul Brenner in this book?, part of the point of what he’s doing, our ultimate villain, killing his own stuntman, what the plot of Blood Rock is, a time of transition, teaching old values, what we get of the script, revenge, stealing women, acting on stage, people standing and giving lines, the way it is cut up for film, stand around doing nothing, somebody dropped a prop, the actors have to keep the show going, a Murder on the Avon, related to the film being axed, turned out great, made money, Madame Bovary, stunts, tripped going in the house, a drawing room, the Moana remake, a clip floating around, runs down the mountain, greenscreen, The Sound Of Music, slide, you couldn’t possibly expect…, westerns, reliable, horror movies, as a murder mystery this is a good book, was he murdered?, an open question, we gotta replace the writer, blackmailing, to get more money, he didn’t deliver anything, the female lead, Sally Oldman, Sally Vega, Suzy Vega, a name to give to a blonde, fired for incompetence, she’s blind and no one knew, can’t hit her marks, we got a really good insight into studio staging, on location, he’s great at what he does, wrung out the possibilities, a little lesson, the publicity guy, he has to be everywhere he has to do everything, he knows every person who has any responsibility for making the movie a success, the perfect piece to pick, calling it out, how could it possibly be a series?, the assistant to Perkins, insurance fraud, why Murder She Wrote is stupid and funny, wherever this lady goes there’s suddenly a murder, Cabot Cove’s murder rate, a cosy farce, stolen things, blackmail letters, very few murders, submarine plans went missing, fairly high-tech, bicycling, bodybuilding, the power of bicycles, you don’t have to feed it, you don’t have to house it, faster than walking, to increase your power, you’re there, very empowering for women, run over or poked, turns out to be protecting her, totally up for more Michael Crichton, by another hand, assume what a sequel will look like, accurate, how much drugs were happening in the 70s in Hollywood, they’re all on pills, nobody was sober, the psychiatrist to Marilyn Monroe, axed, only the one scene, that guy aint good, killed herself/murdered, she did not have a happy life, a huge star, that song is so annoying, recycled that for her, very Hollywood, the Oscar list of stars who had died, who they don’t put on there, Stagecoach (1939), a period piece, not enough name recognition, Jurassic Park movies, people love Dinosaurs, the brand, Prey, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Netflix could do a thing with this, they do a lot of terrible things, the original Westworld on Netflix, a staple of HBO, the audience for it is not a film audience anymore, Prime, a subscription, promoting things, they’re so focused on kissing scenes, this is not the movie audience, too expensive and too few things looking forward to, experienced well in the movie theatre, being in the theatre, wasted my fucking money, who is the audience for A Murder In Hollywood as a film, break up into 6 episodes of someone, isn’t it weird they translated that, Westworld the movie, some of his best novels are movies, instead of writing the book, Looker (1981), reading Predator, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and Total Recall, make ai actors, it’s a murder mystery, it stars Albert Finney, a plastic surgeon, a little fix, an evil James Coburn is an ai bro, the liferights to the ai actor, there is no book, the book is the movie, a great read, a great movie, which one is better, the film stock, still set in a similar time, Runaway (1984), as a book, his ideas are what makes him a great filmmaker and a great writer, he could throwaway something like this, leave that in a drawer, the dinosaur hunting one, and the pirate one, another drawer novel, digging up fossils, early paleontology, some stuff about how fossiling has always been an industry for faking, fake hominids, H.G. Wells, entertainment, drawing an audience, the most accurate representation changes every 10 years, what looks cooler?, about the size of the chicken, sharper teeth, the Jurassic World movies, the new super-dinosaur, we built them that way, designed to look cool, none of this is real, Triumphs Of A Taxidermist: A Confidential Conversation by H.G. Wells, the history of candy, rot and corruption, name drops, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Blackstone picked up all the John Lange books, the new one, one of the few independent publishers, readable books, magic professional version, twice in recorded history, in 1066 we invaded England, 1634 moved to Maryland, persecution, English recusant Catholics, Lord Baltimore, the title, an Irish name, lose the lands, learned a thing or two, a fun book.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #896 – AUDIOBOOK: The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim
The SFFaudio Podcast #896 – The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim, read by Tom Weiss.
This novel was first published in 1920.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (7 hours 56 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org.
The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #890 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Rogues In The House by Robert E. Howard
The SFFaudio Podcast #890 – Rogues In The House by Robert E. Howard (53 minutes) read by Alex (Pulpcovers), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)
Talked about on today’s show:
with a little bit of relish, how little dialogue Conan gets, interesting about it, the first 2 chapters, a little exchange about chapter length, what chapters are for, Agatha Christie novels, chapter titles, help tell the story, earliest being read to experience, An Unexpected Part, Tolkien was a master of chapter titles, “spoiler” vs. anticipation, little fake rhyme, One Fled One Dead One Sleeping In A Golden Bed, the fled is Conan, the red priest, the sleeping in a golden bed, what about poor Thak?, dead, bled out, maybe this is too soon, reflecting on what the story is really about?, set in a city state, we never get the name, nationalists and patriots, funnily, some response about the Reacher series, Conan with a pension and patriotism, 3 main dudes, accessory figures including the girl, clearly so much backstory to this, the Dark Horse comic, all issues, so many issues, the Gunderman, long betrayal, she gets a name, why she’s mad at Conan, all implied, you don’t really need it, ends up in prison, kills her new boyfriend, naked in a cesspit, a mirror, why is she doing that?, working for this fence, the main badguy is a priest to the king, knows everybody’s secrets, his house is full of tech, the last Conan we did, The Tower Of The Elephant, a guarded house, a dog, lions, black lotus, gray lotus, loved his lotuses, a servant master relationship, alien from space, space elephant, acolyte betrayed him, stapled him to a couch, a monkey turned on his master, he knows how to do it, he’s basically a man!, he’s learned his lessons so well, roles are reversed, slightly reversed and twisted, housebreaker, steal the jewel, explicitly hired to kill the guy, I would like to loot the house, too much patriotism and nationalism, the “maze”, full of shit, literal shit, unnamed into the story, some satisfaction out of that, she’s a hooker, a woman of loose morals, sleep her way to whatever she needs, a hard world, kills the most recent guy, he’s mad, threatens her with the knife, Thak does the same thing, Nabonidus, Murillo, stab him, eat em, let em go, a blood rage about his life, monkey man doesn’t talk much, kinda like a maze, now watching through mirrors, hidden cameras, double mirrors, the acid vats, explain your disappearence, this is just like an Epstein story, the acid he ordered in the emails, a puppeteer, a cutout, many theories, cutouts in use, social media people, influencers, bounties, this number of likes and views, streamers and whatever, certain messages, hashtags, the only purpose for hashtags is to punctuate jokes, #BrassBra, get things trending, read good stories, #KetchupAndMustardGetup, wearing both red and yellow, a person your using as a tool, pawns are not important, you can sacrifice your queen, trap the other person, cutouts are pawns, to protect you, explicitly discussed in the story, took Thak from his people when he was a cub, they’re gonna be men in 100,000 years, we’re Thak, Thak is a man, a worthy opponent, typing skills, very interesting, as a shadow of Nabonidus, why people buy dogs, mostly for protection and alarm system, hard to train, expensive, a little thing you keep in your purse, why he’s rebelling, so to with Murillo, a nobleman, chopped off his ear, do what I say or knuckle under, he’s evil because he’s enforcing his will on other people, how’s this different, stealing honestly, he’s assassinating honourably, a debate with himself, he uncuffed me, the honourable thing to do, the moral framing for the story, keep control of the city, famously unnamed, Jenna comes from Roy Thomas, the Marvel version, on page 7, Arnold Schwarzenneger holding up a lady, I put two inches on my muscles, Conan The Destroyer sort of has the Thak scene, The Mirrors Of Tuzun Thune, one of the better post-Conan sword sorcery movies, Krull, good things in it, some of the action is quite good, the tone is wrong, a guy on twitter doesn’t like the first Conan movie, a distillation of the ideology of many of the stories, a scene from Rogues And The House, enjoying the riches after stealing from the tower, the guards come in and arrest him, I need you to kill a man, or get my daughter back, we’re free, he has this abiding ulterior motive, revenge, childhood trauma, after his resurrection, bodily dead, in other Conan stories, The Phoenix On The Sword, we’re patriots we love our country, usurped the proper throne from the proper heir, 19th century French, Ataturk, so sketched, Mirror For Princes, the mirror is for the reader, always, Red Nails, crossing the jungle, I like you girl, I’m busy, suddenly dragon, will say things that make them seem naive, Delcardes’ Cat, a talking cat, I’m not Murillo, I’m Conan, over his shoulder in his thoughts, he doesn’t say much, not be distanced from his POV, make judgements, why do people like the Conan stories?, he just says I’ve had enough of this city, you mentioned a horse, curious to see, before I walked the road Nabonidus walked this night, aware of death, the different between a childlike love of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the point of a story like this, shit happens, why is Thak dead and Conan alive?, he survived the thing that should be unsurvivable, caught up with the nationalist shit and this patriotic shit, a personal propaganda, hmm, yes, I agree, the story works as a whole, literally the sewer of the house, there’s a mirror there, we’re invited to think of Thak, trynna trick people, or take the mantle, become the master of the house, a rebellion against being a cutout, a servant pet, not a tame tiger, fuck you I’m a man, they don’t have fire, the most interesting character in the story, picked up and used as a quasi servant, slave/pet, an experiment, can I teach this thing to do my bidding, the word shadow, one of his favourite words, he learned what I taught him, at once body guard and servant, being partly a man, semibrain, bestial ambition, I see myself in Thak, one of the only characters?, it’s a real fight, this guy could kill Conan, he’s got gorilla strength, all the humans he fights, he brains a guy, knocked his skull open, not even a speed bump, portrayed as a rogue, a corrupt nobleman, invited to see him as honest, Robert E. Howard inviting us to admire Conan, big muscles, also canny, knocked himself out on the way because he was drunk, took him to jail, police, terrible writing and drawing, ship with gunports, am I stupid?, a reference photo, hidden off the coast, the sails are up, sloppiness, Robert E. Howard liked it, praise from Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft, only did two drafts, no notes, makin money, told a good story, it is fun, the mode that people don’t seem to understand, Robert E. Howard has grievances, a personal animus against city hall, or religion, how anti-religious is this story?, in contradistinction to Reacher season 3, a former cop, military cop, wanders from town to town, on the side of good, an old grievance against some guy, running a new thing, basically killing people randomly, in there working in the shadows of law enforcement willy-nilly, just murders people, it fits with the Conan mentality, Conan is not a part of the state, in the war of all against Conan will do fine, a fantasy in the way that Howard isn’t, Howard is more cynically realistic, what anchors his morality, his own sense of honour, barbarism vs. civilization, corrupt thieves, makes his way through it, rights the ship, a very interesting mirror, a monkey who thinks he’s a man, wants to be greater than he is?, we are the monkey men, Conan is comparable to Thak, superstrong, wasn’t quite tweaked up a enough, long story short, to prep for Congo by Michael Crichton, good story and very well read, the one where he takes over a pirate ship, Pool Of The Black Ones, is there pillars in that one?, Iron Shadows In The Moonlight, Queen Of The Black Coast, they’re not designed to be distinct, in this issue, new Conan story, buy the issue, all stories new, reprinted a few Lovecrafts, recording this, the ear party, rich nobleman, rich nobleman, British accent, he’s going to sound American, a John Wayne voice, what Robert E. Howard’s voice, Clark Ashton Smith’s voice, hick Californian?, top stories, the themes are really good, Conan is more invested in that story, puts on the costume, that was a weird Tuesday, he fell under her spell, this is my favourite novel, other mirrors that reflect you better, what am I missing?, this book The Lost Continent, a tentative plan to do a double, The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box, famous titles, human ear!, authors tired of their characters, The Seven Dials Mystery, Jeeves and Wooster, annoyed at writing Poirot stories, hated Sherlock Holmes, read my White Company, by Grabthar’s Hammer!, her first novel, a hot topic at the time, Belgian refugees, poor Belgium, Russians bad, poor Ukraine, why they took the the out of the Ukraine, Ukraine means borderlands, the steppe before you get to the Russian steppe, right in the Conan stories, the Border Kingdoms, we’re being manipulated at all points at all times, he’s so cynical, loves his mom, somethin going on there, maybe he’s a little mad with the hooker he hooked up with, it becomes literary fiction, this is fun, we as English speakers should be free to translate things into English, Mumbai, Bombay, Peking, Beijing, Constantinople, Istanbul, youre being manipulated, Rome, Roma, Munich, Munchen, English names, countries outside of Europe, Germany vs. Deutchland, very top down, a bottom up guy, listen to what the people on the street are saying, fuck the queen, fuck the king, you can’t tell me what to do I’m going to follow my own code, if you acceede, the word empathy is used all the time, what the fuck is an empath?, fuck your feelings, feelings are not important, principles are important, being just is important, sorry kid you can’t have potato?, you can’t have another ice cream, this is a book you don’t break the spine, crack the spine, horrifying, what are you doing, you don’t deserve books, from a scarcity point of view, this is a thing you should respect, pages start falling, tear it limb from limb, that issue of Rogue, you get used to it, it does feel wrong, cut this child apart, maybe this is wrong, to help other children, it was duplicated a million times, they’re relatively rare, a fun mag, the scanning group, yelled at, a moderator, the majority of the things being scanned are from people’s collections, Alexander Tuesday, he must have had a huge collection, Science Fiction Age, Starlog, Realms Of Fantasy, 1977, the Star Wars issue, from Trish [E. Matson], a kid who doesn’t understand this has value to humanity, take it all the way to the dump, literal treasure that needs to be shared, so lucky now, forces, the yahoo group was destroyed, treasured in place, you learn so much, how that thing looked in place, people change things, they don’t negro or nigger, when Agatha Christie, Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little Indians, the gauls, etext being so manipulable, out of a newspaper, a turn of phrase, and abbreviation, in that Poe story, D___, the name of the hotel or whatever, audio is one step removed from the text, a good story from Manhunt, On The Sidewalk Bleeding by Ed McBain, the girl show up, acting differently, they’d swapped the names, write a paper about what’s going on in the story, went to the Manhunt issue, it wasn’t a later revision the author had done, somebody had fucked it up, scanning is the ultimate way of preserving, the bottom of one leaf was cut-off, cloning text letter by letter, a Lawrence Block book, maybe an original paper copy, etext, take a scan that already exists, wraps on different screens, legit typos, 50s sci-fi paperbacks, this is clearly a typo, a weird alternate spelling?, really obvious typos, half-asses way of doing it, original book version, transcribing it anyway, corrections in square brackets, put up both, PDFs print, format for printing, not the ideal, the plain old etext that gutenberg.org does, replicate the font, lose the illustrations, gutenberg Australia, different methods, keep doing your best, audiobook, preferred format, when people are not faithful to the text, the poor blind people who don’t get to experience how racist things were, that Amy Tan story, Shirley Temple, a star from the 30s, “sauciness”, popu-music stars, age 12 boobs, what do you think about breast implants, Shirley Temple is not a sex symbol, Little Orphan Annie, musicals, delighted by this little singing girl, nightmare life, get some trauma out of that, a monkey with a cape and a hoddie, taken from his parents, his culture!, I’d be ragin too, some Cimmerian kills him, annoyed by this story, too much intrigue, a good clean monkey to fight, a girl who won’t betray me the instant I leave the room, it’s a book, wife got really mad, slip her some mp3 files, uncensored from the 30s, Kings In The Night, etexts of The Sex War and World Without Men, pathogenic books, purple lips, fun ideas, the year 7000, discover a frozen man, flashback to the 50s, a new kind of birth control, the weirdly manipulative woman, sexually assaults him, the 2020s, a reporter in London, a Children Of Men sort of thing, enforced breeding, the government comes after him, the Concorde, many such cases, and his name will be Adam, protect this weird little boy, instincts, no real resolution, ai controlled, all the women are lesbians because they’re brainwashed, Mr. Adam by Pat Frank, a sex-comedy, very prudish, atmospheric nuclear test, 9 months later, what happened?, no fertile men anymore, saved by lead poisoning, this guy is still fertile, all the women have to have sex with this man, a program to best use his sperm, he’s not actually being used, jockeying for who’s going to be in charge, a joke about the arms race, nuclear weapons, we’ve got a sperm gap, you’re going to have access to Mr. Adam, the Chinese have one too, how stupid the government, pre-the Cold War, but not much, no on-screen sex at all, using a man as a tool, we’re going to sterilize Mr. Adam, I’d like to spend some time with my wife, the cover from Britain, a certain kind of book, theoretically they find him sexy, fun book.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #529 – Black Cat In The Snow by John D. MacDonald
Reading, Short And Deep #529
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Black Cat In The Snow by John D. MacDonald
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.
Black Cat In The Snow was first published in Manhunt, February 1958
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #879 – READALONG: Two Much by Donald E. Westlake
The SFFaudio Podcast #879 – Jesse and Alex (PulpCovers) discuss Two Much by Donald E. Westlake
Talked about on today’s show:
1975, paperback fuzz, worth the squeeze?, Fawcett, 1st edition, illustrated painted cover, flocking applied, fuzzy bikinis, if you rub that off you’ll see them nude, they look nude except for the fuzz, lying on a pile of pink fuzz, if it goes down, a great gimmick cover, Brother’s Keepers, a cover that reveals something, that cutout was to show a demon, a reveal cover, a monk on the cover, a halo, his clothes change, an insight, V.C. Andrews covers, what Westlake you got in stock?, trends in paperbacks, out of fashion, all we have is trades, mass market paperbacks, tall format, paperback shelf, hearsay from the internet, fold them into a signature, fold the paper four times, why they’re that size, everything is just glued together, weird big paperbacks now, weird stuff that’s like that, the prices of televisions and phones, a boule, what are the expensive parts?, the big sheet of glass, mechanical things that matter a lot when making physical, such a great writer, surprised and surprised and surprised, a Tamil version as well?, all the movies are long, a remake of the movie not a remake of the book, the French movie, farther and farther away, very close, an expected ending, our guy being convicted of murdering his non-existent brother, he never existed, we’re his cellmate, he just walks off into the sunset with both fortunes, murdered two women, the guy was probably self-defense, witnesses a murder, that’s what happened, chapter 28, quite deep into the book, not a light comedy, almost Shakespearean, a French farce, a French movie, you never get the money at the end, and both girls, actual twins, half French half American, an excellent film, bilinguality, such a fucking great writer, the American version, 1995, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah, Danny Aiello, easier to cast not-twins, back to her ex-husband, the book is the best, it hits you way harder, in the end we know he’s a horrible human being, a scamp, cheating, a real sleazeball, somehow even darker, he kills her on the 747, down she goes, sues the airline, even more money, some dialogue is identical, super close, why they wanted to make this movie, that bathroom shuffle scene, better overall, the star, the French guy, French handsome, weird thinning hair, big nose, weird cartoonist guy, too attractive, a mystery, tax purposes, everybody’s scamming everybody, leverage all over everybody, the format matters a bit, he knows what he’s doing, Veronica by Donald Westlake, a farce with a twist, the character and what he’s done, Elizabeth and Elizabeth Kerning, to kern, about spacing between words on a page, an old pulp magazine, right and left justified, a little book thing, their money is in paper and publishing, “Art Dodge”, the artful dodger, one who kerns, Bart Dodge, Robert, spinning up these stories, Fire Island, a very gay island, back to New York, a secretary, they get back together, Volpinex, Vulpine is fox, ex is out, out-fox?, kung fu and karate, the lawyer for the family, this level, relevant earlier this week, conversation with somebody exploited by the Epstein people, Palm Beach, trynna be a singer, the handler, the recruiter, here’s the contract, this Campbell’s soup heir, you need to be his girlfriend, when again allowed to be the head of the Campbell’s soup company, a certain amount of money per month, not that much, have sex with him?, that’s up to you, living off shore on a yacht, a warrant out or something, that’s fine, this doesn’t seem right to me, Hollywood rapes, this is a real thing, at the part, one bathroom, two bedrooms, sex in the closet, the parents died in a piano accident, is this a cartoon?, was it a murder?, there’s no evidence, how does a piano fall on a car, it was New Year’s Eve, his card company, this girl who’s doing her doctoral thesis on comedy, he also has sex with her, the psychology, a deep dark scary story, with a few changes it becomes a light romantic comedy, the shooting scene, thrusts the gun upon him, by accident rather than plan, cloned Darryl Hannah, he murders her twice, it would wreck his career, such a scamp, the tone, the whiplash, cold blooded murder, he’s really a terrible person, willing to overlook it, he’s always been incredibly selfish, he learns his art again, writing up ideas for Christmas cards, you’ve got it too, get well soon card, an idea for a birthday card, your birthstone is hanging around my neck, what does it mean?, the Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, the albatross, millstone from the bible, paralleling everything, responsible for his own murder, quite a bit like Edgar Allan Poe, we hate him, he’s a killer, a mirror image, chirality, sinister – dexter, it all matches, The Cask Of Amontillado, medoc, jokes within the story, medicine, we never really understand why the murder is happening, you who know so well the nature of my soul, the last words of the story, RIP, he’s blessing the murder, relishing the telling, he got away with it, his priest, his confessor, gets to go to heaven, his soul has been cleansed, the legalistic way, if you’re an evil shit, keeps growing in estimation, William Wilson, this problem at the school, exactly my name, the opening of the story, for the present you may call me William Wilson, a doppelganger, in trouble, the mirror trick in book, getting ready for it, well done in the French movie, a swordfight with the other William Wilson, there was no other William Wilson, wakes up a couple of times, he’s drugging the women, the waiter’s getting mad at him, very lightly gone over, right to sleep, less obvious in the book, we forgive him all his sins, so likeable, these debts, $75-80?, he picked a target, what about twins?, twins dating twins, genetically identical, you’re brother’s children, your own children, their cousins are genetically siblings, adopt a pig and make it your child, to mother it, cat moms, pig moms, eat your babies, eat them at the right age, what if you’re a man, Twins, Basil! Twins!, save money on taxes, Two Much (1995), kinda blonde, 1 much, twinning characters together, four girls total?, his friends wife, a maid at the end, going on our honeymoon, you’re never coming back, everything’s working out, there’s the twist, the twist back, every possible variation on it and nailed it, walking across a crosswalk, laughing out loud, Westlake’s so funny, the phone scene, both ends of the conversation, not as well as Westlake does it in the book, so good with characters, the bartender, we have no rum, ha ha ha, ho ho ho, effortless storytelling, focus on hands, he makes a bridge with his hands, observing what they do with their hands, that little flourish of characterization and we’re there, the new family buying their place, horses and horse-racing, having him be a painter, art dodge, they’re all fuckn horrible, modern art in movies never works right, without royalty, modern art on film, like music, this would never be a hit song, the Michael Cain movie called The Hand (1981), it is a tragedy, crazy stupid little movie, it paid for my garage, Jaws IV, I’ve seen the house it bought my mother, greeting cards, sits with us like a stone, greeting card business, being able to come up with something to write inside of them, Jesse’s poor, register for wedding, blessed wedding, “you will always be each other’s greatest gift”, the other French farce, Cyrano de Bergerac, the handsome guy with no words, the Juliet balcony scene with Romeo tongue-tied, 1984, 2000s, this could be anytime, it could in the 1980s, nothing in it makes it dated, racist slurs in the greeting cards, anti-gay slurs, the race riot, at what point are we supposed to twig this guy is the villain, the way people drink, vodka, rye, a good liqor neat, rail vodka, how beards or hats go into fashion, maybe hats are coming back, time outside, a good chunk of your day, walking to work everyday, having to spend time outside, the number of convertibles has gone down, people doing their tick tock videos in their car, you live with your parents, an enclosed little vocal booth, a weird place to sit, with their phone, things have changed, very realistic, to get his own airplane company, because he’s rich, the heir to this massive, billionaires, calculate for inflation, Bart’s the good one, Art’s the evil one, sleeps with his brother’s wife, cuckold’s himself, Beth and Liz, one’s a bitch, the other’s nice, cuckolding him?, with twins it gets confusing, we’re worried about your brother inseminating your wife, it’s not about genes, red hair, wait a second, looks exactly like you, you can’t be upset, there’s some slippage, you can’t be jealous but you can, so far away you could almost not even notice, that’s from the French movie more, whoever made that Melanie Griffith movie, La Cage Aux Faux (1973), dozens of movies, Cops And Robbers, could this book have been better written by another author better?, The Devils’ Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Westlake vs. Stark, The Comedy Is Finished, that turn, the killing, that evil that’s in there, reading Dortmunder, silly criminals, Westlake is more masterful than people can know, art books, tell fun stories, tackles a topic, two criticism, when the author mentions other books, Arthur Hailey, chonkers, Hotel, a novel, Airport, Robert A. Michner, James A. Michener, leaves the novel, you reader are reading a paperback, a shitty paperback, you’re carrying this right out, on the shelf, the good cover with the flocking, wet glue fuzz particles with an electrostatic charge, an arts and crafts thing, diorama of grassy knolls, health issues, flockworkers lung, Kahawa, Kenya train heist, Idi Amin, Raid On Entebbe, famous president of Uganda, eagerly take any Westlake novel, too late to be public domain, Killing Time, Brother And Sister, the reason you fucked it up, for that market, assigned that, my great incest novel, get it done this weekend, until the 70s, early 2000s, so solid, a show that’s never gonna come out, The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown, Knock 3 1 2, Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson, done in real time, a serial killer on the loose, Ray Fleck, compulsive gambler, the dame he’s shacked up with, the city boils over, hard-boiled, two-timer, cheater, crop and rotate, colour corrected, look fake, resource for the finding the originals, google is so shit, my plugin guy, the gallery plugin, now fixed, what was in the scan, artifact, cloned, filled but didnt do it with love, an H in the bottom right hand corner, John Newton Howitt, inflating the word count, School Mistress Of The Mad, College For Corpses, title generator, x of the y, defying the rules, a woman in distress (to put her on the cover), male fantasy, married already, sexually grateful, a fantasy for the reader, mad people, insane people, escaped lunatic, weird fiction in weird tales, late 19th century, cut-off somebody’s head, Mike the headless chicken, brain stem, made the body super strong, if it get you it will hug you to death, glands story, goat glands, W.C. Morrow, dip ladies in acid, gold, wax, mummies, to put them in jeopardy, so they can be rescued, The Painter Of Dead Women by Edna Worthley Underwood, Pygmalion in reverse, not quite the formula, saves herself, I need a mad scientist, just so long as she’s in mortal peril, perverted weird tales, the same period, the shudder pulps, depression era, survive WWII, paper shortages, write about paperbacks, heiresses, everything twinned, effortlessly, what a hero, two books that year, Lester Dent, two novels a month for a decade, what’s this book really about? twin, the title, numbered kids, Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Dos Muchos, internet archive.org, the dedication, who knows how, the mistress of Adam’s Apple, Eve, the snake, Abby Adams, he knows what he’s doing there, a quote, two heads are better than one, John Hayward, reviewing his own novel, the front half of a horse suit, was that supposed to be funny?, threw it away, you didn’t get what you thought you were getting, funny on the front, funny on the back, a lightweight farce, evil getting away with evil, he can’t be amused, becomes he becomes a real murderer, Lisa, you make fun of them, Westlake doing his philosophy, what’s going on with humor, standup comedians, bombing, killing, chatting her up, what comedy is and what it is for, practice murder, he’s murdering out there, not everything funny is about murder, defeating expectations, a baboon watching magic tricks, put a lid on the cup, the empty cup, a laughing sound, laughing behavior, we have a map of the world, when they don’t line up, it makes us laugh, somehow built into brains, hyenas laugh, the mirror, why we hate him, the outfoxer who must be physically destroyed, struggling over the gun, blackmail him, in the office, you’re just like me, ultimately, at what cost, its all profit, man this guy’s a good storyteller, an anti-twist, the conventions are so strong, the expected twist, the lack of twist is shocking, a twist and then a retwist, money, house, company, money in the mail, its like Elbe, Napoleon put on an island, what!?, he did it again, what an evil shit, sues the airline, the cherry on top, she died really tragically, yes sir right away sir, didn’t fuck over his secretary, severance and, little bit exposed, its okay, personable, some of the dad’s stuff, korsakoff’s syndrome, a commercial movie, people would hate it, fluff, the French version today, ends like the end of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), he just murdered that lady, she’s not nice, Betty you feel pretty bad about, happens quick, the heat of the moment, the best of a bad situation, twice is a pattern, conversation on twitter, character arcs vs. character revelation, what is Hamlet about?, my uncle murdered my dad, his dad told him, doesn’t believe ghosts, killing everybody including his mom by accident, better than brooding in your bedroom and killing yourself, some built in fatal flaw, no characters in Shakespeare grow they only reveal themselves, it works for Star Wars maybe? over the Hornblower series, he has less hair, more confident, he gets taller, riddled with self-doubt, Admiral Hornblower, talking about your D&D character, level up, character revelation, set your players, see where they go, whatever gears and programming inside of them revealed by the story, how could have we ended this better, cheating, lying to people, the stakes are a little higher, you kill the girl too, that bitch, she’s gonna inform on me, fuck her, this character’s horrible, great book though, Knock Three-One-Two by Fredric Brown, Phantasties by George Macdonald, the book that turned C.S. Lewis gay for Anglicanism?, a fairies romance for men and women, 1858, an ancient fairy lady in a desk, transforming into a forest, fairyland itself, Travels With A Donkey, donkey travel, witnesses dueling societies, officiates at a duel, the tone is mixed, jump off of the Matterhorn with an umbrella, Mark Twain is so reliable, more shudder pulp stories, how nuts they are, nice and short, good book.
Posted by Jesse Willis