Mickey Spillane

[dropzone]

There are the fans of Raymond Chandler. There are fans of Dashiell Hammett. But Mickey Spillane took the soft-boiled, Hercule Poirot who lives in the US and drinks too much, detective and truly made him a schlub who has to live on his per diem. He's a vet who saw WAY too much on Guadalcanal to function in regular society.

(Note: I knew many vets who managed to internalize it so they could function in IRL. Except on weekends, which seem to have been PTSD holidays. And the guys who wore socks that were white cotton on the foot side but colored on the ankle side because of some form of foot rot they'd developed on campaign. Because of advances in podiatric medicine I don't think you can still get them, but foot fungi are nasty so I assume they died, in podiatric relief, of other things. :( )

The Mick broke many rules. Rule #1 was that you didn't shoot the frail. He tossed her aside in I, the Jury and placed the Hard-Boiled ethos on a silver platter, to be admired or refused. He liked it when it was refused.



I, the Jury ended with

[spoiler]The roar of the .45 shook the room., Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to the truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. A thin trickle of blood welled out.... Her eyes had pain in them now, the pain preceding death. Pain and unbelief.
"How could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said." Brutally cool.

[Johnny L.A.]

Sounds like she was telling him he had some spillaning to do.

[Ike Witt]

After reading most of Raymond Chandlers work I started reading Mickey Spillane. I would have to say that Marlowe is a well developed character who appears in some interesting stories. Hammer is wish fulfillment on an adolescent level.

[Argent Towers]

Has the OP been drinking? ;):p:D

[dropzone]

Hammer is wish fulfillment on an adolescent level.He is that, but I wonder how much of it was marketing to an adult audience whose tastes were formed by pre- and wartime pulps who wanted something more aimed at their age group after a war full of virginal cartoon Lois Lanes. I'm guessing all of it.

[dropzone]

Has the OP been drinking? ;):p:DIt is the best route into the works of Mickey Spillane...

...I mean...

During my stretch as an English major I wrote a paper comparing Hammer, Marlowe, and Spade, as they represented three takes on the Hard-Boiled Detective. Note that Freud had not yet been exposed as the worst form of huckster, this having happened 35 years ago, when it was only suggested. Obviously, Hammer was the Id, Marlowe the Ego, and, by default, Spade the Super-Ego.

Considering that I composed much of it riding back from my grandmother's funeral in a '74 Cougar with so little rear legroom that after only an hour I wondered if my left knee would recover enough to let me walk again I think I got a pretty good grade. Though my knee still hurts on occasion.

[BrainGlutton]

I've never read Spillane, but I have read that he really played on the 1950s Red-Scare atmosphere -- a lot of his villains were Communists. Is that true?

[dropzone]

A-yup. Novelists like to sell their books and that sold.

Not as much as naked blondes, but to create a novel you need a backdrop on which to drape your plot. Naked women were particularly effective.

[aceplace57]

What? No mention for one of the best hard boiled detectives ever?

Michael Shayne was right up there with Hammer, Marlowe, and Spade. Created By Brett Halliday (pseudonym of Davis Dresser), his books started in 1939 and were written into the early 60's.
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/shaynemike.html
In all versions, Shayne was "that reckless, red-headed Irishman" Halliday originally described, who used brain and brawn equally, though the writers tended to have Mike take the physical approach to solving most problems. Easier to write, I guess. His assistant, a lovely blonde named Phyl Knight, was not prominent in most of the episodes. About 30 programs (most starring Chandler) are in trading currency today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Halliday

[BrainGlutton]

I've never read Spillane, but I have read that he really played on the 1950s Red-Scare atmosphere -- a lot of his villains were Communists. Is that true?

This (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=389315) is where I read that, BTW.

[Shodan]

I, the Jury ended with

The roar of the .45 shook the room., Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to the truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. A thin trickle of blood welled out.... Her eyes had pain in them now, the pain preceding death. Pain and unbelief.
"How could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said." Brutally cool.Spillane was the master of the ultra-hardboiled closing line.

My Gun Is Quick -He was screaming with all the fury of the gods dethoned, but my laugh was even louder.

He was still screaming when I pulled the trigger.
The story is told that Spillane bet his publisher he could write a novel with the punchline in the very last word. The result was Vengeance Is Mine - Juno was a man!

aceplace57, I have read a couple of the Michael Shane books, and what strikes me most is how much he drank. I know it is part of the hard-boiled genre, but my golly! His liver must have been charred to ashes!

Regards,
Shodan

[BrainGlutton]

Mike Hammer: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hammer)

While pulp detectives such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are hard-boiled and cynical, Hammer is in many ways the archetypal "hard man:" he is brutally violent, misogynistic, and fueled by a genuine rage that never afflicts Raymond Chandler's or Dashiell Hammett's heroes. In The Big Kill Hammer describes himself to a bargirl as a misanthrope.

While other hardboiled heroes bend and manipulate the law, Hammer holds it in total contempt, seeing it as nothing more than an impediment to justice, the one virtue he holds in absolute esteem. However unlike many fictional private detectives, Hammer has a strong respect for the majority of police, realising they have a difficult job and their hands are frequently tied by the law when trying to stop criminals. Hammer has no such constraints.

Mike Hammer is a no-holds barred Battle of Guadalcanal veteran private investigator who carries a .45 Colt M1911, named "Betsy" in a shoulder harness under his left arm. His love for his secretary Velda is only outweighed by his willingness to kill a killer. Hammer's best friend is Pat Chambers, Captain of Homicide NYPD.

Hammer is also patriotic and anti-communist. The novels are peppered with remarks by Hammer supporting American troops in Korea, and in Survival...Zero Vietnam. In One Lonely Night, where Hammer attends a communist meeting in a park, his reaction to the speaker's propaganda is a sarcastic "Yeah."

So far as violence is concerned, the Hammer novels leave little to the imagination. Written in the first person, Hammer describes his violent encounters with relish. In all but a few novels, Hammer's victims are often left vomiting after a blow to the stomach or groin.

The Washington Times obituary of Spillane said of Hammer, "In a manner similar to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Hammer was a cynical loner contemptuous of the 'tedious process' of the legal system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own terms." [1]

:eek: Phew! I'll stick with Chandler!

[In Winnipeg]

I think Spillane was great, and he sure knew how to tell a story. Over time, he practically became a cliche of himself, but since no one else was writing the same kind of stuff he did, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing -- with Spillane, you knew exactly what you were getting.

The earlier Mike Hammer novels are definitely the best, but the latest ones weren't bad either from "The Killing Man" onward.

Warning: "Highbrow" you're not going to get here, folks, and if that's what you want, stick to Hammett or Chandler, but if you like the genre at it's most primal and brutal, then Spillane's your man.

And while you're at it check out Hard Case Crime: http://www.hardcasecrime.com/

[Johnny Angel]

I found an audiobook of Spillane's Vengeance is Mine, with Stacy Keach reading it. This was an odd choice for recording unless a lot of the other books had been done already, because audiobooks are a relatively new medium, and a modern audience could not possibly be surprised by the dramatic reveal at the end.

Of course, the girl turned out to be evil. But more importantly, she turned out not to be a girl. This much was entirely obvious from her first appearance, but is a big shock to Hammer, making the whole book more comic than hard-boiled

[dropzone]

One of his top sellers read by the guy who played Mike Hammer on TV? Sounds like an obvious choice for an early audiobook, with two built-in audiences.

[Johnny Angel]

Keach has a pretty solid masculine voice, to be sure. But the show from what I remembered was of a distinctly 80's sensibility. Not exactly "sex and slaughter for a quarter" as Spillane's work has been described. Is there really a big crossover in audiences?

Then again, I also can't imagine that enjoying the Perry Mason TV show is likely to translate into enjoying the books. Or that anyone who sees Philip Marlowe the way that Powers Booth portrayed him will care for the way Chandler wrote him.

[dropzone]

That's why I said "two built-in audiences." One was the Spillane fans and the other was the Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer fans.

I always often use words that will can help me weasel out of a problem. ;)

[Stranger On A Train]

Mickey Spillane was a terrible writer of prose; his passages are sometimes incoherent, and characterization and plot were secondary to pure sensationalism. He wrote at about the same level as Don Pendleton or Robert Ludlum, and no doubt appealing to the same audiences. I can't word my reaction better than Lawrence Block, who once wrote that he's rather read a chewing gum wrapper over and over rather than read another Spillane novel.

Raymond Chandler, along with David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich, Richard E. Westlake, Robert Bloch, and others, were all competent hacks in the hardboiled genre; craftsmen who could build and tell a good story with compelling characters; worthwhile, if just purely entertaining reading.

Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, and Patricia Highsmith all manage (at least, at their best) to transcend the hardboiled/noir genre. While their works often involve crime as an aspect, the theme of their works is not so much getting away with the crime but what the act of committing or being involved in atavistic and criminal behavior does to the basic humanity of the protagonist and others. Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, The Glass Key, The Grifters, The Cry of the Owl and The Talented Mr. Ripley should all stand with other works of great literature.

Spillane is bottom of the barrel in terms of literary value, characterization, coherence of plot, or indeed, basic readability.

Stranger

[LiveOnAPlane]

....

Spillane is bottom of the barrel in terms of literary value, characterization, coherence of plot, or indeed, basic readability.

Stranger

Good thing for you he is no longer around...

I pulled Betsy fromt he shoulder rig and lined it up between Stranger's terrified eyes. I wondered, just before squeezing the trigger, if he could see the tip of the .45 slug there in the barrel, waiting for the falling hammer to release it...

[myimpossiblepast]

Mickey Spillane was a terrible writer of prose; his passages are sometimes incoherent, and characterization and plot were secondary to pure sensationalism. He wrote at about the same level as Don Pendleton or Robert Ludlum, and no doubt appealing to the same audiences. I can't word my reaction better than Lawrence Block, who once wrote that he's rather read a chewing gum wrapper over and over rather than read another Spillane novel.

Raymond Chandler, along with David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich, Richard E. Westlake, Robert Bloch, and others, were all competent hacks in the hardboiled genre; craftsmen who could build and tell a good story with compelling characters; worthwhile, if just purely entertaining reading.

Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, and Patricia Highsmith all manage (at least, at their best) to transcend the hardboiled/noir genre. While their works often involve crime as an aspect, the theme of their works is not so much getting away with the crime but what the act of committing or being involved in atavistic and criminal behavior does to the basic humanity of the protagonist and others. Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, The Glass Key, The Grifters, The Cry of the Owl and The Talented Mr. Ripley should all stand with other works of great literature.

Spillane is bottom of the barrel in terms of literary value, characterization, coherence of plot, or indeed, basic readability.

Stranger

Lumping Chandler in with Woolrich, Westlake, and Bloch while extolling the superior literary value of James Cain and Jim Thompson is curious to me. I fail to grasp how the theme of how criminal behavior affects the basic humanity of both the perpetrator and those in their orbit is not present in Chandler's work. Is it really just a plotless grab-bag of literary posturing?

[myimpossiblepast]

Lumping Chandler in with Woolrich, Westlake, and Bloch while extolling the superior literary value of James Cain and Jim Thompson is curious to me. I fail to grasp how the theme of how criminal behavior affects the basic humanity of both the perpetrator and those in their orbit is not present in Chandler's work. Is it really just a plotless grab-bag of literary posturing?

While Chandler's stylistic flourishes and poses are contrived at points, the direct and lyrical quality of his prose is far above any pyrotechnics that a great storyteller like Robert Bloch could provide.

Calling Chandler a hack seems a bit much. James Hadley Chase was a hack. Mickey Spillane's great hero, Carroll John Daly, was a hack. Chandler? I'll agree to disagree.

[The King of Soup]

Me, too, with respect to Chandler. Some of the books had problems, but nothing big enough to make you doubt the strengths were real. I'll concede that he didn't have a lot of help.

In fact, let's posit this: that writers in this despised genre pretty much all look worse than they deserve, because they didn't get the best, or even the second-best, reading and editing that publishing could provide. James Agee could write too, but I'll bet 1941's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men got a lot more TLC from Houghton-Mifflin than Hammett, Chandler, and for that matter Stout and MacDonald got in their whole careers. These are all good writers (actually, I don't like Ross MacDonald much), but you have to award extra points for quarterbacking the B-team.

I did say "pretty much," and here's the payoff: Spillane excluded. Better editing would have made his novels disappear. His stock in trade was childishly-pornographic violence and sex, or, mostly, violence-as-sex. He was offering raw corn whiskey to the folks who thought aging and filters are for sissies, or at least felt that way once in a while. Spillane was a genius in the same way Larry Flint is: matching the perfect product to a certain widespread, yet widely unacknowledged taste, and that takes smarts. And imagination. And a typewriter. And brutality. But not literary merit, and I assert he deserves none.

[RealityChuck]

I, too, find your characterization of Chandler odd, especially since his plots were only an excuse for his prose and characters. He was by far the greatest stylist of the genre, and if his style seems contrived today, it's because so many people tried to follow him that it became cliche.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Raymond Chandler, along with David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich, Richard E. Westlake, Robert Bloch, and others, were all competent hacks in the hardboiled genre; craftsmen who could build and tell a good story with compelling characters; worthwhile, if just purely entertaining reading.
That's Donald E. Westlake. You're conflating his real name with the Richard Stark pseudonym he used when writing the Parker books. (You ain't talking about physics now, punk; you're in my world. :D )

Parker was a crook, not a detective. Westlake wrote very few books that could be called hardboiled detective yarns.


Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, and Patricia Highsmith all manage (at least, at their best) to transcend the hardboiled/noir genre. While their works often involve crime as an aspect, the theme of their works is not so much getting away with the crime but what the act of committing or being involved in atavistic and criminal behavior does to the basic humanity of the protagonist and others. Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, The Glass Key, The Grifters, The Cry of the Owl and The Talented Mr. Ripley should all stand with other works of great literature.

Spillane is bottom of the barrel in terms of literary value, characterization, coherence of plot, or indeed, basic readability.

Stranger

In fact, Chandler and Hammett are the only true hardboiled writers on this list. Several can be called noir, although I'd argue that Westlake was never a noir writer.

Does it make a difference? I think so. The line between detective fiction and crime fiction is inherently fuzzy, but get far enough from that line, as most of the writers you mention did most of the time, and the distinction makes itself clear.

The central character of a detective novel must be fit for Chandler's "mean streets" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simple_Art_of_Murder). "But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."

Spillane stretches that to the breaking point with his not merely tarnished but vile Hammer character. But Spillane believed seriously in Hammer. The more relevant quote in "The Simple Art of Murder" is the last line, "a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities ... it is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in." Spillane's anti-communism saw the Commies are gangsters who ruled nations and wanted to rule his. Combating them was a moral imperative, and he meant to emphasize how high the end stakes were by making the means as unpretty as possible. It was moral pornography, wish-fulfillment fantasy as I said in that other thread. Worked great. Spillane's first five paperbacks were the bestselling paperbacks in history for many years after they were written.

Crime novels don't have any such underpinnings; they can look into the heads of the criminals and that gives them greater power than detective novels, even the best. There's an odd little book out by P. D. James, Talking About Detective Fiction, in which she tries very hard to give the formal detective story some weight, but keeps being forced to end arguments by saying that it's only mindless entertainment. Over and over in every chapter. That's probably why Hammett and Chandler wound up as drunks.

I also believe that Chandler was a better writer than Hammett. That argument goes round and round like the one between Hemingway and Fitzgerald and I could make a case either way and have come down on different sides at different times. Calling Chandler a mere "competent hack" is a literary felony, though. That's on the level of the guy in the current thread who insists that the Bee Gees are better than The Beatles.

I know that noir movies could feature either detectives or crooks, but the print world was more divided. Noir as a genre faded by the mid-1950s. It couldn't survive the harsh light of prosperity. Crime and depravity and grittiness are timeless, but we approach them distinctively with each era.

[aceplace57]

I just finished rereading Poodle Springs. It is the eighth Philip Marlowe novel. Raymond Chandler was working on it when he died in 1959.

Robert B. Parker was asked by the estate to finish it in the early 80's. He did a remarkable job capturing Chandler's voice. Great edition to the Marlowe series.