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Unidentified Floating Object Cafe "It Appears War is Here:" Israel May Be Preparing for Ground Invasion of Hezballah's Strongholds in Southern Lebanon Teamsters Union Makes No Endorsement in Presidential Race; First Time They Haven't Endorsed a Democrat Since 1996 Despite Inflation Still Raging, Fed Chairman Powell Slashes Interest Rates by a Big Half Point Hezballah Rocked by More Explosions, As Israel Begins Detonating Solar Power Controllers, Smart Watches, Home Appliances, and Electronic Keypad Door Locks in Houses Owned by Hezballah Terrorists Kamala Harris Has a New Fake Accent: Latinxish Nine More Hezballah Terrorists Killed by Racist Right-Wing Memes and Remotely-Detonated Walkie-Talkies But Mostly by Remotely-Detonated Walkie Talkies The DHS's Evasiveness and Incompetence Is Too Much Even for Leftwing Democrat Partisan Senator Richard "Danang Dick" Blumenthal, Who Accuses the Agency of "Stonewalling" About Its Botched Protection of Trump Wednesday Morning Rant Absent Friends
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July 17, 2006
Mickey Spillaine Dies At 88No details of his death have been provided yet. One hopes it involved a dame and .45. He'd've wanted it that way. Mickey Spillaine of course wrote the blood-and-guts Mike Hammer series, which liberal book critics called "fascistic" in its crude, naive belief that sometimes evil just needed some killin'. He's one of the few writers who every got the chance to play his most famous creation in a movie. He also got to play himself, basically, in a Columbo episode. Ayn Rand was a big fan of his very masculine, "objectivist" sort of writing. Or at least she took it that way. I remember an essay of hers quoting this passage from Spillaine's One Lonely Night as the sort of direct, Roarkian writing she approved of: NOBODY ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhatten by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance. Quoted from a pretty cool Mike Hammer site, if you're curious to read more about the tough-guy detective who just never got the props that Spade and Marlowe did. Thanks to Kent for the tip. More.... CNN has a good obit. They call this "boilerplate," though. I think it's rather innovative in its brutality. As a stylist Spillane was no innovator; the prose was hard-boiled boilerplate. In a typical scene, from "The Big Kill," Hammer slugs out a little punk with "pig eyes." He had no pretensions, though: Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn't care about reviews. He considered himself a "writer" as opposed to an "author," defining a writer as someone whose books sell. Mystery writer Lawrence Block recalled one time Spillaine was on a roundtable chat with other writers, and they were asked what spurs them to write. The others gave the typical answers, like "when I get inspired by an idea" or "when there's just something inside of me that needs to get out." After a few minutes of this Spillaine said (paraphrased), "When are we going to talk about money? Because I'll tell you, I start getting the urge to write another book when my bank account gets down to zero." At which point, Spillaine having broached the crude issue, the other writers piped up to say they, too, tended to get the "most inspired" when a big mortgage payment was on its way. And Still More... Cool background: Mickey Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of a bartender. In his youth he read such writers as Alexandre Dumas and Anthony Hope, and was also fascinated by comic books. He attended briefly Fort Hays State College in Kansas, but dropped out, moved back to New York, and began his writing career in the mid-1930s. Spillane's first stories were published mostly in comic books and pulp magazines. He developed Mike Danger, a private detective, and wrote among others for Captain America, Captain Marvel, and The Human Torch. During WW II Spillane worked as a flying instructor for the U.S. Army Air Force. If anyone doesn't like some of the word-choice in the One Lonely Night passage above, bear in mind: Spillaine wrote his first book, I, the Jury (what a title) in nine days. Compare that to Chandler's taking two or three years on a book. Sure, Chandler's a better writer. But there's no doubting Spillaine was a lot more efficient. His most famous lines were from the end of that first book. After he shoots the dangerous dame who's been his lover, but is now revealed as a murderer: "How c-could you?" she gasped. Ohhh, snap, as all the kids say. He Had The Right Enemies Update: He was attacked by Dr. Frederic Wertham, who, as all true geeks know, almost killed the comic book industry by claiming comic books promoted hooliganism and homosexuality. "Why should one of the most popular authors of the twentieth century need defending? Easy, as Mike Hammer might say: his subject matter and his approach were so hard-hitting, so individual, that Spillane repelled the more proper and staid among the Literary Establishment (and the Establishment in general, including Dr. Frederic Wertham and Parents Magazine and other unpointed arbiters of public morality.). ... ( 'Mecca Spillane' by Max Allan Collins, in The Big Book of Noir, 1998) And he wrote for Batman, too. Some more of Spillane's unnuanced politics. Or rather, mostly his wife's. He doesn't like talking about them. But you get a feel for the general contours. We weren't far along the road when he showed me a card: a permit to carry a concealed weapon. "What do you need to carry a concealed weapon for?" I ask. "In case I need to shoot someone... Aye, that's a joke." Now, Hammett and Chandler were better writers, but... Hammett was a Commie symp -- errr, socialist utopian -- and Chandler was a stumbling wreck of a man, an alcoholic who did not handle his affliction particularly well, a bit of a persnicketty Anglophile, and had a very loving, though strangely dependent, relationship with his much-older wife. On the other hand, Mickey Spillaine knocked out mutlimillion-selling books in two weeks, refused to revise a word of his cranked-out books, wrote blood-soaked tales of Commie-hunting, punk-bludgeoning, and dame-slapping, wrote for Captain America and Batman as a young writer, and proudly admits he did all for the damn money. I think I know which of the three I'd want to have a drink with. | Recent Comments
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Wednesday Overnight Open Thread (9/18/24)
Unidentified Floating Object Cafe "It Appears War is Here:" Israel May Be Preparing for Ground Invasion of Hezballah's Strongholds in Southern Lebanon Teamsters Union Makes No Endorsement in Presidential Race; First Time They Haven't Endorsed a Democrat Since 1996 Despite Inflation Still Raging, Fed Chairman Powell Slashes Interest Rates by a Big Half Point Hezballah Rocked by More Explosions, As Israel Begins Detonating Solar Power Controllers, Smart Watches, Home Appliances, and Electronic Keypad Door Locks in Houses Owned by Hezballah Terrorists Kamala Harris Has a New Fake Accent: Latinxish Nine More Hezballah Terrorists Killed by Racist Right-Wing Memes and Remotely-Detonated Walkie-Talkies But Mostly by Remotely-Detonated Walkie Talkies The DHS's Evasiveness and Incompetence Is Too Much Even for Leftwing Democrat Partisan Senator Richard "Danang Dick" Blumenthal, Who Accuses the Agency of "Stonewalling" About Its Botched Protection of Trump Wednesday Morning Rant Search
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