From the Book of the Dead: C. L. Moore

Where were you when you first read "Shambleau" by C. L. Moore? In his Book of the Dead, E. Hoffman Price remembers; he was there when Farnsworth Wright plucked it out of the slush pile!

Whenever Farnsworth found an outstanding story, his enthusiasm was wonderful to see. His talks on the fine points of each yarn made it seem that he was the author's agent, and I the prospective buyer. 

H. Warner Munn's horror story, The Chain, and Donald Wandrei's striking cosmic concept, The Red Brain, were things I had to read, at once, and be damned to sociality. The peak was reached in 1933, when he handed me something by one C. L. Moore. 

"Read this!" he commanded, the moment I stepped into the new editorial rooms at 840 North Michigan Avenue, in Chicago. 

I obeyed. The story commanded my attention. There was no escape. I forgot that I needed food and drink--I'd driven a long way. For nearly six years, I'd not lived in Hammond, as Farnsworth's neighbor. The stranger's narrative prevailed, until, finally, I drew a deep breath, exhaled, flipped the last sheet to the back of the pack, and looked again at the by-line. Never heard of it before. 

"For Christ's sweet sake, who and what is this C. L. Moore?" 

He wagged his head, gave me an I-told-you-so grimace. 

We declared C. L. Moore day. I'd met Northwest Smith, and Shambleau.

The Book of the Dead: Farnsworth Wright and the Slush Pile

Finally getting around to E. Hoffman Price's Book of the Dead, a memoir of sorts covering his interactions with many authors and editors at Weird Tales. Just scratching the surface, and already it has proven its worth in entertainment and in advice.

For example, E. Hoffman Price recounts a lesson he learned from Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright after reading through the slush pile on a sleepy day:

One day after an unusually long night shift, I was too groggy to do justice to a script. I told him so. 

Farnsworth said, "You're quite wrong. We do have many quick witted readers, very much alert. But most of them are dull, really thick headed. If you're fifty per cent below par, it'll take a solid impact to make an impression on you. Anything that stirs you now is sure to make the standard reader sit up and take notice." 

Though I had my doubts, I nodded and blinked my way through half a dozen scripts. some were well written, aptly phrased, nicely composed. Finally, I said, "This isn't working out at all. I'm too dopey to follow the stuff. It's good material, some of it is, but I'm damned if I can keep my eyes open." 

"Go ahead," he persisted. "I'll check them later." And then, "You'd be surprised if you realized how very alert you were when you tried to convince me that you were in a stupor, open eyed sleep." 

Another half dozen scripts, purely soporific--ranging from sedative to outright anaesthetic. Then came one which brought me to my feet with a whoop. Farnsworth had been right, was right! Vitality made the thing sparkle. The "good ones" which had put me to sleep had everything except life. All they needed was embalming.

Farnsworth chuckled. "It's not necessary to read a dud all the way to the end. If a script doesn't show life within the first two pages, it'll prove out to be a zombi to the finish. 

After reading a hundred or more impossibles to the final line, I knew he was right. The duffer who grimly, laboriously or hastily and sloppily, composes a couple of stories annually is inclined to feel that every line deserves careful reading, no matter how much of the reader's effort is required. The stern and dedicated novice has the notion that it's a reader's duty to have comparable fortitude. It never occurs to the self centered blockhead that it is his job to win and hold the reader's interest: and regardless of whether that reader is a dull witted clod or a bright person weary from a long day's work, he is entitled to entertainment. 

Much of the time which Wright saved through realistic refusal to wade through dull verbiage was devoted to analyzing living yarns which, although not acceptable, could be made so if the author cared to revise his good start. All too often, Wright's effort got him a reply packed with the indignation and fury of a "sincere and sensitive artist" who would not cater to any "crass and mercenary" editor.

50 YEARS OF LUPIN III: Dead or Alive

"Believe me, the painting doesn't do him justice. He's worse than me."--Lupin, describing General Headhunter.

To keep his nation's treasury out of the hands of thieves, the king of Zufu moved his nation's gold reserves to a safe house on Drifting Island. After a coup topples the heads of the king and his son, Prince Pannish, Zufu and the Drifting Island fall into the hands of General Headhunter. The general has spent lucre and lives trying to break into Drifting Island's vaults, only to be frustrated at every turn. Now Lupin and his gang have turned their talents to the task. Getting to Drifting Island is simple enough, even while dodging General Headhunter's agents, Inspector Zenigata, and double agents, such as the prince's lover, Oleander. But as Drifting Island's mechanical defenses continue to stymie Lupin and his gang, the nation rises in revolution. For Prince Pannish has returned to take his country back from General Headhunter.

The fifth Lupin III theatrical movie, 1996's Dead or Alive had been plagued with issues throughout its production. With no one else willing to helm the project through the short production schedule, Lupin III manga artist Monkey Punch stepped up to lead. Quickly overwhelmed, he relied heavily on his staff, generally staying out of their way while the deadline approached. What should have been a disaster instead turned into a solid action film, although one with the slower pacing of manga instead of the relative frenzy of Hollywood. Dead or Alive steers the series back towards its darker roots without abandoning the formula that established the franchise. With the theatrical animation quality and the shift in tone, Dead or Alive stands out from the the TV specials that propelled the franchise through the 1990s.

Review: When the Death-Bat Flies 4-6

Last time, when we looked at the first half of Norvell Page's "When the Death-Bat Flies":

Hirotoyo had lost his smile, “Speak, my friend, and if I can help you….” 

“You can,” Dunne said shortly. “Donald Henderson was murdered last night and the death arranged to look like hari-kari. Another associate of his, Paul Tarsus, said he had been threatened as a result of a death in your own honorable family, Hirotoyo. I know this is false, but in order to clear myself of the murder charge against me, I must solve this crime which the police call suicide.”

*****

Aubrei Dunne and Socks Bee flee from his shot-up apartment and the dead policeman inside. Dunne seeks out Natsuki Hirotoyo to learn more about the Bat of Death, but it is Hirotoyo's guest, Chu Pei-yi, who tells Dunne of its significance. Hirotoyo offers sanctuary, but Dunne instead leaves, only to be picked up by a set of indistinctly Asian thugs, who blindfold him before driving him away. They deliver him to a secret room, where an silhouetted Asiaitic man warns Dunne to stay out of his way, for the Hendersons must be punished. After a second blindfolded tour of the city, Dunne is released, angry that his friend Hirotoyo would treat him in such a manner. He finds Socks, who identifies one of Dunne's kidnappers as Paul Tarsus, whom they met at the Hendersons' mansion. Spoiling for a fight, Dunne and Socks go to the Henderson's where they find a dying man--and the cops!

After enduring a bit of police brutality back at the precinct, Dunne attempts to win the police's assistance in arresting Tarsus by showing how, with a little manipulation and help from an assistance, a man might turn a murder site into a locked-room suicide. The inspectors instead treat this display as a confession, and lock Dunne up. Dunne pleads with them, saying that if they don't free him and arrest Tarsus, there will be more murders. But as accusations of blackmail mount, and no more corpses are found, the blame shifts solely on Dunne's shoulders. After overhearing news of Tarsus's apparent locked-room suicide, Dunne escapes from the police station, eager to ensure Margaret is safe.

At the Hendersons' mansion, Dunne finds another dead cop. After a flash of insight, he calls the police, demanding that they arrest Hirotoyo. After he leaves the mansion, the Asian thugs abduct him once more, dragging him in front of the Bat Throne, where he had be taken before. There, he is forced to watch as Professor Henderson and Margaret are both drugged and forced into the proper posture for ritual suicide. With a single suggestion from the shadowed man on the Throne, father and daughter will take their lives. The shadowed man forces Dunne to be Margaret's second, to end her suffering with the swift stroke of a sword. Dunne instead knocks Margaret unconscious In the resulting melee, Dunne frees the Professor and beats down the Chinese thugs. But the man on the throne escapes. To confront him, Dunne races back to Hirotoyo's house, where the cops shoot him. Bleeding out, Dunne staggers into the house, only to interrupt Chu Pei-yi's attempted murder of Hirotoyo. Confronted by his crimes, Chu Pei-yi kills himself in the Japanese manner. Dunne collapses, but not before he gets a kiss from Margaret.

*****

The significance of the Bat of Death:

“There is a Mongol superstition about the bat. They believe that the bite of a bat steals a man’s soul and that subsequently the man will destroy himself.”

This is echoed in the unique method of murder used in the story, the suggestion of ritual suicide when drugged. Yet it also becomes a moral, as Chu Pei-yi's cleverness (and bat motif) turns on him at the end, leaving him no choice for his pride but suicide. Here, it is the theme and method of murder that force the jumbled chinoiserie on this detective story, and not some lingering Yellow Peril.

*****

Page draws upon the spicies during Margaret's final peril. Female ritual suicide in Japan tended towards the opening of veins, not disembowelment, but this inaccuracy allowed Dunne to linger on a rare display of cleavage and bare tummy. Like many of the spicy adventures, the display of skin is tame compared to what is seen today on small-screen and red carpet, but at a time when pornography was just getting under way, it was risque and sensational. Now, it's mere fanservice. And it was this escalating mix of sex and violence common to the field of weird menace that would prompt a government crackdown within a matter of  years. 

*****

Car crash theater continues. While Dunne is not completely swept along by the course of events, only rarely is he ever truly a master of his own fate. In specific high spots, he is able to use his own skills to extricate himself from his perils, but most of the time, the only true escape from one peril is the sudden crash into another, greater peril. It's a little too much action in a small space, and there was more that a few times I had to read back to see just how Dunne got from one disaster to the next.

*****

Rumor has it that "When the Death-Bat Flies" was supposed to be the first of a series of heroic detective pulps had its host magazine not folded. And, if one looks closely, the stamp of the first hero pulp,  The Shadow, is apparent throughout. For in many ways, "When the Death-Bat Flies" revisits the elements of the first Shadow adventure, "The Living Shadow." Dunne and the Shadow both rescue an assistance from self-destruction, both rely on their assistants for important investigative leg-work, both men are masters of the illusionary arts, and both adventure in a Chinatown where Asiatics can be thug, and villain, hero and pillar of society. And, at the end, the assistant's role gives way to the hero's triumphant confrontation of the criminal mastermind. But where Gibson explores his hero through the relationship with his assistant who acts as the protagonist, Page keeps Dunne in the central role of hero and protagonist. As the author of The Spider, Page had his own take on the hero pulps, and while he was not shy about borrowing, he made his work uniquely his own. Something Detective Comics should have done with the Batman...

Review: When the Death-Bat Flies 1-3

The burglar fumbled in his pocket, and Dunne leaned forward sharply, the gun jutting out. It was only the jewelry. It glowed on the man’s big palm and Dunne whistled softly. 

“You damned fool,” he whispered. “You utter damned fool. That’s moonglow jewel jade! Worth a fortune. Good lord, it’s priceless! That bit there shaped like a bat….” 

He caught it up, and the burglar scrambled abjectly to his feet, round eyes bulging while Dunne examined the intricate carving of the precious stuff. The bat was really superb workmanship. 

“Geez, chief,” the burglar gasped. “You gotta take it now. No fence would touch stuff like that."

*****

Norvell W. Page is best known for writing the adventures of the pulp hero The Spider, one of the more successful hero pulps to follow in The Shadow's wake. But when he wasn't writing for the hero pulps and comics, to include The Shadow and The Phantom, he indulged in the growing field of weird menace, a sensationalized form of the detective story that mixed a generous heaping of over-the-top violence, a dash of dread, a sprinkle of the spicy,and a bit of that black magic into the conventional detective recipe.

His "When the Death-Bat Flies" is a six chapter novelette that mines one of the most common veins of 1930s occult menace, the mysteries of chinoiserie. Reflecting the West's growing fascination with all things Asia--East, West, and South, the lands of China, Japan, India, and Persia were ready sources of exotic mysteries for writers to spin into their stories. But where in the 1910s, this would have led to unadulterated Yellow Peril racism in the mold of Fu Machu (who still acted more honorable than his Western nemesis), exposure to such tales as Charlie Chan had changed the hero pulps. While men from the East would still be villains, they would also be sidekicks, teachers, and heroes in their own right. And in "When the Death-Bat Flies", Norvell Page brought this sensibility into his weird menace.

On to the story...

*****

A thug tries to mug tinkerer and stage magician Aubrei Dunne, but Dunne manages to turn the tables on his attacker using a mix of stage-props and jiu-jitsu. To pay for the damage the thug caused, Dunne decides to empty the thug's pockets instead. The thug, better known as Montmorency "Socks" Bere has in his possession an unfencible jade bat that he tries to push on Dunne. Before Dunne can take the jewelry, a red-haired girl bursts in and mugs them by gunpoint, believing Socks to be the thief and Dunne his boss. But before she can finish her stick-up, a car full of Chinese drives by and empties a drum of machine gun fire at all three. As they vanish, a bat flies into the room, and the redhead declares it an omen, hai chei p'ing or the Bat of Death.

The redhead introduces herself as Margaret Henderson, the daughter of Professor Michael Henderson. She panics as she realizes her father might be attacked next. After cutting a quick deal with Socks, Dunne leads all three to the Henderson mansion, only to find burglars smashing their way inside. The burglars see Dunne and run away, leaving a corpse bowing on the ground. As Margaret screams, another death bat flies past.

Dunne, Socks, and Margaret follow a man's screams and find the professor, who is terrified of the Bat of Death. But rather than show relief at his daughter's return, Professor Henderson takes umbrage at Dunne's presence. Accusingly, he asks if Dunne saw the Bat of Death and demands what the magician-sleuth knows. After Margaret explains how Dunne helped, her the professor stands down, claiming he is distraught over the recent suicide of his brother. After Margaret leaves, the professor asks for Dunne's assistance when another bat flies through. The professor takes him to his brother's corpse, which has been disemboweled by a sword wrapped in silk embroidered with a bat. Dunne takes a closer look, and declares the brother's death murder instead of suicide and points out the killing blow. Henderson names Natsuki Hirotoyo, Dunne's jiu jitsu partner, as the murderer. Dunne calls him a liar, and the men come to blows. Margaret intervenes, and Dunne returns home, only to have the policeman investigating the drive-by die in his arms!

*****

Socks stared from the doorway. "Geez, chief," he whispered, "what happened to the bull? Dead! Boss, we gotta get out of here fast. What they do to cop-killers in this town ain't pretty!"

Dunn said irritably, "I didn't kill him, you fool!"

Socks' laughter was hollow. "Yeah, but try and make them coppers believe that! Boss, we gotta take it on the lam!

*****

So far, "When the Death-Bat Flies" has been a pleasant mix of detective story and general chinoiserie. However, it has been reliant on car-crash theater, slamming one run-in after another without giving time for the tension to build. The first chapter, for instance, runs through an entire Dent's formula of twists in a fourth of the wordage. But Dunne only had one chance to extract himself with his own skill. After Margaret's appearance, he escapes one peril because a newer peril intervenes. If it was not for the sudden appearance of Natsuki Hirotoyo, an apparent good guy whose family has been wrapped up in dealings with the Bat Tong, the constant smash of plot points would have been wearying.

The chinoiserie appears to be sorting itself out so that the Chinese is ominous and the Japanese virtuous. The blending of chinoiserie and japonisme makes sense in hindsight, with the Hirotoyo family's involvement with Chinese crime families, but just how the Hendersons are mixed into this has yet to be clear. The professor, by employing Chinese servants, is clearly at the Chinese pole of foreign virtue here.

It was an interesting surprise to find a reference to jiu jitsu so early (1937), especially with the popular perception of the martial arts being virtually unknown in the West prior to the 1960s. However, I was quickly disabused of that popular perception when I brought it up online. Spencer Hart found judo and jiu jitsu ads filling WWII era pulp magazines. And Kevyn Winkless pointed out that:

In storage I have a 1920s era book that purports to teach gentlemen the key skills of jujitsu. According to Google's ngram viewer, karate gets virtually no mention until exactly 1960 when it takes off to become the most commonly mentioned by far, kung fu was invisible until its brief popularity in the 1970s. But various spellings of ju-jitsu see raised visibility around 1900-1910 and again from '35-'45. It's not particularly common in either period. Judo starts to take off in about 1910 and keeps going up to be the most mentioned until karate surpasses it in 1970.

Regardless of how novel the grappling arts might be in pulp times, will knowledge of jiu jitsu be enough to save Aubrei Dunne from the menace of the Death Bat and the Bat Tong?  We shall see soon, as "When the Death-Bat Flies" concludes...

Pulp Radio Wednesday: The Lives of Harry Lime - It's a Knockout

"Orson Welles reprised his role of Harry Lime from the celebrated 1949 film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel The Third Man. The radio series is a "prequel" to the film, and depicts the many misadventures of con-artist Lime in a somewhat lighter tone than the character's villainy in the film."

(Description from archive.org.)

Meeting Howard A. Jones at PulpRev.com

Over at Pulprev.com, a review of Zelazny's Jack of the Shadows introduced the PulpRev movement to Howard Andrew Jones, an earlier voice in reviving pulp sensibilities and sword and sorcery to fantasy. 

Mr Jones wrote:

I’m following the discussions of a pulp revival with great interest because it seems to dovetail a lot with what some of us have been trying to do for years with sword-and-sorcery, which was to hone it and give it a new edge. Chris Hocking, William King, Clint Werner and some other folks along with me were talking about that during the years I was involved with Flashing Swords and Black Gate. In some ways it seems like our interests overlap profoundly with those of this movement, but in other ways it feels like we have our borders in different places. 

When you write that Roger Zelazny doesn’t feel like pulp, I think you’re right in that he doesn’t feel much like The Shadow, or E.E. Doc Smith. But to me it’s more important if the author took root in the same rich soil and delivered some great storytelling thrills.
So what does the pulp revival search for? What defines it? Is there a manifesto of some kind? 

If you’re interested, here’s what we cooked up (my God, I’m getting old) back in 2008 on the old Black Gate forum page when we were discussing a new way to craft sword-and-sorcery. I’d be very interested to hear how it lines up with the goals/outlook of the new pulp movement. 

http://bg-editor.livejournal.com/22488.html 

I’ve since updated my definition of sword-and-sorcery, here, which might make a better starting point to ensure we’re starting from the same standard of reference as to what we mean when talking about sword-and-sorcery. 

http://www.howardandrewjones.com/sword-and-sorcery/a-new-edge

I took a moment to answer in the comments:

PulpRev started out of two distinct sources. One was Jeffro Johnson's survey of the Appendix N literary inspirations for Dungeons and Dragons, the other was "Cirsova's" dissatisfaction with the fiction of both sides of the Hugo Awards dust-up, which led to him publishing his own periodical of heroic fantasy short fiction. A bunch of us found that the older pulps and the Cirsova fantasies to be more satisfying than the current tradpub fiction, so we started to devour the pulps as inspiration for new works. 

A lot of this enthusiasm is still new-born. While a couple of us have attempted to distill some guidelines from the pulps, there are few real rules. Unlike newpulp, we don't want to be limited to pulp as a millieu, even if some of us do like pulp-punk or diesel-punk settings and write in that vein. Some of us even turn to the pulp-descendants of New Wave, wuxia/xianxia, and Japanese light novels for inspiration in addition to the classic days of the pulps. 

As for inspirations, the most common among the PulpRev are Burroughs, Merrit, C. L. Moore, R. E. Howard, and Leigh Brackett. But there's a large tapestry of pulp and pulp-descended works out there, so it seems like every month, someone new discovers a new writer who broadens the horizons on what pulp-style can be. 

If you haven't read these already, I'd recommend Thune's Vision by Schuyler Hernstrom, Cirsova Magazine, and StoryHack Magazine as examples of what PulpRev and fellow travelers are currently writing. 

I look forward to taking a closer look at your own experiences with sword and sorcery.

I do beg forgiveness of many of the PulpRev writers my suggestions might leave out. Mr. Jones likes sword and sorcery, so I tailored it accordingly.

Curious of how Mr. Jones attempted to define his new approach to sword and sorcery, I took a look at the first link. There, he lays out five goals:

1. We can find inspiration from the pulps without pastiching them. Specifically I mean setting aside the sexism and racism and the suspect politics, but embracing the virtues of great pulp storytelling: The color. The pace. The headlong thrill and sense of wonder. The celebration not of the everyday and the petty, but of those who dare to fight on when the odds are against them. 

2. We can create new characters. Not homages. And not ironic sendups. I would prefer to go a long time without seeing any more “comedy sword-and-sorcery.” 

3. We can craft exotic settings and/or settings that live - as in NOT faux Tolkien of faux Howard. We need to make our own worlds and look past the groundbreaking ideas that have now become limiting barriers set in place by Tolkien’s imitators and bookshelves stuffed with gaming manuals. 

4. We must restore the sense of fantastic. Once magic is banal or easy, once magic rings can be found at the corner market and wizards are everywhere, sense of wonder all-too-easily goes straight out the window. It may be possible to write good fantasy in such an environment, but it would be very challenging to craft good sword-and-sorcery there. 

5. We can check the irony at the door. Sure, humor and irony can be found in the world our characters walk, but we don’t need to write, as Martin Zornhau says, with “amused detatchment to revel in swordfights.” We should either embrace the genre or not, but we shouldn’t pretend to do so then try to excuse it to our literary friends by claiming it’s all just a joke and is really beneath us. Pfah.

I see PulpRev as harmonious with these ideas. We do want to bring some of the writing techniques of the pulps back, and since much of our inspiration is found in Weird Tales, to be honest, most of us have yet to grapple with the problems of the spicies, weird menace, and Yellow Peril. Personally, I'd like to see more of the chinoiserie and japonisme found in those days, but I am more critic than writer. As for not creating pastiches or retreads or ironic reinterpretations, we agree. We wish to take our turn in the Great Conversation instead of mimicking others like a myna bird. The exploration of the exotic and the sense of wonder/fantastic are key parts of what makes pulp pulp. And on poisonous irony, we agree as well. Restoring the sense of the fantastic means restoring the heroic, and to do so requires stepping away from ironic detachment and literary realism's fascination with the mundane.

As for comedy in sword and sorcery, I much prefer the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser that tried to be published in Wright's Weird Tales than the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser molded by Campbell's vision of fantasy. But on that, I won't dare speak for others.

I do hope that Mr. Jones may find PulpRev kindred spirits or fellow travelers in bringing back a little of that old time sword and sorcery.