First Draft

I identify with this book title because I have allergy related bloodshot eyes. Note that the cover on the left was published under the Harlequin imprint. It’s obviously not a romance novel. Ain’t nothing romantic about bloody eyes.

Rufus King had a long run as a crime fiction writer. 1945’s The Deadly Dove was published smack dab in the middle of that lengthy career. Both editions have a strong tagline game.

Taglines can be misleading. Darkness At Noon is the tale of an old Bolshevik caught up in Stalin’s great purge. It’s a serious and highly-regarded look at the horrors of the Soviet system but Signet had books to sell. As long as Arthur Koestler got his fair share I have no beef with that. It was the way of the pulps.

I originally thought that Bruno Fischer was the pen name of an overly prolific pulp practitioner. I was wrong. Ya learn something new every day.

The last word goes to the Rolling Stones. Why? Why the hell not?

It’s sci-fi time here at First Draft. The original title is on the left. I prefer Space Plague. It’s catchy; in fact, it’s contagious.

Believe it or not, Octavus Roy Cohen is NOT a pen name.

I still have winter on my mind. Winter Kill was first published in 1946. The paperback cover was done by the noted pulp artist Rudolph Belarski.

I decided to keep it seasonal as well as Dickensian this week. Dickens was fond of villains who could be redeemed by the goodness of his other characters. That fits Ebenezer Scrooge to a T. Where I fit on this spectrum remains an open question.

It’s time for before and after, Pulp Fiction Thursday style. I’m uncertain, however, if that’s supposed to be Scrooge or Bob Cratchit toting Tiny Tim on the right.

Contemplating Jacob Marley’s ghost has given me an earworm. The last word goes to Aimee Mann:

I was doing another search when I stumbled into an alternate title for Gore Vidal’s 1946 war novel, Williwaw. I suspect Signet thought Dangerous Voyage was a pulpier title than Williwaw.

Here’s a thumbnail description of the book from Harry Kloman’s definitive Vidal site:

Vidal’s first novel – written when he was 19 and recovering from rheumatoid arthritis that flared up during his military service – takes place aboard an Army FS boat in the Aleutian Islands near Alaska. The title is an Indian word for a big wind, peculiar to that region of the world, which sweeps suddenly down from the mountains toward the sea. Such a wind occurs during the dramatic climax of the novel, which explore its milieu in lean, taut style. It’s a swift read, with well-constructed characters, and it coolly captures the daily routines of men on the fringe of war. And like many books of men at war, it has a moral ambiguity, although in Vidal’s nascent fictional world, there is ultimately no moral reckoning. More than 50 years after its publication, the book remains in print. In the 1950s, the paperback first edition was published under the title Dangerous Voyage, presumably because the word “williwaw” was too off-putting for general audiences.

Thanks, Harry. I’m just wild about your site.

Here are the dueling covers: