Ashtray

There was this guy at work. We called him The Ashtray, and although it wasn't funny it was a better name than The Doormat. He had this talent, a dubious talent, but one that gained him notoriety from the upper echelons of management to the lower depths of the clerical pool.

He was a highly skilled, well-adjusted man who could buffer the abuse of any and all tyrannical supervisors in the office. Whenever a difficult supervisor tore through subordinates to warrant their own circus cage they'd send The Ashtray in to work for them. Every term served was practically a Master's thesis in abnormal psychology.

 

The Ashtray had dark hair, dark eyes and kind of looked like a walking shadow. He was very quiet and seemed to slip in and out of every department he was sent to. And he did all the problem ones, from corporate to casual. Dressy to messy, he was sent there if there was a difficult, dysfunctional boss to defuse any problem situation.

He won awards, citations, got fancy silver badges, the works, but especially the drama. What amazed everyone was that after all the dust had settled, he managed to walk out of the office in one piece, looking younger and happier than the rest of his co-workers. It was 100% weird.

He first gained notoriety when he served as the assistant to Miss Felice, a manager who demanded that her computer be turned on before she arrived in the morning, the air conditioning turned up to her preferred temperature and her favorite music streaming playlist set at an acceptable volume.

But that wasn’t what made her difficult; it was her disbelief in anything she was told. Her mind processed everything people said as a lie, so if someone explained a problem to her she would ask them to tell her again, and then of course again. She would then dissect what they just said and pointed out the inconsistencies in what they explained in each version. It drove her previous assistants mad, many running out crying and calling in sick too times too many.

They sent The Ashtray to her. She liked his looks; she was single and blonde and its’ been said that blondes like dark men and dark women like blonde men. Once she got over her attraction to him she went to work on cracking his marble veneer.

When he answered her questions she made sure to interrupt his answers to unnerve him. Every reply to her stern questioning would be brought down by her outraged interruptions.

One Friday afternoon The Ashtray had his nose buried in a report he had to complete by 4 pm and many co-workers had left early for the weekend. Of course the boss made him stop drafting his report to explain to her why everyone was gone. She made him explain one more time, and then again…his responses were so flat and indifferent he killed all the fun out of her sadism. Disappointed, she chastised him for not being done with his report.

But all good things must come to an end, as Del transferred to another section to find a less micro-managing boss. The next one hew as assigned to was a different kind of strange.

Mr. Boswick was an odd man. He'd report to work two hours later than Del and ignore him for most of the morning as he worked. Occasionally Del walked by Mr. Boswick's cubicle and would see him: 1) meticulously trimming his fingernails, 2) arguing on the phone with his wife, who always hung up on him, only to get him to phone her back and argue more; and, oddly 3) he would be prone to sitting in front of his desk simply staring off into space.

He trimmed his fingernails every day even if there was hardly anything left to cut. They were done so loudly you could hear the incessant snipping down the hall. Not so loud were his arguments on the phone with his wife, which were always delivered in a hissing stage whisper.

"Abby? Abby? ABBY? ABIGAIL!!!"

Mr. Boswick would fortunately gain his second wind by 3 pm in the afternoon and suddenly assault Del with an insurmountable pile of work for him to tackle, apathetically oblivious to the fact that quitting time was in two hours. It dove Del The Ashtray mad.

Co-workers would join him for a smoke on his break and the same question would arise.
"Boswick's an asshole, Del. How do you put up with his bullshit?"
"It's just part of the job, I guess".
"No, this guy goes over the line. I'd report him to the Internal Affairs Committee".
"I'll think about it. I got to go".
"Yeah! He's probably timing you with his watch! Later!"

Occasionally Mr. Boswick and Del would attend meetings and sit together at the conference table. Whenever Del got up from his seat to give handouts to the attendees he had to rise up slowly. It was peculiar, but the reason arose from an episode at previous meeting.

"Del", Mr. Boswick chastised him, "I need to speak to you about your attitude".
"Why? What's wrong?"
"The way you got up from your chair. You looked so angry, everybody stared at me. Your chair spun around a few times! That makes us look bad, Del. If that ever happens again I'll write you up for discipline".

After being admonished about the "spinning chair" incident Del did a peculiar rise from the chair to prevent it from spinning around, which only made the attendants stare at him even more. The rise was not unlike a cobra rising from its wicker basket, a sort of vertical unfolding. Mr. Boswick still looked disgusted, anyway.

The Ashtray was taken away from Mr. Boswick and handed over to a new supervisor, a Mr. Schubert. How Mr. Schubert scaled the heights of supervisory status was never known because his spelling and grammar were a modest grammar school D grade level.

The Ashtray would occasionally correct Mr. Schubert, raising his ire.
"The memo will go out AS IS!"
After the Division Chief was copied on the email, she would call Schubert into her office and ask why would he send out a message with so many errors. Schubert called Del into the room and blame him for typing up his poorly written memo.

He was then made to apologize for arguing with Mr. Schubert. The Ashtray complied, feeling bitter resentment.

Things came to a head with them when the Ashtray planned a vacation a month in advance and Mr. Schubert decided the week before to take that very week off, too.

"Coverage, Del, coverage! Someone in our section needs to be here. You can't take off when I'm going on vacation. You're already on probation for sending out those poorly written memos. I'd watch my Ps and Qs if I were you. Just a friendly word of advice".

After that admonition he'd step out for an angry smoke and run into Miss Felice, smiling at him for the first time he'd known her.
"Oh, Del, things just aren't the same without you. I feel lost without my favorite assistant".

She continued for another minute telling him that she couldn't hold on to anyone as long she did with him. He wasn't surprised but just kept smiling that strange smile of his. Funny, the smile seemed believable but you could almost detect a few cracks beneath the surface of that smile.

Standing in front of the building, having his smoke, a co-worker sidled up.
"Schubert fucked with your vacation, you know? You should look into getting a lawyer, I'm telling you".
"What's that going to do?"
"You have to document every time you get disciplined, like keep a diary for every time he gives you shit and keep copies of every time he writes you up or threatens to write you up and maybe you should go to a psychiatrist and take time off for stress time taken off and then have the psych write you a report and..."

Schubert didn't last, either. The Ashtray was reassigned to a new supervisor, Mrs. Ganigher, a divorced mother who always demanded he sit next to her while she instructed him on how to type up a report. He had over ten years experience in drafting reports, but she needed him to sit right next to her while she tediously typed away, speaking to him as if he were her child. It was maddening.

"Now this is the way we title the report and format it", she would speak slowly as if he were simple. Co-workers would walk by the cubicle and look at him, then at her and roll their eyes.

Once Del was home sick and she called him, hysterical about not being able to find a file. He was doped up on flu medication and she screamed at him.
"How could you pick an important day like today to call in sick? I need to find that file. I know you know where it is! Tell me! Are you sure you don't know??? Sure you're sure?"

 

Mrs. Ganigher rarely bathed, so when it was time to attend a meeting she'd pull out a bottle of Evening Musk and spray herself like lice spray at the local jail. She also had a bad habit of pulling at the straps of her bra while talking to people, which always put them off from her and made them prefer to speak with him, which always made her insanely jealous.

 

Even an ashtray cracks and breaks and that day finally came. Mrs. Ganigher gave him three reports to draft and loaned him out to two more supervisors to transcribe their meetings. All of this work was due by the end of the day.

While he was processing all these reports Mrs. Ganigher kept interrupting him with important questions and a few stories of her porn-addicted teenage son. Finally it was nearing the final hour of the day and he only managed to draft two out of the five reports.

"WHY? WHY NOT??"
"I'll need more time", The Ashtray patiently explained.
"NO YOU DON'T. YOU TOLD ME YOU WOULD BE DONE BY THE END OF THE DAY AND YOU'RE NOT! DEL!!!"

"I'm going to need more time to complete this work".
"I've had enough of this bad attitude from you. We're going to see Ms. Adams about your sloppy output. I'm getting really fed up with it!"

The Ashtray's eyes got real big and he said, "No we're not. I'm not putting up with this anymore. You finish this fucking work!"
The Ashtray grabbed his jacket and walked out of the building, never to return.

He didn't take anything with him and that was pretty smart. If he had the company could have nailed him for stealing, but if he walked out without taking anything they couldn't put up anything against him.

This didn't go well with his wife, of course. When The Ashtray's wife found out he quit his job there went the medical benefits and the expensive vacations and the job security.

"HOW COULD YOU DO SUCH A STUPID THING? HOW COLD YOU JUST WALK OFF A JOB???"
"I had enough", he said, stammering a little bit. "You just don't understand".
"WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? YOU'RE AN IDIOT!"
"No, I'm not, we'll be fine. I have some money saved up".
'SO WHAT?? I WANT YOU TO APOLOGIZE TO ME RIGHT NOW FOR QUITTING YOUR JOB! I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER YOU'RE HAPPY OR NOT!"

"Look,. I've supported you all this time. Now it's your turn to support me, I mean-"
"OH, FUCK YOU, DEL!"
She stormed out of the apartment, going to a Mexican restaurant where she'd meet up with some man she was seeing behind Del's back.

Del mumbled mutely to himself and looked around the empty apartment. He wanted to cry and he wanted to laugh, but he just mused on the futility of making unhappy people happy.

Instead, he picked up the phone, dialed a number and said, "Hi, this is Del Carver. I have twenty years clerical experience and have awards and citations. Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Creative Cloud and difficult supervisors a specialty. Please keep me in mind"....

 

What Is And What Should Never Be

"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
-Stephen King

While I understand that a gym isn't a gathering place for all persons and things intellectual there are times when I hear things that are a little too ridiculous to be believed. While I was flapping my pins on the thigh abductor I overheard some young guy talking to an older gent about his college courses.

"Yeah, I'm taking English at UCLA but I really want to write for movies and TV", the 22-year old crowed. "I like all kinds of movies and I know how to write for them". I guess everyone's entitled to their daydreams but nowhere in the conversation did this kid say what kind of books he read and what sort of novels he enjoyed. The entire realm of literature didn't come up once in the conversation. And he talked about becoming a writer.

Let's talk about the guys that wrote for the movies, the greats: Stirling Silliphant, Dalton Trumbo, Robert Towne, Rod Serling, Charles Brackett, to name a few. Did any of them say when they were young, "I want to write for the movies?" No, I'm pretty sure they dreamed of writing brilliant novels but somehow got roped into the screenwriting game. And I'll wager anything they all had extremely prodigious libraries full of books and spent all their leisure time reading them.

The scary part is when you ask a clueless guy like Gym Kid who his favorite writer is and he'll probably say "Hitchcock!" People like this are completely oblivious to the fact that if it weren't for the writing of Cornell Woolrich, Robert Bloch, Patricia Highsmith and Daphne Du Maurier, to name a few, there wouldn't even be anything for Mr. Hitchcock to film at all. He knew it, too: one of the first credits beginning each episode of his TV show names the writer of the story. Hitch even had a mystery magazine back in the day.

I once knew a hammerhead whose favorite mantra was, "I don't read books, I don't need books, I depend on my looks". What an asshole. Needless to say he now works in the motion picture industry.

Here's another story for you: Rebecca met a fast-talking blowhard who kept up about how he was going to write a novel and then write for the movies and went on and on about it and of course didn't divulge about what the hell he was writing.

"I couldn't stand him! You've already written two novels and this guy kept talking like he was King Shit just because he was starting some dumb novel he wouldn't talk about. I just wished he'd shut up!"
"I know how to shut him up", I said.
"How do you do that?"
"Ask him who's his favorite author", I smiled. "That always shuts them up".

One of my favorite mottoes is "In this place called Hell novels are written by people who don't read books". I'm not joking, either: we have friends who say, "I WROTE A BOOK ABOUT MY EXPERIENCES AS A STRIPPER IN SAN FRANCISCO". Okay, even if it's a memoir there needs to be plot development, character development (i.e. someone who started out as a rival becomes your best friend towards the second half of the book), fact checking, so on and so forth. And then what style is the book written in: Will it be funny sleaze like Bukowski, dark decadence like Hubert Selby Jr., erotically charged like Genet, what's your POV?

To say you want to be a writer without reading books is like saying you want to be Governor of California without knowing The Declaration of Independence (um, wait a minute, I just described Arnold Schwarzenegger, scratch that). It's like saying you want to play guitar without knowing who Les Paul, Hubert Sumlin, Chet Atkins or The Ventures are. Without an understanding of the history of your craft you're flying without a pilot's license, which means you'll crash and burn.

It also means your memoir of being a stripper in San Francisco will never be published. Read a fucking book. It'll probably change your life.

Illustrations by Rebecca Seven

Desert Island Short Stories

In 1942 the BBC programmed a radio show called "Desert Island Discs" where celebrities would come on and talk about what eight records they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Since then there have been millions of variations on that concept, and I'm going to borrow it myself to list ten of my desert island short stories.

Short stories probably have more of a chance to reach a larger audience than ever before due to the rapidly decreasing attention span in most people these days. You could probably get more people to read a short work of fiction than a full-length novel, which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering how many great short works there are waiting to be read and enjoyed.

It's also interesting how many writers are better served by the short fiction medium than they are by full-length novels, writers like Paul Bowles, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, John O'Hara, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and many more. I think brevity in storytelling wins the game every time.

Anyway, for all intents and purposes here are my ten favorite short stories I could read again and again if I were stranded on a desert island - kind of like Burgess Meredith in that Twilight Zone episode where he's alone in the library with millions of his beloved books after the planet's been blown up and everybody else is dead - in no particular order:

1. A Distant Episode - Paul Bowles: An American professor of linguistics arrives in an Arabic Maghreb town conducting a survey. Everyone is gruff towards him, but nevertheless he maintains a friendly demeanor. An irritable guide leads him to an increasingly darker part of the desert to buy local goods, where he is abandoned by the guide and abducted by a gang of thieves. The thieves tear out the linguist's tongue and tie a stream of tin cans around him like a common dog, making him perform tricks like an animal. Although he has been degraded to being treated like a common animal, even an animal eventually turns on its master.

One of the best things about this story is the way Bowles shifts the topography of the desert sets the mood of the story, ranging from bright and hilly to dark and flat. This is one of those short stories that stays with you forever.

2. Torch Song - John Cheever: Torch Song is told from the POV of a man named Jack who has a crush on a woman named Joan. Both newly relocated to New York City, Joan keeps spurning Jack as he watches her date creep after creep, Jack's love always unrequited by her. As she keeps turning him down he watches her descend lower and lower in her taste in men.

Well! This is as believable as it gets. I can't even count how many fucking losers I've known like Joan, sinking lower and lower into the toilet with their bad romantic choices. By the end of the story we finally get an idea why she picks the damaged men that she loves, and it's pretty creepy. I also loved The Chaste Clarissa, O Youth And Beauty!, and The Swimmer. John Cheever may be the greatest short fiction writer I've ever read.

3. Billenium- J.G. Ballard: The most claustrophobic story ever written, one where staircases are crowded with dozens of people living and sleeping in. Tides of people moving in waves against the direction the main character's headed in, a simple task of going somewhere takes hours! People sitting on top of each other like nests of roaches, it's one of the most powerful statements on overpopulation ever written.

4. Exactly Eight Thousand Dollars Exactly - John O'Hara: A wealthy industrialist gets a visit from his brother, a snotty, deprecating snob who's only dropping by to put the pinch on his brother. As the story progresses we discover that the corporate building was once a country club both brothers frequented in their youth. We also learn that the prosperous CEO was bullied mercilessly by his less industrious brother. The industrialist writes a check to get his brother out of his hair, the snobby brother maintaining an ugly, unrepentant attitude.

Although John O'Hara wrote many great short stories, this is my favorite. It's one of those stories that reveals more and more as you continue reading, not letting you really know the score until you reach the end. There's a rawness in the emotions and an ugly truth so many writers fear to tread.

5. Big Blonde - Dorothy Parker: Big Blonde is the classic tale of a woman who measures her self-esteem according to her ability to make men happy. Written in the Roaring Twenties, it is as relevant today as it was when it was first written. Big Blonde is the story of Hazel Morse, better known as Haze (dig the irony) who's the ultimate party girl, and like all party girls dumped by one man after another as the years go by.

It has often been said that both Dorothy Parker and Patricia Highsmith wrote misogynistic stories, but I don't think the men fare any better than the women in them. I believe both writers don't harbor any hatred for women, but more likely don't think much of women who use men left and right like Hazel Morse.

6. The Ice Palace - F. Scott Fitzgerald: Ice Palace begins with the main character Sally Carrol looking out her window in her home in hot and torrid South. Engaged to be married to New Yorker Harry Bellamy, she travels up to New York with him to visit his family and friends.

The trip turns into a revelation of sorts for Sally when Harry drops his guard and shows his snobby, insensitive side to her, cursing all Southerners among other things. On a cold and wintry night the pair go to a large auditorium carved out of ice to watch a hellish pep rally. Sally's snooty fiancee disappears during the rally into a dark, narrow channel of ice with Sally following him, eventually becoming lost in the cold, narrow darkness.

Ice Palace may very well be Fitzgerald's Fuck You to New York and literary society, depicting small town Southerners as a soulful bunch and meat head Yankees as a load of loud, boisterous Pagans. Maybe, maybe not. Nevertheless, Ice Palace is a brilliant work.

7. The Hyannis Port Story - Kurt Vonnegut: Published shortly before the Kennedy Assassination, Hyannis Port Story is a very funny story about old Commodore William Rumfoord, a staunch Goldwater Republican who's unlucky enough to be the neighbor to President John F. Kennedy's off-duty hideaway. The Commodore's already pissed off to death that his small hometown has turned into a shrine to the President complete with gift shops, noisy tour guides and even noisier tourists.

Yes, The Commodore is so pissed that tour guides refer to his house as "The Ugly One Next To The President's" that out of spite he posts a huge billboard of Goldwater's face with spotlights all around it. The last straw comes when The Commodore finds out from a Secret Service agent that his pride and joy son has been sneaking around with a Kennedy relative.

I liked this Vonnegut story over his others because he didn't seem to try as hard as he did with others. I felt a very effortless humor in this one that I found very appealing. I also liked Next Door and The Foster Portfolio, too, and Vonnegut's sense of humor never fails.

8. Memory In White - Budd Schulberg: Washed-up boxer Young Pancho Villa The Third makes a go at being a ring announcer by buying a white suit and a megaphone in a pawn shop. He shows up at the gym he used to box at and announce all the fighters sparring in the ring. Trouble is he has a thick Puerto Rican accent as well as a sever speech impediment. Through the miracle of annoying persistence he graduates from gym announcer to all-time ring announcer. His debut as a legit ring announcer is of course met with tragedy.

Schulberg was a genius at capturing the sounds and mood of the New York streets, never romanticizing them but breathing them to life, warts and all. Although he will always be known as the writer of On The Waterfront and A Face In The Crowd his short works definitely deserve to be rediscovered.

9. Confessions Of A Man Insane Enough To Live With Beasts - Charles Bukowski: Probably the most compressed version of the Bukowski legend that many remember from the Barfly and Factotum movies. There's the story of his awful skin problems, even more awful jobs held at rock-bottom wages, and the girl he meets in a bar who brings him home to the nutty old yacht-boating sugar daddy. Everything you ever wanted to read about Bukowski is distilled in this 21-page story.

10. The Monster - Stephen Crane: This is actually a novella rather than a short story, but I added it here, anyway. Henry Johnson is the black coachman for a well-to-do white family in upstate New York. He forms a strong bond with the boss' four year old son, Jimmie Trescott, which supercedes any racial barriers. When Henry isn't working for the white family he courts the prettiest black girl in town and dresses like an absolute dandy.

While on his date the town goes into an uproar over a fire at the Trescott's house and Henry runs over to save Jimmie by racing into the burning house to save him. Consequently he is severely burned beyond recognition from the fire and has lost what was left of his sanity. Out of guilt Dr. Trescott keeps him at home, away from prying eyes. The whole town, white and black alike have now ostracized Henry Johnson for his disability in spite of the fact that he committed a completely charitable act.

The Monster is a brilliant mediation on racism, societal intolerance and personal guilt. It's arguably Stephen Crane's finest work, a writer more people should seek out. The Blue Hotel and The Open Boat are pretty brilliant, too.

Unfortunately I've left out many great short fiction writers like Graham Greene, Joe R. Lansdale, Harlan Ellison, Elmore Leonard, Bernard Malamud and Raymond Chandler, to name a few, but that's the beauty of libraries and books. There are a million stories to be told and it's all in your grasp, anytime, anywhere. Even on a desert island.

YA Noir: Teenage Wasteland Lit

One of the most exciting discoveries I’ve made in reading lately is an increase of roman noir elements in Young Adult (YA) novels. Although they’re lacking in the familiar femme fatale theme commonly used in noir, these books nevertheless play the same old themes – crime, paranoia, and soul-wrenching guilt - once mined by such noir masters as Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Cornell Woolrich.

If someone can lay claim to being the originator of this style it would be S.E. Hinton, author of teen classics The Outsiders, Rumblefish, and That Was Then, This Is Now. Rumble Fish was a cool movie that looked a lot like Robert Frank’s The Americans and had Mickey Rourke perfecting his Richard Hell impersonation with Tom Waits doing a Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe routine, whilst listening to Wall Of Voodoo and The Police jamming on the soundtrack…very new wave…totally Eighties. Then there’s the book.

S.E. Hinton writes more like a noir writer than a YA one, complete with flashbacks, delusional madness and death. Her uncanny ability to get into a teenage boy’s mind and do so with intensive insight is nothing short of remarkable.

Rumble Fish was written in the Seventies so I imagine more of a burned-out Motorcycle Boy fried by too many Boones Farm empties, dozens of Testors glue tubes, and scratchy Steppenwolf records. Whichever spin you put on Rumble Fish it’s one of the best tomes in the Teenage Wasteland bookshelf.

That Was Then, This Is Now is a coming of age story that's equal parts "The Hustler", "Rumble Fish" and the Jack Kerouac-Neal Cassady bromance legends. Two punks grow up = one goes straight, the other gets crookeder, the story's been told many times before. But S.E. Hinton gives it a fresh spin setting it in Vietnam War-era hippiedom so you get psychedelic painted Volkswagen buses and Roger Corman-style drug den crash pads. As is the case in all noir books everything explodes at the end because hip kids never win and squares always spin.

Another major voice in YA noir is the late Robert Cormier, whose tales of teenage despair are even darker, so much so that several of his books have been banned from school libraries for their bleak vision of youth gone mad. His most famous work was The Chocolate War, but my favorite work of his is Tenderness.

Tenderness might well be the pinnacle of YA Noir with Robert Cormier holding court as its master. An amazing work, it's the story of a lovesick teen runaway who stalks an unrepentant teenage serial killer with dreamboat looks after he's sprung from juvie. Ironically they met several years previously when she caught him nuzzling a girl who was about to be his next kill.

Cormier's work is extremely dark and complex. You don't need to be a pimple popper to dig this genius murder story, in fact, calling Cormier a YA writer is a lot like calling Cornell Woolrich a crime writer. Also recommended is a strange novel called Heroes, about a teenage war veteran (in by 16, out by 18) with a disfigured face who returns to his hometown stalking the pro-war motivational speaker that talked him into enlisting and stole his girlfriend in the process, with the intention of killing him. Crazy as hell!

More famous examples of the YA Noir genre would be Paranoid Park written by Blake Nelson and directed into a motion picture by Gus Van Sant. Paranoid Park is a brilliant YA noir about a skater boi from the 'burbs who accidentally kills a security guard at a railyard. The murder ironically creates a rite of passage making him question his existence, his values and everyone in his orbit. Tightly written with no room for chaff, this is the best noir I've read in ages and could teach those fedora wearing old farts a thing or two.

Also well known is Mysterious Skin written by Scott Heim and made into a motion picture by Gregg Araki. A flawed masterpiece that continuously treaded on fragile territory, sometimes making it through the high wire act and other times falling ass over elbows into the circus net below. The fragile territory is child molestation by a Little League coach with the aftermath as told by two different boys: Brian, who grows up somewhat asexual obsessed with UFOs and aliens, and Neil, a promiscuous teen hustler.

There's something kind of weird about calling a book like this beautiful but there are passages that are downright poetic and gorgeous. It's just that there are parts that will trouble many, like the fact that Neil the Hustler had homosexual urges prior to his molestation, so it's implied somewhat that he "wanted it". Maybe Mr. Heim thought this urge would somehow take him off the hook -but the whole idea is so shaky.

I actually bought right into the whole story until the last three pages when it's revealed that both boys engaged in a certain activity that no 8-year old would agree to without collapsing into spasms of hilarious laughter. The fact that it's told in such a drop dead serious and manipulative fashion - with Christmas carolers singing in the background, even! - turned the whole ending into an unintentional parody. It’s still a great book and worthy of your attention.

Older, less popular examples of YA Noir would be “Giveaway” by Steve Fisher, an absolutely brilliant Fifties noir about a teen runaway in Hollywood who falls in with an aging hustler, her daughter, and countless Vaudeville burnouts working the TV quiz show circuit.

“Giveaway” recalls Horace McCoy at his finest in depicting small-time chiselers seeking fame and fortune at the lowest rung in Hollywood. Corruption in the game show biz is in large supply here, too. The book's ironically timely in this age of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and all the other migraine contest shows.

You’ll have fun guessing the thinly fictionalized locations in the book like Clifton’s Cafeteria, RKO/Desilu Studios, Sy Devore, Wallich's Music City, and the Hollywood-Highland Rexall Drugs. I’d say this is the best Steve Fisher novel, way better than “I Wake Up Screaming”. Highly recommended.

Then there’s The Fourth Angel by John Rechy, the toughest book about teenagers ever written. A pack of outcast teens dare each other to play vicious games with strangers they brutalize and degrade in a haunted house. The sexual lines are crossed and double-crossed by them. John Rechy outdid "City of Night" with this one, and that's saying a Hell of a lot!

While teen despair is nothing new these books serve up something extra-intense and daring to the show, and I don’t mean a bunch of B-movie vampires and werewolves falling in love. There’s a depth and maturity to these characters and the story they tell that’ll frighten all the grown-ups, case in point Mr. Cormier’s struggle to even get his books available to his audience. When literature poses that much of a threat to American society then it’s more vital and subversive than any punk rock record ever cranked out.

French Crime Time

It’s simply a matter of propinquity, but lately I’ve discovered a lot of great crime novels and movies this past summer, all produced in France. Nobody renders crime stories the way the French do. Their slant on noir is unique for two reasons I can think of:

1. They are the biggest fans of noir, bigger than America. Writers like Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson and David Goodis have enjoyed greater popularity there than in their home country. Many American noir novels have been adapted into film on a routinely regular basis, so as a result their influence on modern French crime writing is considerable; and,

2. The French have always suffused their noir with erotica, so in addition to all the cold-blooded misanthropy the story-telling serves heaping dollops of sex. Many of the books and movies listed below have strong sexual activity in them that serve the stories well.

One of my discoveries this past summer was the works of Sebastien Japrisot, a highly successful, award-winning writer who’s virtually unknown in the United States. That’s a shame, because he’s a brilliant story-teller and deserves to be read by more people. My favorite books by him are:

One Deadly Summer, the tale of a beautiful but amoral girl who moves into a small town and marries into a family that she believes played a role in brutally attacking her mother. In the course of her revenge there’s lots of Brigitte Bardot-styled sex shenanigans.

Trap For Cinderella, a tale of two girls, one rich and beautiful, the other poor and plain, trapped in a house fire in the South of France (where else?). One girl survives with her face reconstructed and her memory lost. Which girl survived the fire? An inheritance of millions is at stake, so if the poor girl survived she’ll require lots of training from an insane female guardian.

The Lady In The Car With Glasses And A Gun, a timid yet beautiful secretary drives off with the boss’s expensive American convertible, picking up hitchhiking gigolos near the South of France (here we go again!), having her way with them and finding a dead body in the trunk of the car.

Another great crime writer is Jean Patrick Manchette, whose novel Fatale is the bizarre tale of a female hitman losing her grip on sanity. She stops in a small upper-class village and foregoes the chance to blackmail the richest citizens after having a meltdown and simply kills them methodically, one after another. This one also had some surreal touches in them, as well, like the professor who serenely urinates all over the banquet room wall in one chapter.

Right around this time I also caught TCM’s Summer Under The Stars series on the day they highlighted crime star Jean Gabin. They screened Jean Renoir’s classic film, La Bete Humaine (Human Desire), a great noir with a brilliant performance by Gabin. The film has a recurrent theme of a speeding train during scenes of murder and lovemaking. The love interest is played by Simone Simon of “Cat People” fame, and she’s also very good in it.

Another Gabin film I saw was Georges Simenon’s The Night Affair, a hipster noir about a police inspector who falls in love with a strung-out jazz singer who frequents a beatnik night club. Made in the Fifties during Gabin’s older years, it has that weird French underground vibe with a TV detective show vibe (think “Johnny Staccato”) combined. I liked it a lot, and of course there’s lots of sexy Fifties gals like Nadia Tiller in it to keep it French and noir.

The French love for noir is the stuff of legend. Film critics have always professed their love for film directors like Anthony Mann, Robert Aldrich (“Kiss Me Deadly” being a big favorite), Sam Fuller, and many others, while upper-echelon directors like Francois Truffaut have directed noir classics like “Shoot The Piano Player”, “The Bride Wore Black”, and “Mississippi Mermaid”.

I really like the French spin on noir and intend to investigate more great stuff that hasn’t enjoyed enough popularity in our country. What we take for granted here in the States is a revered genre in France, and sometimes we need the superfans to remind us what an important art form it is.