> >Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 16:59:13 -0500
> >To:
rara-avis@icomm.ca
> >From: Bruce Southworth <
bruces1@mindspring.com>
> >Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS Digest V3 #739
> >
> >
> >Hubin's Crime fiction index 3 (which goes thru
1995) does have listings
> >for Belmont as a publisher but has no reference
for 'The Machine in Ward
> >Eleven' either under Willeford or his pseudonym
of Will Charles. There is
> >a passing reference to 'The Machine in Ward
Eleven' in "Pulp Culture: Hard
> >Boiled Fiction and the Cold War" by Woody Haut,
but no publisher listed.
> >
> >Interestingly, there is no mention at all of
Willeford in either Barzun's
> >"A Catalogue of Crime" (revised and enlarged
ed.) or, the new "Oxford
> >Guide to Crime and Mystery Writing" ed. by
Rosemary Herbert.
Part of the problem with looking in sources such as these is
that -- rightly or wrongly -- the collection "The Machine in
Ward Eleven" is generally considered "science fiction", even
though it's not labelled as such on the paperback. At least
I'd heard of this legendary (and rare) book in science
fiction fandom years before I was sucked into mystery genre,
and thence Willeford.
One thing that lead me to go to considerable lengths (and
some expense) to get a copy was that I'd heard about subject
matter of the title story. You see my father, as a result of
a quote nervous breakdown unquote in 1949-50, underwent
electro-shock 'therapy' -- twice. I was only a kid, 6 or 7,
but I _knew_ that the man who came out was not the same as
the man who had gone in. (It was at that point that I
consciously determined that I would
_never_ loose control to an extent that *they* could justify
doing _that_ to _me_. It hasn't always made my life
easy....)
I don't know how Willeford "researched" this tale but, as the
Brits on another List would say, it was spot on.
[This volume -- he said, just having received DELIVER ME FROM
DALLAS! last week -- is rare enough that McMillan should
consider reissuing it.]
--- Bill Bowers | <Bill@Outworlds.net>
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