Few months ago, IIRC there was a thread discussing here about
the early works of Westlake and his "erotic" novels were
evoked -as well as his reluctance to admit he did it (and
more than once) protected by some pseudos at the time.
When in 2006 he was in France for a promotion
tour, and during an interview he declared, after a question
asking him if it's true that during the sixties he wrote
erotic lit., Westlake declared (freely re-translated, as I
was not there during the interview):
"At my early beginning, indeed. I was part of
this group of writers which had to write fast things that
could be sold fast. Lawrence Block was among them also.
So, in order to make a living I wrote indeed some
of this kind of stuff. Different kind of books. And a lot of
short stories, mainly for paperbacks.
Yes, it was erotic lit., but not very hard,
without the strong or too vulgar words: very soft !
And I can tell you it was very difficult to write
a 50,000 words novel without having the possibility to use
the correct words to tell things…"
I stumbled recently again on this interview
published in a French fanzine, and thought it may give some
light about what Donald Westlake thinks to-day about these
early works.
E. Borgers
POLAR NOIR
http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
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