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RARA-AVIS: Review: "The Woman Chaser" by Charles Willeford



BOOK REVIEW

"The Woman Chaser" by Charles Willeford, Carroll & Graf, New York, 1992 
(first published 1960), paperback, 192 pp., $3.95, ISBN: 088184-556-6

The blurb quoted from a Village Voice review calls Charles Willeford 
(1919-1988) "the pope of psychopulp"; while this extravagant term is 
hardly adequate to describe Willeford's work as a whole, it does capture
well the essence of "The Woman Chaser". Older friends tell me that this is
the sort of book that used to be considered "soft porn" in the fifties
 - a quaint notion to readers of the nineties. The late Willeford, after
first achieving cult status in restricted circles, has come to be widely
regarded as a master of crime fiction - which, alone, would lend value to
this reissue. Fortunately, the book has considerably more than historic
interest.
  
This is the story of Richard Hudson, a used-car salesman who is sent to 
Los Angeles by his San Francisco company in order to start a branch there. 
Honest Hal, his boss, has given him carte blanche to pick a lot, hire
employees, and buy and sell cars - in other words, control of the purse.
For years, Richard has had the secret desire to make a film, and his return
to Los Angeles and money at hand ignite that desire to the point of obsession.

Enter Hudson's mother Alexandra, a sexy ballet dancer who looks and acts 
much younger than her age, and whom he has not seen for years. She is married 
to Leo Steinberg, a talented film producer and director who has fallen out of 
favor with Hollywood; Leo spends his days brooding and waiting for a phone call 
that never happens. The household, into which Hudson moves, includes also 
Leo's attractive teenage daughter Becky. The pawns move as follows: Hudson has 
a quasi-Oedipal attraction to his mother (with whom he eventually dances 
Bartok's "The Miraculous Mandarin" in the basement); young Becky virtually begs 
Richard Hudson to take her virginity, which he does with brutal disdain; Hudson 
admires Leo as an artist and father figure, eventually convincing him to try a 
comeback as a producer - with himself as scriptwriter and director. Initial 
financing consists of money borrowed by Hudson from the company and of Leo's
sale of a valuable painting - all he has left. The film, to be written and
directed by Hudson and supervised by Leo, is taken on by a studio for
production.

The remainder of the book is the story of the making of the film and its 
subsequent fate; the narration adopts a cinematic, suspenseful style as 
well. As the film is written, actors are chosen, and shooting starts, the 
atmosphere becomes distinctly darker; the protagonist's obsessions and
fragile state of mind create a sense of impending disaster, amply confirmed
by the final, apocalyptic fate of the film and its protagonist. 

Whatever its place in the history of innocence in America, this is a 
wonderfully trashy and suspenseful book. Minor Willeford it may be, but I 
would argue that it is still indispensable in order to understand the
author's strangely porous artistic continuum (just like minor Truffaut is
an integral part of that filmmaker's oeuvre). Even a casual reader will
notice that the virtues of the plot in "The Woman Chaser" are primitive
- which is not to say that they are not virtues. Yet primitive themes
can yield considerable results when in the hands of a master, and so it 
happens here. Willeford apparently had an unlimited supply of quirky,
unusual, dark-funny characters; he was also a master of lurid,
outlandish yet completely believable dialogue and situations. By virtue 
of his incantatory powers as a narrator, trash is turned into gold for 192 
pages. "The Woman Chaser" is a minor masterpiece in the noir style.

Reviewed by Mario Taboada
Copyright (c) 1997

Old Dominion University
taboada@math.odu.edu      



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