Re: RARA-AVIS:Westlake Pseudonyms

blumenidiot (blumenidiot@email.msn.com)
Sat, 5 Dec 1998 23:54:41 -0600 --Mark Sullivan wrote :

Westlake: he wrote a number of Monarch sex books as Edwin West. Now to
show you just how inexact this information is, I have read that Alan
Marshall was a Westlake soft-core pen name (there is one book listed as
co-written by Marshall and Sheldon Lord), but it is not identified in
the copyright card catalog as a pseudonym. Given that many (all?) of
these were probably works for hire, with the copyright owned by the
publisher, there was little reason to be very meticulous about recording
the true author on the form. As a matter of fact, many names that have
been confirmed were not initially identified as pen names, including
Block's Kavanagh and Westlake's Tucker Coe, Thomas J. Culver, Curt Clark
and J. Morgan Cunningham.

Was it commonly known that he wrote as Richard Stark initially? I think
Westlake used Curt Clark only for one sf novel. His other pseudonym, Samuel
Holt, was used to write four very soft boiled, non humorous mysteries.
Their protagonist was Sam Holt. Supposedly these are the only mysteries he
doesn't want grouped with all of his other books in mystery bookstores.
Mark Blumenthal

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