Just finished I MARRIED A DEAD MAN. Woolrich writes
beautifully and the irony at end was drop-dead wicked, but
the writing was a bit melodramatic for me. I guess a steady
diet of hardboiled has left me with calloused emotions. I
just couldn't understand all the commotion over one dead guy.
But I blame my own tastes and not the quality of Woolrich's
prose.
I've seen one of the original pulp covers for the book, and I
can't help but think that it made the author cringe. It makes
it look like a horror novel and she's married to the walking
dead, and people expecting what they saw on the cover
(commercial and exploitive?) were bound to be disappointed. I
know Chandler hated the pulpy covers they put on his books.
He thought it was like dressing up a respectable lady like a
streetwalker.
miker
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