Doug,
Re your comments below:
"I, THE JURY has a great beginning and a great ending, but
the rest of it is really a lot of vamping to the finish. The
beginning of ONE LONELY NIGHT is, I think, the single best
sustained piece of writing Spillane ever did, but it soon
descends into a lot of cliched anti-Communism which, no
matter how you feel about the subject, feels like a real
comedown in intensity. VENGEANCE IS MINE is an
extraordinarily interesting book, and a cultural critic could
have a field day with it, but it's absurdly dated and
certainly has lost a lot of it's punch."
I quite agree with your comments about ITJ, and, in fact, I
think I've said much the same thing here. I also agree about
the opening of OLN, although I think the intensity is
maintained quite well throughout the novel. My one complaint
about that book is that I though Spillane was way too easy on
the commie filth.
VIM is certainly dated, but I don't know about ABSURDLY
dated. It's a long build-up to a surprise ending that isn't
revealed until the last word in the book. I think it might
have worked better a short story than as a novel, but the
fact that Juno's particular quirk is has gotten more exposure
in the last half-century or so, robbing the ending of a lot
of its shock power, doesn't make it aburd, just of its
time.
"Even the two books of his I like the best, MY GUN IS QUICK
and THE TWISTED THING can't be said to be successful in terms
of plot. You can guess the villain in GUN by sheer process of
elimination, and THING gives away the game in the very
title."
I'm not going to argue that plot construction was Spillane's
greatest strength. Clearly it wasn't. What's interesting to
me, though, is that the plots ARE constructed, (maybe not
well-constructed, but constructed) as fair play puzzles, with
the villain unrevealed until the end, and the clues needed to
identify the villain given to the reader as the novel
progresses. Spillane, in his way, is playing at the same game
as Queen, Christie, and Carr. Not playing in their league, of
course, but playing the same game.
I'm not sure I agree that THE TWISTED THING (one of my
favorite Hammers, too) gives away the solution in the title,
though. Having said that, perhaps the original title, FOR
WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY, would have been better, more in
line with the Biblical-Avenger tone of titles like I THE
JURY, VENGEANCE IN MINE, MY GUN IS QUICK, etc.
Another interesting thing about TTT, considering that it was
the second Hammer novel written (though not published until
the mid-60's), is how comparatively mellow Hammer is. There's
little sign of the the psychically damaged figure on OLN,
still agonizing over his final dispatching of the killer in
ITJ. In fact, the Hammer of TTT actually fits better into
the
'60's run of books, in which Mike has come to terms with the
kind of life he leads, and has relaxed a bit.
"The first thing I want to say about Spillane is that he is a
writer of moments. For all of his pose as the consummate
self-depracating tough guy professional, he is in fact
something of a Romantic -- by which I mean his work, when
it's good, is good due to it's deliberately heightened
pitches of emotion. Nobody can sustain that kind of level
over a length of time, which is why even the best Spillane
novels have draggy patches. A Spillane novel builds to a peak
-- it's also no accident that a lot of his best moments are
endings."
Some of Spillane's strongest work comes during the supposed
"long silence" betweem KISS ME, DEADLY IN 1952 and THE DEEP
in 1960, when he supposedly had stopped writing altogether.
In fact, he was keeping his hand in writing a number of short
stories, and at least one Spillane scholar has suggested that
the novella length suited him best precisely because it was a
length at which the high emotional pitch could be sustaine
throughout the work.
"(There is still a notion in some circles that Spillane was
some kind of grunting clodhopper, but THE TWISTED THING I
think is the final refutation of that. It is a well-written
and well plotted -- I think his best job of plotting,
actually. It covers a world that Spillane mostly did not deal
with and did it credibly. Of all things, Spillane is actually
quite good at descriptions of nature.)"
And, again, that it is such a well-written and comparatively
well-plotted novel is particularly remarkable given that it
was only his second book, written immediately after
ITJ.
Rural descriptions, and rustic, natural settings, are also
more common in his short work.
"The other thing I want to say about Spillane is this. The hb
novel has as it's engine a process of uncovering. Generally,
the protagonist reveals the truth of the world, which is seen
to be far worse that what surface reality presents. Usually
the truth of the world is unconquerable: the hb protagonist
basically just makes his/her seperate piece with it.
(While conversely the noir protagonist is subsumed by the
'truth.' But I saw there was a whole discussion of that here
already, don't want to open that up again.)"
Just as well, since you're dead wrong on both counts. The HB
isn't necessarily about uncovering truth, nor is noir about
being subsumed by truth.
"What Spillane did was take that uncovering to a kind of
poetic conclusion. Hammer is constantly uncovering Hell,
basically. And I mean that in the religious sense of the term
-- in MY GUN Hammer and his bad guy are literally in flames
screaming. (The books are constant knocking out of the props
of the world: love, women in general, respectable old men,
children, etc. What's revealed is corruption, yes, but
corruption in a sin-and-damnation sense. Twisted thing,
indeed.)"
Perhaps this world-view, clearly in place prior to his highly
publicized religious conversion, is what led him to a sect
like the Jehovah's Witnesses.
JIM DOHERTY
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