Mario wrote:
"What I see here is a microversion of the obnoxious dichotomy
between literature and popular fiction: it's all
literature."
Of course, this dichotomy was/is also upheld by the writers.
At least for Block and Westlake, these were all pseudonymous
works, while they reserved their real names for, say, Gold
Medal or Pocket. To his day, Block ducks questions about
which books he wrote (while Westlake is more forthcoming)
and, from what I hear, he also refuses to sign them. I found
it very surprising that Hard Case was able to convince him to
reprint a few. And I'm glad they did.
"By the way, much later than the early sixties Block
published a miniseries about a youngster who desperately
wanted to get laid... I forget the name of the protagonist,
but the novels were reprinted not that long ago."
That would be the four Chip Harrison books. The author, Chip
Harrison, dedicates the first, No Score (1970):
" To LAWRENCE BLOCK
"who is my favorite writer
"and who is as together a person as he is a writer and you
can't get much better than that"
The jacket copy compares this book about a 17 year old trying
to lose his virginity to Portnoy's Complaint, Catcher in the
Rye and Candy.
Mark
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