Thursday, November 11, 2010

Charles Willeford on Mulholland Books

Mulholland Books, the new crime imprint of Little, Brown, has been hosting a great blog since the imprint launched. It has musings about noir, appreciations of writers, fiction, interviews, and more. Today, they were kind enough to run a piece of mine on one of my favorite writers, Charles Willeford. Even if you don't want to read about Willeford, it's worth looking at the piece to see two of the pulpy covers from Willeford's books (and a photo of the writer himself). Here's the lead...

When I hit certain moments in works by Charles Willeford (1919–1988), I feel like the top of my head is going to rip right off. This is my brain teetering on the strange mental precipice that is the hallmark of Willeford’s odd and destabilizing fiction.

Read more...

(Addendum: Piece highlighted online in the Oregonian's books section: "Portland writer Doug Levin on Charles Willeford's crime classics.")

4 comments:

Evan Lewis said...

I'll be plugging your article - and tossing up a whole gallery of Willeford covers - on Saturday. Stop by the Almanack and check them out.

Doug Levin said...

Thanks! I'm looking forward to seeing all the covers, too. The covers and titles of the early Willeford novels made promises not quite fulfilled by the writing itself. Richard Hudson is not much of a "Woman Chaser" and there is only one wife in "Wild Wives."

JT said...

Belated thanks for the article, great reading.

To lose Willeford
We can ill afford

Doug Levin said...

JT -- Thanks for your comment. Glad to see Wit's End getting some Willeford out in ebook. I was recently paging through WE's "The Second Half of the Double Feature." I remember your posts from my Rara-Avis days about a decade+ ago. Hope all your ventures are going well.