Westlake Score and Review: 361 by Donald E. Westlake (T. V. Boardman, 1962); Denis McLoughlin Cover

NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog. Also featured as one of this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

As anyone who's been following Existential Ennui for a while will know, I've been avidly collecting Donald E. Westlake first (and other) editions – both his "own-brand" books and his Richard Stark, Tucker Coe et al pseudonymous works – since 2010. It's got to the stage now where there are probably only a handful of Westlake novels I'm still keen to obtain in first edition or hardback, and that shortlist has shrunk even further with the acquisition of a book that was top of my list to get my greasy paws on in British first:

Published in hardback by T. V. Boardman in the UK in 1962 (the same year as the US Random House first edition), 361 was Westlake's third novel under his own name, following The Mercenaries (1960) and Killing Time (1961). (It was also his third crime novel, Westlake having infamously quit writing science fiction in favour of crime fiction in the early '60s – at least for a while.) There were a couple of reasons why I was especially keen to get hold of 361, and this edition in particular, which I bagged on eBay a matter of hours after it appeared as a "buy it now" auction. For one thing, I'd heard it was among the best of Westlake's early works – which it most definitely is; I'll return to that in a moment – and for another, this edition sports a dust jacket designed by one of the greatest artists ever to illustrate covers in the UK: Denis McLoughlin.

McLoughlin was a prolific comic book artist and illustrator, producing well over 500 dust jackets for British publisher T. V. Boardman alone. I've written about him before, notably in this post on the jackets he designed for the Westlake novels Boardman published from 1961 to 1967; his wrappers were typically striking and inventive, making intelligent use of restricted palette, chiaroscuro and bold typography. With the acquisition of the 1961 Boardman edition of The Mercenaries (signed and inscribed, no less) I blogged about as a Westlake Score in January, there were only two Boardman Westlakes left on my list. Now there's only one. (As luck would have it, no sooner had I procured my Boardman 361 than another one popped up on eBay, but while my copy is ex-library – although only with a scattering of stamps to indicate that – its jacket is in nicer nick than the other copy. Still, if you fancy your chances, the auction is, as I write, in progress.)

As for the novel itself, not only is it one of the best of the early Westlakes, but one of his finest novels full stop. Westlake would, of course, strike literary gold later in 1962 with the first Richard Stark/Parker book, The Hunter, but in many ways the groundwork for the Parker novels was laid here: stripped-back prose, short, staccato sentences, and a blunt, unglamorous depiction of violence and its consequences. There is, however, a crucial difference in style and approach: 361, like The Mercenaries and Killing Time before it, is written in the first person, narrated by a protagonist whose peculiar quirks and idiosyncrasies give the novel its distinctive character and flavour.

Ray Kelly is that lead, newly discharged from the Air Force as the story opens and on his way to New York to meet his father. Ray's dad is inexplicably nervous when the two meet up, but Ray doesn't dwell on his anxiety – until the next day, when, as they're driving out of New York heading for their home town, a tan-and-cream Chrysler pulls alongside their Oldsmobile and a guy in the Chrysler sticks his hand out the window and starts shooting at them. A month later Ray wakes up in hospital having lost an eye and, his brother Bill informs him, his father. Shortly after that, Bill stops visiting Ray, and Ray is told by a nurse that Bill's wife has been killed in a hit-and-run.

Thereafter, Ray enlists Bill's aid in trying to find out why their dad – and seemingly Bill's wife – was murdered, in the process uncovering their old man's murky past as a mob lawyer. But it's Ray's reaction to the news of the death of Bill's missus that gives the earliest indication of what an oddball character he is: "'Oh,' I said. 'I never met her.'" He's a weird, detached, fascinating creation, even more twisted in his own way than the succession of shady types and gangsters he encounters in his quest for justice and the truth. At one point, whilst attempting to extract information from a frail pensioner, he bows his head, removes his glass eye, and looks up again, uttering the words, "I can see your soul this way. It's black." Following this gruesome piece of theatre, the old feller becomes the first of the bodies on Ray's hands.

But Ray's also disarmingly funny at times – like Parker, he gets irritated by people who take their time getting to the point, and some of his his sarcastic put-downs are priceless – not to mention strangely philosophical; attending a funeral, he narrates: 

So Saturday six hired pallbearers carried the coffin from the funeral home. There was no stop at a church for the suicide; he went straight out of town to a clipped green hill with a view of Lake Champlain, and into a hole which no priest had blessed with holy water. He would have to make do with God's rain.

When he's not offering philosophical bon mots, Ray rages around New York and the surrounding area leaving a trail of carnage in his wake. Halfway through the novel comes an explanation for his mean streak, and then an additional trauma that he accepts with his by-now expected stolidness, after which he does his best to embrace the badness within him. That he can't quite – not all the way, anyway – could be taken as an argument for nurture over nature, but it doesn't stop him meting out a furious vengeance on the man who brought such destruction on his life.

361 is a blistering, raw, visceral novel – part Peter Rabe, part Jim Thompson, but mostly just pure Westlake – and a big step up from both The Mercenaries and Killing Time, good though those books are. And speaking of Killing Time, having now reviewed The Mercenaries and 361, I reckon it's about time I reviewed the book which nestles in-between those two novels, so look out for that next week. In the meantime, the splendid Denis McLoughlin jacket for the Boardman edition of 361 has now joined his others in that Westlake/Boardman post and in the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery – and I have a bunch more McLoughlin dust jackets (of the non-Westlake variety) waiting in the wings, all of them wrapping spy novels, of which Boardman published a scattering in amongst their more traditional crime fiction. 

But I've a number of other dust jackets to add to the gallery ahead of those, some of which, before we return to the signed editions, I'll be unveiling in the next post...

Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd (Bloomsbury, 2012): Signed First Edition, plus Boyd and Bond

From a signed political memoir sent to me as a gift by my friend and fellow blogger Book Glutton, next in this series of posts on signed editions, a book which may well be of interest to Book Glutton, by an author who's currently writing a Bond novel...

This is the British first edition/first impression of William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise, published by Bloomsbury earlier this year. Boyd's eleventh novel, the reason this particular copy might be of interest to Book Glutton is because BG is a big fan of Boyd's work, and so he'll hopefully appreciate this:

The author's signature on the title page. I bought this copy on publication from Firsts in Print, but I must admit I haven't yet read it – in fact I've still only read one William Boyd novel: his 2009 thriller Ordinary Thunderstorms, which I liked a lot. I did, however, find a cheap first of his 2006 spy novel Restless in Bookworms in Shoreham the other week, so I'm more likely to try that ahead of Waiting for Sunrise, even though the latter does apparently feature elements of espionage. (Book Glutton, if you're reading this, and if you've read Waiting for Sunrise, do please share your thoughts on it in the comments.)

Speaking of espionage, in April of this year William Boyd was announced as the writer of the next official James Bond novel, following in the footsteps of Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver. Book Glutton expressed his disappointment at the news in this post, reasoning that Boyd writing a new Bond novel meant that he wouldn't be writing a new Boyd novel, but I'm actually cautiously optimistic, as Boyd's Bond book, unlike Deaver's (Carte Blanche, 2011, which I didn't get on with at all), will be period, i.e. set in 1969, which would place it just post-Colonel Sun, Kingsley Amis's rather good 1968 pseudonymous contribution to the Bond literary canon. Even more promisingly, Boyd cites perhaps the best of Ian Fleming's original novels, From Russia, with Love, as his favourite Bond novel. Given that Ian Fleming Publications seem intent on adding to the literary Bond's adventures, Boyd strikes me as an interesting choice to pen a Bond novel, particularly one that's set to be published in 2013, the sixtieth anniversary of Bond's debut in Casino Royale.

And of course before that, there's this:

Anyway, enough of all this Bonding. There'll be more signed editions soon, many of them by authors who are firm favourites here on Existential Ennui. Ahead of those, though: a Westlake Score-and-review...

In My Time by Dick Cheney, with Liz Cheney (Threshold, 2011): Signed First Edition

Let's crack on with the signed editions from my bookshelves, shall we? And this next signed book was actually sent to me by a friend and fellow blogger, who went above and beyond the call of duty to obtain the John Hancock in question...

This is the American first edition/first impression of former US Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir, In My Time, published by Threshold in 2011. It was a gift from Book Glutton, who, having read my series of posts on political diaries in September of last year, knew I had an interest in political autobiographies (and who probably wondered if I'd ever get round to blogging about the book, ingrate that I am; he sent it to me in November). Even given that my politics and the Vice President's are poles apart (on most things, at least – although that hasn't stopped me reading and enjoying political tomes in the past), I was still dead chuffed to receive this copy of In My Time, especially so in light of this:

Dick Cheney's signature on the title page (with Book Glutton's accompanying post-it note on the blank verso). There aren't that many signed copies of the memoir available: AbeBooks currently has fewer than ten, all of them in the States, and the majority of them being the Threshold limited-to-5,000-copies cased edition. My copy isn't one of those, however; it's the standard first edition, and was signed by the Vice President at Book Glutton's place of work.

BG, you see, works with, and is friendly with, Liz Cheney, the VP's daughter, and co-writer of In My Time. In the wake of the VP's book tour, BG spent quite a while trying to coordinate handing over a signed copy or two, but the stars never aligned. So eventually Liz frogmarched her father over to hers and BG's office to sign the books there, which BG was as astonished by as I was: as he told me, "One does not summon a Vice President to have him sign a book". The kicker being, BG wasn't in the office when the VP visited, and so missed meeting him. Gah!

Still, at least both he and I now have signed firsts, and it was very kind of BG, Liz and indeed the Vice President to make that happen; I'll certainly treasure my copy. And Book Glutton may well be interested in the next signed edition I'll be showcasing, as it's a novel by an author he's a big fan of...

Point Blank by Richard Stark (Allison & Busby, 2001): Double-Signed Edition

NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.

This week I'll have another selection of signed books for you to gaze upon (or possibly ignore, depending on your mood) – both fiction and non-fiction – along with another Westlake Score-and-review, this one even more exciting than last week's (well, to me, anyway). But before we get stuck into all that, and since we're on the subject of signed editions, here's a quick plug for a friend of mine's in-progress eBay auction. The book under the hammer isn't, as editions go, especially notable:

A 2001 Allison & Busby paperback of Point Blank (originally titled The Hunter) by Richard Stark, alias, of course, Donald E. Westlake. But what's remarkable about this particular copy are the signatures within:

It bears the John Hancocks of both Westlake and the director of the Lee Marvin-starring movie adaptation of Point Blank, John Boorman, making it, to my knowledge, the only item – book or otherwise – currently for sale online bearing both their signatures.

You can read how my friend came into possession of the book on his excellent blog, The Accidental Bookshop – and no, before you ask, I don't have any kind of stake in the eBay auction; I'd be bidding myself if I didn't already own far too many signed Westlake novels. (I will, however, be eBaying some of my books – Westlake and non-Westlake – down the line sometime, at which point I will be plugging the living bejeezus out of the buggers.)

Right then: back to my signed editions...

Notes from the Small Press 13: First, by Tom Gauld and Simone Lia (Cabanon Press, 2001)

NB: Featured as one of this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

In the wake of yesterday's signed copy of British cartoonist Tom Gauld's graphic novel Goliath, let's take another short break from the signed editions to spend a moment or three on Gauld's debut self-published comic, presented as part of my intermittent Notes from the Small Press series:

First was Gauld and fellow cartoonist Simone Lia's first foray into the world of small press comics, published under their own Cabanon Press imprint in 2001. At the time, the two friends were still studying at the Royal College of Art in London, and both have gone on to bigger things – Gauld with his regular work for The Guardian newspaper and books for Buenaventura Press and Drawn & Quarterly, Lia with the graphic novels Fluffy and Please God! Find Me a Husband for Jonathan Cape. But First was the, well, first glimpse of their particular, peculiar talents, and as such proved instructive as to what was to come.

Lia's main contribution to First is an eight-page story (untitled, like all the stories in the comic) about a woman who develops "road leg" – basically her left leg turns into a road – featuring a walk-on cameo by a talking table lamp who appears earlier in the comic. It's as odd as it sounds, but infused with a wiggly charm which would serve her well in the later Fluffy. Other than that, her remaining pages are all single illustrations, snapshots from what look to be longer works, although ones which possibly only exist in her imagination. Gauld's strips alternate between the goings-on at a remote castle keep – these would become the comic Guardians of the Kingdom later in 2001 – and the adventures – or lack thereof – of two astronauts travelling to the Moon. His signature style is already firmly established even at this early stage in his career: fantastical situations punctured by mundane banter and punctuated by stretches of stillness.

As beguling as Gauld and Lia's cartoons in First are, however, what really made the thing stand out from the majority of British small press comics of the era – at least for me – were its production values. Professionally printed and bound in a minimalist rough card cover, First was a cut above much of the photocopied mini-comix fare to be found on the shelves of London's Gosh Comics (which is where I'm pretty sure I bought my copy) – a comic that was clearly, and correctly, pleased with and proud of itself. In a way, the blunt anti-humour of Gauld's strips in particular, but also Lia's to a degree, were quite at odds with the look feel of the comic overall. A comic as well-produced as this would typically be published by Americans, its interiors containing the kind of opaque art comix seen in, say, Kramers Ergot (which Gauld would in fact begin contributing to as of the 2005 fifth volume, sticking out – in a good way – like a sore thumb).

If anything, however, Gauld and Lia probably owe more to British daily newspaper strips and cartoons (and maybe American ones; Gary Larson springs to mind in Gauld's case), or perhaps even scabrous humour title Viz, than they do to alt. or art comix. Theirs is a sensibility more in tune with Monty Python's Flying Circus or Spike Milligan: gags that aren't really gags; jokes whose punchlines never come. In other words, very silly, and very, very British.

First was followed, surprisingly enough, by Second in 2002, the two comics then being collected by Bloomsbury in 2003 as – wait for it – Both. Gauld and Lia continued pumping out fun little mini-comix through Cabanon Press over the following eight years, although latterly other commitments have meant that Cabanon has gone on hiatus. But First provides a peek at two talented cartoonists at a formative stage in their career, and over a decade on from publication still stands as an intriguing and rewarding comic in its own right.

It's back to the signed editions next on Existential Ennui, with a political autobiography that was actually given to me by a friend, plus a selection of signed fiction...

Notes from the Small Press 1: Fast Fiction Presents the Elephant of Surprise

Notes from the Small Press 2: Monitor's Human Reward by Chris Reynolds

Notes from the Small Press 3: Small Pets

Notes from the Small Press 4: Anais in Paris by Mardou

Notes from the Small Press 5: The Curiously Parochial Comics of John Bagnall

Notes from the Small Press 6: Ed Pinsent's Illegal Batman and Jeffrey Brown's Wolverine: Dying Time

Notes from the Small Press 7: The Comix Reader #1

Notes from the Small Press 8: A Help! Shark Comics Gallery

Notes from the Small Press 9: Some Gristavision Comics by Merv Grist

Notes from the Small Press 10: Some Sav Sadness Comics by Bob Lynch

Notes from the Small Press 11: a Review of Illegal Batman in the Moon

Notes from the Small Press 12: The Sky in Stereo by Mardou

Graphic Novel Review: Goliath by Tom Gauld (Drawn & Quarterly, 2012); Signed Edition

Back to the signed editions we go (after a Westlake Score), and following in the footsteps of Antony Johnston and Sam Hart's The Coldest City, here's another signed graphic novel, again by a British comics creator, again published this year, and also boasting a little something in addition to a signature...

Tom Gauld's Goliath was published by Drawn & Quarterly back in February, and unless I'm very much mistaken, at around 90 pages it represents the longest narrative Gauld has yet attempted. It's a reworking of the Biblical story of David and Goliath, which is one of those Bible stories that made an indelible impression on me as a kid, chiefly because of the indelible impression David's sling-hurled stone made in Goliath's forehead. Gauld tells the tale from the perspective of Goliath, who, in Gauld's version, is instructed by his Philistine commanders to read out a script to the Israelites facing the Philistines on the battlefield, challenging the Israelites to send out a champion to fight Goliath. Which is what, after fainting in shock (Gauld portrays Goliath as a gentle, usually desk-bound sort), Goliath does, attended by his young shield-bearer – and then waits. And waits. And waits...

That's pretty much it, but the beauty of Goliath – the beauty of Gauld's work in general – comes not in the plotting, but in the way Gauld depicts the downtime of life, the everyday ennui of existence, those in-between periods that, in truth, far outweigh the more memorable moments. Goliath and his shield-bearer while away the time waiting for a response from the Israelites discussing the size of Goliath's "you-know-what", or the state of disrepair of Goliath's armour, or the king's impending birthday. Furthermore, far from being raring to ruck, Goliath seriously considers running away.

It's all quietly beguiling and charming in that typically Gauldian deadpan sort of way (see also the work of Norwegian cartoonist Jason), but there's something else going on here, too – a gradually increasing sense of dread – because we know, as Gauld knows we must, that his gentle giant's days are numbered. And when he eventually meets his fate, it's all the more shocking for what's come before, emphasized by a visual reference to a contemplative early scene at the water's edge near the Philistine encampment.

I picked up this copy of Goliath in Forbidden Planet in London, spending some time going through the stock of the graphic novel on their shelves to find just the right one. Because at bottom left of the half-title page, each book had been signed and individually and uniquely illustrated – and this is the one I went for:

Goliath, standing on a hillock under a starry sky, holding his spear.

I've been following Tom Gauld's work for over a decade now, ever since his first self-published comic, produced in conjunction with his friend from art college and fellow cartoonist, Simone Lia, and titled, appropriately enough, First. So, in a Notes from the Small Press break from the signed editions, I thought we could take a look at that comic in the next post...