Nobody’s Perfect by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1977)

 

Tiny said to him, “You the driver?”

“The best,” Murch said, matter-of-factly.

“It was a driver got me sent up my last stretch,” Tiny said. “Took back roads around a roadblock, made a wrong turn, come up behind the roadblock, thought he was still in front of it. We blasted our way through, back into the search area.”

Murch looked sympathetic. “That’s tough,” he said.

“Fella named Sigmond. You know him?”

“I don’t believe so,” Murch said.

“Looked a little like you,” Tiny said.

“Is that right?”

“Before we got outa the car, when the cops surrounded us, I broke his neck. We all said it was whiplash from the sudden stop.”

Another little silence fell. Stan Murch sipped thoughtfully at his beer. Dortmunder took a mouthful of bourbon. Tiny Bulcher slugged down the rest of his vodka-and-red-wine. Then Murch nodded, slowly, as though coming to a conclusion about something. “Whiplash,” he commented. “Yeah, whiplash. That can be pretty mean.”

“So can I,” said Tiny, and the door opened again . . .

The Pressures of Life: Four Television Plays edited by Michael Marland (Longman Imprint Books 1977)

 

The Pressures of Life

Sometimes we feel that we are on top of life - able to follow our interests, succeed in our work, get on well with other people, and everything goes smoothly. At other times, we feel frustrated we cannot quite manage what is needed; we seem to hit problems that are beyond us; we feel overcome by “the pressures of life". These four plays all show people of today suffering in one way or another from the pressures of life today. The plays are by different authors, and were written for different series, but they each have “the pressures of life” in common, and in each we meet characters who are having difficulty coping.

Short plays on television are one of the most popular and probably one of the best art forms of today. The television screen has encouraged a form of realistic, compressed, and popular drama which explores contemporary characters in contemporary settings. The best of these have a depth of understanding of human nature and the predicaments that people get into that makes the play seem more than just a typical problem of the moment. Neil’s conflict with Fred Pooley in the first play, for instance, makes us think about the ways in which people’s pride and their prejudices affect their relationship with others. These are, above all, plays about people, people pushing against their surroundings and fighting the pressures of life.

The atmosphere of each play is different, and the reader should try to imagine the background of each. Speech Day depends on the atmosphere of an old-fashioned school building, just as A Right Dream of Delight depends on the cheery, bright comfort of a modern light factory, and The Piano on our sensing of Ada’s house, which is cramped but homely and comforting. Readers can build up a picture of each setting, not only the look, but the sounds of the schoolboys singing, and the demolition machinery' at work — all the details which are hinted at or described in the printed text and which the television screen would bring to life.

My Life Closed Twice by Nigel Williams (Faber & Faber 1977)

 

6.30 a.m. Monday

On most of them, you see, I want revenge. I want to make them suffer. Revenge first of all, on that guy at the publishers. I recall his letter as faithfully as I can. I can’t bear to get it out from the pile.

Dear Martin Steel,

   I'm afraid I’m returning The Good The Bad and the Indifferent to you. Some of us here liked it a lot, but none of us (alas!) enough to publish.

    Do let me see anything else of yours.

Ronald Jones

Like your wife or your mother or your father. Just so long as it isn't a novel, short story, play or poem I’d love to see it. I mean—who does Ronald Jones think he is? What does he do on his free evenings? I can see him now—in a fetching leather bum-freezer—sitting with a few chosen friends in Charco’s wine bar in Chelsea.

And who, while we’re at it, are “some of us”? A sandpit full of trendies, up there in Bedford Square or wherever they hang out, lounging around like the last days of the Roman Empire and sneering at Manuscripts Received? Or is it just a stupid way of saying “Me”? Ronald Fucking Jones. Probably never even tried to write a novel. The ultimate one-upmanship.

Like the other week when I was with a Minor Poet, we met Davies, a zealous Talks Producer from Radio. It was about half past nine at night and the Minor Poet and 1 were having a steak in the canteen, prior to recording some of his verse. There, at a table in the corner, was Davies, moustache drooping, stooped over a plate of soup.

“What goes on?" I asked.

“Oh,“ says Davies, “just doing some typing."

Suspicious. So I said, lightly and airily to the Minor Poet, as we made our way down to the studios,

“I bet he’s writing a novel."

“Oh they’re all writing novels at the BBC," says the Minor Poet, “only none of them are any good, are they?" And he looked at me keenly.

I knew then that he’d rumbled me. How in God’s name does one conceal the fact that one writes novels? I really have tried to look as if I do something else with my leisure hours. I really have tried to do something else with my leisure hours actually but that’s not the point. The fact or point is that I have written about fifteen novels in the last five years. About a million and a half words. And, all around my room, stuck to the walls, the ceiling, the floor even, are short, pithy letters on thick paper, all beginning “Dear Martin Steel" why do they always use both names as if you were a kid at school?), and all of them saying, in one way or another “Piss off with your bloody awful books." Here's another:

Dear Martin Steel,

Yes I’ve read the two novels. I found Down The Corridor too long, and although I loved some of the dialogue and many of the set pieces from The Jellabies Move To 22a Camden Hill Gardens, I felt the joke didn't quite hold for two hundred pages!!!

Yours,

Elizabeth Jones

Elizabeth Jones. Probably a relation of Ronald’s. Probably his sister. And what makes the thing so bad is that Elizabeth Jones is, or was, my agent. A woman greatly loved by other rattlesnakes in the Literary World because (quote) of her “in-built shit-detector". Sure she’s got an in-built shit-detector—she detects shit and sells it to various publishers at enormous gain to herself. Only the other rattlesnakes in the Literary World call this “being in touch with things’’.

Just a couple more letters before I get on with the business proper. One of the mealier variety from a creature who works (believe it or not) at the BBC. Last year, as a desperate resort, I took to writing for television. It seemed such an easy option. One simply writes “Interior. Day. Brighton.” and there one is. I wrote a long (and quite funny) piece about a man who grows a pair of symbolic breasts and sent it to an acquaintance of mine from the Drama Department. Here is his reply:

Dear Martin,

  Now you’re really going to hate me for this! You see, I think Serenade on a Rainy Day is a good idea and a well written idea, but I think you haven’t really come to terms with what television wants from a play (if you see what 1 mean). One has to do things that one feels it right to do now and I think that is the situation one is in here (really).

 

   If we want to be particular I think that when David meets Julie on the station, from that moment on we really are unsure as to whether he is only doing this for Karen or whether his antics in the Department are a factor. And once that is exploded the whole David/Karen thing is no go.

Agree?

Paul

P.S. Let’s meet and talk.

Let’s not, Paul. Let’s avoid each other for ten years, and, at the end of that period I will supervise a small but tasteful ceremony at which slices will be cut off your behind and served (with garlic bread) at a hootenanny for Script Editors. And, while we’re at it Paul, when my sixteenth novel hits the bookstalls and you’re catching up with my (unlisted) phone number—you will not get so much as an Italian meal out of me. When you ask for the Television Rights, I shall refer you to my new agent, a Greek half-wit from Camden Town, whose only other authors are world-famous playwrights and celebrities. I will make you crawl, Paul. Agree?

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1977)

Someone had murdered a Munchkin. The little man was lying on his back in the middle of the yellow brick road with his startled wide eyes looking into the overhead lights of an M.G.M. sound stage. He wore a kind of comic soldier’s uniform with a yellow coat and puffy sleeves and a big fez-like blue and yellow hat with a feather on top. His yellow hair and beard were the phony straw color of Hollywood. He might have looked kind of cute in a tinsel-town way if it hadn’t been for the knife sticking out of his chest. The knife was a brown-handled kitchen thing. Only the handle was visible.

Bullet for a Star by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1977)

My face was in my favor. I badly needed a haircut, but sometimes the slightly wild look was just what a client wanted in a bodyguard. My nose had been broken at least three times, once by a baseball thrown by my brother, once by a wind-shield and once by a fist thrown by my brother, in that order. But at five foot nine, the nose was a valuable asset. It announced that I had known violence.

Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (NYRB Classics 1977)

"I am unarmed," said Lorque. "I want to talk to you. Listen here, I don't deserve to die. What have I done except follow the natural impulses of the human race? And even that is saying a lot. We are choirboys compared with our ancestors. Does the sack of Cartagena ring any bells with you? Some of Bléville's bold seafarers were there. I'm not talking about the first sack of Cartagena, that was Sir Francis Drake, but the second, when the French did the sacking. What I've done is nothing alongside the sack of Cartagena. Okay, so I worked a bit on the Atlantic Wall, I had to keep a low profile in South America for a while, then I came back and I've been giving employment to workers and making land productive. I've made my pile in the usual way. Just tell me one outrageous thing, one truly criminal thing, in what I've done, in what the baron had in his files, just name one!"

"I haven't read the baron's files," said Aimée. Lorque tensed and listened hard, apparently striving to determine the precise source of the young woman's voice. "I couldn't care less," Aimée observed. "Do you really imagine I'm interested in your crimes and misdemeanors? You must be joking!"

Laidlaw by William McIlvanney (Pantheon Books 1977)

'I'm going to miss the compassion you bring to the job,' Harkness said.

Milligan was looking out at the passing scene with a kind of sunny malice.

'No,' he said. 'Where you're going you'll get plenty of that. Laidlaw? You'll have to wear wellies when you work with him. To wade through the tears. He thinks criminals are underprivileged. He's not a detective. He's a shop-steward for neds. It'll be a great experience for you. Boy Robin meets Batman.'