Theodore Tinsley's multivalent pulp patter
"`If you wanta slip me the dough—I'm his babe.'"First I was dizzy with the heady fizz of the slang. Then the pathos hit me, and the harshness, before a return to the hard glitter of the slang, with the final line. I'd call that a nice summation of the pleasures to be derived from pulp writing. Good job, Ted Tinsley.
"She was his babe—and he left two days ago—he must have come back and left all over again according to the Swede in the cellar. What the hell were they all lying about?
"Tracy looked keenly at her eyes, the nervous hands, the pale lips with the sagging flesh-lines at their corners.
"He said, coolly: `Nix. This is Johnny's dough. I'll hold it for him. I'm not staking his babe to a trip through Switzerland.'"
"She grinned at that. Her right fingertips jerked suddenly to her left forearm with a slow rotary movement of which she was entirely unconscious."
"She said, sneeringly: `You're a pretty wise jasper, at that. Only I don't sleigh-ride. Morph's my dish, dearie.'"
© Peter Rozovsky 2014
Labels: Black Mask, Theodore A. Tinsley
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:58 PM
4 Comments:
I got an e-book copy of this, and though I thought it was fun, my copy was a mess. There were sentences that began one way and then seemed to be spliced with action that happened later. The first time, I thought I was just not following the action well, but it became clear that something was up with the printing. There was a line similar to "She ran the hot water in the bath and slipped in to have a soak, then turned left on Main Street to avoid the traffic." I wish it hadn't been such a mish-mash.
"First I was dizzy with the heady fizz of the slang." Great sentence! It is almost as if you were writing for Black Mask.
"She ran the hot water in the bath and slipped in to have a soak, then turned left on Main Street to avoid the traffic."
Kelly: I can well believe she'd have to dip, turn, and swerve in all directions to avoid distracted drivers if she went out in traffic straight from the tub. (I assume, of course, from the source that she's a honey or, at worst, a babe.) I have noticed a small glitch or two in either the Tinsley book or the Paul Cain volume, from the same publisher, but nothing on the order of what you found. You ought to drop a line to Otto Penzler or someone at one of the various enterprises that seem to be involved in the imprint.
RT, when I read the sentence, I thought of inventing a character named Hedy Phizz, a honey or, at worst, a babe.
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