A first look at the new Donald Westlake non-fiction miscellany

I have long admired Donald Westlake's musings on his chosen genre of crime fiction, on memory, media, popular culture, and other subjects, but I had to glean the observations from interviews, articles, and citations in the work of others. Levi Stahl and the good people at the University of Chicago Press apparently agree that Westlake was an interesting guy, because they're bringing out a collection of  his non-fiction called The Getaway Car. Release is slated for October.

The book offers insight into Westlake's many alter egos (Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, et. al), a list of Westlake's favorite crime fiction, his reflections on his own work, letters, recollections, and May's famous tuna casserole recipe, among other things. Also included: an introduction by Stahl, a foreword by Westlake's friend Lawrence Block, and an epigraph from Westlake's widow, Abby: "No matter where he was headed, Don always drove like he was behind the wheel of the getaway car."

While I wait for a final copy of The Getaway Car, here's an old blog post that explains why I'm excited about the book. And here's a link to all Detectives Beyond Borders posts about Westlake.

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Donald Westlake, who died Dec. 31. 2008, at 75, was not just a prolific, creative, original and endlessly entertaining crime writer, he was also a thoughtful, intelligent observer of the world around him.

He once lamented the reduced distribution of foreign films in the U.S., calling the superb 1958 Italian heist movie Big Deal on Madonna Street a laboratory for comedy writers and mourning that future Americans might miss similar opportunities to absorb and learn from foreign influences.

He also noted mass media's tendency to telescope the past into a timeless present/past accessible to all. This meant, he remarked, that Americans could assess the accuracy of a movie scene set on a train even though most had never been on a train. I suspect he underestimated the number of Americans who had travelled by rail, but his point was valid, and it anticipated such phenomena as retro fashions, digital sampling/recycling of old pop songs, and the Beatles churning out new records long after they had broken up and begun to die off.

Those statements, one in an interview, the other in a preface to one of Westlake's books, if I recall correctly, rank among my favorite Westlake moments. They're right up there with Parker out of jail and walking across the George Washington Bridge in The Hunter or Joe Gores' D.K.A. gang meeting up with Dortmunder and his crew in Drowned Hopes or all of The Score or the stoic Parker finally losing patience with his lighthearted sidekick's antics and snapping, "Shut up, Grofield."

I always said Westlake differed from most authors in one respect: Most writers might come up with a wild story idea from time to time. Westlake turned his wild ideas into books. That's why even some of his less successful stories were always exciting and worth admiration for the man's gumption, imagination and industry.

Sarah Weinman's remarks include a library of Westlake links and a rolling list of Westlake tributes. Leap in. The man offers some terrific reading.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Who should play Dortmunder in the movies?

Steve Lewis of the Mystery File blog is reposting reviews of movies made from Donald Westlake's comic John Dortmunder novels. He's put up Why Me? and The Hot Rock so far, and both reviews have naturally pondered the weird surgery that movie producers perform on the books.

I mean, producers know better than anyone else what makes money, but here's what Westlake answered when asked what Dortmunder would have done had he not become a thief. Dortmunder is eternally 44 years old, Westlake said, and:

"I doubt John would have chosen a profession. He might have run a grocery store in a changing neighborhood where nothing really works out, or run the construction office for a large inept builder corporation constantly being ripped off by the employees. `Hey, where you goin with that plywood?' `It’s mine, I brought it with me this mornin.' `Oh, okay.'"

And you're going to have Christopher Lambert, Robert Redford and Martin Lawrence play this guy? OK, I can understand casting big names, but why violate the books' charm? Dortmunder is a downmarket type of guy. He slouches. His girlfriend May helps herself to bags of groceries from her job, and Dortmunder's gang always have to scramble for places to sit when they meet in his apartment. Yet the Dortmunder character in the movie Why Me?, for some reason called Gus Cardinale, lives in a clean, sunny apartment that appears full of gorgeous, blond-wood furniture. Why?

So, here are your assignments: If you don't know Dortmunder and his gang, make their acquaintance immediately (You'll find excerpts here, here and here). If you do, who should play Dortmunder on screen? A younger Harry Dean Stanton? Elisha Cook Jr.? Woody Allen? You tell me.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

A bit more about Donald Westlake

Can I say just one more thing about the man? Or three or four?

Here's a post I made a year ago about Westlake's occasional tendency to jump the boundaries between series. Here's one delicious way he solved the problem of sustaining interest in a long-running series. Here's a bit about the fine Australian author Garry Disher and his fascination with Parker.

And here's just a touch of Dortmunder sneaking into a Parker book, Dirty Money:

"`You kill a lawman,' [Parker] said, `you're in another zone. McWhitney and I are gonna have to work this out.'

"`But not on the phone.'

"Parker yawned. `Nothing on the phone ever,' he said. `Except pizza.'"

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Donald Westlake dies

Donald Westlake, one of the world's liveliest, funniest and most prolific crime writers, died New Year's Eve. He was 75.

Westlake wrote around 100 novels, virtually inventing the comic caper with his Dortmunder series and the amoral, professional thief/killer in twenty-seven novels featuring Parker, written under the pen name Richard Stark.

Westlake was also a screenwriter, and his screenplay for The Grifters earned an Academy Award nomination in 1991. He won three Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America, which named him a Grand Master in 1993

Westlake was one of the cleverest of crime novelists, engaging in such experiments as beginning two different novels with the same botched robbery in order to take the story in two different directions. He also liked to share chapters with authors whose work he enjoyed, a Westlake novel and a book by the cooperating author having a common chapter that features characters from both. He did this notably in the Dortmunder novel Drowned Hopes, which shares a chapter with Joe Gores' 32 Cadillacs, a delicious treat for anyone, doubly so for readers who know both writers.

The New York Times obituary of Westlake, by the way, is a shoddy piece of work, full of what the writer probably thought was delightful color ("who pounded out more than 100 books and five screenplays") but not mentioning Dortmunder, one of the author's two most influential and enduring creations. The obituary also makes the questionable assertion that Westlake's work translated well to the screen. The Dortmunder novels especially have been notoriously ill-served by screen adaptations.

(A knowledgeable observer of both crime fiction and journalism points out that the Times was likely caught unaware by Westlake's death. With a holiday schedule likely in effect, the Times had to draft a non-obituary writer and non-crime-fiction expert. But my correspondent also expressed surprise that the Times did not have an obituary ready in advance, as it should have and as newspapers traditionally do. Westlake was 75, he was extremely well known, especially in New York, and he had had health problems in recent years, though not apparently related to the heart attack that appears to have killed him. The Times dropped the ball on this one. )

© Peter Rozovsky 2009