Bridget Jones of the 1950s: The Dinner Party by Gretchen Finletter

The Dinner Party (From the Journal of a Lady of Today) by Gretchen Finletter (1954)

Every now and again, one stumbles onto a book about The Rich and Their Problems, and though these problems are annoying in that they are both trifling and particular to the rich, one sits back and begins to enjoy reading about them.

One of the many things I enjoy about books about this class from this time period is the habit of somewhat Arbitrary Capitalization that their authors tend to favor. Even the reviewers seem to fall prey to it. In the review of The Dinner Party that appeared in Time in 1955, the author writes, "Dinner Party is charming chatter, with just a lemon-twist of real wit. It is the kind of book a woman likes because it is So True, and may even beguile an idle husband."

The author of the journal, and our narrator, is a perpetually bewildered woman in her 40s, who has moved to the country with her husband who is working on His Book. Though she generally means well, and tries her best to embody the virtues of gracious living, our narrator is a hopeless case, terrified of confrontations with the cook, flustered by the prospect of hosting a dinner party, and never quite taken seriously by anyone, even her own family.

However, the jams that our lady finds herself in are frequently hilarious. In my favorite of these, she is given the task of managing the bake sale for her daughters' school. In order to drum up extra business, she commissions her next-door-neighbor to pose as an Egyptian fortune teller and set up a tent behind the bake sale table. I won't spoil how it happens, but suffice it to say, she nearly succeeds in getting her neighbor (who is neither Egyptian nor a fortune teller) vaccinated and deported.

Her journal entries are written in the crisp, breezy prose of a woman who has things Under Control, but like her Less Fortunate descendant Bridget Jones, the contents reveal a woman who is anything but. In one entry, the lady writes,

"Make up my mind to be clear-headed and authoritative and write out on pad what I plan to have for dinner party. Will then go into kitchen and simply Tell Roza. Rehearse conversation. Must not begin with 'Oh by the way, Roza, we are having a few people in,' which is cowardly, nor 'Give me your suggestions, Roza,' which is craven, but go into kitchen, say 'Good morning,' bring out my pad and list, and tell her, pleasantly of course, that we are going to have a small dinner of about eighteen people...

Decide instead to go to Mary Jane's Beauty Shoppe. Know it is several days before the party but do not wish Mrs. Pullman to imagine that the dinner is so important to me that my hair has been especially waved for it, and feel it is more worldly to have it on the night either a bit over-ripe or under-done."

Like Ms. Jones, the narrator is a woman who is constantly plagued with doubts about her appearance, her abilities, her relationships. However, the narrator of The Dinner Party would probably trade places with Bridget in a heartbeat. Despite her foibles, Bridget Jones is a singleton who eventually realizes that if she is not her own champion, no one else will be, while the narrator is a married, settled, and moneyed woman who, despite her privilege, is always in danger of becoming invisible and taken for granted.

And unlike Bridget Jones, our narrator does not possess the Inner Resources to pull herself up by the bootstraps. She can only face her future with self-deprecating wit, a brave face, and a healthy measure of resignation.

Zombie Summer Reading: It's People! PEOPLE!

I'll admit it: Almost nothing makes me happier than the literary equivalent of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If Tom Servo and the gang ever started recording commentary on audio books, I'd probably keel over from sheer joy.

Mary knows of my addiction, and from time to time she picks up some truly sublime crap for my amusement. A couple of weeks ago, she emailed me from work - indecently pleased with herself - to tell me that she'd be bringing home Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, perhaps better known as the book upon which they based that most often mocked entry in the Charlton Heston oeuvre, Soylent Green.*

Oh happy day.

So imagine my surprise and consternation when I finish the book and nowhere in it has anyone screamed "It's people!!" In fact, there is no sinister plot in which people are ground up and pressed into tasty wafers at all. The titular green crackers are made from seaweed, and "It's made of Kelp! KEEEEELLLLLLP!!" just isn't very likely to inspire much dread or revulsion.

In fact, the only soylent in Make Room! Make Room! comes in the form of soylent steaks (soylent = soy + lentil). I can get those at the Ralph's down the street; again, not so scary unless you count the price of corn these days. (Zing!)

All griping aside, it may turn out that the price of corn actually is the scariest thing about Harrison's novel. Written at a time when the population explosion was the apocalypse du jour, the book's dystopian vision of the U.S. in 1999 - overcrowded, starving, and Hobbesian in the extreme - is certainly unnerving: homeless families crowded into abandoned parking garages to live in abandoned cars, water shortages, food shortages, utterly overwhelmed civic institutions, refugees living on fleets of cargo ships permanently converted into floating cities in the NY harbor, etc.

The plot - your basic cop-on-a-murder-case story - is pretty unremarkable and serves mostly an excuse to explore Harrison's starved new world. Likewise, the characterization is also fairly underwhelming. Our Hero is a bit of a cipher and the rest of the players relentlessly conform to stock types: fallen woman with a heart of tarnished gold, honorable mob bodyguard, crotchety old man sidekick, impoverished kid in over his head. Like a lot of third-tier science fiction, this is a novel written at the intersection of "pretty great idea for a book" and "not the world's greatest writer."

Still, it's worth taking on the bus if sci-fi dystopia is your thing. For one, it makes for an interesting noir companion to Issac Asimov's trio of Elijah Bailey novels. Harrison has a far more bleak vision of a terminally overcrowded Earth than Asimov, but it's interesting to see what the two writers do with the same basic premise.

And of course, given that the book and the film part ways around page 50 you can go into it without knowing the ending, which - sadly - is not this:



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*Also, oddly enough, this makes another movie adaptation of the work of a Zombie Summer Reading author that stars Edward G. Robinson as a cop. He's the Kevin Bacon of the golden age of cinema, apparently. I think that we must schedule a Soylent Green/Harness Bull double feature.

Last of the Love Goddesses: The Zany Adventures of Liz Renay

My Face for the World to See (1971)
My First 2,000 Men (1992)

In most people, self-awareness is a good quality, but thankfully for us, and probably for her as well, Liz Renay never believed herself to be anything other than a fabulous glamour girl just on the verge of becoming the next big thing. Until her death in January 2007, Renay frolicked through life with happy-go-lucky aplomb, even after a series of setbacks -- treacherous husbands, bad boyfriends, gangsters, grand juries, jail time, a thwarted film career, and family dramas -- that would have sent most people spiraling into depression and self-doubt.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. For those who don't yet know Miss Liz, a little background, described far more colorfully in My Face for the World to See. Born Pearl Dobbins in Chandler, Arizona, our young heroine was raised by strict evangelical parents, but fell away from the church at an early age after her first visit to the local skating rink, which she's been told was "Satan's palace." Renay writes, "In one wave of nausea, my religious belief was swept away. Every value the church had taught me was crushed under the rolling wheels of those innocent skates.... This place was not evil or sinful or wrong. Common sense made that obvious."

Heady with freedom, Renay went a little wild, running around with soldiers stationed in the area, marrying two of them, and giving birth to two babies before the age of 18.

However, Renay's love affair with notoriety began in earnest in the 1950s when the newly single mother began dancing burlesque in New York City to pay the bills, and caught the eye of Tony "Cappy" Coppola, bodyguard for Murder Inc. head Albert Anastasia. After letting Cappy down easy, Liz hoped to break into the movies, and headed to Los Angeles where her gangster buddies arranged for Mickey Cohen to help her settle in. The two hit it off immediately, and Liz got off to a promising start, captivating no less a person than Cecil B. DeMille.

Unfortunately, Liz made the mistake of loaning Mickey Cohen some money, which landed her in front of 13 grand juries on both coasts and into the headlines of national newspapers as "Mickey Cohen's girlfriend." Eternally naive, she enjoyed the attention and photo ops, but got her testimony mixed up in front of one of those juries, and found herself pleading guilty to perjury. She was given probation, but wound up having to serve a three year sentence at Terminal Island after pleading guilty to an unrelated charge of disturbing the peace*.

Between the jail time, the mobster associations, and the fact that she was pushing 40 by this time, no major studio would touch Renay. Undaunted, she went back to dancing burlesque, painting, appearing in B-movies like The Thrill Killers and Blackenstein, and her favorite pastime, men.

My Face for the World to See was published in 1971, but germinated during Renay's prison term. In fact, the portions of the book devoted to this period are the high point, as we see Renay leading the prison's theatre and art classes, painting portraits for her fellow inmates, fighting off the attacks of the "Butch Broads," and getting locked in solitary over a fight for religious freedom behind bars (Renay does apologize for her harsh words against homosexuality in My First 2,000 Men).

Renay's second memoir is just as entertaining as its predecessor, but only if you skip the chapters where she's giving romantic advice and stick to the ones where she's telling tales about her lovers. Another reason I find myself utterly enchanted by Renay is that, although she certainly bedded a number of celebrities, and even devotes a chapter to them, she's no groupie and no star chaser. She writes about the men who treated her best, were most generous, most bizarre, most exciting, and a few who were just oddballs and perverts, and fame or lack thereof seems to play no part in how Renay feels about her conquests.

And how can you not love a book that begins, "There've been so many talented, charismatic men in my life, it's hard to know where to begin. I'll start with Burt Lancaster."

Though self-absorbed and unselfconscious, Liz Renay was a giddily irrepressible barrel of fun, and her memoirs are, too. Definitely worth a skim.
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* Renay really got a bad deal on this count, and again, her naivete got her into trouble. She went to a hotel for what she believed to be a "photo shoot," and discovered that the photographer had ulterior motives. There was a ruckus which drew the police, and Renay was charged with disturbing the peace. Bobby Kennedy was under some pressure to get mobster convictions and harsh sentences, and though Renay's actual involvement with the mob didn't go beyond dating its membership, she got three highly undeserved years in the pokey.

I was reading these books around the time that the 40th anniversary of RFK's assassination was being commemorated, so it was rather a surprise to come across sentences like, "My greatest contempt was for hypocrites like Robert Kennedy," and "It sure is awful about poor Marilyn. I'm sure that jerk Robert Kennedy had something to do with this."

Just the facts, man: Homicide by Leslie T. White

I came to Leslie White's Homicide by way of the Black Lizard Book of Pulps, or as I like to call it, "the Bible of Awesome." White's short story "The City of Hell" was...well, it was like a caper/heist flick mixed with Red Harvest and written on an ultimately wholesome bender. Sure, some yeggs get new buttonholes in their coats, and there is much talk of rats devouring certain characters' faces, but our heroes don't drink that much and won't let the family men in the group take the real risks. I quickly flipped to the little author blurb to discover that Mr. White also wrote novels, Homicide and Harness Bull (the basis for the film Vice Squad, in which Edward G. Robinson plays the cop for a change) among them. He also wrote Me, Detective in which he presents his own take on the Doheny murder case, having worked it as an investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office.

Me, Detective was clearly the book I had to read for this week's Zombie Summer Reading.

Well, sometimes you brain the zombies and sometimes the zombies eat you. Me, Detective only made it through the first edition and is thus a little pricey if you can find a copy, and the reference copy at the library was A.W.O.L.

Homicide nevertheless made a dandy substitute: burglary cop Steve Muttersbach is detailed into a murder investigation when a nightclub owner/lady of ill-repute is found strangled in her coupe, shortly after he investigates a break-in at her apartment.

Sure, it's a little hacky. The prose is nothing to write home about, the plot is a parlor mystery in hardboiled clothing, and it lacks the inspired lunacy of "The City of Hell."

But what it lacks in style it makes up for in concept: the chapters are a series of letters and telegrams from our clearly-out-of-his-depth hero to a retired Homicide Detective buddy, with interview transcripts, police reports, and newspaper clippings attached. (Someday, somewhere, a graduate student will use the novel as evidence that postmodernism was blossoming in the pulps before it ever hit the academic presses.)

And there's something charming about Muttersbach, a cop whose chance to step up to the show came a few years too late but who nevertheless dives into the investigation like a catcher with bad knees and one last shot at the pennant.* The comic subplots involving a flirty tabloid reporter, Muttersbach's increasingly estranged relationship with his wife, and the indignities visited upon our hapless flatfoot by his superiors when he roughs up a politically connected suspect, also liven up the proceedings considerably.

All in all, Homicide reads like the source material for what could have been an excellent Warner Brothers B-picture, which I guess is kind of what it is. It's not a lost classic by any means, but it reminds me of a number of records by local bands that never really went anywhere: the production isn't so great, the songs aren't all quite there yet, and they should never have let the bass player sing on that one track. But it's quirky and odd, and clearly a labor of love by a talented amateur, and - despite what Harlan Ellison thinks - it's evidence that "not very good" can be worthwhile in its own right, if it's done with care.

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* Why yes, I did enjoy Major League when I was a kid.

Arsenic and Axes: Blood in the Parlor by Dorothy Dunbar

Blood in the Parlor by Dorothy Dunbar (1964)

While half the fun of the Zombie Summer Reading Program is finding the weird books yourself, when the recommendation comes from Donna Tartt, it's worth following up on. A recent Village Voice feature asked writers to list their favorite obscure books, and while there were many fine contributions, Tartt's caught my eye:

My mother has had this book since I was a little girl, but no one else I know has ever heard of it, and it's almost impossible to find. Each of the 12 stories is an account of a 19th-century murder told with a light, macabre sense of humor. I'd love to see it back in print with illustrations by Edward Gorey.

I was intrigued, and delighted to find a very ratty copy available at the Los Angeles Public Library.

Like the inimitable Edmund Lester Pearson, Dunbar has a very particular vision of what makes a "good murder." Weary of "I'll-blow-your-guts-out" detective stories and 20th century crime in general, Dunbar longs for the evildoers of a more gracious age, a time when murderers were more likely to employ an axe or a bottle of chloroform than a revolver. But the 19th century crimes she chooses to write about interest her because of their distinctive Victorian quality. Dunbar writes, "In most Victorian murders, murder is the act of removing an ugly fact to maintain a pleasant fiction, the grim reality of a dead body, or bodies, contradicting the fantasy of high-flown or obscure motives."

Medical students are likely criminals, as evidenced by the tale of Scott Jackson, a Cincinnati dental student who dispatched his inconveniently pregnant mistress, saving her head for his own research, or by Theodore Durrant, a monstrous medical student/church librarian who seduced pretty young women and stashed their bodies in the well-ventilated church belfry.

Though Dunbar isn't so obsessed with murderesses as Pearson, the Victorian period certainly had a number of fascinating ones, including Florence Maybrick, who may actually have been innocent, and Lydia Sherman, who certainly wasn't. And of course, no book would be complete without some discussion of Lizzie Borden, whose guilt Dunbar doubts not for a moment.

Blood in the Parlor was Dunbar's only book, which is a shame because she's an intelligent, wry, and very funny writer. In her account of the Lizzie Borden murders, Dunbar writes,

"There are many elements of horror in the Borden case, but one of the worst was the August fourth breakfast - mutton, sugar cakes, coffee, and mutton broth."

Her introductions to each chapter tie the cases, in grandiose terms, to classic myths, obscure historical facts, and literary and historical figures. All are giddily over the top. Combined with the book's occasional typos and factual errors, the enthusiastic result is rather endearing.

I had a great time with my first pick for the Zombie Summer Reading Program - next week, the two memoirs of that irrepressible streaker, Liz Renay!

Seven Days....

Next Monday, the second incarnation of the Zombie Summer Reading Program begins. We've been browsing the shelves at our lovely (and now fully funded) local library, and have dug up some likely corpses to kick things off: the life and loves of a 1960s burlesque dancer, the Victorian criminal mind, and some very regrettable cookbooks, to name a few.

The Zombie Summer Reading Program has only two rules:

1. The book must be dusty, moldy, neglected, overlooked, and/or forgotten.
2. It must be written by someone you've never heard of.

The fun starts next Monday, and lasts all summer long.

"When there's no more room in closed stacks, the out-of-print will rise up and walk the earth."

Return of the Zombie Summer Reading Program

Last summer, I found x-rays of human teeth in a weird, old library book, and a dream was born. A dream to uncover the dustiest, creepiest, strangest books that time ever forgot.

Brady and I read memoirs by the most notorious madams of the 20th century, Bolshevik science fiction, 1950s Junior League cookbooks, and some weird-ass children's books, and had ourselves a fine old time.

We'll be kicking things off June 1, so this summer, join us in seeking out the dankest corners of your local library or used bookstore, and share your findings most foul. There are only two rules:

1. The book must be dusty, moldy, neglected, overlooked, and/or forgotten.
2. It must be written by someone you've never heard of.

Contact me if you'd like to contribute a post, join our group on Facebook, or feel free to use the image and concept on your own blog. The fun starts June 1, and lasts all summer long.

"When there's no more room in closed stacks, the out-of-print will rise up and walk the earth."

Lobster Thermidor and Icebox Cake

The Junior League of Memphis Cookbook (1952)

I have a weakness for Junior League cookbooks, so when I found this one for a steal at Acres of Books in Long Beach, it had to come home with me.

The first Junior League cookbook was published in 1943 by a chapter in Minneapolis, and since then, the cookbooks have become a fundraising staple of the organization. More than that, though, these cookbooks serve as a historical record of regional cookery in the United States, which is why I love them.

So, what was served up at the dinner parties of Memphis's most prominent ladies in 1952? Aspic, gelees, molds, and more aspic. One is hard-pressed to find a recipe in the Salads and Dressings chapter that does not involve an envelope of unflavored gelatin. Mrs. Philip B. Winston of Germantown, TN stretches the limits of the molded salad to the breaking point with her Meaty Salad Ring, a horseradish and mustard-flavored gelatin with a jar of diced tongue suspended in the translucent, jiggling mess.

By 1952, the tamale pie, a potluck staple of the 1930s and 40s, had evolved into something that bore little resemblance to early recipes, which look almost tasty by comparison. The traditional turn of the century recipe for tamale pie involved a tomatoe puree seasoned with chiles and topped with a cornmeal crust. Some recipes also included ground or sliced beef, olives, and cheese.

But in 1952 Memphis, tamale pie had become very much a product of the convenience food era, at least as evidenced by Mrs. W. Lytle McKee's recipe, which calls for more canned food than fresh. Chicken is used in place of the beef. Instead of chiles, the tomato puree is seasoned with something called Mexene powder, then littered with corn niblets. Most egregious, the cornmeal crust is done away with in favor of 3 cans of High Power brand tamales. Ack.

While Memphis certainly has a distinct regional cuisine, very little of that food appears in this 1952 edition. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that most of Memphis's best food comes from the culinary heritage of African-Americans. In any case, most of the recipes included here are of the bland and white variety. However, a few of the more daring ladies submitted ethic recipes that call for more or less authenic seasonings. There's an Arroz Con Pollo that looks pretty tasty and Mrs. Dunbar Abston's recipe for Indian Curry also looks excellent - it actually calls for real coconut milk and imported curry.

So, it's not all bad. Last night, I made the Watercress Dip, which was simple, refreshing, and good on toast rounds, and I'm looking forward to trying out one of the book's three icebox cake recipes. Icebox cake is one of those retro foods that totally needs to make a comeback. Aspic, not so much.

For further reading, and lots of great historic recipes, check out Feeding America, a digital collection of American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century.

Little Red Men

I realize I've been somewhat silent on the Zombie Summer Reading front, but that's because....well....I been busy, what with the research, the writing, the statistics tutoring, and the re-learning how to play the piano.

But that ends today, because what I have to show you is so incredibly awesome that I could keep its awesome secret no longer.

(See? Words are failing me.)

Three words, comrades: Bolshevik Science Fiction.

Alexander Bogdanov's Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia was first published in 1908, republished a few times up until the late twenties, and then fell off the map for a while. The first English translation appeared in the early Eighties, and the edition I found also contains a prequel story and an introductory essay on "Fantasy and Revolution". So basically what we have here is an embarrassment of riches, only redistributed.

As it happens, Martian society is quite a bit older than Earth society, and consequently it's already gone through the stages of history that we Earthlings are mired in, and the Martian proletariat has triumphed and created a collectivist utopia among the canals. The novel follows the adventures of the most progressive Bolshevik in Russia, who's abducted and taken to Mars to be shown the social future, as it were, so that he can eventually act as an ambassador between the worlds.

It's actually a very readable tale, apart from its value as a historical artifact. Red Star shares a lot with classic sci-fi tales like The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which our baser human instincts are pitted against our desire to advance as a society, only with a Marxist (not Leninist or Stalinist) twist. It reads like The Communist Manifesto, only with spaceships.

There's a lot more I could say about this book, which is both endearingly dogged in its celebration of the collective good over the wants of the individual and surprisingly clear-eyed about the kinds of problems likely to arise in such a society. But instead, I'll just leave you with this:

Communist Martians.

Awesome.

I Liked Atreyu Before It Was Cool To Like Atreyu

I'm putting together a snazzy little display of books that were adapted for the screen at my library, and have come upon quite a number of titles that I never knew existed in book form.

While none of these titles will strike you as the least bit obscure, some of their original authors might. And while a couple of these don't meet the Zombie Summer Reading Program "40 years old" rule, I was just so darn startled to find them that I felt compelled to share.

Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1952)
The Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett (1949)
Johnny Guitar by Roy Chanslor (1953)
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (originally published in German, 1979)
Wild At Heart by Barry Gifford (1990)
Midnight Cowboy by James Herlihy (1965)
MASH by Richard Hooker (1968)
The Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter (1954)
The Searchers by Alan LeMay (1954)
The Graduate by Charles Webb (1963)

I'm so reading Wild At Heart. And upon further reflection, I admit that it was never cool to like Atreyu.

A 1950s Bestseller You Can Enjoy Unironically

The Devil's Advocate by Morris L. West (1959)

In my exploration of the closed stacks for suitable Zombie Summer Reading Program material, I've come upon a lot of schlock, which is about what I expected. But deep down, I've been hoping to uncover some forgotten classic. The Devil's Advocate ain't it, but it comes close. Which gives me hope for what the rest of the summer holds.

Morris West was an Australian writer who almost became a priest, decided to become a writer instead, had a nervous breakdown about it, became the Vatican correspondent for the Daily Mail,then went on to pen over 25 novels and a number of plays before his death in 1999. As you might expect, the church figures heavily in his work.

The Devil's Advocate is about a Vatican priest named Blaise Meredith who is sent to a remote Italian village to investigate a candidate for beatification. The would-be saint was an English deserter named Giacomo Nerone who mysteriously appeared in the village and became its most beloved citizen, at least until the villagers turned him over to a firing squad.

When Meredith arrives in the village, he's just been diagnosed with stomach cancer and given only a few months to live. In addition to suffering almost constant pain, his investigation is stymied by the tight-lipped residents of the village, hesitant to speak of their complicity in Nerone's death, even as they place remnants of the bloody shirt he died in over the bellies of women in childbirth.

Meredith's greatest allies are the Jewish doctor living in exile, both Nerone's closest friend and fiercest rival, and Nerone's lover, a village woman who bore him a bastard son. His enemies are the Contessa, an English woman who suffers from some kind of hysteria caused by her overly passionate nature or something, and Nick Black, a homosexual English painter living under her patronage. West's characterizations of these two suffer from prevailing attitudes of the times. The Contessa's troubles are nothing a loving husband or a good dose of the Lord wouldn't fix, and Nick is suspected of trying to seduce Nerone's teenage son throughout the book. Despite these stereotypes, however, West's depictions of the two are not without sympathy, and the eventual resolution of Nick's relationship is handled with far more subtlety than I expected.

The question of Nerone's canonization is similarly subtle, and suitably shrouded in mystery. While I did skim over many of Meredith's long-winded meditations on faith, The Devil's Advocate is a page-turner with compelling supporting characters and just a touch of the miraculous and the mystical.

And it's a fair sight better than Enid Blyton.

Gruesome Death, and How To Recognize It

Note: Kim Cooper of 1947project and Esotouric joins us for today's Zombie Summer Reading Program guest post, and her offering should be just the thing to help you unleash your inner coroner. As every discerning zombie knows, a brain laced with hydrochloric acid just doesn't have that nice, brainy zip.



Post-Mortem Appearances by Joan M. Ross (Oxford Medical Publications, 4th edition, 1939)

There are some things you need to know, although you might not realize it. But it becomes obvious, when you open this peculiar little purple book and begin to read the strangely poetic descriptions of the physical signs of disease, infection and poisonings, that Miss Ross was a chronicler of a most compelling set of human mysteries.

From Post-Mortem Appearances, I have learned that a person who has frozen to death will upon first examination exhibit remarkably red flesh, similar to carbon monoxide poisoning, a result of hemoglobin's retaining its oxygen at low temperatures, and the blood remaining arterial. As the body warms, more typical darkening of the skin is seen.

Any metal objects on the body of an electrocuted person may become magnetized. A starved person's viscera is nearly transparent.

A drowned person's lungs behave abnormally during autopsy, bulging out from the thorax is a manner called "ballooning." When a woman is burned to death, the last organ to char is her uterus.

If you wish to hang yourself but leave a good-looking corpse, use a soft handkerchief as the noose rather than stiff cord. The former leaves a soft, white mark, the latter a dark impression stiff as parchment.

Mustard gas, as used in warfare, results in injury to the stomach when the victim swallows caustic snot and saliva. Chronic lead poisoning makes the arm and shoulder muscles whither.

Before it kills you, hydrochloric acid can produce a markedly fatty liver.

Drink Lysol or other phenols and when they open your bladder, it will be full of smoky green urine with the characteristic disinfectant smell. Also, cyanide does taste like bitter almonds, and smells like them, too, when its victims are autopsied.

Would-be saints are advised to take sulfuric acid or antimony internally to delay post-mortem putrefaction. Or just don't die.

If It's Good Enough for Hugh and Liz...

The Magic Faraway Tree (1943)
Five Have a Wonderful Time (1952)

Note: These books may not be quite undead enough, as they come back into print every few years in the UK (with hip covers, and the racist and sexist bits taken out), but I'd never heard of Enid Blyton until my colleague and fellow L.A. true crime afficianado, Greg, suggested she might be a good subject for this project. The book titles were so silly and the premises so weird that I couldn't resist. Apparently, Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley came together over a shared childhood obsession with Blyton's books.

Before J.K. Rowling was born, the biggest name in children's fantasy literature was another Brit by the name of Enid Blyton, and none of this waiting around 2 years for sequels with her. During her career, which spanned from the early 1920s until the late 60s, Blyton published around 600 books, and edited and wrote her own magazine. The year she died, Blyton's output was a little sluggish -- only 7 books.

However, while Rowling is lauded by fans and critics alike, Blyton's books received a frostier reception, particularly from librarians who thought her formulaic, monosyllabic stories were something for children to grow out of as quickly as possible.

I don't know, though. I read two of Blyton's best-known books, and really, I'm kind of surprised that a Leary/Burroughs-esque circle hasn't formed around them.

The Magic Faraway Tree is the story of three children who live next to a forest that happens to contain a magical, faraway tree crawling with forest friends like Moon-Face, Silky the Elf, and the Saucepan Man. At the top of the tree is a freakin' portal to alternate dimensions that change every few days. These include: the Land of Topsy-Turvy; the Land of Take What You Want; the Land of Do As You Please.

When Dick, their sort of naughty cousin, comes to visit, the first thing they do is spend two days telling him all about it, and promising to take him there once their parents allow them to stop farming. My heart really goes out to Dick those first two days. I mean, he's sent into indentured servitude on a farm with a bunch of batshit crazy cousins who are really excited about dragging him into the woods without adult supervision to commune with elves. I'm sure it crossed his mind that he was going to spend his summer vacation being sacrificed to Satan.

What's also weird about the book is that the parents (or at least the mother; the father is never really seen) are not only aware of their children's rich fantasy life, they also accept it as gospel truth, instead of assuming they'd all been out licking toads.

Now, Blyton's Famous Five series, featuring the adventures of Dick, Julian, Anne, George (a tomboy), and her dog, Timmy, is perhaps her most (in)famous. Blatantly sexist, snobbish, and anti-gypsy, The Famous Five Have a Wonderful Time is the eleventh book in the series, and clearly, Blyton had just run out of titles by then.

The book starts with the entirely implausible scenario of the children and their dog going on holiday by themselves to stay in a caravan surrounded by a campground of circus people. While the boys run off and play, little Anne and George spend their mornings tidying up and shopping for provisions. Anne actively loves housewifery, and is about as much fun as an instructional video.

The circus folk are super cool, and eat fire and throw knives and tame snakes, but for some reason, they don't warm to the wealthy children summering alone on their turf. The Famous Five are mystified ("But we're not like other children"). Then their old pal Jo, a little gypsy girl they befriended on a previous adventure, appears, and just happens to be related to the fire-eater and his wife (she is also frequently described as "filthy" and "dirty"). The circus folk are all deeply ashamed of how they treated the Famous Five, and they all become great friends. Jo even sleeps under the Famous Five's caravan. What a sport that filthy little gypsy girl is!

Somehow, tied up in the whole thing is a plot about a kidnapped scientist trapped in a nearby castle. Sure, why not.

So, I guess the moral of the story is, if you're a little kid who can't get drugs, reading the stories of Enid Blyton will tide you over until you can go to the magical, faraway tree all by yourself. Thanks again, Greg.

The Undead Hand of the Market

We here at TBIFY got bored the other night and, being indecently pleased with ourselves as regards the graphic for the Zombie Summer Reading Program, e-moseyed over to CafePress. And we made a coffee mug.

As we are sticklers for quality control, we ordered one to make sure it wasn't crap. And lo and behold, it's not. It is my new favorite mug, next to my treasured P&H mug, and I am sorely tempted to brew up a pot of coffee, despite it being three in the afternoon.

And thus we have set up a shop and made it available to all. For twelve bucks.

(Full disclosure: filthy capitalist running-dog lackeys that we are, we get a dollar for each mug. I plan to compose an ode, or at least a limerick, to Antonio Gramsci, in penance.)

Barhah.

A Hearty "Barhah" for Guest Zombie Larry Harnisch

Our friend Larry Harnisch has leapt into the Zombie Summer Reading Program with the kind of masochistic glee that is usually reserved for blue-lipped children at the community swimming pool on Memorial Day weekend. Check out these treasures(?) he rescued from the scrap heap.

A disclaimer: I haunted thrift shops for many years, so although I haven't necessarily read lots of obscure authors, I've at least handled their books long enough to know they're not coming home with me.

Through the years, I refined the multi-part Larry Harnisch unreadability test. I mention this because I turned myself loose on the "last chance shelves" at the South Pasadena Public Library and came home with a $2 armload of books.

In picking my eight books, I awarded bonus points for inscriptions such as "Xmas 1944" and threw back any Book of the Month Club printings.

Here's my harvest, in chronological order:

"Riding Down," by Harris Patton, 1932, pulpy printing by the Goldsmith Publishing Co. of Chicago. This already has "stinker" written all over it, but what's this? It's part of the Young Eagles Series. Time for the crucial Opening Paragraph Test:

"Dick Davis, one of the ace pilots of the mountain division of the Red Arrow transcontinental air mail and passenger line, had a premonition of trouble when he stepped into the hangar at Sheldon that bitter January night. For the life of him he couldn't tell just what it was but he was restless, anxious to be in the air and climbing toward the snow-crested top of the Continental divide."

I don't need to read another word to know what this baby is going to be like.

Next is "American Saga," 1939, Marjorie Barstow Greenbie, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill. Uh-oh. It's subtitled: "The history and literature of the American dream of a better life."

Perhaps I'm being too hasty. The hinges are loose as if someone actually read this book. On the other hand, "American Saga" appears to have pretensions of grandeur that are thankfully absent in "Riding Down."

Time for the Opening Paragraph Test:

"These states were settled by people with ideals. From the first gentlemen loafing on the shores of Virginia to the latest immigrant seeing the Goddess of Liberty emerge from the mists, the persons who have come here have been seeking a better life."

I may be too hasty here, but I'll wager this is the work of a Yankee writer. Virginians do not loaf; they are the aristocracy of the South. Note that the author says nothing about blacks or Native Americans.

The remaining six are clustered between 1944 and 1949.

"Pleasant Valley," Louis Bromfield, 1943, Harper and Bros. I chose this one because a valentine was being used as a bookmark--on Page 18.

As for the First Paragraph Test:

"This book is a personal testament written out of a lifetime by a man who believes that agriculture is the keystone of our economic structure and that wealth, welfare, prosperity and even the future freedom of this nation are based upon the soil."

"As the car came down out of the hills and turned off the Pinhook Road the whole of the valley, covered in snow, lay spread out before us with the ice-blue creek wandering through it between the two high sandstone ridges where the trees, black and bare, rose against the winter sky. And suddenly I knew where I was. I had come home!"

Next, "The Building of Jalna," Mazo de la Roche, 1944, Little, Brown and Co.

First Paragraph:

"Adeline thought that never, never in her life had she seen anything so beautiful as "The Bohemian Girl." The romance of it transfigured her mind, as moonlight a stained-glass window. And the music! Words and tune possessed her, making her feel like one in a dream. As she hung on Philip's arm on the way out of Drury Lane the ground seemed unsubstantial beneath her feet, the crowd about her to be floating like herself."

Now "Jalna" has real stinker potential. The author is not only clumsy in setting a scene. The author is just plain clumsy.

Time for the Last Page Test:

"Then Philip exclaimed--'See the pigeons, Adeline! They are going south! Gad, what a horde of them!' With her head on Philip's shoulder, Adeline slept."

I'm supposed to slog through this just to read about some stupid pigeons? Stinker!

"Winter Wheat," by Mildred Walker, 1944, Harcourt Brace and Co. This bore (ahem) the name of Capt. Ben Klauman, M.C." and appears to be unread. However, some spilled coffee or other foodstuff indicates a reader to got to Page 230:

"The light bulb in the barn was mirrored in the cows' big dark eyes. I'm out of practice but I like milking. May turned her big head and looked at me and I could see myself perfectly reflected in her eyes. She was easy to milk. The milk poured down evenly into the pail. I gave May a pat on the flank and set the pail on the shelf where it was safe and moved to Belle. The cows' names were May and Belle and Dunya. Dad had named the first cow they had on the ranch Dunya after a girl they knew in Russia to tease Mom and we had had one by that name ever since."

OK, time for the Last Paragraph Test:

"I honked the horn. It grated noisily on the bright spring day.
'Come on!' I yelled. 'It won't grow while you watch it!'
Mom waved.
'Hold your horses!' Dad yelled back. They came up the field together.
I had not always been glad that I was their child, but today I had a kind of pride in being born to them.

Into the slush pile.

"The World, the Flesh and Father Smith," by Bruce Marshall, 1945, Riverside Press, Cambridge.

I grabbed this one because it had a book plate: Leona L. Wise.

First Paragraph Test:

"As he freewheeled down the long hill, Father Smith remembered with irritation that, as a member of the League of Saint Columbia, he had promised to say a Pater, an Ave, and a Gloria daily for the conversion of Scotland. There was no dispensation either on Sundays, not even for priests who had to bicycle twenty miles on an empty stomach to say two Masses and preach two sermons in separated parishes, who had their office to recite as well and another sermon and benediction to give in the evening. 'Our Father, who art in heaven,' he began but gave it up before he had proceeded more than one or two clauses, because the rain was dripping down the back of his neck and because he felt.....

I can't even get through the first paragraph. Fired!

"Lovely Is the Lee," by Robert Gibbings, 1945, E.P. Dutton. I bought this one because there was a note being used as a bookmark indicating that the recipient got to Page 54:

Dear Sue,

Maybe you or your folks would enjoy this book about County Galway, Ireland,

Love

DD

Obviously neither Sue nor her folks gave a rip about this little jewel.

Page 54:

"Beyond the sand pit there's a corner where 'many a man gets a weakness. 'Tis there they'd put down the coffin for a rest when they'd be carrying it to the churchyard.'"

The hinges are a bit loose. Maybe somebody read it. Perhaps it was "Laurie W. OstsXXX? of 4210 SW 4th St.," who wrote her name in the front.

And finally "Prairie Avenue," Alfred Meeker, 1949, Alfred A. Knopf. This one also has a bookplate (Juliet Voorhees) and the spine is faded, indicating it spent many years on a shelf somewhere in the sun.

First Paragraph Test:

"Then it's decided," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Ned is to spend the winter with Hiram and Lydia in Prairie Avenue."

Last Paragraph Test:

"Drawing his coat collar higher to ward off the bitter cold, Ned thrust his hands deep in his pockets and strode on in the gathering dusk."

All pretty dismal.

Stay tuned.

"Just Lucky, I Guess": Madam Memoirs

A House Is Not a Home by Polly Adler (1953)
Sex Is a Private Affair by Kay Jarrett (1966)
The Lady of the House by Sally Stanford (1966)

This week for the Zombie Summer Reading Program, I dipped into the prostitution section in the Social Science Department at the Los Angeles Public Library (351.764, in case you wondered). It was an educational experience.

For starters, I learned that "Just lucky, I guess" is the punchline to a joke, an answer to the top prostitute FAQ, "How'd a nice girl like you get into this line of work?" For all of the madams here, the real answer is, more or less, accidentally. For Adler, it was a better deal than factory work. Jarrett saw an untapped niche market in Chicago's travel and tourism industry. And Stanford figured that since the legitimate hotel she ran was already assumed to be a brothel, she'd show the city a real brothel.

Adler's book is the best-known of the three, due partly to her notorious dealings with mobsters, partly to her frequent arrests, and partly to the fact that after retiring from the brothel business in the late 1940s, she shocked everyone by enrolling in college. In the book, we learn there are three things Polly Adler really hates: drugs, pimps, and double-crossing cops, and A House Is Not a Home pulls no punches in detailing the unglamorous, violent life of a prostitute, even one working in a relatively classy establishment. Aside from Adler's juicy stories about cozying up to the mob, the best thing about the book are her accounts of the girls who worked in her house. For every girl who gets out and goes legit, there are scores more who fall victim to one of the three banes of Polly's existence. However, Adler lets herself off the hook pretty easy for these lost girls, saying that she never hired a girl who wasn't already "in the life," and that she encouraged them to open savings accounts, "take the cure," and get out young. The book was adapted into a 1964 film starring Shelley Winters, and a new edition was published in 2006.

Jarrett was technically not a madam, as she operated an escort service where the girls did not "live in." She arranged dates over the phone and her apartment served as a meeting place. Instead of prostitutes (and Jarrett is quick to insist that her girls were not prostitutes), the rooms of her apartment were filled with stray dogs she'd adopted. Sex Is a Private Affair is neither as well-written, nor as interesting as A House Is Not a Home. Jarrett tells many stories about her girls, but they tend to be unnecessarily long and rambling. However, the book has two things going for it. First is Jarrett's riveting account of taking in disgraced starlet Lila Leeds (best known for getting busted with reefer alongside Robert Mitchum in 1948) while she was pregnant, and helping to raise her infant son when the baby's father proved uncooperative and Lila proved to heroin-addled. Second is the fact that Jarrett wrote at least some of this book from prison, and she is piiiisssed about it. Jarrett's diatribes about the legal system, freedom of expression, and the criminalization of prostitution are chock-full of passion and bile, and make the book worth a skim.

But I saved the best for last. Sally Stanford's The Lady of the House is hilarious, and a delight to read. The prose is peppered with great lines like "Madaming is the sort of thing that happens to you -- like getting a battlefield commission or becoming Dean of Women at Stanford University," and "I was raised -- most kids are 'reared,' but I was 'raised'-- on a God-awful, fertile-as-the-Sahara, close-to-nowhere farm outside of Baker, Oregon. There was my poor mother, my ineffectual but well-intentioned father, my three brothers, two sisters, and myself -- six light-hearted and raggedy-assed kiddies fighting starvation and poverty in an Oregon gulch. We were so poor we envied everyone we ever heard of."

Rather than writing about her girls, Stanford has a great deal of fun writing about the customers who came to 1144 Pine St., everyone from curious teenagers to the founding delegates of the United Nations. When Stanford got out of the business, she went legit with a vengeance, eventually becoming the mayor of Sausalito, CA at the age of 72. You can read her obituary here. What a broad!

We've received a number of recommendations from readers this week, and the first batch will be up on Friday. If you have an unloved and musty title to recommend, send it to zombiesummerreading@gmail.com.

The Zombie Summer Reading Program: Week 1

Terror Keep by Edgar Wallace (1926)

Even if my copy of Terror Keep had not contained x-rays of human teeth, it would still be a great title to kick off the Zombie Summer Reading Program. Still, I'm a little embarassed that I hadn't heard of Wallace earlier.

An immensely prolific writer, Wallace was the author of 173 novels, thousands of short stories and serializations, and uncredited co-writer of the original King Kong. It was estimated that, in the 1920s, one of every four books purchased in England was written by Wallace. Today, however, his books are out-of-print and seldom sought out due to their formulaic plots.

Terror Keep is considered to be one of his best efforts, and I certainly enjoyed it.

The book begins with John Flack's escape from the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Flack is a fiendishly clever, if nutso, murderer who also happens to specialize in bullion theft. Before his escape, he swears revenge on the three men who had him locked away, one of whom is our protagonist, J.G. Reeder.

Reeder works for the office of the Public Prosecutor, and though only 48, is described as "elderly-looking" by virtually everyone who meets him. Despite his unfashionable haircut and bad clothes, Reeder has somehow managed to win the heart of the young and lovely Margaret Belman. Upon hearing of Flack's escape, he encourages her to take a job out of town, which turns out to be the most dangerous place she could possibly be.

Though indeed formulaic, the book has great chase scenes, real tension, and a heroine who doesn't simper. More importantly, it's really funny -- the book is filled with weird little nuggets like this one:

"Mr. Reeder was a very methodical man; he was, moreover, a careful man. All his life he had had a suspicion of milk. He used to wander round the suburban streets in the early hours of the morning, watch the cans hanging on the knockers, the bottles deposited in the corners of doorsteps, and ruminate upon the enormous possibilities for wholesale murder that this light-hearted custom of milk delivery presented to the criminally minded. He had calculated that a nimble homicide, working on systematic lines, could decimate London in a month."

You can join the Zombie Summer Reading Program by sending your blurbs to zombiesummerreading@gmail.com, or post on your own blog and send me a link.

When there's no more room in closed stacks, the out-of-print will rise up and walk the earth.

Introducing the Zombie Summer Reading Program

While digging through the closed stacks at my library, I came upon a strange old book with lovely spine art. Now, I watch Angel, and I know that opening strange old books in Los Angeles libraries leads to portal-opening and getting sucked into creepy demon dimensions. Still, I pressed on.

And found tucked inside the front cover no evil portals, but rather, a small envelope filled with x-rays of human teeth. This gave me an idea.

This summer's blockbuster hit is next year's $5.98 remainder at Barnes & Noble, so I wonder, what happened to the smash beach read from 1938 that currently languishes in your grandmother's attic? Is there some unsung classic waiting to be sold by the pound at your neighbor's yard sale?

This summer, I plan to slog my way through the forgotten books of the twentieth century, and you are cordially invited to join me in the Zombie Summer Reading Program. Email your most ghastly, obscure finds to zombiesummerreading@gmail.com, and I'll post your blurbs.

There are two rules for selecting a book:

1. It must be over 40 years old, and ideally, have a whiff of mold or neglect about it.
2. It must not be written by anyone you've ever heard of.

Will we find the Great American Novel? Will we find actual human teeth?

Stay tuned, dear reader.

When there's no more room in closed stacks, the out-of-print will rise up and walk the earth.