Pick-Up - Charles Willeford...late hardboiled lit

 

Couldn't settle into a book for weeks until I picked up Charles Willeford's Pick-Up, which has been sitting around for a few months. I'd tried other novels of his before but never finished one, not because they were bad but because I'm easily thrown off course. You know how it is, you're fine reading something, then you buy another and can't resist starting that. That's what I can be like anyway. Maybe the wind changes direction or I grow to hate the stink of an old second-hand book. I told you I'm easily deterred form finishing books. 

This is his second novel, published in 1955. As I lay in bed last night having put it down I wondered where it sat in the hardboiled genre, or if it even belonged there. I concluded it was 'late-hardboiled'. The classic era is roughly 1930 to 1950? Maybe. It coincides with film noir. No surprise. I also thought of Charles Bukowski, a contemporary. Only because Pick-Up depicts the same kind of lush life Bukowski's novels do. 

Americans have long been criticised for being 'vulgar' by snobs who like to think of European literature (and Europeans?) as being 'superior', more intellectually and artistically refined. Those loud-mouthed Yanks! But you know as well as I do that the genius of some American literature is to turn the commonplace into poetry. I don't mean Hemmingway. I find his style far too mannered, these days. Too self-conscious. Whereas once I enjoyed it; when I was younger and more intent on reading 'the greats'.

Novels like Pick-Up 'tell it like it is' and don't mess around with either flowery descriptions or detours that distract from the momentum of the main narrative. Nothing to prove, or want to prove. It's life on the edge, two steps from sleeping on the streets without hammering home a 'social' message. Writers like Willeford can tell you everything about a life without actually telling you everything. That's the mark of a great novel. OK, it may not ever be regarded as a Great American Novel but Willeford isn't aiming that high. His aim is squarely set on 'low' life and he hits the target dead centre.