Harry Whittington, Paperback Ace

He could plot like the very devil. He wrote well, and he certainly cared about characterization, and that’s what gave his plots weight, but it was the mechanisms of his stories that made them so interesting.

Unlike some writers, Whittington had to know where everything was going, how it was going to happen, and how people were going to react to it. This may make it sound as if those mechanisms were robotic, but that is far from the case. Sure, Whittington wrote a little too fast much of the time, and there are places in his books that are not as on the money as others, but there was a pure storytelling drive inside Whittington and he was burning to get it on paper; and he did.

I don’t know the exact number of books he wrote during his lifetime, but it was in the ballpark of 200. He started in the pulps, and was at the birth of the paperback revolution. He was made for that revolution, and was one of the most important writers in it. Along with a few others, he pretty much created the original paperback novel, fast-paced stories, shootings and killings and sexual titillation, and all the things that those seeking entertainment couldn’t find in films and other mediums; cheap entertainment for the masses, mostly male.

Whittington had started out to be what some call a “serious” novelist. And then he decided making a living telling stories was more to his taste. Still, he started out poorly. He had a hard time selling his work, but when it did click, he was off and running. He was able to bring the better aspects of literary fiction to his crime novels and westerns, and for that matter most everything he wrote. It was a combination that worked.

One of the things he wrote is the book you're about to read.

FIRES THAT DESTROY is a favorite of mine. It owes something to James Cain, one of my favorite writers of all time, primarily for two novels, DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. Raymond Chandler once compared Cain to a Billy Goat, I believe. Whittington in many ways took Cain’s ideas of carnality and murder to a new level. He wasn’t as slick as Cain, but he damn sure knew how to slum in the best possible way. If Cain was a Billy Goat, Whittington, in some of his novels, at least, could be a Billy Goat on Viagra. And hey, that had yet to be invented when he wrote this.

FIRES THAT DESTROY is very much of the Cain school, the Viagra added. It’s a third person novel, but it feels as if it is mostly told from the viewpoint of its main character, Bernice Harper. Whittington has many moments when he dips into her thoughts, her point of view. Bernice is a common person living day to day, and unlike the usual women in these sorts of stories, is not a voluptuous knock-out, or at least she isn’t from her own point of view. She is just an average office worker with nothing particularly interesting about her, until she meets up with a blind business man named Lloyd Deerman. He meets her where she works and where he is a consultant from time to time, and though he can’t see her, he takes to her. He convinces her to go to work for him as his private, live-in secretary, with side benefits for him, of course.

Bernice likes the attention and the possibility of a better income, but is simultaneously humiliated, certain the attention he’s giving her is due to him being blind, unable to see how unattractive she is. Coupled with this she makes a discovery. Her blind suitor and employee has a large sum of money in his home, and something inside of Bernice Harper is awakened and snaps firmly into focus.

Greed.

Before discovering the money she felt worthless and without hope. Just an unattractive woman surrounded by people with power, beauty, and money. The possibility of being in a financial condition that will allow her to live more the way she would like to live is too strong a compulsion to ignore. Money, she feels, will give her prominence, opportunities, and hope.

She makes plans, and soon Deerman has what appears to be an accident, and Bernice pockets the money. A detective isn’t so sure. He sees something in Bernice that others do not; a predator hiding behind banality. But the problem is, he can’t prove it.

I don’t want to go into much more than that, the book should be your pleasure and I shouldn’t spoil it for you. But the power of this book for me isn’t so much the plot, it’s the escalation of the rotten drive inside of Bernice Harper that is so compelling, and the fact that rotten seeks rotten. And Bernice finds just that.

FIRES THAT DESTROY is like so many of the best noir novels, the sort where you see the main character climb on a fast train with a straight track and no detours, even though like all noir characters of this sort, they should be able to look far enough ahead to realize that the track falls off into an abyss. Bernice should sense that just past the bright city lights and the chattering voices, way out there in the shadowed country land, the bridge is out and the train has nowhere to go but over a cliff, and into that aforementioned abyss.

But the needy noir character, which Bernice is, stays on anyway. It’s the immediate thrill of the train ride she wants, and like a child, she can’t observe far enough down the track to see the doom that waits. She’s just too empty. Too hungry for something she can’t identify. She wants so desperately to have her moment, to fill that emptiness, she’s not only riding that train to certain destruction, she is in fact pushing down on the throttle, trying to get there way too fast. Like a child, it’s hard for her to understand there are consequences for her actions.

Here’s a powerful quote from the novel, and one that gives you a feeling for what gives the book its power. This is from Bernice’s point of view, reveals how she feels around other people, how she feels about herself:

“You become sensitive. You become so sensitive that two people cannot whisper across the room without causing you to be ill. You’re sure they’re talking about you. You want to run. You spend your entire life running from people. And all the time all you want inside is to run toward them and find them waiting, smiling, and their arms outstretched.”

Ouch.

That’s a sadly beautiful and revealing passage. With it we actually have the opportunity to reach out and touch the heart of noir, which this novel personifies, and stir our fingers about in a darkness that seems to have form but can’t be gripped; it’s that grim but not entirely recognizable emptiness the characters in these sorts of stories are always trying to fill, only to find that at the bottom of their emotions is a hole, and any sort of pleasure they put into themselves leaks out, allowing satisfaction, pride, success, to be nothing more than a fleeting sensation, leaving only need and greed and disappointment, and those whirling and insubstantial shadows.

Another interesting aspect of this novel, and the modern reader might not snap to it immediately, but the women of this era were thought horribly vulgar if they were open about sexual needs and gratification. Of course, deep down, even then, both women and men knew this was true, but it was not something that was open to polite discussion, and any woman who wanted or enjoyed sex was usually branded as a vixen at best, and more commonly a whore. It was like a truth everyone knew, that both men and women had “urges” and could enjoy sex, but it was hidden under layers of culture, like cheap paint over rotten wood. When that sort of lust was tied to greed and nihilism, you had the perfect 1950’s paperback-noir cocktail.

FIRES THAT DESTROY is indeed that cocktail.

Drink up.

Joe R. Lansdale

Nacogdoches, Texas

December 2013

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Harry Whittington, Paperback Ace