The Woman Chaser

Holy crap, every time I read a Charles Willeford novel I find myself wondering why this guy isn't treated like a major talent. I think this is the best of the few I've read. Time to look for more.

A good enough short pulp fiction read from Willeford. The protagonist is a real asshole, which I guess is a a testament to the author, but sort of limited my enjoyment of the book.

Charles Willeford is one of those rare authors who makes me laugh out loud in book after book. Donald Westlake is another. It's their deadpan delivery or something. Anyway, Richard Hudson is a fun-loving used car salesman (one of Willeford's favorite characters to use) who gets bored and decides to make a movie. He runs into all types of crazy problems, including making a short movie of sixty-odd minutes instead of the conventional ninety minutes. Entertaining even if not one of his best, this Willeford novel can be downloaded at munseys.com.

Sick, twisted, and deliriously funny. Like Walker Percy's THE MOVIEGOER, but without all that preening and pretentious navel-gazing. An absurdist show-biz story that dives into the sleaziest dives and skuzziest dumpsters of Tinsel Town. A family melodrama that is equal parts August Strindberg and dinner scene from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Hummm. Another book by Charles Willeford and again, how would this be classified, what genre?

As a writer, Willeford is very difficult to categorize and rightly so. I’ve read almost all of his books and they range from absurd to zany from intense to humorous.

The Woman Chaser falls somewhere between a to z starting with the opening paragraph which begins like a movie script. For good reason, too. After a few chapters that's what it's about; a movie script and Richard Hudson's life in humdrum Amercia, living (or not) the Amercian dream.

Hudson is an off-the-chart great used car salesman who gets bored with all the money he’s made selling used cars. With the big ‘thumbs up’ from his boss in San Francisco, Richard buys a used car lot in Los Angeles, gussies it up, staffs it, reconnects with his family (he grew up in LA) and soon thereafter leaves for a hotel room to write his first movie script. He has a strong desire, an urgent need to be creative apparently having lost his himself in making money in the used car business. Richard is like 'is this all there is?' or ‘What’s it all About, Alfie?”

His family consists of his ‘forever a ballerina’ mother, step-father who is about his age and a down and out movie producer, and his step-sister, a nubile teenager. Beginning with absurd or ending with zany, either term will do, my favorite part in the book is when he finds his mother in the well-appointed basement ballet dancing to The Miraculous Mandarin. He strips off his shirt and begins dancing with her becoming the “the Miraculous Mandarin himself, the damndest Chinaman anybody ever saw! I chased, I pursued, I made impossible leaps and came down as lightly as a wind-wafted cigarette paper.” What a sight, in my mind, to behold when Richard “pranced, cavorted, darted, turned, glided, bent, stretched, and did a mad fouetee on one leg” until he almost lost reason, he says. That was the turning point, when he decided that writing and directing the movie was his destiny. The only reason for his existence at this point in his life.

I found myself from time to time thinking about the movie American Beauty, a mid-life crisis in the making. Here's Richard, in mid-life crisis mode, and I'm reading it line by line. And the title, well, women are throwaways for him, but then so is everything else when he decides his life is not complete until his movie is written, directed (by himself, of course) and in the theaters as the biggest success since Gone With the Wind. When his masterpiece is completed, well, that’s the story, so I’ll leave it up to you to take the time to read this little jewel of a book, a scant 192 pages.

In my view, Willeford is underestimated, if estimated at all on anyone’s radar. He’s relatively unknown except for those interested in noir (he wrote from the 1950's-1980's) although he can’t, in my mind, be classified in that category either. But he was a great underrated talent who should be studied in creative writing classes and read by even more readers than some of the noted authors of today. He's a vivid and a simply great writer in my opinion.

In my list of favorite authors, Willeford is right up there with my favorites. My only regret is that he went long periods of time (12 years) without writing or publishing anything so he has a very small library of books; unfortunately, I’m near the end of reading them. Too bad for me but good for you if you haven’t read him. He’s a must in on my list and you are missing out if you haven't read him yet.

Holy cow, what a book. I just read Willeford's memoir a while back, but this was the first novel of his I've read. Steve Erickson has called Willeford the Philip K. Dick of crime writing, in that both writers refuse to fit neatly into their genre's confines. And like Dick, they were both pulp writers, in the sense, as Luc Sante puts it, that their work comes from a working class, gotta-continually-hustle-to-get-by sensibility.

Anyway, this is a perfect little gem of a book. Very odd in places--the main character Richard Hudson's relationship with his mother, for instance, is like nothing I've read before--and continually fresh. Fun fun fun read.

The weird, noirish story of a car salesman in '60s L.A. who decides to make a movie. Things do not work out well. The salesman, who narrates the story, has an attitude and a way with words that's both hilarious and demented. The movie version of the book is perhaps even better, but alas, is still not on DVD.

This one feels like a mid-way point in Willeford's development. He's found his central interest - the psychopath - but has not yet perfected the wry, deadpan eye that he trains on this subject in the better novels (Shark Infested Custard, Miami Blues, etc.). Nor is the book entirely convincing - I didn't quite buy the portrayal of Hollywood or the used car business.