Yes, it's Willeford ... and well liked (i guess) but- this didn't do it for me at all. I rather liked the 1st half the book- setting up our character as a slick and successful used car salesperson/wunderkind. Sleazy and amoral enough to be interesting for future developments, but it is hard to square that half with the 2nd half the book- the real story here. Turns out out anti-hero is an aspiring film maker. Yes, he has an idea and finds a way to sell the notion (with his father in law, has been of the movie industry) to Mammoth studios for the most lean, dirt cheap movie you can make. A profound anti sort of movie showing a normal man truck driver driven to extremes. He is able to make the movie- the screenplay, the directing everything! but... the movie comes in at 63 minutes- exactly. Everyone knows movies must be 90 minutes, so a struggle ensues.... the pure artistic vision of the director at exactly 63 minutes vs the dumb commercial needs of a 90 (or it later transpires ... a shorter version for tv) minute movie. Our anti hero plays out his dream of artistic integrity, burning down the studio to show his anger, punching a pregnant lady out because- why not .... and waiting for the law to close him down. Piffle... artistic self indulgence ... of the author (not the pretend filmmaker). Maybe there is a story there somewhere (the struggle of artistic integrity) but not with this dull sledgehammer... kind of hated it by the end and not because of the cinematic violence ... but due to the lazy author. acknowledges that he just hasn't grown up like the others- but says that with the sure knowledge that we are supposed to be awed by your unspoiled purity. bleck.

Charles Willeford wrote unique characters and truly grasped the human psyche and humanity.

Ick!

Richard Hudson, the POV, is a used car salesman who decides to make a film, in part to help is step dad. The man is a jerk and this is obvious ahead of time, but when the film is a bust (too short, for one thing)nev, he decided to go for revenge. He is sexist and not particularly sensitive to other things, either. His mother is odd, and a few odd scenes happen between them.

If it hadn't been fairly short and if it hadn't been on Hoopla and if I'd owned this, I'd have chucked it in the recycling bin.

The entire structure of the book is framed with screenplay type things (such as fade to black), but for the most part it's written like a hardboiled type book. I do NOT understand why it has such a high average rating.

Very funny noir about a psycho used car dealer who gets the itch to make a movie and walks all over everybody in sight to get it done. If the film version ever shows on the Sundance Channel or IFC drop everything and watch it. This is one of the few movies that totally gets the book right. Charles Willeford rules!

A man who hates the world discovers it hates him back

My first exposure to this odd gem was the indie film starring Warburton. In this case the movie does better than the book, but only because the book is about a movie... everything great about the film is here, and I'm glad I finally read the book as well.

I enjoyed this, but maybe not quite as much as I expected, especially given the number of times people whose tastes I admire have recommended Willeford to me.

I generally liked the writing. And the weirdness. And the disgust with so much of American culture of the era. Somewhere along the way it reminded my of Portnoy's complaint without the sex (and much of the anxiety). And the subtlety with which Richard's craziness is revealed was really well done.

But I guess I would have enjoyed more thrills and less ruminations on artistry. (Also more of the used car and less of the movie business.) So much of it was building, building, building--but to what? If this was cleverly intended to show "movement" over "action," that was lost on me. Maybe because I expected it be more of a crime/revenge novel and less about movies or the american condition, I was disappointed by the last third.

Still, I will definitely read some more--maybe Miami Blues or Side Swiped.

Some other things I liked:

The line about need 2 shifts to support such a family; 3 shifts to love them.

The comfort of mummies.

Vocabulary needed for Time vs Newsweek.

A bottle of scotch as your only luggage.

Does anyone know what "spaelean depths" (p.49) refers to?

DO NOT READ THE BLACK MASK EDITION AS IT HAS A RIDICULOUS NUMBER OF TYPOS!!

Ahem, ok, The Woman Chaser. Another book I first heard of in the bonus features for Down By Law when Jim Jarmusch listed some of his favorite books. Then the Onion AV Club had it in their bookclub and my lovely lady sent me her copy to read.

Richard Hudson has problems. Part megalomania, raging Oedipus complex, and some pretty frightening sociopathic tendencies especially when it comes to the ladies. But the man wants to somehow transcend all that and the futility of "Eisenhower USA" by making a movie. But naturally this doesn't go quite as planned and people have to be taught a lesson as he sees fit.

Definitely absorbing even though it takes a while to feel any kind of connection with such a weird guy. But it has its moments both comical (just check out how he phrases the synopsis of his movie) and just surreal (the dance sequence with his mother) and in a way the whole quest to create a piece of art rather than the movie itself becomes the "masterpiece" Hudson is going for. And this book, written as a film script, is the relic surviving it all. Probably a grower but definitely one I enjoyed reading and am still thinking about a week after I finished it.

Richard Hudson is The Man Who Got Away. Because everything was too easy for him and he was tired of it.

This (deceptively-titled) story, is much like Willeford's 1953 debut High Priest of California but with a more enterprising plot and flashier writing.

For you GRers, here is a reading list for sociopaths (courtesy of Richard Hudson):
Ulysses
The Trial
Practical Clinical Psychiatry
Crime and Punishment
Self-Analysis
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

I like the movie more, but the book really underlines the psychotic bent of the protagonist.

I read this after I saw the indie film version starring Patrick Warburton as the eponymous protagonist. It's about a used car salesman who decides his life is pointless unless he creates one thing. Just one thing.
So he sets out to, and as his creation grows, his sanity seems to diminish.

Truly a classic from pulp writer Willeford.
Also, the movie is good.

Another weird Charles Willeford book. It partly reads like a film script, because the narrator seems to be obsessed with film. Early into the story he breaks out into asides like this:

Already I sense that I am breaking some cardinal rule of writing.
If I continue in this vein how will I be able to establish a strong reader-identification? The average reader has a tendency to identify himself with a lead character and to project himself into the story and actually live the story through the thoughts, emotions and actions of the lead character. Poor reader. I am the reader and I dread the thought of going through it all again, and at the same time I welcome
and relish the opportunity. Perhaps I am a masochist?

Richard Hudson is a used car dealer but all he wants is to make a film.

Our lives are so short and there is so little time for creativeness, and yet we waste our precious time, letting it dribble through our fingers like dry sand. But that was it. Creativeness. To create
something. Anything.

He has some traits in common with the sociopath Frederick J. Frenger in Willeford's later novel Miami Blues. Both characters share this sentiment:

As I see things now, in retrospection, the only thing the matter with me was my compassion for others.

But it's unclear to what extent we're supposed to feel Hudson is a psychopath (he goes a little postal towards the end of the novel) and to what extent he's actually a truth teller, an artist with a clearer view of reality than the average citizen. It offers Willeford some occasion for satire, but it's all a little unfocused and sometimes plainly just boring. The story keeps you reading just because it's so weird, rather than because there's any memorable writing.

not actually a completely good book but it has moments of lurid, wry pulp that stand up to pretty much anything else in the damn world. This book gets five stars because of the elaborate set up for the Santa costume gag that it ends on. Has very little to do with chasing women, is actually a sort of cobbled together, rushed thing about a pervy used car salesman who decides to make a savagely honest movie about the death of the American dream. It would not surprise me if Charles Willeford wrote this in one sitting, it has a kind of amphetamines vibe to it. It's not really a pulp book, although it has some similarities to pulp--it's almost existentialist. I love this writer.