...
Show More
A salacious title for a mostly non-salacious book. The publisher tagged a moniker to the book that is not even actually noted throughout the book.
This Willeford
This Willeford
Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book
Community Reviews
Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 43 votes)
5 stars
16(37%)
4 stars
16(37%)
3 stars
11(26%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
43 reviews
...
Show More
I'm re-reading this book on my Kindle (It's a bargain at $3.99), having read the paperback 11 years ago.
It's amazing how it sprang into life from the first page and took me back to that state of amazement I felt the first time I read it.
I was especially moved by the introduction from Donald Westlake, which is not in the earlier editions. Westlake really nails it. Willeford earned the ultimate reward--honor and respect from the best-selling writers in the noir genre.
In 1958, when this book was published, Willeford was a struggling pulp fiction writer. Although he published several remarkable books during this period, none of them were big sellers, although they were critically acclaimed.
He kept on writing anyway, while paying the bills by teaching writing at Miami Dade College and the University of Miami.
Willeford finally hit it big in the 1980's with the Hoke Moseley novels, the first of which (Miami Blues) was made into a damn good film. At that point, he was 61 years old. He wrote three more Moseley novels, all classics, and then he left us.
If you are a true Willeford freak, you have to go back and read his pulp classics from the 50's through the 70's. Every single one of them is a gem.
Sometimes I feel like screaming to the world, "If you haven't read Willeford, you're not qualified to discuss postmodern American literature!"
It's amazing how it sprang into life from the first page and took me back to that state of amazement I felt the first time I read it.
I was especially moved by the introduction from Donald Westlake, which is not in the earlier editions. Westlake really nails it. Willeford earned the ultimate reward--honor and respect from the best-selling writers in the noir genre.
In 1958, when this book was published, Willeford was a struggling pulp fiction writer. Although he published several remarkable books during this period, none of them were big sellers, although they were critically acclaimed.
He kept on writing anyway, while paying the bills by teaching writing at Miami Dade College and the University of Miami.
Willeford finally hit it big in the 1980's with the Hoke Moseley novels, the first of which (Miami Blues) was made into a damn good film. At that point, he was 61 years old. He wrote three more Moseley novels, all classics, and then he left us.
If you are a true Willeford freak, you have to go back and read his pulp classics from the 50's through the 70's. Every single one of them is a gem.
Sometimes I feel like screaming to the world, "If you haven't read Willeford, you're not qualified to discuss postmodern American literature!"
...
Show More
Willeford is a favourite of mine, his crime writing has a gritty style to it that is difficult to compare to anyone else.
This, one of his early novels published in 1958, is of particular interest.
The narrator and protagonist, an unsuccessful writer with a failed marriage, scams his way into a post as a white Pastor shepherding a black congregation in Jim Crow era Jacksonville, Florida. He’s written more as an opportunist than a militant racist and yet he uses his position to do some crappy things, which is still racist.
Before I continue, it is necessary to say that this is written as a biting satire of organised religion, and a send up of civil rights through the white perspective.
What’s clear, is that though the Reverend Springer comes over as more of an opportunist than a blatant racist, he is still painted as a pretty despicable character. He misuses his position, and he is a racist by association at the very least. Though, in the last part of the novel, he takes a flight to New York with a woman from the congregation he had been chasing, and shows her how different the attitude to race is. His short time amongst the Jax congregation has perhaps changed him.
It was only published after a change of title. The publisher objected to this one, to which Willeford suggested ‘N word’ lover, also rejected, then published as Honey Gal.
It’s significance should not be under estimated. It was one of the first novels to depict the civil rights revolution that followed the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ruling, that State laws establishing segregation in public schools were unconstitutional (1954).
Yet, it bears the hallmark of Willeford’s best; his black humour about which he said he just wrote the truth, and that they are neither wholly plot driven nor character driven, but have an eccentricity to them which provides all the fun.
This, one of his early novels published in 1958, is of particular interest.
The narrator and protagonist, an unsuccessful writer with a failed marriage, scams his way into a post as a white Pastor shepherding a black congregation in Jim Crow era Jacksonville, Florida. He’s written more as an opportunist than a militant racist and yet he uses his position to do some crappy things, which is still racist.
Before I continue, it is necessary to say that this is written as a biting satire of organised religion, and a send up of civil rights through the white perspective.
What’s clear, is that though the Reverend Springer comes over as more of an opportunist than a blatant racist, he is still painted as a pretty despicable character. He misuses his position, and he is a racist by association at the very least. Though, in the last part of the novel, he takes a flight to New York with a woman from the congregation he had been chasing, and shows her how different the attitude to race is. His short time amongst the Jax congregation has perhaps changed him.
It was only published after a change of title. The publisher objected to this one, to which Willeford suggested ‘N word’ lover, also rejected, then published as Honey Gal.
It’s significance should not be under estimated. It was one of the first novels to depict the civil rights revolution that followed the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ruling, that State laws establishing segregation in public schools were unconstitutional (1954).
Yet, it bears the hallmark of Willeford’s best; his black humour about which he said he just wrote the truth, and that they are neither wholly plot driven nor character driven, but have an eccentricity to them which provides all the fun.
...
Show More
A year ago, Sam Springer left his stable (if uninspiring) job as an accountant to become a novelist. Now, he has left his wife in order to become an ordained minister of a small black church in Jax, Florida. It's not that he believes in God (he doesn't!), it's just that he figures the pay is good and the work easy:
"Most ministers are smarter than ordinary people, and the only real difference is, they are a lot lazier. The stuff they put out in the pulpit is entirely different from what they believe… If they are really good, they get into the big pay brackets like the revival circuits. In fact, the less a minister believes, the more effective he is when he talks about religion."
Over the course of one eventful week, the Right Reverend Springer is about to discover how wrong he is. Whether he's organizing a grass-roots civil rights bus boycott, trying to collect bribe money from racist white city leaders, or seducing the young black wife of one of his parishioners, he is about to work harder than he ever has in his life!
This book failed to connect with me, but it is hard to say why. I liked the premise, and I enjoyed the author's prose and his cynical ironic view of the world. I think the problem may be the book cannot decide if it wants to be a pulp noir, an existential literary exercise, or an outright social parody.
It was first published in 1958 by Beacon Books under the title Honey Gal. It was marketed as a sex book (despite having no sex scenes). The cover featured an interracial couple with two tag lines: "He was white. She was beautiful--and bad" and "A starkly naked novel of sin and segregation".
It was republished in 1989 by Black Lizard Books under the author's preferred title. By this time, Willeford had become a popular crime writer, and this early book was hailed as a "masterpiece" by at least one mainstream critic.
The novel is fairly consistent in its relentless mockery of religion, especially the Pentecostal fire-and-brimstone variety common in southern black churches. Despite the main character's assumed, casual racism (such as when he sleeps on a bus while his black lover is forced to stand all night because it is illegal for her to deprive any white person of a seat), the book itself does not spare its punches when depicting white racism.
Its attitude towards the Civil Rights movement is a little more mixed. The NAACP comes off as mildly corrupt and self-serving, but local black activists are generally sympathetic. They are portrayed as sincere and well-intentioned, except insofar as they are easily duped by their religious superstitions.
The interracial romance angle provides a reason for Springer to eventually leave town and wrap up the story, but otherwise its primary purpose seems to be selling that original cover for Beacon.
As usual, Willeford's imagery is memorable. Here were two of my favorite lines:
"As she unpeeled the Renolds Wrap from the chicken, a maddening aroma filled my nostrils. The outside of the chicken was a beautiful color-the shade of a two-day bruise on the tender side of a woman's thigh."
She was "a perfect thirty-eight, and most of the thirty-eight was in the long evenly matched breasts, not in a thick, meat-padded back."
The book reminded me somewhat of Frederick Buechner's Book of Bebb. Both feature charismatic but ungrounded protagonists searching for meaning in life. Willeford's humor and social commentary has more bite, but they both have high awareness of and tolerance for human frailty.
"Most ministers are smarter than ordinary people, and the only real difference is, they are a lot lazier. The stuff they put out in the pulpit is entirely different from what they believe… If they are really good, they get into the big pay brackets like the revival circuits. In fact, the less a minister believes, the more effective he is when he talks about religion."
Over the course of one eventful week, the Right Reverend Springer is about to discover how wrong he is. Whether he's organizing a grass-roots civil rights bus boycott, trying to collect bribe money from racist white city leaders, or seducing the young black wife of one of his parishioners, he is about to work harder than he ever has in his life!
This book failed to connect with me, but it is hard to say why. I liked the premise, and I enjoyed the author's prose and his cynical ironic view of the world. I think the problem may be the book cannot decide if it wants to be a pulp noir, an existential literary exercise, or an outright social parody.
It was first published in 1958 by Beacon Books under the title Honey Gal. It was marketed as a sex book (despite having no sex scenes). The cover featured an interracial couple with two tag lines: "He was white. She was beautiful--and bad" and "A starkly naked novel of sin and segregation".
It was republished in 1989 by Black Lizard Books under the author's preferred title. By this time, Willeford had become a popular crime writer, and this early book was hailed as a "masterpiece" by at least one mainstream critic.
The novel is fairly consistent in its relentless mockery of religion, especially the Pentecostal fire-and-brimstone variety common in southern black churches. Despite the main character's assumed, casual racism (such as when he sleeps on a bus while his black lover is forced to stand all night because it is illegal for her to deprive any white person of a seat), the book itself does not spare its punches when depicting white racism.
Its attitude towards the Civil Rights movement is a little more mixed. The NAACP comes off as mildly corrupt and self-serving, but local black activists are generally sympathetic. They are portrayed as sincere and well-intentioned, except insofar as they are easily duped by their religious superstitions.
The interracial romance angle provides a reason for Springer to eventually leave town and wrap up the story, but otherwise its primary purpose seems to be selling that original cover for Beacon.
As usual, Willeford's imagery is memorable. Here were two of my favorite lines:
"As she unpeeled the Renolds Wrap from the chicken, a maddening aroma filled my nostrils. The outside of the chicken was a beautiful color-the shade of a two-day bruise on the tender side of a woman's thigh."
She was "a perfect thirty-eight, and most of the thirty-eight was in the long evenly matched breasts, not in a thick, meat-padded back."
The book reminded me somewhat of Frederick Buechner's Book of Bebb. Both feature charismatic but ungrounded protagonists searching for meaning in life. Willeford's humor and social commentary has more bite, but they both have high awareness of and tolerance for human frailty.
...
Show More
First off, this tells a story of how easy it used to be to just walk away from your life, and start a new one. Such as the case with Sam Springer who becomes Deuteronomy Springer, a white reverend with an all black flock. He has the worst intentions, and lives up to them in an unapologetic tale of greed and lust and violence. Classic Willeford.
...
Show More
A lot of Willeford fans like this one but I thought it was crap. Once you get past the short punch line (phony white minister takes over a black church and leads them) there's nothing much going on here. No big payoff, no character development to speak of. I'm surprised Willeford wanted this one published. He's a great writer but this wasn't funny or involving. It was the equivalent to sitting through a bad movie just waiting for it to end so you could say you saw it all the way through. I think I sold my copy.
...
Show More
Originally published in 1958 as Honey Gal of all names, this casual existential tale of the white Brother Springer escaping his wife, failed career as a writer and his past in Columbus, Ohio by accepting ordainment in a church he doesn't believe in and preaching to an all black congregation in Florida in the days of the Civil Rights Movement is a truly enjoyable piece of entertainment featuring some of those trademark Willefordisms any casual reader of the man will have come to notice.
Sam Springer is an inherently good man with a good thing going in smooth talk, a penchant for idleness and a complete lack of driving force in his life. He is pretty much your typical Willeford character and nothing that he does really surprises you in that sense. I spotted some similarities with some of the Chester Himes Harlem Cycle novels I've read and rather more interestingly Springer's desire to live as easily as possible called to mind Robert Heinlein's famous character Lazarus Long who inadvertently worked harder than he ever would have in trying to do as little as possible in every task he was ever assigned.
It's a hardboiled little tale of greed, lust and deception that provides the reader with existential questions without putting the thoughts in the head of the protagonist, pure 50s pulp gold, and it even has interracial relations and violence to boot.
Sam Springer is an inherently good man with a good thing going in smooth talk, a penchant for idleness and a complete lack of driving force in his life. He is pretty much your typical Willeford character and nothing that he does really surprises you in that sense. I spotted some similarities with some of the Chester Himes Harlem Cycle novels I've read and rather more interestingly Springer's desire to live as easily as possible called to mind Robert Heinlein's famous character Lazarus Long who inadvertently worked harder than he ever would have in trying to do as little as possible in every task he was ever assigned.
It's a hardboiled little tale of greed, lust and deception that provides the reader with existential questions without putting the thoughts in the head of the protagonist, pure 50s pulp gold, and it even has interracial relations and violence to boot.
...
Show More
Totally relevant today. The American condition examined closely.
...
Show More
#9 from willeford for me...give or take...
i liked the description: lurid tale of a preacher saving an entire congregation. he saves every one except one...
good enough for me...onward & upward.
ha ha ha ha!...the cover is great...kindle version...but they use what must have been the cover of a paperback, yay ago...a man in white shirt/tie...a woman, barefoot, dress...a haystack behind them. yay! boy howdy!
this at the top: he was white. she was beautiful--and bad.
this at the bottom: a starkly naked novel of sin and segregation
yeah...i thought i read something about a black preacher? i dunno...
and... a price on the cover= $00.35. heh! 35 cents.
"a beacon first award winner"
also...this was 1st published around 1958...w/a different title, and there's info at wiki related to that...the black mass of brother springer...and apparently, the publisher at some point rejecting willeford's title, asked for another...the nigger lover he suggested, also rejected...a phrase that is used more than once in the story...as it plays upon the rosa parks story
story begins:
softly--i didn't want to waken merita--i eased the window up as high as it would go and inhaled the aroma of ammonia, stale food, discarded socks, and some air that wafted lazily up the air shaft. less than three feet away i could see into another hotel room, almost the same as mine, and observe the heavy breathing of an old geezer sleeping like the only man left in the world without a conscience.
and here we go...as the song has it...again!
time & place
*sometime after 1954...when the present abbott took over the monastery
*story opens at the anderson hotel, on the edge of harlem in new york city, & then it backtracks to begin following sam springer...the anderson is the 3rd hotel they tried before they got a room..."no room at the inn"
*church of god's flock...and the kindle has what i assume is an amusing typo--the kindle has had mistakes like this and i wonder how they happen? a misreading of one program's type? simple typos? i dunno...but it has the "church of god's hock" heh!...or another example: "comer" for "corner"
*a year-old project house in an area of greater miami known as ocean pine terraces
*the thrifty way finance company
*tanfair milk company, columbus, ohio, previous employer of sam
*beacon storage company
*john adams junior high school...wife's school
*orangeville, florida, location of the church of god's flock monastery, population 603
*greyhound bus station
*a save! chain gas station
*a movie theatre that the abbott dover was at...in lincoln, nebraska
*soldier's home in washington...where the abbott will go when he leaves the monastery
*fort ord...from a character's past
*green lobster, in miami, restaurant where sam took virginia
*trent...small place on the way...to jax
*dr. jensen's office, 71714 n. tremaine street
*jackie's bar-b-que...owned by jackie linsey, one of the trustees
*golden chevel club...where rosie does three sets a night
*kern's funeral parlor and special ambulance service
*afro hotel
*a drugstore
*the jensen residence, part of a double duplex
*the southern baptists of saint john church
*city bus stop at the corner of lee and broadway in downtown jax
*a flat-nosed, green-and-white city bus or two
*ed price's garage
*montgomery street...flagler park
*a telegraph office
*white springs...atlanta...post office
*international airport, atlanta...international airport, new jersey
*airport cafe
characters
*sam springer...who morphs into the right reverend deuteronomy springer...previously a novelist from miami, florida, previously an accountant from columbus, ohio, now a minister of god's flock, jax, florida, his one published novel, no bed too high, zenith press
*merita...the wife of another...she is described as a "negro woman w/a latin appearance." she was merita wells, prior to her marriage to dr. jensen, dentist in jax...and is now merita jensen
*alias of mr. william johnson...at the anderson hotel
*hotel clerks
*mr. louis carlisle...manager of tanfair milk company
*his secretary, mrs. burns
*virginia, sam springer's wife
*next door neighbor in florida, a trust officer at the citizen's bank
*an elderly gentleman in a grey wash-and-wear dacron suit...on the bus
*station attendant, a young man in his late twenties...as the save! station
*abbott dover, right reverend jack dover...at the monastery, took over in 1954
*dover had a pet snake while in the service, name of mary lou
*right reverend cosmo bird of birmingham, alabama...founder of the church of god's flock, and the man who started the monastery
*1st abbott, a white man by the name of terence norton
*a nigger girl came along and sat down (abbott dover's words)
*a former teacher in the audience, two women friends of his mother's, a dentist, and several boys that he knew (abbott dover)
*some pickers...in the past, the monastery grew oranges, etc
*dr. fred jensen, jax, florida, a dentist, heads up the board of trustees at the church of god's flock...married to marita, who will not bear him children--she knows how to keep that away--and he is 22 years older than her
*two roman catholic priests at the green lobster
*a negro boy polishing squash
*reverend wannop...passed on to meet his maker...previous minister
*jackie linsey, one of the trustees
*his wife, mrs. linsey
*mr. clyde caldwell, 3rd trustee of the church
*guest ministers from the abyssinian church of lambs, the truth baptists of the infant, jesus, and the afro-cuban missionary society
*combination cook/maid named ralphine...springer's help in jax
*rosie durrand, choirmistress, "dressed in a pair of green slacks and a pink blouse" heh!
*six young girls...the choir, i presume
*mr. & mrs. kern...church members...he is also a minister, the church of jesus's rock
*a young negro and his girlfriend...both sixteen...want to marry
*tom the ragman...church member who hasn't attended
*toby harris, hotel clerk at the afro hotel
*the fountain girl at the drugstore, ellie may
*jim lyle, proprietor of the drugstore
*ruthie...the jensen's maid
*dr. theodore heartwell, the head of the jax colored church league
*mrs. bessie langdale...a kind of rosa parks
*her oldest married daughter...her grandson, robert
*reverend warren hutto
*dr. harry david
*right reverend jason mccroy, pastor of the church of the divine spirit
*his ten-man choir
*several bus drivers, one named roy...policemen...reporters...one a mr. dick ames from the jax daily advertiser
*ames tells springer about john, a "nigger servant for twenty years"
*tommy heartwell, dr. heartwell's giant-sized son
*several instances of white men...white women...negroes...waiting at the bus stops...one white man named mr. sawyers
*a young girl in pedal pushers and a tight orange sweater
*eddie price
*corwin...represents the jax intertransit omnibus company
*springer says at one point "my sister was run over by a car when she was nine years old"
*mr. keene...mentioned by name by corwin...his higher-up
*girl at the telegraph office
*an investigator from the international colored advancement society in atlanta...mr. fred grant, chief investigator
*a kindergarten teacher...to help bessie work on her speech
*a negro station manager
*volunteer workers....several of dr. hertwell's female church members
*slow-moving pedestrians
*a young buck...mad at ralphine for the worthless ju-ju she gave him against the v.d.
*an angel of the lord...(springer's story to jensen)
*an elderly woman...brought springer a barbecued pork sandwich
*a dispatcher seated at reverend hutto's desk
*the driver was a thick-bellied negro, and a sausage roll of fat hung loosely over the back of his collar
*four men flew out of the parked cars and began to run
*station attendant
*a white waitress...waits on springer and merita
*salesmen....guards...
*toward the end...springer says his first name is judas...judas d springer
*a male negro...a prime specimen of american man
*two teenage puerto rican girls
a story like this
The Gospel Singer Harry Crews
this idea is present in a number of stories i've read
a feeling of unreality, almost impossible to pinpoint, that made me feel like an observer watching someone else do very foolish things, amusing things, that were somehow unimportant to the real me.
as in...From Here to Eternity...Darkness Visible...and possibly another from styron
and here is another from the story: the rest of the time i seemed to be outside myself, an observer, an anonymous member of a great movie audience watching some new kind of comedy on a life-sized screen, wondering how the plot would turn out in the end.
plus: in willeford's story, Pick-Up, there exists a similar description, harry jordan, the eye-narrator of that piece, his state-of-mind at the midway point of the telling
some unusual words at play
*"set of sticks"...manger of the thrifty way finance company's words for springer's furniture
*"a plug of brown mules"
*"burpies"...that the abbott performs...some sort of calisthenic, a term familiar to both the abbott and springer from armed service days
*"geedus"...as in "a pile of dough in nigger property in pratt city, and he put most of the geedus into establishing more churches."...words spoken by abbott dover
*"give him something besides a cotton string for a backbone. amen."
*color described thus: "the shade of a two-day bruise on the tender side of a woman's thigh"
some books mentioned
the bee-eye-bee-ell-ee...although willeford, too, uses the word revelations...i've seen that so much that i wonder if the final book of the bible isn't plural, like so many use...or what?...genesis thirty-two, twenty-four
the plumed serpent d.h. lawrence
thomas merton paperbacks
the golden bough
sartre's, being and nothingness
kafka's, the trial
henry miller's tropic of capricorn
notes...from under the floorboards...dostoyevsky
update, finished, 8:32 p.m. e.s.t. 27 dec 12, thursday evening
an okay story...not blown away...not bored to tears...much to like...very little to dislike...although even the dislike should be liked--like some continuity errors...i pound nails...on occasion, i bend one...so...it is still nice to read that others make mistakes, willeford among them...like the revelations mistake...
but there was another...a character's name introduced into the story w/o the pov-narrator working for it...meaning...the name shouldn't have been there, but it was...and one error, merita is identified as "merita springer"...and springer is identified as "john springer" at one point...another continuity error?
t'would appear so...he was sam springer at the get-go
all in all...good read...smoke em if you got em
i liked the description: lurid tale of a preacher saving an entire congregation. he saves every one except one...
good enough for me...onward & upward.
ha ha ha ha!...the cover is great...kindle version...but they use what must have been the cover of a paperback, yay ago...a man in white shirt/tie...a woman, barefoot, dress...a haystack behind them. yay! boy howdy!
this at the top: he was white. she was beautiful--and bad.
this at the bottom: a starkly naked novel of sin and segregation
yeah...i thought i read something about a black preacher? i dunno...
and... a price on the cover= $00.35. heh! 35 cents.
"a beacon first award winner"
also...this was 1st published around 1958...w/a different title, and there's info at wiki related to that...the black mass of brother springer...and apparently, the publisher at some point rejecting willeford's title, asked for another...the nigger lover he suggested, also rejected...a phrase that is used more than once in the story...as it plays upon the rosa parks story
story begins:
softly--i didn't want to waken merita--i eased the window up as high as it would go and inhaled the aroma of ammonia, stale food, discarded socks, and some air that wafted lazily up the air shaft. less than three feet away i could see into another hotel room, almost the same as mine, and observe the heavy breathing of an old geezer sleeping like the only man left in the world without a conscience.
and here we go...as the song has it...again!
time & place
*sometime after 1954...when the present abbott took over the monastery
*story opens at the anderson hotel, on the edge of harlem in new york city, & then it backtracks to begin following sam springer...the anderson is the 3rd hotel they tried before they got a room..."no room at the inn"
*church of god's flock...and the kindle has what i assume is an amusing typo--the kindle has had mistakes like this and i wonder how they happen? a misreading of one program's type? simple typos? i dunno...but it has the "church of god's hock" heh!...or another example: "comer" for "corner"
*a year-old project house in an area of greater miami known as ocean pine terraces
*the thrifty way finance company
*tanfair milk company, columbus, ohio, previous employer of sam
*beacon storage company
*john adams junior high school...wife's school
*orangeville, florida, location of the church of god's flock monastery, population 603
*greyhound bus station
*a save! chain gas station
*a movie theatre that the abbott dover was at...in lincoln, nebraska
*soldier's home in washington...where the abbott will go when he leaves the monastery
*fort ord...from a character's past
*green lobster, in miami, restaurant where sam took virginia
*trent...small place on the way...to jax
*dr. jensen's office, 71714 n. tremaine street
*jackie's bar-b-que...owned by jackie linsey, one of the trustees
*golden chevel club...where rosie does three sets a night
*kern's funeral parlor and special ambulance service
*afro hotel
*a drugstore
*the jensen residence, part of a double duplex
*the southern baptists of saint john church
*city bus stop at the corner of lee and broadway in downtown jax
*a flat-nosed, green-and-white city bus or two
*ed price's garage
*montgomery street...flagler park
*a telegraph office
*white springs...atlanta...post office
*international airport, atlanta...international airport, new jersey
*airport cafe
characters
*sam springer...who morphs into the right reverend deuteronomy springer...previously a novelist from miami, florida, previously an accountant from columbus, ohio, now a minister of god's flock, jax, florida, his one published novel, no bed too high, zenith press
*merita...the wife of another...she is described as a "negro woman w/a latin appearance." she was merita wells, prior to her marriage to dr. jensen, dentist in jax...and is now merita jensen
*alias of mr. william johnson...at the anderson hotel
*hotel clerks
*mr. louis carlisle...manager of tanfair milk company
*his secretary, mrs. burns
*virginia, sam springer's wife
*next door neighbor in florida, a trust officer at the citizen's bank
*an elderly gentleman in a grey wash-and-wear dacron suit...on the bus
*station attendant, a young man in his late twenties...as the save! station
*abbott dover, right reverend jack dover...at the monastery, took over in 1954
*dover had a pet snake while in the service, name of mary lou
*right reverend cosmo bird of birmingham, alabama...founder of the church of god's flock, and the man who started the monastery
*1st abbott, a white man by the name of terence norton
*a nigger girl came along and sat down (abbott dover's words)
*a former teacher in the audience, two women friends of his mother's, a dentist, and several boys that he knew (abbott dover)
*some pickers...in the past, the monastery grew oranges, etc
*dr. fred jensen, jax, florida, a dentist, heads up the board of trustees at the church of god's flock...married to marita, who will not bear him children--she knows how to keep that away--and he is 22 years older than her
*two roman catholic priests at the green lobster
*a negro boy polishing squash
*reverend wannop...passed on to meet his maker...previous minister
*jackie linsey, one of the trustees
*his wife, mrs. linsey
*mr. clyde caldwell, 3rd trustee of the church
*guest ministers from the abyssinian church of lambs, the truth baptists of the infant, jesus, and the afro-cuban missionary society
*combination cook/maid named ralphine...springer's help in jax
*rosie durrand, choirmistress, "dressed in a pair of green slacks and a pink blouse" heh!
*six young girls...the choir, i presume
*mr. & mrs. kern...church members...he is also a minister, the church of jesus's rock
*a young negro and his girlfriend...both sixteen...want to marry
*tom the ragman...church member who hasn't attended
*toby harris, hotel clerk at the afro hotel
*the fountain girl at the drugstore, ellie may
*jim lyle, proprietor of the drugstore
*ruthie...the jensen's maid
*dr. theodore heartwell, the head of the jax colored church league
*mrs. bessie langdale...a kind of rosa parks
*her oldest married daughter...her grandson, robert
*reverend warren hutto
*dr. harry david
*right reverend jason mccroy, pastor of the church of the divine spirit
*his ten-man choir
*several bus drivers, one named roy...policemen...reporters...one a mr. dick ames from the jax daily advertiser
*ames tells springer about john, a "nigger servant for twenty years"
*tommy heartwell, dr. heartwell's giant-sized son
*several instances of white men...white women...negroes...waiting at the bus stops...one white man named mr. sawyers
*a young girl in pedal pushers and a tight orange sweater
*eddie price
*corwin...represents the jax intertransit omnibus company
*springer says at one point "my sister was run over by a car when she was nine years old"
*mr. keene...mentioned by name by corwin...his higher-up
*girl at the telegraph office
*an investigator from the international colored advancement society in atlanta...mr. fred grant, chief investigator
*a kindergarten teacher...to help bessie work on her speech
*a negro station manager
*volunteer workers....several of dr. hertwell's female church members
*slow-moving pedestrians
*a young buck...mad at ralphine for the worthless ju-ju she gave him against the v.d.
*an angel of the lord...(springer's story to jensen)
*an elderly woman...brought springer a barbecued pork sandwich
*a dispatcher seated at reverend hutto's desk
*the driver was a thick-bellied negro, and a sausage roll of fat hung loosely over the back of his collar
*four men flew out of the parked cars and began to run
*station attendant
*a white waitress...waits on springer and merita
*salesmen....guards...
*toward the end...springer says his first name is judas...judas d springer
*a male negro...a prime specimen of american man
*two teenage puerto rican girls
a story like this
The Gospel Singer Harry Crews
this idea is present in a number of stories i've read
a feeling of unreality, almost impossible to pinpoint, that made me feel like an observer watching someone else do very foolish things, amusing things, that were somehow unimportant to the real me.
as in...From Here to Eternity...Darkness Visible...and possibly another from styron
and here is another from the story: the rest of the time i seemed to be outside myself, an observer, an anonymous member of a great movie audience watching some new kind of comedy on a life-sized screen, wondering how the plot would turn out in the end.
plus: in willeford's story, Pick-Up, there exists a similar description, harry jordan, the eye-narrator of that piece, his state-of-mind at the midway point of the telling
some unusual words at play
*"set of sticks"...manger of the thrifty way finance company's words for springer's furniture
*"a plug of brown mules"
*"burpies"...that the abbott performs...some sort of calisthenic, a term familiar to both the abbott and springer from armed service days
*"geedus"...as in "a pile of dough in nigger property in pratt city, and he put most of the geedus into establishing more churches."...words spoken by abbott dover
*"give him something besides a cotton string for a backbone. amen."
*color described thus: "the shade of a two-day bruise on the tender side of a woman's thigh"
some books mentioned
the bee-eye-bee-ell-ee...although willeford, too, uses the word revelations...i've seen that so much that i wonder if the final book of the bible isn't plural, like so many use...or what?...genesis thirty-two, twenty-four
the plumed serpent d.h. lawrence
thomas merton paperbacks
the golden bough
sartre's, being and nothingness
kafka's, the trial
henry miller's tropic of capricorn
notes...from under the floorboards...dostoyevsky
update, finished, 8:32 p.m. e.s.t. 27 dec 12, thursday evening
an okay story...not blown away...not bored to tears...much to like...very little to dislike...although even the dislike should be liked--like some continuity errors...i pound nails...on occasion, i bend one...so...it is still nice to read that others make mistakes, willeford among them...like the revelations mistake...
but there was another...a character's name introduced into the story w/o the pov-narrator working for it...meaning...the name shouldn't have been there, but it was...and one error, merita is identified as "merita springer"...and springer is identified as "john springer" at one point...another continuity error?
t'would appear so...he was sam springer at the get-go
all in all...good read...smoke em if you got em
...
Show More
Sam Springer, a smooth talking, white, wannabe writer cons his way in as minister at an all black southern church and becomes an unlikely civil rights champion. It would be easy to denounce him as a scoundrel, yet he has redeeming qualities. Most such people might be morally conflicted, but Springer seems to have few moral qualms. He's a free spirit who has little tolerance for commitment, is prone to idleness and is happy to let the tide of life sweep him where it will. A satire of religion and race, comical and absurd but also weighty and consequential. There are few authors that could pull this off, especially with Willeford's fluid, whimsical style.
...
Show More
Originally published as "The Black Mass of Brother Springer" and with original 1960s cover art that looks eerily like George W. Bush trying to make some girl in a haystack, this is a must read for any Willeford fan.
The book itself is a good read and a fun commentary on religion-as-theater that takes place during the beginning of the Civil Rights Era as told be an almost sociopathic ex-accountant who inherits a phony title as a preacher (The Right Reverend Deuteronomy Springer) and an all-black congregation. But what gets it the extra bump from three to four stars for me is a fanboy-like amusement of a secondary character, a charlatan monk, that more closely parallels the author than any of his other fictional characters.
The book itself is a good read and a fun commentary on religion-as-theater that takes place during the beginning of the Civil Rights Era as told be an almost sociopathic ex-accountant who inherits a phony title as a preacher (The Right Reverend Deuteronomy Springer) and an all-black congregation. But what gets it the extra bump from three to four stars for me is a fanboy-like amusement of a secondary character, a charlatan monk, that more closely parallels the author than any of his other fictional characters.
...
Show More
The Black Mass of Brother Springer is a tough book to classify…or even recommend. A biting satire of organized religion, a send up of civil rights through the white gaze, a testimony on the consequences of fragile masculinity. There’s a lot going on here for such a short book.
The book’s writer Charles Willeford is one of my favorites. He writes crime novels with a unique voice that’s tough to compare. No less than Quentin Tarantino has said that Willeford is the biggest literary inspiration for his movies and I get it. Though stylistically they’re both quite different, Tarantino uses Willeford’s dialogic framework for repartee and monologues.
I liked much of this book; it’s tautly written and while I didn’t get a sense for the main character, I didn’t feel like I was supposed to as Willeford seemed more interested in telling the character through the story instead of vice versa. The story itself is just tough to stomach. The main character, a lazy writer, scams his way into a gig as a white Pastor shepherding a black congregation in Jim Crow era Jacksonville, Florida. He’s written more as an opportunist than a militant racist and yet he uses his position to do some crappy things, which is still racist.
Willeford himself writes with some sympathy towards the plight of black people at this time, even though Rev. Springer does not share it. He doesn’t think black folks should be treated the way they are but he doesn’t see how it’s his problem to solve. I get that, but when the plot makes it his problem (in a literal sense), I’m not sure I can accept “Well, it’s all just a grift” as an excuse. I know this was published in 1958 and going hard on the racism of that era is sometimes a sign of “faux wokeness.” Still…I’m not sure it works.
Read this if you’re a Willeford fan and have a strong stomach for such things. But be warned.
The book’s writer Charles Willeford is one of my favorites. He writes crime novels with a unique voice that’s tough to compare. No less than Quentin Tarantino has said that Willeford is the biggest literary inspiration for his movies and I get it. Though stylistically they’re both quite different, Tarantino uses Willeford’s dialogic framework for repartee and monologues.
I liked much of this book; it’s tautly written and while I didn’t get a sense for the main character, I didn’t feel like I was supposed to as Willeford seemed more interested in telling the character through the story instead of vice versa. The story itself is just tough to stomach. The main character, a lazy writer, scams his way into a gig as a white Pastor shepherding a black congregation in Jim Crow era Jacksonville, Florida. He’s written more as an opportunist than a militant racist and yet he uses his position to do some crappy things, which is still racist.
Willeford himself writes with some sympathy towards the plight of black people at this time, even though Rev. Springer does not share it. He doesn’t think black folks should be treated the way they are but he doesn’t see how it’s his problem to solve. I get that, but when the plot makes it his problem (in a literal sense), I’m not sure I can accept “Well, it’s all just a grift” as an excuse. I know this was published in 1958 and going hard on the racism of that era is sometimes a sign of “faux wokeness.” Still…I’m not sure it works.
Read this if you’re a Willeford fan and have a strong stomach for such things. But be warned.
Leave a Review