The Wrong Marlowe
CHARLES KELLY
on an amnesiac pulp writer in L.A.“You don’t deserve it, but I’ll give you a choice,” I said. “I was going to leave you out here, with the heat and the mosquitoes and the bugs and the snakes and the alligators. You’ll never make it in. I doubt if I could myself.” His whole face was wet as he stared at me. “You won’t go easy if you stay, so I’ll give you the choice. Stay, or take one dead center from this.” I waved the little handgun … “You’ll go out of your mind out here in twelve hours.” His chest was heaving as he tried to pump air through his constricted throat. “Take the bullet.”Hollywood is for the young and tough, a place where you must be beautiful simply to survive, let alone prosper. God help you if you’re homely, aging, and physically beaten. Double that if you’ve lost the creative skills you’ve counted on, and forgotten much of your life and all the people you’ve known. Double that again if you’re a writer. Let’s say it’s 1978 and you are Dan J. Marlowe, once one of the hottest suspense novelists of your day, author of such hard-boiled Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks as The Name of the Game is Death, The Vengeance Man, Never Live Twice, and the Operation books, featuring a bank robber turned international agent. It’s 1978, yes, and the market for that kind of book has evaporated. You’re 64 years old, suffering from amnesia, glaucoma, and the consequences of a stroke. It’s painful for you even to lift your hands high enough to type.– from The Name of the Game is Death (1962)
Though you’re chubby and unathletic and wear dark, horn-rimmed glasses, in the past you’ve been a devil with the ladies. Now those ladies are ghosts to you. You’ve spent more than 15 years living in Harbor Beach, Michigan, a picturesque, isolated town on the shore of Lake Huron. You made a good living, served on the city council, partied with the Rotary Club. And you found time to indulge in your own secret sexual quirkiness. Now you’re broke and short of options. So you’re moving to the City of Fallen Angels to share an apartment with a former bank robber. To try to put your writing life back together, maybe even get movies made from your books.
You’re a Hollywood Untouchable because you’re a lousy money-maker, and you’ll stay that way. People hear your name and confuse you with Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s iconic detective, or with your mystery-writing contemporary, Stephen Marlowe. You’re the wrong Marlowe, in the wrong time, the wrong place. So what are the chances you’ll be remembered with fondness? What are the odds that nearly four decades later, megastar horror writer Stephen King will honor your talent by dedicating a novel to you? Well, you’ve always been a gambler — a professional one for seven years. You’ve played long shots and won. Maybe you’ll do it again.
The timeless wisdom of my late journalism professor and mentor, Dick Blood
The man has touched everyone from Jimmy Breslin to Frank Bruni. He nurtured two generations of journalists, both as editor and teacher, molding all of us from mediocre to something closer to great. Chances are, if you read with any degree of frequency, you’re reading the words of Dick Blood’s former students every day—and you can thank him for the mastery of those words. No one recognized beauty—and for that matter, trash—better than Dick Blood. He was one of the world’s greatest stewards of integrity and substance—and how better to describe the job of a journalist?
I had Professor Blood for two life-changing semesters at NYU. He wasn’t easy. But he wasn’t unwinnable, either. I hear his methods often referred to, then and now, as “tough love.” I think of them only as love. Above all else, what Professor Blood awoke in us was a real hunger to be better—by making us feel like it actually mattered. I was happy to see that I wasn’t alone.
Here’s a collection of immortal Dick Blood quotes, compliments of my friend and former fellow classmate Ulysses. They were transcribed directly from Blood’s mouth to Ulysses’ notebook, in a shoddy old room full of CRT monitors in the neglected first floor of 10 Washington Place. And you can bet your ass they’re accurate.
“I don’t care if you’re male, female, black, white, young, old, blond, brunette, gay or straight. The only thing I care about is: Can you deliver?”
“Save all your wiles for some other marshmallow course. We’re professionals here.”
“I used to edit twenty-five stories every two hours, and had the booze and two-pack-a-day habit to match.”
“Life has been very boring for me since I conquered all of my flaws and weaknesses.”
“If you have any problems with the English language, then – what the hell are you doing here?”
“If you leave, don’t come back.”
“If I had my way, I’d have you three days a week, eight hours a day and we’d be humming.”
“My course takes a lot of work. And you will work.”
“Reporting and writing is what I’m about. I’m not into all these intellectual boutique courses.”
“I don’t teach history. I teach this city.”
“My assignments are real. They’re not make-believe.”
“The more wounds you have, the more I’ll like you.”
“I don’t get my kicks destroying young lives. I’m in the building business.”
“I am a dinosaur. I teach pure journalism.”
“I have four little grandchildren and I worry about them.”
“I’d give anything for a good British drama.”
“The newspapers and television nowadays are filled with puerile crap.”
“I spend $82 a month on cable TV and it’s nothing but pure drivel.”
“I can’t imagine a finer thing to do with your life than to be a journalist.”
“I am very concerned with inaccuracy. In fact, I will pummel you to death.”
“People have come to despise me because I gave them an F for spelling a word wrong.”
“All we’ve got going for us is our integrity, our credibility, our believability.”
“I left the Daily News and was offered the number three position at the National Enquirer for $125,000 in Lantana, Florida. I asked the guy if he has any children. He said, ‘Yes’. I asked him, ‘Do you keep a copy of the Enquirer on your coffee table, should you have a coffee table?’ He said, ‘No.’ So I asked him, ‘You want me to work for that rag and you don’t even keep a copy of it in your own bloody house?’”
“I’m not into lying. I’m not into creativity.”
“No story is worth your life.”
“All copy should be triple-spaced, fourteen point. I’ve got old eyes and I need space to write caustic remarks.”
“I make a chocolate mousse that is so good, women weep.”
“I’m not in the business of compromising my news sources. I would sooner go to prison, which wouldn’t be all that bad. It would save money.”
“The worst thing you can do to a bureaucrat is ask him to get off his rear end.”
“I might point out that fabulously wealthy Columbia gives its students a copy of the green book. We here at NYU just take your money and run.”
“People say, ‘Jeez, Professor Blood humiliates us in front of everyone else.’ Who cares? Who cares?”
“I don’t want you to be average. I don’t want you to be typical. I don’t turn out average reporters.”
“I’m only interested in winners. I’m an elitist.”
“It’s not all that bad, so stop your whimpering.”
“The fact that I beat you up this week does not mean I don’t love you.”
“You are entitled to access and I’m determined to be accessible. I have colleagues, that, I swear, you need radar to find them.”
“This is not your best work but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Keep that in mind as you go down the tubes.”
“I used to drink twelve cups of coffee a day and I’m now down to four.”
“One time, up at Columbia, a young lady turned in her bio, and in the middle of the bio, she said she was a member of a trust fund support group.”
“Always look for patterns of behavior.”
“Everything is about money. Follow the buck. It never fails you.”
“Go through your life skeptical, but not cynical.”
“No one is guilty of anything until they’re convicted in a court of law.”
“Always try to get a quality quote high in the story.”
“You’ll notice all these tenured faculty members have these la-di-da country club courses.”
“The older I get, the more I bleed for humanity.”
“I get paid to embarrass you publicly. You don’t get paid to challenge me.”
“The word is show. Show the reader. Don’t tell.”
“I don’t have to see a good movie if I read a good writer.”
“Bear in mind a C in my class is like a B in other classes. Congratulations, you got a B. Just kidding, it’s a C.”
You can read more on Professor Blood’s Facebook tribute here.
