I’ve “mentioned before”:https://crookedtimber.org/2003/07/31/comfort-reading/ on CT that I’m a fan of Richard Stark’s (aka Donald Westlake) Parker novels, but I didn’t know that John Banville shared my admiration until I read his blurb on Stark’s most recent, Ask the Parrot
[One] of the greatest writers of the twentieth century … Richard Stark, real name Donald Westlake … His Parker books form a genre all their own
This surprised me; Banville is a wonderful writer (perhaps my favourite living novelist), but not the _kind_ of wonderful writer whom I would have thought likely to be an admirer of the Parker books. Banville’s best books ( _The Book of Evidence_; _The Untouchable_) are extended monologues delivered by shifty narrators who don’t themselves understand what’s driving them. In contrast, the Parker novels are all plot, taut and brutal. Few of the characters have complicated motivations, and when they do, it’s a problem for Parker and his colleagues, who are ruthless and clear-thinking professional criminals. Rich interior lives make for loose cannons.
I haven’t been able to track down the source of this quote using either Google or Lexis-Nexis. I have found a couple of articles where Banville describes his admiration for Stark/Westlake, including this “Sunday Telegraph article”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/02/11/svinsider111.xml where he compares Stark to Beckett and Simenon. He mentions that he names the main character in his most recent novel, _Christina Falls_ by his surname alone in homage to Parker. I haven’t read this yet, but am very interested to see what Banville makes of the noir genre (maybe Donald Westlake will in turn be inspired to do a rewrite, say, of _The Sea_ a la style Starkaise).
{ 20 comments }
T Hodler 04.24.07 at 4:19 am
You might be interested in this:
Donald Westlake and John Banville in a joint interview:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18082591/site/newsweek/
alphie 04.24.07 at 6:46 am
Prolly this Slate article Banville wrote last year:
http://www.slate.com/id/2142091/
Nigel 04.24.07 at 8:24 am
Newsweek interview between Banville and Westlake:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18082591/site/newsweek/
Tony 04.24.07 at 3:14 pm
Banville isn’t particularly interested in character, which is why his protagonists’ motivations are always obscure.
JB is on record as saying he doesn’t believe in “the self”, and I suspect he feels this (perfectly legitimate) philosophical position absolves him from the usual novelistic business of character development, which bores him. (Beckett’s novels also serve as precedent in this respect.)
The main exception here may be THE UNTOUCHABLE, where Banville (pretty unsuccessfully, in my opinion) attempts some kind of psycological backstory – the family background in N.Ireland, the mad brother etc …
One day he will discover that character is also an element of style, and he’ll write the great book that has, so far, in my opinion (though I haven’t read THE SEA) eluded him.
I just took a quick ‘look inside’ at NOBODY RUNS FOREVER at:
http://www.donaldwestlake.com/wks_nobody.html
and there were indeed tonal similarities – to wit:
“Harbin, a *nervous man unused to the dress shirt, kept *twitching and moving around, bending forward to *squint at his cards, and finally Parker, a *quarter around the table to Harbin’s left, saw in the gap between shirt buttons that *flash of clear tape holding the wire down.”
There is something very Banvillian about the asterisked words, not to mention the gereral sense of unease and neuraesthenia.
Nice!
Hogan 04.24.07 at 3:22 pm
Parker fans should also read Jimmy the Kid, Westlake’s knockoff of The Ransom of Red Chief, in which the Dortmunder gang performs a kidnapping using a Parker novel as their blueprint. Wackiness ensues.
Henry 04.24.07 at 4:25 pm
tony – the dialogue between Banville and Westlake linked by nigel above is pretty interesting in this respect – Banville says that writing noir is freeing up his writing style.
Hogan – I haven’t read Jimmy the Kid, nor most of the early and out-of-print Dortmunder novels, much to my chagrin. Some of the Parker novels I’ve only been able to read in Italian translation (Guardita la Spalle, Parker!), again because they are out of print. The Library of America needs to do an edition one of these days …
Tripp 04.24.07 at 6:25 pm
I think the Slate piece is cribbed from Banville’s longer Attraction of Crime Novels essay, which explains why he wanted to write a crime novel.
http://images.amazon.com/media/i3d/01/banville2.pdf
Slayton I. Musgo 04.24.07 at 7:00 pm
I’m starting to think that Stark’s characters aren’t really “ruthless and clear-thinking professional criminals”. They may want to be, may think they are, but there is more. That part keeps coming through the cracks. It shows up in the 3rd act when thigs fall apart, and in the last act where Parker gets away with the help of a kind citizen.
This annoyed me at first – it was not the kind of escapism I signed up for. But it is clearly the author’s intention.
Nigel 04.24.07 at 7:26 pm
The joke in Jimmy The Kid is sublime, and that’s on top of the standard Dortmunder hilarity, which is pretty high.
BillCinSD 04.24.07 at 9:18 pm
I concur that the joke in Jimmy the Kid is very good indeed. The Westlake/Dortmunder book “The Hot Rock” was made in to a pretty good movie with Robert Redford as Dortmunder. I think Zero Mostel and Elliott Gouild are in the movie also.
godoggo 04.25.07 at 3:30 am
The Bad Plus blog, Do the Math, is probably my favorite arts-oriented blog, and, though the main emphasis is on jazz, it covers a little of everything, with quite a bit of content on crime fiction. Googling “Richard Stark” on the blog gets 7 hits
rilkefan 04.25.07 at 4:14 am
I love the Dortmunder books. _Jimmy the Kid_ isn’t my favorite (though the last few pages are hilarious – and that’s with me not even realizing how self-referential it is) – maybe _Bank Shot_ or _Why Me?_.
Matt Weiner 04.25.07 at 1:42 pm
early and out-of-print Dortmunder novels
Oh no! This is shocking.
Why Me? is possibly my favorite; maybe The Hot Rock. The most recent Dortmunders have been making me think he needs to retire the character, though. Did The Road to Ruin have any point at all?
Steve 04.26.07 at 1:50 am
Westlake probably should have stopped the series with What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, in which we discover how everything can go spectacularly right and yet feel like a Dortmunder book.
Adam Stephanides 04.26.07 at 2:06 am
One thing always sort of bothered me about the Parker books: Parker is supposed to be a master thief and planner, but most of the jobs he pulls (that we read about, anyway) don’t make a profit, and his coworkers have a tendency to end up dead. To be sure, Westlake does have an explanation of sorts for this: he lost his stash of cash and has to rebuild it quickly, so he can’t be too picky about the jobs he takes or who he works with. But still, you’d think word would have gotten around that these days it’s unlucky to work with Parker.
I didn’t like Ask the Parrot that much, for two reasons. First, Westlake takes Parker out of his usual setting, instead putting him in a A Simple Plan-like situation. And while I applaud his willingness to experiment, I like the old way better. Second — and this is what really bugged me — Westlake cheats; though unfortunately I can’t think of how to describe how, even vaguely, without spoilers.
Adam Stephanides 04.26.07 at 2:18 am
Another book to look for if you like Parker is The Spy in the Ointment. As its title suggests, it’s a spy spoof (a practically vanished genre); but its premise is that a normal guy is, through a case of mistaken identity, thrust into a Parker-like milieu of violent, untrustworthy types and has to survive using his wits. It’s the funniest of Westlake’s books that I’ve read, though I confess I’m not a Dortmunder fan.
361, an early, serious crime novel by Westlake (under his own name), is also worth digging up, though it’s not particularly Parker-ish.
Chris 04.26.07 at 3:52 am
Yes, but the real question in Jimmy the Kid is which Parker novel? There is, as far as I can find, no Parker about a kidnapping. I’d suggest that Westlake started one, found it wasn’t working, and decided to save some of it to use in a Dortmunder.
I rather thought he should have ended the Parker series with Drowned Hopes, which is a Dortmunder but also features a hard man supercrook who I suspect was based on Parker – but still, I always come round to the view that a new faintly subpar Stark/Westlake is still better than almost any other author’s best, so what the hell. Unfortunately, we haven’t got the option of having him write more books in 1975. Just recommend that new readers read the new ones first and work their way up to Slayride or The Hot Rock. And finish with Drowned Hopes and What’s the Worst that Could Happen? Oh, and Dancing Aztecs.
And I’d like to see his screenplays as a separate volume, too.
Matt Weiner 04.26.07 at 1:34 pm
Even if early Dortmunders are out of print, public libraries seem to be particularly likely to have them. And they’re estimable institutions worthy of your support anyway.
Steve 04.27.07 at 1:30 am
18 – I assumed it was supposed to be a refuge from a Jim Thompson (The Grifters, Pop. 1280, The Killer Inside Me) novel, given the name (“Tom Jameson”, wasn’t it?).
Matt Weiner 04.27.07 at 3:15 pm
Tom Jimson, which really clinches the Jim Thompson tribute. (“May, some famous writer said it once: The law’s an asshole.”)
That novel weirded me out a little; I didn’t think it was right for Dortmunder to be confronting real actual evil. The Dortmunderian world requires a suspension of belief in the world of Parker.
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