Charles Willeford
Encyclopedia
Charles Ray Willeford III (January 2, 1919 – March 27, 1988) was an American
writer
. An author of fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Willeford is best known for his series of novels featuring hardboiled
detective
Hoke Moseley. The first Hoke Moseley book, Miami Blues (1984), is considered one of its era's most influential works of crime fiction. Film adaptations have been made of three of Willeford's novels: Cockfighter
, Miami Blues, and The Woman Chaser
.
Willeford was born in Little Rock, Arkansas
, in 1919. Following the death of his father from tuberculosis
in 1922, Willeford and his mother moved to the Los Angeles
area. After his mother's death in 1927, also from TB, he lived with his grandmother Mattie Lowey on Figueroa Street near Exposition Park
until 1932. At the age of thirteen, in the midst of the Great Depression
, he boarded a freight train in Los Angeles, assumed a false identity, and—passing as a seventeen-year-old—traveled by rail along the Mexican border for a year.
In March 1935, he signed up with the California National Guard
; a few months later, he enlisted in the regular United States Army
. He spent two years stationed in the Philippines
serving as a fire truck driver, a gas truck driver, and briefly as a cook. At the end of 1938, he was discharged from the Army, though he re-enlisted in March 1939, joining the U.S. Cavalry stationed at the Presidio of Monterey, California
. In the Cavalry, he learned to ride and care for horses and spent several months learning the art of horseshoe
ing. He also served as a "horseholder" in a machine gun troop and earned a marksman qualification.
In 1942, Willeford married Lara Bell Fridley before being stationed at Fort Benning
, Georgia, for infantry school
. He was assigned to the Third Army, Company C, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division
and sent to Europe as a tank commander. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge
and earned the Silver Star
, the Bronze Star
for outstanding bravery, the Purple Heart
with one oak leaf cluster, and the Luxembourg War Cross
. After V-E day, he studied at Biarritz American University until he was shipped back to the United States. He again enlisted in 1945 for a term of three years and was stationed in Kyūshū
, Japan, from 1947 to 1949, where he ran the Army radio station WLKH and was promoted to master sergeant.
His first book of poetry, Proletarian Laughter, was published in 1948. In May 1949, he and his wife, Lara, divorced. In July of the same year, he left the Army, leaving a mailing address of General Delivery
, Dallas, Texas
. He enrolled in the Universitarias de Belles Artes in Lima, Peru, studying art and art history in the graduate program. He was dismissed from the university when officials learned that he had neither an undergraduate degree nor a high school diploma. He lived in New York City for a month at the end of 1949 before re-enlisting in the armed forces.
Willeford was stationed at Hamilton Air Force Base
in California through April 1952. He married Mary Jo Norton in July of that year, and lived for a while in Birmingham, Alabama
. In 1953, Willeford's first novel, High Priest of California, was published. Bound as a double volume with another writer's novel, it sold 55,000 copies, about a third of its print run. In January 1954, he re-enlisted once again; he was stationed this time at Palm Beach Air Force Base, while living in West Palm Beach. In 1955, he was reassigned to Harmon Air Force Base
in Newfoundland
. Willeford finally left active duty in November 1956. By that time, two more novels of his had been published.
After his departure from military service, Willeford held jobs as a professional boxer, actor, horse trainer, and radio announcer. He studied painting in France for a time, returning to the United States to attend Palm Beach Junior College. After receiving an associate's degree in 1960, he studied English literature at the University of Miami
, attaining a bachelor's degree in 1962 and a master's in 1964. During this period he also worked as an associate editor with Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
and began a long tenure as a book reviewer for the Miami Herald. Willeford had been very productive as a novelist after leaving the military, but after 1962's Cockfighter, he would not have another novel published for nine years. Upon receiving his M.A., Willeford taught humanities classes at the University of Miami through 1967, then moved to Miami-Dade Community College
where he became an associate professor, teaching English and philosophy through 1985.
In 1971, The Burnt Orange Heresy, often identified as Willeford's best noir novel, and The Hombre from Sonora appeared (the latter under a pseudonym). Though he would continue to write fiction, there would again be an extended hiatus—thirteen years—before another novel of his came out. He wrote the screenplay for the 1974 film adaptation of Cockfighter
, which he also acted in. In 1976, he and his second wife were divorced. The following year he appeared in a small role in the film Thunder and Lightning, produced by Roger Corman
. Willeford married his third wife, Betsy Poller, in 1981. Three years later came the publication of Miami Blues, the first of the Hoke Moseley novels and their twisted take on the hardboiled tradition for which Willeford would become best known. The "series was almost nipped in the bud," notes Lawrence Block
. In Willeford's first, unpublished sequel, "he had his unlikely hero commit an unforgivable crime, and ended the book with Hoke contentedly anticipating a life of solitary confinement." As it turned out, the popularity of Miami Blues and its first two published sequels led to the largest financial windfall of the author's life: a $225,000 advance for the fourth Hoke Moseley book, The Way We Die Now. Released in early 1988, it would be his last novel.
Charles Willeford died of a heart attack in Miami, Florida
, on March 27, 1988, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery
.
suggests that Willeford's crime novels are the "genre's equivalent of Philip K. Dick
's best science fiction novels. They don't really fit into the genre." Marshall Jon Fisher describes the "true earmark" of Willeford's writing, particularly his early paperbacks, as "humor—a distinctively crotchety, sometimes, raunchy, often genre-satirizing humor." "Quirky is the word that always comes to mind," according to crime novelist Lawrence Block
. "Willeford wrote quirky books about quirky characters, and seems to have done so with a magnificent disregard for what anyone else thought." In Erickson's description, "The camera's not really focused on the middle of the scene. It's a little bit off. They're not plot driven or language driven, which makes them really different from most major crime novels. They're character driven and cunning in a very eccentric way." Lou Stathis
argues that it is Willeford's "complete lack of sentimentality and melodrama that sets him apart from the pack of so-called 'tough-guy' writers.... Willeford's prose is as flat-toned and evenly cadenced—as emotionally neutral—as the blank visages of his feigned-human socio/psychopaths...the careful accretion of detail adding up to an incontrovertible truth of insight."
Woody Haut suggests that Willeford's second novel, Pick-Up (1955), "combines David Goodis
's romanticism, Horace McCoy
's portrayal of alienated outcasts and Charles Jackson
's depiction of life as a 'lost weekend
.'" The Woman Chaser (1960), he writes, features a "structural self-consciousness [that] prefigures subsequent post-modernist texts." Lee Horsley describes how Willeford—along with his contemporaries Jim Thompson
and Charles Williams
—"structured entire narratives around the satiric presentation of the male point of view...subverting male stereotypes and creating a space within which the strong, independent woman could get and even sometimes keep the upper hand." David Cochran suggests that while his protagonists are not quite as psychotic as Thompson's, "they are in some ways even more disturbing because of their appearance of normality." Most, he points out, "have adjusted successfully to postwar American society, which given the[ir] psychotic nature...serves as a damning indictment of the dominant culture."
Willeford's wide-ranging interests were reflected in his work: High Priest of California references T. S. Eliot
, James Joyce
's Ulysses
, and composer Béla Bartók
. The Burnt Orange Heresy cracks jokes about Samuel Beckett
amidst contemplations of the sources of Dada
and Surrealist
painting. In Block's words, "it is at once a solid crime novel and a fierce send-up of modern art while constituting perhaps the longest shaggy dog story ever told." Willeford sometimes addressed more serious topics in explicit fashion: The Black Mass of Brother Springer (1958) is one of the first novels to depict the civil rights revolution that followed the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education
. But even without such overt topicality, there was an ideological edge to his work. Cochran writes of the author's 1950s and 1960s novels,
In Haut's words, Willeford "creates characters who search for autonomy but settle for survival.... [He] never abandons his class perspective." Describing the Hoke Moseley novels, Horsley similarly writes that Willeford "uses both his transgressors and his investigator...as commentators on the injustices of class and on a system that seems preoccupied with owning and controlling human life." According to Willeford's wife, Betsy, he had a credo that also served as a caution for aspiring writers: "Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor."
said of Willeford. Sean McCann credits Willeford—along with Jim Thompson and David Goodis
—as one of the writers responsible for bringing the "hard-boiled crime story to a new stage in its development during the 'paperback revolution' of the 50s." Centered around criminal protagonists rather than private eyes and "focused on those features of the genre that seemed most grotesque or cruel or uncanny and, extending them to new extremes, [they] remade the hard-boiled story into a drama of psychopathology." According to bookseller Mitch Kaplan, an expert on the South Florida literary scene, "Miami Blues launched the modern era of Miami crime fiction. There's a direct line from [Willeford] through just about everyone writing crime fiction in Miami today." Fellow writer James Lee Burke
has acknowledged a "great debt" to Willeford: "If someone wanted advice about writing, about how to pull it off, make it work, punch it up...Charles could tell you how to do it." Daniel Woodrell
is among the other crime novelists he is identified as influencing. Willeford's characteristic juxtaposition of humor and violence was apparently one of director Quentin Tarantino
's inspirations. Discussing Pulp Fiction
, Tarantino has said that the film "is not noir. I don't do neo-noir. I see Pulp Fiction as closer to modern-day crime fiction, a little closer to Charles Willeford." Writing in 2004, Jonathan Yardley
of The Washington Post
called him "one of our most skilled, interesting, accomplished and productive writers of what the literary establishment insists on pigeonholing as 'genre' fiction."
Three of Willeford's books have been adapted for the screen: Cockfighter
(1974; starring Warren Oates
and directed by Monte Hellman
), for which Willeford wrote the screenplay; Miami Blues (1990; starring Alec Baldwin
and directed by George Armitage); and The Woman Chaser
(1999; starring Patrick Warburton
and directed by Robinson Devor). Willeford adapted his first novel, High Priest of California, into a play. A 2003 production in New York apparently represents its first full staging.
This bibliography is adapted from Don Herron's Willeford (1997), courtesy of Dennis McMillan Publications.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
. An author of fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Willeford is best known for his series of novels featuring hardboiled
Hardboiled
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...
detective
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
Hoke Moseley. The first Hoke Moseley book, Miami Blues (1984), is considered one of its era's most influential works of crime fiction. Film adaptations have been made of three of Willeford's novels: Cockfighter
Cockfighter
Cockfighter is a 1974 film by director Monte Hellman, starring Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and featuring Laurie Bird and Ed Begley, Jr. The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford...
, Miami Blues, and The Woman Chaser
The Woman Chaser
The Woman Chaser is a 1999 film by director Robinson Devor, starring Patrick Warburton. The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford.- Synopsis :...
.
Early life and military career
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, in 1919. Following the death of his father from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in 1922, Willeford and his mother moved to the Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
area. After his mother's death in 1927, also from TB, he lived with his grandmother Mattie Lowey on Figueroa Street near Exposition Park
Exposition Park (Los Angeles)
Exposition Park is located in University Park, Los Angeles, California, across the street from the University of Southern California. Exposition Park houses the following:* Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum* Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena...
until 1932. At the age of thirteen, in the midst of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, he boarded a freight train in Los Angeles, assumed a false identity, and—passing as a seventeen-year-old—traveled by rail along the Mexican border for a year.
In March 1935, he signed up with the California National Guard
California National Guard
The California National Guard is the component of the United States National Guard in the U.S. state of California. It comprises both Army and Air National Guard components and is the largest national guard force in the United States with a total authorized strength of 22,900 soldiers and airmen...
; a few months later, he enlisted in the regular United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
. He spent two years stationed in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
serving as a fire truck driver, a gas truck driver, and briefly as a cook. At the end of 1938, he was discharged from the Army, though he re-enlisted in March 1939, joining the U.S. Cavalry stationed at the Presidio of Monterey, California
Presidio of Monterey, California
The Presidio of Monterey, located in Monterey, California, is an active US Army installation with historic ties to the Spanish colonial era. Currently it is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center .-Spanish fort:...
. In the Cavalry, he learned to ride and care for horses and spent several months learning the art of horseshoe
Horseshoe
A horseshoe, is a fabricated product, normally made of metal, although sometimes made partially or wholly of modern synthetic materials, designed to protect a horse's hoof from wear and tear. Shoes are attached on the palmar surface of the hooves, usually nailed through the insensitive hoof wall...
ing. He also served as a "horseholder" in a machine gun troop and earned a marksman qualification.
In 1942, Willeford married Lara Bell Fridley before being stationed at Fort Benning
Fort Benning
Fort Benning is a United States Army post located southeast of the city of Columbus in Muscogee and Chattahoochee counties in Georgia and Russell County, Alabama...
, Georgia, for infantry school
United States Army Infantry School
The United States Army Infantry School is located in Fort Benning, Georgia. It is made up of the following components:*192d Infantry Brigade...
. He was assigned to the Third Army, Company C, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division
U.S. 10th Armored Division
The 10th Armored Division was an armored division of the United States Army in World War II. During the European Theater of Operations the 10th Armored Division was part of the Twelfth United States Army Group and was originally assigned to General George S. Patton’s Third United States Army...
and sent to Europe as a tank commander. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive , launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium, hence its French name , and France and...
and earned the Silver Star
Silver Star
The Silver Star is the third-highest combat military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States armed forces for valor in the face of the enemy....
, the Bronze Star
Bronze Star Medal
The Bronze Star Medal is a United States Armed Forces individual military decoration that may be awarded for bravery, acts of merit, or meritorious service. As a medal it is awarded for merit, and with the "V" for valor device it is awarded for heroism. It is the fourth-highest combat award of the...
for outstanding bravery, the Purple Heart
Purple Heart
The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those who have been wounded or killed while serving on or after April 5, 1917 with the U.S. military. The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is located in New Windsor, New York...
with one oak leaf cluster, and the Luxembourg War Cross
Luxembourg War Cross
The Luxembourg War Cross is a military decoration of Luxembourg which was first created on 17 April 1945 by the Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg. The War Cross recognizes military service and feats of bravery performed between the years of 1940 and 1945...
. After V-E day, he studied at Biarritz American University until he was shipped back to the United States. He again enlisted in 1945 for a term of three years and was stationed in Kyūshū
Kyushu
is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....
, Japan, from 1947 to 1949, where he ran the Army radio station WLKH and was promoted to master sergeant.
His first book of poetry, Proletarian Laughter, was published in 1948. In May 1949, he and his wife, Lara, divorced. In July of the same year, he left the Army, leaving a mailing address of General Delivery
Poste restante
Poste restante or general delivery is a service where the post office holds mail until the recipient calls for it...
, Dallas, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
. He enrolled in the Universitarias de Belles Artes in Lima, Peru, studying art and art history in the graduate program. He was dismissed from the university when officials learned that he had neither an undergraduate degree nor a high school diploma. He lived in New York City for a month at the end of 1949 before re-enlisting in the armed forces.
Willeford was stationed at Hamilton Air Force Base
Hamilton Air Force Base
Hamilton Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base located along the western shore of San Pablo Bay, south of Novato, California.-History:...
in California through April 1952. He married Mary Jo Norton in July of that year, and lived for a while in Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
. In 1953, Willeford's first novel, High Priest of California, was published. Bound as a double volume with another writer's novel, it sold 55,000 copies, about a third of its print run. In January 1954, he re-enlisted once again; he was stationed this time at Palm Beach Air Force Base, while living in West Palm Beach. In 1955, he was reassigned to Harmon Air Force Base
Harmon Air Force Base
Harmon Air Force Base is a former World War II United States Army Air Forces airfield, and postwar United States Air Force Base on Guam in the Mariana Islands. Originally named "Depot Field", it was renamed in honor of Lieutenant General Millard F. Harmon, who was killed on a routine flight from...
in Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
. Willeford finally left active duty in November 1956. By that time, two more novels of his had been published.
Later years
University of Miami
The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...
, attaining a bachelor's degree in 1962 and a master's in 1964. During this period he also worked as an associate editor with Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine is a monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime and detective fiction. AHMM is named for Alfred Hitchcock, the famed director of suspense films and television.-History:...
and began a long tenure as a book reviewer for the Miami Herald. Willeford had been very productive as a novelist after leaving the military, but after 1962's Cockfighter, he would not have another novel published for nine years. Upon receiving his M.A., Willeford taught humanities classes at the University of Miami through 1967, then moved to Miami-Dade Community College
Miami Dade College
Miami Dade College, or simply Miami Dade or MDC, is a state college with eight campuses and twenty-one outreach centers located throughout Miami-Dade County, Florida in the United States. It is part of the Florida College System. Miami Dade College is the largest school in the Florida College...
where he became an associate professor, teaching English and philosophy through 1985.
In 1971, The Burnt Orange Heresy, often identified as Willeford's best noir novel, and The Hombre from Sonora appeared (the latter under a pseudonym). Though he would continue to write fiction, there would again be an extended hiatus—thirteen years—before another novel of his came out. He wrote the screenplay for the 1974 film adaptation of Cockfighter
Cockfighter
Cockfighter is a 1974 film by director Monte Hellman, starring Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and featuring Laurie Bird and Ed Begley, Jr. The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford...
, which he also acted in. In 1976, he and his second wife were divorced. The following year he appeared in a small role in the film Thunder and Lightning, produced by Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
. Willeford married his third wife, Betsy Poller, in 1981. Three years later came the publication of Miami Blues, the first of the Hoke Moseley novels and their twisted take on the hardboiled tradition for which Willeford would become best known. The "series was almost nipped in the bud," notes Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York–set series, about the recovering alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively...
. In Willeford's first, unpublished sequel, "he had his unlikely hero commit an unforgivable crime, and ended the book with Hoke contentedly anticipating a life of solitary confinement." As it turned out, the popularity of Miami Blues and its first two published sequels led to the largest financial windfall of the author's life: a $225,000 advance for the fourth Hoke Moseley book, The Way We Die Now. Released in early 1988, it would be his last novel.
Charles Willeford died of a heart attack in Miami, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, on March 27, 1988, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great...
.
Literary style
Steve EricksonSteve Erickson
Stephen Michael Erickson is an American novelist, essayist and film critic. He is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters's Award in Literature and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation., and is considered an important representative of the Avantpop...
suggests that Willeford's crime novels are the "genre's equivalent of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
's best science fiction novels. They don't really fit into the genre." Marshall Jon Fisher describes the "true earmark" of Willeford's writing, particularly his early paperbacks, as "humor—a distinctively crotchety, sometimes, raunchy, often genre-satirizing humor." "Quirky is the word that always comes to mind," according to crime novelist Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York–set series, about the recovering alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively...
. "Willeford wrote quirky books about quirky characters, and seems to have done so with a magnificent disregard for what anyone else thought." In Erickson's description, "The camera's not really focused on the middle of the scene. It's a little bit off. They're not plot driven or language driven, which makes them really different from most major crime novels. They're character driven and cunning in a very eccentric way." Lou Stathis
Lou Stathis
Lou Stathis was an American author, critic and editor, mainly in the areas of fantasy and science fiction. During the last three years of his life he was an editor for DC Comics' Vertigo line, including Preacher, Doom Patrol, Industrial Gothic, The System and Dhampire.Stathis was a columnist and...
argues that it is Willeford's "complete lack of sentimentality and melodrama that sets him apart from the pack of so-called 'tough-guy' writers.... Willeford's prose is as flat-toned and evenly cadenced—as emotionally neutral—as the blank visages of his feigned-human socio/psychopaths...the careful accretion of detail adding up to an incontrovertible truth of insight."
Woody Haut suggests that Willeford's second novel, Pick-Up (1955), "combines David Goodis
David Goodis
David Loeb Goodis was an American noir fiction writer.Born to a respectable Jewish family in Philadelphia, Goodis had two younger brothers, but one died of meningitis at the age of three...
's romanticism, Horace McCoy
Horace McCoy
Horace McCoy was an American writer whose hardboiled novels took place during the Great Depression. His best-known novel is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , which was made into a movie of the same name in 1969, fourteen years after McCoy's death.-Early life:McCoy was born in Pegram, Tennessee...
's portrayal of alienated outcasts and Charles Jackson
Charles R. Jackson
Charles Reginald Jackson was an American author, best known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend.-Career:Jackson's first published story, "Palm Sunday", appeared in the Partisan Review in 1939...
's depiction of life as a 'lost weekend
The Lost Weekend (novel)
The Lost Weekend is Charles R. Jackson's first novel, published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1944. It served as the basis for a film adaptation by the same name in 1945.-Synopsis:...
.'" The Woman Chaser (1960), he writes, features a "structural self-consciousness [that] prefigures subsequent post-modernist texts." Lee Horsley describes how Willeford—along with his contemporaries Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction....
and Charles Williams
Charles Williams (U.S. author)
Charles Williams was an American writer of hardboiled crime fiction. He is regarded by critics as one of the finest suspense novelists of the 1950s and 1960s. His 1951 debut, the pulp paperback novel Hill Girl, sold over a million copies...
—"structured entire narratives around the satiric presentation of the male point of view...subverting male stereotypes and creating a space within which the strong, independent woman could get and even sometimes keep the upper hand." David Cochran suggests that while his protagonists are not quite as psychotic as Thompson's, "they are in some ways even more disturbing because of their appearance of normality." Most, he points out, "have adjusted successfully to postwar American society, which given the[ir] psychotic nature...serves as a damning indictment of the dominant culture."
Willeford's wide-ranging interests were reflected in his work: High Priest of California references T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
, and composer Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
. The Burnt Orange Heresy cracks jokes about Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
amidst contemplations of the sources of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
painting. In Block's words, "it is at once a solid crime novel and a fierce send-up of modern art while constituting perhaps the longest shaggy dog story ever told." Willeford sometimes addressed more serious topics in explicit fashion: The Black Mass of Brother Springer (1958) is one of the first novels to depict the civil rights revolution that followed the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
. But even without such overt topicality, there was an ideological edge to his work. Cochran writes of the author's 1950s and 1960s novels,
Willeford created a world in which the predatory cannibalism of American capitalism provides the model for all human relations, in which the American success ethic mercilessly casts aside all who are unable or unwilling to compete, and in which the innate human appreciation of artistic beauty is cruelly distorted by the exigencies of mass culture.
In Haut's words, Willeford "creates characters who search for autonomy but settle for survival.... [He] never abandons his class perspective." Describing the Hoke Moseley novels, Horsley similarly writes that Willeford "uses both his transgressors and his investigator...as commentators on the injustices of class and on a system that seems preoccupied with owning and controlling human life." According to Willeford's wife, Betsy, he had a credo that also served as a caution for aspiring writers: "Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor."
Notability and influence
"Nobody writes a better crime novel," Elmore LeonardElmore Leonard
Elmore John Leonard Jr. , better known as Elmore Leonard, is an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.Among his...
said of Willeford. Sean McCann credits Willeford—along with Jim Thompson and David Goodis
David Goodis
David Loeb Goodis was an American noir fiction writer.Born to a respectable Jewish family in Philadelphia, Goodis had two younger brothers, but one died of meningitis at the age of three...
—as one of the writers responsible for bringing the "hard-boiled crime story to a new stage in its development during the 'paperback revolution' of the 50s." Centered around criminal protagonists rather than private eyes and "focused on those features of the genre that seemed most grotesque or cruel or uncanny and, extending them to new extremes, [they] remade the hard-boiled story into a drama of psychopathology." According to bookseller Mitch Kaplan, an expert on the South Florida literary scene, "Miami Blues launched the modern era of Miami crime fiction. There's a direct line from [Willeford] through just about everyone writing crime fiction in Miami today." Fellow writer James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke is an American author of mysteries, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won an Edgar Award for Black Cherry Blues and Cimarron Rose . The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin and then Tommy Lee Jones...
has acknowledged a "great debt" to Willeford: "If someone wanted advice about writing, about how to pull it off, make it work, punch it up...Charles could tell you how to do it." Daniel Woodrell
Daniel Woodrell
Daniel Woodrell is an American writer of fiction. He has written eight novels, most of them set in the Missouri Ozarks. Woodrell coined the phrase "country noir" to describe his 1996 novel Give Us a Kiss...
is among the other crime novelists he is identified as influencing. Willeford's characteristic juxtaposition of humor and violence was apparently one of director Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
's inspirations. Discussing Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction (film)
Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references...
, Tarantino has said that the film "is not noir. I don't do neo-noir. I see Pulp Fiction as closer to modern-day crime fiction, a little closer to Charles Willeford." Writing in 2004, Jonathan Yardley
Jonathan Yardley
Jonathan Yardley is a book critic at The Washington Post, and at one time of the Washington Star. In 1981 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.-Background and education:...
of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
called him "one of our most skilled, interesting, accomplished and productive writers of what the literary establishment insists on pigeonholing as 'genre' fiction."
Three of Willeford's books have been adapted for the screen: Cockfighter
Cockfighter
Cockfighter is a 1974 film by director Monte Hellman, starring Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and featuring Laurie Bird and Ed Begley, Jr. The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford...
(1974; starring Warren Oates
Warren Oates
Warren Mercer Oates was an American actor best known for his performances in several films directed by Sam Peckinpah including The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia...
and directed by Monte Hellman
Monte Hellman
Monte Hellman is an American film director, producer, and film editor.Hellman is among a group of directing talent mentored by Roger Corman, who produced several of the director's early films...
), for which Willeford wrote the screenplay; Miami Blues (1990; starring Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin
Alexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III is an American actor who has appeared on film, stage, and television.Baldwin first gained recognition through television for his work in the soap opera Knots Landing in the role of Joshua Rush. He was a cast member for two seasons before his character was killed off...
and directed by George Armitage); and The Woman Chaser
The Woman Chaser
The Woman Chaser is a 1999 film by director Robinson Devor, starring Patrick Warburton. The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford.- Synopsis :...
(1999; starring Patrick Warburton
Patrick Warburton
Patrick John Warburton is an American actor of television, film, and voice. He is best known for his several TV roles, including the title role of The Tick, David Puddy on Seinfeld, the evil Johnny Johnson on NewsRadio, and anchorman Jeb Denton on Less Than Perfect...
and directed by Robinson Devor). Willeford adapted his first novel, High Priest of California, into a play. A 2003 production in New York apparently represents its first full staging.
Hoke Moseley series
- Miami Blues. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984.
- Hardcover. The first of the crime novels featuring Hoke Moseley. Willeford's original title was Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye.
- Miami Blues. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2004.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Elmore LeonardElmore LeonardElmore John Leonard Jr. , better known as Elmore Leonard, is an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.Among his...
.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Elmore Leonard
- Miami Blues. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2004.
- Hardcover. The first of the crime novels featuring Hoke Moseley. Willeford's original title was Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye.
- New Hope for the Dead. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985.
- Hardcover. The second Hoke Moseley novel.
- New Hope for the Dead. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2004.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by James Lee BurkeJames Lee BurkeJames Lee Burke is an American author of mysteries, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won an Edgar Award for Black Cherry Blues and Cimarron Rose . The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin and then Tommy Lee Jones...
.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by James Lee Burke
- New Hope for the Dead. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2004.
- Hardcover. The second Hoke Moseley novel.
- Sideswipe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.
- Hardcover. The third Hoke Moseley novel.
- Sideswipe. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2005.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Lawrence BlockLawrence BlockLawrence Block is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York–set series, about the recovering alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively...
.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Lawrence Block
- Sideswipe. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2005.
- Hardcover. The third Hoke Moseley novel.
- The Way We Die Now. New York: Random House, 1988.
- Hardcover. The fourth Hoke Moseley novel.
- The Way We Die Now. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2005.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Donald E. WestlakeDonald E. WestlakeDonald Edwin Westlake was an American writer, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction or other genres...
.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Donald E. Westlake
- The Way We Die Now. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2005.
- Hardcover. The fourth Hoke Moseley novel.
- Grimhaven (unpublished).
- Photocopy of typescript maintained in the Charles Willeford Archive at the Broward County Library, Florida; 212 leaves, no date: "NOTE: as per Betsy Willeford [widow of the author]: 'Ms. of the "black Hoke Mosely" [sic], never published, sold to a small but ruthless group of collectors in the form of Xerox copies. May not be copied in the library by patrons who'll wholesale it on the Internet.'" Originally intended as the second Hoke Moseley novel.
Other novels
- High Priest of California/[Full Moon]. New York: Royal Books, 1953.
- Paperback original. Willeford's first published novel, bound with novel by Talbot MundyTalbot MundyTalbot Mundy was an English writer. He also wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt.-Life and work:...
. Cover blurbs for High Priest: "A roaring saga of the male animal on the prowl"/"The world was his oyster—and women his pearls!" 151,000-copy press run.
- Paperback original. Willeford's first published novel, bound with novel by Talbot Mundy
- Pick-Up. New York: Beacon Books, 1955.
- Paperback original. His second published novel. Willeford's original title was Until I Am Dead. Cover blurb: "He holed up with a helpless lush."
- High Priest of California/Wild Wives. New York: Beacon Books, 1956.
- Paperback original. Willeford would later mistakenly recall that Until I Am Dead was the original title for Wild Wives. Bound with his earlier novel, High Priest, which is blessed with another turgid blurb: "No woman could resist his strange cult of lechery!"
- High Priest of California/Wild Wives. San Francisco: Re/Search Publications, 1987.
- Trade paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Lou Stathis, an afterword by V. Vale and Andrea Juno, biographical notes, and a bibliography.
- High Priest of California/Wild Wives. San Francisco: Re/Search Publications, 1987.
- Paperback original. Willeford would later mistakenly recall that Until I Am Dead was the original title for Wild Wives. Bound with his earlier novel, High Priest, which is blessed with another turgid blurb: "No woman could resist his strange cult of lechery!"
- Honey Gal. New York: Beacon Books, 1958.
- Paperback original. Willeford's original title was The Black Mass of Brother Springer. The publisher rejected it and asked for another; Willeford proposed Nigger Lover, which was also rejected. The cover blurbs indicate Beacon's high intentions: "He was white, she was beautiful—and bad"/"A starkly naked novel of sin and segregation."
- The Black Mass of Brother Springer. Berkeley, California: Black Lizard Books, 1989.
- Paperback reprint, with Willeford's title restored.
- The Black Mass of Brother Springer. New Albany, Indiana: Wit's End Publishing, 2004.
- Trade paperback reprint, with Willeford's title restored. Includes a foreword by James Sallis.
- The Black Mass of Brother Springer. Berkeley, California: Black Lizard Books, 1989.
- Paperback original. Willeford's original title was The Black Mass of Brother Springer. The publisher rejected it and asked for another; Willeford proposed Nigger Lover, which was also rejected. The cover blurbs indicate Beacon's high intentions: "He was white, she was beautiful—and bad"/"A starkly naked novel of sin and segregation."
- Lust Is a Woman. New York: Beacon Books, 1958.
- Paperback original. Willeford's original title was Made in Miami. Cover blurbs: "She was a pawn in an evil game"/"The story of Maria who wanted—desperately—to become a movie star!"
- Made In Miami. Point Blank, 2008.
- Trade paperback reprint, with Willeford's title restored.
- Made In Miami. Point Blank, 2008.
- Paperback original. Willeford's original title was Made in Miami. Cover blurbs: "She was a pawn in an evil game"/"The story of Maria who wanted—desperately—to become a movie star!"
- The Woman ChaserThe Woman ChaserThe Woman Chaser is a 1999 film by director Robinson Devor, starring Patrick Warburton. The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford.- Synopsis :...
. Chicago: Newsstand Library, 1960.- Paperback original. Willeford's original title was The Director. The title of the protagonist's would-be cinematic magnum opus is The Man Who Got Away.
- The Whip Hand. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1961.
- Paperback original. Published under the sole byline of W. Franklin Sanders, though documentary evidence and stylistic analysis indicate it is largely, perhaps almost completely, the work of Willeford. A manuscript of the novel, written around 1952, found in his files indicates that Willeford's original title was Deliver Me from Dallas!
- Deliver Me from Dallas! Tucson, Arizona: Dennis McMillan Publications, 2001.
- Hardcover of Willeford's original manuscript version, with his name and title restored. Includes an introduction by Jesse Sublett.
- Deliver Me from Dallas! Tucson, Arizona: Dennis McMillan Publications, 2001.
- Paperback original. Published under the sole byline of W. Franklin Sanders, though documentary evidence and stylistic analysis indicate it is largely, perhaps almost completely, the work of Willeford. A manuscript of the novel, written around 1952, found in his files indicates that Willeford's original title was Deliver Me from Dallas!
- Understudy for Love. Chicago: Newsstand Library, 1961.
- Paperback original. Willeford's original title was The Understudy: A Novel of Men and Women. Cover blurb: "When it came to love he was just an understudy...but he was learning in a hurry!" Newsstand's covers advised that both this and Willeford's next novel were "Adult Reading."
- No Experience Necessary. Chicago: Newsstand Library, 1962.
- Paperback original. Willeford's original title was Nothing Under the Sun. Cover blurb: ""You like it?' she whispered. 'I like it,' he clenched his teeth, 'I like it, I like it!'" The in-house editor rewrote parts of this novel in a more conventional "pulp erotica" style without Willeford's advance knowledge or subsequent approval. Willeford disclaimed this book. He salvaged the work later by using it, with only slight rewriting, as the Pop Sinkiewicz half of Sideswipe.
- CockfighterCockfighterCockfighter is a 1974 film by director Monte Hellman, starring Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and featuring Laurie Bird and Ed Begley, Jr. The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford...
. Chicago: Chicago Paperback House, 1962.- Paperback original. Cover blurb: "The dedicated obsession of a fanatical sport. As in the bullring—to the death. Legal in Florida—illegal in the forty-nine other states. The iron will of a man, whose entire life was channeled into one supreme ambition!"
- Cockfighter. New York: Crown Publishers, 1972.
- Hardcover. A slightly rewritten second edition of the novel.
- Cockfighter. New York: Crown Publishers, 1972.
- Paperback original. Cover blurb: "The dedicated obsession of a fanatical sport. As in the bullring—to the death. Legal in Florida—illegal in the forty-nine other states. The iron will of a man, whose entire life was channeled into one supreme ambition!"
- The Burnt Orange Heresy. New York: Crown Publishers, 1971.
- Willeford's first hardcover original.
- The Hombre from Sonora. New York: Lenox Hill Press, 1971.
- His second hardcover original. Published under the pseudonym "Will Charles." Willeford's original title was The Difference.
- The Difference. Tucson, Arizona: Dennis McMillan Publications, 1999.
- Hardcover reprint, with Willeford's original title restored.
- The Difference. Tucson, Arizona: Dennis McMillan Publications, 1999.
- His second hardcover original. Published under the pseudonym "Will Charles." Willeford's original title was The Difference.
- Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye. Miami Beach, Florida: Dennis McMillan Publications, 1987.
- Hardcover. A self-contained fragment from Willeford's novel The Shark-Infested Custard, finished by early 1975, but rejected by everyone who saw it as "too depressing" to publish. Four hundred–copy press run.
- A Charles Willeford Omnibus. London: MacDonald and Co, 1991.
- Hardcover. Collects Pick-Up, The Burnt Orange Heresy, and Cockfighter.
- The Shark-Infested Custard. Novato, California: Underwood-Miller Books, 1993.
- Hardcover. The novel deemed "too depressing" to publish when offered around in the mid-seventies, in print at last. As an in-joke, the novel's four protagonists discuss Monte Hellman's Two-Lane BlacktopTwo-Lane BlacktopTwo-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 road movie directed by Monte Hellman, starring singer-songwriter James Taylor, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird. Esquire magazine declared the film its movie of the year for 1971, and even published the entire screenplay in its April, 1971...
and its star, Warren Oates, in the first chapter. Oates collaborated with Hellman on the film adaptation of Cockfighter.- The Shark-Infested Custard. New York: Dell, 1996.
- Paperback reprint. Includes an introduction by Lawrence Block.
- The Shark-Infested Custard. New York: Dell, 1996.
- Hardcover. The novel deemed "too depressing" to publish when offered around in the mid-seventies, in print at last. As an in-joke, the novel's four protagonists discuss Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop
Poetry
- The Outcast Poets. Yonkers, New York: Alicat Bookshop Press, 1947.
- No. 8 in the Alicat Bookshop Press "Outcast" chapbook series. Collects poems by Willeford and four other writers.
- Proletarian Laughter. Yonkers, New York: Alicat Bookshop Press, 1948.
- No. 12 in the "Outcast" chapbook series. Contains a preface by the author and seven prose "Schematics" interlaced with the poems. One thousand–copy press run.
- Poontang and Other Poems. Crescent City, Florida: New Athenaeum Press, 1967.
- Self-published saddle-stapled chapbook of poetry. Five hundred–copy press run.
Short stories and nonfiction
- The Machine in Ward Eleven. New York: Belmont Books, 1963.
- Paperback original. Short story collection. Willeford stated, "I had a hunch that madness was a predominant theme and a normal condition for Americans living in the second half of this century. The publication of The Machine in Ward Eleven (1963) and its reception by readers confirmed what I had only heretofore suspected."
- A Guide for the Undehemorrhoided. Kendall, Florida: self-published, 1977.
- Hardcover. A short account of Willeford's hemorrhoid operation. One thousand–copy press run.
- Off the Wall. Montclair, New Jersey: Pegasus Rex Press, 1980.
- Hardcover. Nonfiction. An account of the Son of Sam case, telling the story of Craig Glassman, the deputy sheriff who captured David BerkowitzDavid BerkowitzDavid Richard Berkowitz , also known as Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and arsonist whose crimes terrorized New York City from July 1976 until his arrest in August 1977.Shortly after his arrest in August 1977, Berkowitz confessed to killing six people and...
.
- Hardcover. Nonfiction. An account of the Son of Sam case, telling the story of Craig Glassman, the deputy sheriff who captured David Berkowitz
- Something About a Soldier. New York: Random House, 1986.
- Hardcover. Autobiography, covering Willeford's first hitches in the peacetime Army and Air Force in the Philippines and California, from age sixteen to age twenty.
- New Forms of Ugly: The Immobilized Hero in Modern Fiction. Miami Beach, Florida: Dennis McMillan Publications, 1987.
- Hardcover. Subtitle per online McMillan bibliography; Willeford's New York Times obituary, "Charles Willeford, 69, Author of Crime Novels", gives it as The Immobilized Man in Modern Literature. A revised version of "The Immobilized Man: A New Hero In Modern Fiction," Willeford's University of Miami master's thesis. A survey of the literature of angst, covering writers from Fyodor DostoevskyFyodor DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
, through Franz KafkaFranz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
and Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, to Chester HimesChester HimesChester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works include If He Hollers Let Him Go and a series of Harlem Detective novels...
and Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
. 350-copy press run.
- Hardcover. Subtitle per online McMillan bibliography; Willeford's New York Times obituary, "Charles Willeford, 69, Author of Crime Novels", gives it as The Immobilized Man in Modern Literature. A revised version of "The Immobilized Man: A New Hero In Modern Fiction," Willeford's University of Miami master's thesis. A survey of the literature of angst, covering writers from Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Everybody's Metamorphosis. Missoula, Montana: Dennis McMillan Publications, 1988.
- Hardcover and limited-edition goatskin. Collection of short stories and essays. Includes annotated bibliography by Don Herron. 374-copy hardcover and 26-copy goatskin press run.
- I Was Looking for a Street. Woodstock, Vermont: Countryman Press, 1988.
- Hardcover. Autobiography, covering Willeford's childhood and the period when he went on the road as a teenager during the Depression, before joining the Army.
- Collected Memoirs of Charles Willeford. Sarasota, Florida: Disc-Us Books, 1988.
- Paperback. Collects Something About a Soldier and I Was Looking for a Street.
- Cockfighter Journal: The Story of a Shooting. Santa Barbara, California: Neville Publishing, 1989.
- Hardcover. Autobiography, covering the filming of the Roger CormanRoger CormanRoger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
production of Cockfighter (for which Willeford both wrote the screenplay and acted the role of Ed Middleton), taken from a diary he kept during the shoot.
- Hardcover. Autobiography, covering the filming of the Roger Corman
- Writing and Other Blood Sports. Tucson, Arizona: Dennis McMillan Publications, 2000.
- Hardcover. Collection of essays on writing, writers, and related facts of life. Includes New Forms of Ugly. One thousand–copy press run.
- The Second Half of the Double Feature. New Albany, Indiana: Wit's End Publishing, 2003.
- Hardcover and trade paperback. Collection of short stories, vignettes, and autobiographical sketches. The hardcover also includes Willeford's complete poetry.
This bibliography is adapted from Don Herron's Willeford (1997), courtesy of Dennis McMillan Publications.
External links
- Charles Ray Willeford—Sergeant, U.S. Air Force & U.S. Army biographical notes; part of the Arlington National Cemetery website
- Charles Willeford site devoted to the author; part of the Dennis McMillan Publications website
- Charles Willeford Bio Page biographical chronology (note that a few of the dates and descriptions given conflict with those in published sources); part of the Disc-Us Books website
- Charles Willeford Omnibus page in dedicated section of No Exit Press website—see "Related Links" on the right-hand side for several essays on the author
- Charles Willeford Paperback Covers part of the Vintage Paperbacks website
- The Shark-Infested Custard excerpt from the novel: chapter 1 and part of chapter 2; part of the Random House website
- Willeford Archive inventory of archive at the Broward County Library—Bienes Center for the Literary Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida