Jimmy Sangster's John Smith Spy Novels: private i (Triton, 1967); Signed Inscribed First Editions

NB: Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 16/10/15.

When Jimmy Sangster died four years ago, his obituaries naturally concentrated largely on his film and TV work (see The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph and The New York Times). Sangster was a key figure in the revival of Hammer Films in the late 1950s and through the 1960s; he wrote The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1959) and two dozen other Hammer horrors before moving to America, where he wrote for The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Ironside, Wonder Woman and a bunch more US TV shows.

But Sangster also penned eight novels (plus a couple of novelisations of his own screenplays) besides his film and television work: three murder mysteries published from 1986–88 (1989–90 in the UK) starring expat former Scotland Yard investigator James Reed; one standalone thriller-cum-farce published in 1971 starring gun-running adventurer Anthony Bridges; two spy thrillers published from 1968–70 starring British Intelligence agent Katy Touchfeather; and two half-spy/half-mystery novels published from 1967–68 starring ex-British Intelligence operative turned private investigator John Smith, the first of which is this:

Or rather, these: private i, published by Triton in 1967, dust jacket design by Collis Clements. Now, I suppose the immediate question here is, why do I have two copies of the same book? Answer being, having learned about Sangster's parallel career as a writer of spy fiction (from screenwriter and novelist Stephen Gallagher, no less), I went in search of a first edition of his debut novel – private i – and came across two copies, both of which boasted intriguing inscriptions (written by Sangster, as far as I can determine; the handwriting is a little different in each book, but there are enough similarities – the same black maker pen used, corresponding letterforms – that I'm fairly confident they're from the same hand), one of which being an association copy. And since both books were relatively inexpensive – and being the hopeless case that I am – I bought both of them. (Whether or not I'll keep both of them remains to be seen – I'm planning on doing some eBaying soon.)

The copy on the left has a poem inscribed on the front free endpaper:

It reads:

Roses are Red.
Violets are Blue.
I'll lay odds
I'm higher than you.

Violets are Blue
Roses are Red
If I could find the strength
I'd drag you to bed

Drifting around in a Pale Velvet haze
What a wonderfull way to pass all our days.

Love, Jim xxxx

I've no idea who the poem was written for (although I'd dearly love to find out), but I do know who the other copy of the book, the association copy, was inscribed to, this time on the title page:

The inscription reads:

To Bob and Marilyn.

"John Smith" couldn't be in better hands.

Love

Jimmy S.

Bob and Marilyn are the American actor Robert Horton and his wife; Horton starred in Wagon Train from 1957–1962 and featured in numerous other television series, films and TV movies, one of which being the 1969 television film The Spy Killer, directed by Roy Ward Baker, produced by Jimmy Sangster and with a teleplay by Sangster based on his own novel... private i.

I've not seen The Spy Killer – although there is a clip on YouTube of the opening five minutes, featuring Horton as John Smith walking through Berwick Street Market to the baritone strains of what sounds like Scott Walker (although actually the rather less-well-known John Rowles), and the reviews on IMDB are positive – but I have read private i, and can report that it's a cracking piece of spy fiction – kind of early le Carré crossed with Len Deighton's unnamed working class secret agent and with a dash of Adam Hall's Quiller mixed in for good measure. Narrated by Smith, one-time operative with the Service – i.e. British Intelligence – turned down-at-heel private investigator, it starts out in a cut-price seedy gumshoe vein, with Smith employed by his ex-wife to obtain evidence of her new husband's gay affair, before taking a sharp left turn into the dangerous world of international espionage, as Smith is press-ganged back into service by his former boss, the ruthless and manipulative Max.

The plot is suitably murky and twisty, involving murder, coded secrets and both the Chinese and Russian security services, but it's Smith's sardonic narration which really lifts the thing. When three pages into a spy novel the lead states that he's "nearly two stone overweight, that my digestive system plays up constantly, that my teeth aren't particularly good, and that I have suffered periodically from halitosis, B.O., prickly heat and dandruff", you know you're not in the realm of Bond, and Smith spends the remainder of the novel boozing, leching, failing to get it up with his indifferent girlfriend and crashing around like the low rent – and yet, on occasion, lowly cunning – loser that he is. The only real downside is a regrettable streak of homophobia which runs through the narrative, but even that can be put down to Smith's boorish nature and the prevailing attitudes of the time rather than to whatever prejudices Sangster might or might not have held. And anyway, I can forgive a multitude of sins in any example of the spy fiction form which contains an irreverent passage like this one:

I poured myself a large drink, and read the evening paper. I washed up some dirty dishes and rinsed out a couple of pairs of socks. I washed a nylon shirt and hung it up to dry. I had another drink which I took with me to the bath. I trimmed my toenails, had a crap, read the evening paper again, and then had a shave. After that there seemed to be nothing left to do but to phone Berat's contact and tell him about the rendezvous.

The second and final John Smith spy thriller, Foreign Exchange, was published by Triton in 1968 (and filmed for television in 1970, again with Robert Horton in the lead role), and it's almost as good as private i, sending Smith to Russia as part of a complicated Cold War spy swap plot. A full review will have to wait for another time, however; this post is quite long enough as it is. For now, I invite anyone interested in learning more about the novel – and in reading contemporaneous reviews of private i – to click on the above images of the dust jacket of the Triton edition (designed by Alison Storey).

A Big Long List of the Books I Read in 2014: Novels, Graphic Novels and Short Story Collections

NB: Linked in Patti Nase Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books roundup, 19/12/14. Thanks Patti!

Well that threw a spanner in the works. I had every intention of posting one last book review – of Victor Canning's third "Birdcage" novel, The Mask of Memory (1974) – before embarking on my traditional, widely reviled, even more widely ignored, still more widely unregistered, end-of-year review of the year; but then the illustrated books publisher I work for, Ilex, got bought by a bigger publishing company, Octopus, and my life was thrown into disarray (short version: in the space of less than two weeks I went from living and working in Lewes, with a walk to work of fifteen minutes, to living in Lewes and working in London, with a journey to work of at least two hours) and blogging had to take a back seat while I wrestled – continue to wrestle – with a long commute and new offices and new work colleagues and new systems and so forth. The upshot of all of which is that not only will the book review have to wait, so will the widely reviled/ignored/unregistered review of the year – possibly until this time next year; as things stand it's unlikely I'll have either the time or energy to properly unpack the year's events chez Louis XIV before 2014 draws to a close.

Instead, because it's a comparatively less taxing task, I thought I'd assemble my similarly traditional big long list of the books I read, with its equally traditional links to whatever I've written about each book (if anything) and ensuing attendant half-hearted, half-arsed analysis. And this year's list, arranged in roughly the order in which I read the books, looks like this:

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (Hodder, 2013)
Richard Stark's Parker: Slayground by Darwyn Cooke (IDW, 2013)
Nemo: Heart of Ice by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (Knockabout, 2013)
Nobody's Perfect by Donald Westlake (Hodder, 1978)
Firebreak by Richard Stark (Robert Hale, 2002; originally 2001)
Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens by Michael Gilbert (Hodder, 1982)
To Catch a Spy, selected by Eric Ambler (The Bodley Head, 1964)
The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice by Mike Carey, Peter Gross et al (DC/Vertigo, 2013)
Batman: Detective No. 27 by Michael Uslan, Peter Snejberg et al (DC, 2003)
High-Rise by J. G. Ballard (Jonathan Cape, 1975)
Ashenden, or, The British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham (Heinemann, 1928/1934)
Point Blank by Richard Stark (Allison & Busby, 1984; originally 1962) (reread)
The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark (Allison & Busby, 1984; originally 1963) (reread)
The Outfit by Richard Stark (Allison & Busby, 1984; originally 1963) (reread)
Russian Roulette by James Mitchell (Hamish Hamilton, 1973)
The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard (Dell, 1970; originally 1969)
The Whisper in the Glen by P. M. Hubbard (Atheneum, 1972)
The Tin Men by Michael Frayn (Collins, 1965)
High Tide by P. M. Hubbard (Macmillan, 1971)
A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin (Michael Joseph, 1954)
Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann, 1977)
Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes by Patricia Highsmith (Bloomsbury, 1987)
The Black House by Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann, 1981)
A Suspension of Mercy by Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann, 1965)
Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann, 1967)
Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann, 1974) (reread)
Unsung Road by Simon Harvester (Jarrolds, 1960)
Firecrest by Victor Canning (Heinemann, 1971)
The Rainbird Pattern by Victor Canning (Heinemann, 1972)
Breakout by Richard Stark (Robert Hale, 2003; originally 2002)
Her by Harriet Lane (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014)
Danger in the Dark by Patricia Carlon (Ward Lock, 1962)
City Primeval by Elmore Leonard (W. H. Allen, 1981; originally 1980)
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (Hutchinson, 1968) (reread)
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (Gerald Duckworth, 1978)
Split Images by Elmore Leonard (W. H. Allen, 1983; originally 1981)
Cat Chaser by Elmore Leonard (Viking, 1986; originally 1982)
The Hospital Suite by John Porcellino (Drawn & Quarterly, 2014)
Killshot by Elmore Leonard (Viking, 1989)
The Finger of Saturn by Victor Canning (Heinemann, 1973)
The Mask of Memory by Victor Canning (Heinemann, 1974)
Ant Colony by Michael DeForge (Drawn & Quarterly, 2014)
Safari Honeymoon by Jesse Jacobs (Koyama Press, 2014)
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (Collins, 1981)
The Mammoth Book of Cult Comics, edited by Ilya (Robinson, 2014)

Including Gorky Park and The Mammoth Book of Cult Comics, both of which I'm still reading but both of which I'm reasonably confident I'll finish before the end of the year (there's something to be said for commuting by train at least: I get to read more now), I make that forty-five books, which is five more than I managed to get through in 2013 – something of a surprise, I must admit: what with work and Edie and everything I had thought I was going to be down on last year's total. And of those forty-five books: all were fiction; thirty-one were novels; five were short story collections; one – Ashenden, or, The British Agent – was both a novel and a short story collection; seven were graphic novels; and one was a graphic novel short story collection.

Nine of the books were recently published, i.e. in the last year or two; three were first published in the 2000s; eight were first published in the 1980s; twelve were first published in the 1970s; eleven were first published in the 1960s; one was first published in the 1950s; and one was first published in the 1920s. The vast majority were new to me, however; there were just five that I'd read before – and one of those, Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game, I'd read at least a couple of times before. (I was inspired to do so again this year as a result of acquring a scarce 1989 Heinemann reissue of the novel and watching Wim Wenders's film adaptation of the novel, The American Friend – and rewatching Liliana Cavani's later adaptation Ripley's Game.)

Speaking of Highsmith, she ties with Donald E. Westlake for most-read – and reread – author this year: six books in each case (that's if you exclude Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel adaptation of Westlake/Richard Stark's Slayground, which I do). Elmore Leonard was their closest rival with five books, then Victor Canning – this year's major discovery for me – with four, and P. M. Hubbard with two. Everyone else was one book apiece. Twenty-three of the books were what one might class as crime fiction; ten were spy fiction; and the rest were a mixture of science fiction, horror, fantasy and literary works. All of which, glancing back at my lists for 2013 and 2012, suggests that the makeup and breadth of my reading was not dissimilar to that of previous years.

And as in previous years, for my next post I'll be picking my ten favourites from the books I read over the past twelve months – although whether that post will appear before 2014 breathes its last is anyone's guess.

Gods and (Holy) Ghosts: Kingsley Amis, The Green Man (Jonathan Cape, 1969) and The Anti-Death League (Gollancz, 1966)

NB: Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 31/10/14.

When I was drafting my post on Kingsley Amis's The Riverside Villas Murder (1973) last week I came across an interview with Amis which is germane to another Amis book that, like The Riverside Villas Murder, I bought and read bloody ages ago but hadn't got round to blogging about properly (until now). The interview dates from 1973, so not too many years after the book in question:

The Green Man, was published, in 1969 by Jonathan Cape under a dust jacket designed by Colin Andrews – this copy of the first edition of which being a 2009 eBay win, nabbed for four quid; prices have evidently crept up since then, as on AbeBooks at present you'd be looking at more like forty quid for a decent copy of the first (from a UK seller; there are slightly cheaper ones available from US sellers). Anyway, conducted by Amis scholar Dale Salwak – who interviewed Amis six times in total and corresponded with the author for over fifteen years – the Q&A was published in Contemporary Literature 16, No. 1, 1975, and ranges across a variety of topics, from the well-worn – Lucky Jim, the "angry young men" – to more interesting (to me) subjects like human nature, morality and God, both in relation to Amis's work – The Anti-Death League (1966), say – and his life.

In regard to The Green Man Salwak inquires, "How earnestly should we take the supernatural in [the novel]?" To which Amis replies:

As earnestly as possible, I would say. It all really happens; none of what is recounted happens only in the hero's [Maurice Allington, landlord of the Green Man inn, Hertfordshire] mind. It's all literal in that sense. I think we can fit the supernatural part into the natural part by saying that the hero is made aware of his deficiencies by finding out that the reason he's being picked on by the dead wizard [Dr Thomas Underhill, "notorious seventeenth-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviant suspected of two particularly savage murders", as the jacket flap copy has it] to fulfill his designs is that the wizard feels Allington's character is essential for the wizard's purposes, Allington being a man who doesn't care for people and manipulates them for his pleasure. That's the link between them. I think it should be taken very seriously; I took it very seriously. And naturally I enjoyed doing it, and brought in some devices that had been in my head for years. I'd always been interested in the supernatural in fiction; here was a chance to do a ghost story.

And a ghost story, or a horror story, is in essence what The Green Man is – in other words another of Amis's experiments with genre – see also the aforementioned The Anti-Death League and The Riverside Villas Murder, and The Alteration (1976). (It's also an expression of his desire to, as he puts it in the interview, "elude categorization" and avoid "repeating oneself... the most dreadful thing in the world is that you're writing a book and you suddenly realize you're writing a book you've written before".) Although as with his other dabblings in genre it's many other things besides, in this case a very human account of a functioning alcoholic and his dysfunctional relationships with, well, pretty much everyone, but especially his teenage daughter.

God is tackled too, in a rather different manner to the way in which He's tackled in the earlier The Anti-Death League. In one extraordinary scene towards the end of the novel, shortly after Maurice has participated in a disappointing and ultimately abortive – on his part – threesome with his wife and mistress, God makes a special guest appearance, stopping "all molecular motion" outside the confines of the dining room of the Green Man (so as not to be disturbed) and manifesting before Maurice as a smartly dressed young man to explain why He has chosen Maurice to combat the malefic ghost Underhill. In the Dale Salwak interview Amis addresses this scene and his portrayal of God in both The Green Man and The Anti-Death League:

These are two very different incarnations. In The Anti-Death League, it isn't an incarnation at all in a sense. This is a view of the malignant God, who is very well described in Empson's Milton's God where he states practically, I think, that the orthodox God of Christianity is very wicked, and gives reasons for this. He sees God playing in Paradise Lost not altogether a dissimilar role from the role God plays in The Anti-Death League (although, of course, Empson's book was written before my novel ever appeared). I think if you were to look at that, this would throw some light on The Anti-Death League. In the novel, God is showing his malicious, malevolent side.

The Green Man takes a rather different view, and I'm not sure if they are really reconcilable. The Green Man's God is slightly malignant, doesn't at all object to inflicting suffering, but that is not his main concern. He's running a game that's much more complex than that. He's admitting that he's not omnipotent, and that what may strike Allington as very arbitrary is in fact forced upon him because of the rules of the game. The chap in The Green Man does get tempted occasionally (let's throw down one dinosaur into Picadilly Circus and see what will happen), and that's the sort of thing with the being in The Anti-Death League (let's give her a cancer, smarten them up a bit; so that priest thinks he's in communication with me does he – all right, let's sort out his dog). Of course I incarnated God in The Green Man as a young man simply because he can't be an old man with an enormous white beard. The idea of a young, well-dressed, sort of aftershave lotion kind of man, I think, made him more sinister. That was the intention, anyway.

Amis made his own feelings about God clear in an essay entitled "On Christ's Nature" – originally published in the Sunday Telegraph in 1962 (on Easter Day, appositely enough) and reprinted (with a postscript) in What Became of Jane Austen (1970) – setting out his stall as an atheist before stating, "I am one of that company (large and rapidly growing, I hope) which says: 'I think the traditional God of Christianity very wicked.'" (Amis notes that he is quoting Sir William Empson, who he also references in the Salwak interview.) The God of The Green Man may not be wicked per se – as he tells Maurice, "It's not that I want to be cruel, not that so much as finding that's what I seem to be turning out to be" – but he's a memorable creation nonetheless, his cameo an unexpected highlight in what is by any measure a remarkable novel.

Patricia Highsmith's The Black House: Signed Inscribed Association First Edition (Heinemann, 1981) with Handwritten Letter

NB: Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 30//5/14.

This second of two signed and inscribed Patricia Highsmith short story collections which I've recently acquired is, I think, more remarkable than both the first edition of Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987) I blogged about last week and the inscribed first of the short story collection Little Tales of Misogyny (1977) I got my hands on two years ago, for a number of reasons. Highsmith's inscription is more fullsome than in both of those books; there's a link between that inscription and one of the stories in the collection itself; and the book is accompanied by something even rarer than an inscribed Highsmith tome: a handwritten letter by the author.

The book is this:

The Black House, Highsmith's fifth collection of short stories, published in hardback in the UK by Heinemann in 1981. I bought this copy of the Heinemann first from Ashville, NY book dealer Warren Berry – thank you to Barbara Berry for answering my questions. Highsmith's inscription is on the front flyleaf:

It reads:

For Katherine Alexander

with gratitude for her reading of my works. I wish I could see Wellfleet again!

Hello also to Donald Olson – and friendliest greetings from

Patricia Highsmith

19 May 1982

Aurigeno 7771

TI CH

Katherine Alexander was described to me by Barbara Berry as a local librarian, which leads me to believe she was librarian at the Lakewood Memorial Library, a few miles from Ashville; she's mentioned a few times in this history of the library. Donald Olson I'm less sure about; Barbara described him as a local author, and I wonder whether he was the Donald Olson who frequently contributed short stories to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine – to which Highsmith was also a contributor – and who penned a number of paperback potboilers – The Sky Children (Avon, 1975), Beware, Sweet Maggie (Pyramid, 1977) – and hardback suspense novels – If I Don't Tell (Putnam, 1976), Sleep Before Evening (St. Martin's, 1979). Alternatively he could be Donald S. Olson, author of The Secrets of Mabel Eastlake (Knights Press, 1986), Paradise Gardens (Knights Press, 1988), The Confessions of Aubrey Beardsley (Bantam Press, 1993) and, I think, Queer Corners (Bridge City, 1999), although going by the dates of those titles, I think that's less likely.

In any case, plainly this was Highsmith's own copy of The Black House, which Highsmith sent to Katherine Alexander in May 1982 from her then-home in Auregino, Ticino, Switzerland. The accompanying letter – written on a torn-off half sheet of Manegg typewriter paper (a watermark to that effect is just about visible on the original) – sheds light on why Highsmith sent the book:

It reads:

I can't find here a copy of "A Dog's Ransom" but that should be available in Penguin —

The Black House may never be printed in USA. It is very well liked in England, France, [now?] Germany.

Best to you —

Pat H.

19 May '82

The date matches that in the inscription (although curiously it's written in a different pen); evidently Katherine Alexander had asked Highsmith for a copy of Highsmith's 1972 novel A Dog's Ransom, but instead Highsmith sent her this copy of The Black House, a book the author seemed to be proud of – at least her comment about it being "very well liked" in a handful of countries suggests as much to me – but which she feared might not be published in America. In fact it was, belatedly: Penzler Books issued it in the States in 1988 as a hardback and a limited-to-250-copies slipcased signed edition.

Taken purely on its own merits the letter is, I'd suggest, a pretty remarkable document; though it's relatively brief, it's still longer than the one other handwritten Highsmith letter I can see for sale online at present, which has a price tag of nearly £500 (rather more than I paid for my one); and on a more personal level, given that Highsmith is my favourite author, and that I've only managed to get my hands on books containing handwritten letters or notes by their authors (or other interested parties) three or four times before (see here, here and here, although there is also this), my delight at coming into possession of the letter is, I hope, understandable. Add in the inscribed book, however, and the two items become something quite extraordinary. At least one letter from Katherine Alexander to Highsmith is held by the Swiss Literary Archives (to whom Highsmith left her papers, a good many of which can be viewed online), but more intriguingly there's a mention in the inscription of a place which is significant as regards the contents of the book: Wellfleet, a coastal town on Cape Cod.

I'm unsure as to Katherine Alexander's connection to Wellfleet – although one can only assume that for Highsmith to have made note of the town in an inscription to her that she was familiar with the place – but thanks to Andrew Wilson's 2003 Patricia Highsmith biography Beautiful Shadow I do know that Highsmith stayed on Cape Cod. In 1948 she rented a house in Provincetown – the self-styled "Greenwich Village by the sea", at the tip of Cape Cod, not far from Wellfleet – with her fiancé, the writer Marc Brandel; shortly after her arrival Highsmith met Ann Clark, a painter and designer, and the two swiftly became lovers, themselves returning to Provincetown for a holiday in 1950.

All of this is pertinent because both Provincetown and to a greater degree Wellfleet feature in one of the stories in The Black House, "The Dream of the Emma C". Coming at the midpoint of the collection, it's the tale of the crew of the eponymous trawler, who fish a young woman out of the sea and are beguiled by her, variously competing for her affections, writing poetry in her honour and even coming to blows over her as they abandon logic and surrender to a strange dreamlike state. There are parallels here in the way Highsmith's out-of-the-blue encounter with Ann Clark saw her swiftly falling for the other woman, but there's a more concrete connection in that the captain of the Emma C reports the crew's find to Provincetown, and that the vessel's home port is Wellfleet, where the tale comes to a close.

It's a fine story, but it's just one among many fine stories in what is by any measure a brilliant collection, certainly stronger than the later Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes. The range of notes Highsmith hits from story to story, from the amoral ("Not One of Us") to the macabre ("Something the Cat Dragged in"), the creepy ("The Terrors of Basket-Weaving") to the criminal ("When in Rome"), is impressive enough, but the inclusion of tales which embrace themes and styles further afield from her traditional territory, like retribution and forgiveness ("Under a Dark Angel's Eye", elements of which to do with how the elderly can sometimes be a burden on the young would be reprised in "No End in Sight" in Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes), family dysfunction ("I Despise Your Life") and even farce ("Blow It"), is what makes this such a terrific book.

Best of all is "The Kite", in which a young boy channels his confusion over his sister's death and his parents' consequent arguing into building a huge kite. It's a kind of precursor to Up, or maybe more accurately Highsmith's spin on a Roald Dahl fable – Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, say, or James and the Giant Peach, although its devastating ending marks it out as very much not a story for children. That ending is echoed in a similarly shattering climax in the subsequent story, "The Black House", which rounds out the collection, and which is representative of the array of moods and shades and murky motivations at play across the book as a whole and in each individual tale.

Reading The Black House – the Heinemann edition of which, incidentally, can also be found in the Existential Ennui Patricia Highsmith First Edition Book Cover Gallery (the inscribed copy seen here is actually the second copy of the Heinemann first I've bought) – left me in the mood for even more Highsmith, so over the next few weeks I plan on reading and then reviewing the only two Highsmith novels from the 1960s I haven't as yet got round to. Ahead of those, though, I'll be taking a look at the link between Highsmith and another favourite author of mine: Donald E. Westlake.

Friday's Forgotten Books: The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Volumes 1 and 2 (Granada, 1983)

If you've been paying attention at the back, you might have noticed that over the past five or six months I've been participating in Patti Nase Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books initiative, whereby each Friday, Patti rounds up links to posts on obscure or overlooked books from like-minded books blogs – Pretty Sinister Books, say, or Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine, or Tipping My Fedora, or indeed Existential Ennui itself. To keep things interesting, every now and then Patti selects a particular author for FFB bloggers to write about, and this week she's picked Ray Bradbury.

When Patti originally suggested Bradbury back in October, I was initially thrilled: after all, he's one of my favourite writers, as evidenced by this post on The Martian Chronicles and this one on The Illustrated Man. But I quickly realised that, despite having read many, many of his short stories – not to mention novels like Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes – having already written about The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, I didn't have any other Bradbury books I could blog about.

Until I remembered these:

The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Volumes 1 and 2. Now, to you, I expect they don't look like much beyond what they seemingly are: ordinary, cheap, uniform cover collections of Bradbury's short stories, published in the UK in paperback – which ties them nicely into my ongoing series of posts on softcovers – by Granada in 1983 (and originally published in hardback in a single volume in the US by Knopf in 1980). I've owned them for years, ever since I originally bought them in, I think, WH Smiths in Beckenham, south London (the town in which I grew up), probably around the time they were published – which would make me thirteen years old (then, not now, obviously).

But here's the thing: they're the only books I've kept from my childhood. Admittedly I didn't own that many books back then; I read a lot, but most of what I read, besides comics, was borrowed from Beckenham Library – see this post on Doctor Who novelisations for more. I did own some books, although what most of them were I can't for the life of me think now, or recall what happened to them – they're all long gone. But these; these battered Ray Bradbury anthologies: they've stayed with me, through various moves, relocations, re-relocations, attendant clear-outs and stints in lofts – which is where I retrieved them from for this post.

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd put too much stock in this; if I'd actually owned some Doctor Who novels or whatever the hell else I was reading back then, I'm sure I would have kept some of them, so the fact that these two volumes of The Stories of Ray Bradbury have remained in my possession is more a mixture of happenstance and serendipity than anything more significant. But part of the reason I've kept them is undoubtedly the stories themselves. All Bradbury life is here, from a selection of Martian Chronicles – including the horrifying gut-punch classics "Mars is Heaven" and "The Earth Men" – to nursery nightmare "The Veldt", time travel twister "A Sound of Thunder", touching fable "All Summer in a Day", and the elegiac "There Will Come Soft Rains", as well as stories whose titles have become perhaps more famous than the actual tales ("Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed"; "I Sing the Body Electric!").

Across the two volumes there are 100 stories in total, with each book running to around 700 pages – which, with the awesome power of my maths skills, I have calculated comes to 1,400 pages in total. Two great big blocks of Ray Bradbury, marking the first time such a huge selection of his stories had been brought together in paperback, all of them chosen by Bradbury himself.

Not such ordinary books after all, then.

Next in these paperback posts: Patricia Highsmith.

True Blood: The Vampire in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Corgi, 1960) and Justin Cronin's The Passage and The Twelve (Orion, 2010/2012)

Thus far in this series of posts on paperbacks, the books under discussion – if my incoherent keyboard-clattering claptrap could be characterised as such – have all been of a crime or spy bent: Edward S. Aarons's Assignment to Disaster; Richard Stark's The Green Eagle Score; Elmore Leonard's The Big Bounce. To mix things up a bit, then, I thought we could look at some science fiction and fantasy paperbacks next, beginning with this:

A 1960 British Corgi paperback printing of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. This is actually the second Corgi edition (Corgi #SS854), following the 1956 first printing (Corgi #T197, which in turn followed the 1954 US Fawcett Gold Medal original), which sported a different treatment and illustration on the cover – a head-and-shoulders illustration of the novel's protagonist, Robert Neville, the last man alive, set against a staked vampire in a barren landscape (presumably an interpretation of the book's burning vampire pit). Corgi were evidently happier with the artwork on the 1960 edition, however – which depicts Neville looming over his staked wife, Virginia – as for their next edition, in 1962 (Corgi #SS1213), they went with this:

Now, on first inspection, that appears to be the same painting as on the previous edition. Look closer, however – click on the picture to zoom in – and you can see that the artwork has either been painted over, or painted afresh. The brush marks are smoother; the areas of contrast on Virginia not so stark; and the underpainting is less visible, in particular on the hillock, where in the previous version, the pink "ground" can be clearly seen.

To be honest, I'm not sure which one I prefer; they both have their merits, as does the type treatment on both covers. Frankly, early Corgi editions of I Am Legend are so scarce – certainly moreso than Gold Medal editions, and those are pretty uncommon as it is – I may well keep them both.

I'd already seen two of the three movie adaptations of I Am Legend – the Charlton Heston classic The Omega Man (1971) and the eponymous 2007 Will Smith version (which I watched as a slightly unfestive pre-Christmas treat that year, and rather enjoyed) – before reading the book, but neither of those films really captures the essence of the novel. For one thing, in the book, the cause of mankind's downfall is unequivocally vampirism, not mutants or whatever the hell those creatures in the I Am Legend movie are; Matheson's interpretation of it, sure, but explicitly named as such. For another, the way the vampires verbally taunt Neville – barricaded in his brownstone – especially his neighbour, Ben Cortman, brings an added layer of cruelty and torture to proceedings. And where both adaptations pull back from the brink of outright nihilism, Matheson doesn't blink: the horror and despair is unrelenting, with every glimmer of hope quickly extinguished, right down to the final twist in the tale, which upends both ours and Neville's perception of his plight.

One thing Matheson does in I Am Legend is strive to establish a scientific background for vampirism – and it just so happens I've recently finished reading another novel which attempts a similar thing:

Justin Cronin's splendidly sprawling epic The Twelve (Orion, 2012) – which, I think, is the best "new" book I've read this year – the sequel to this:

The Passage (Orion, 2010). Obviously there are differences between Cronin and Matheson, not least being that the former's magnum opus is by this point well over a thousand pages long and still only two-thirds done, whereas the latter's novel barely troubles 150 pages. Even so, they both offer explanations for the vampire – except that they approach their explanations from different directions. In I Am Legend, Neville tries to determine the scientific basis of each symptom of the, on the surface, seemingly supernatural disease of vampirism – living death, fear of garlic, etc. – in order to arrive at a cure. But in The Passage and The Twelve, right from the outset Cronin painstakingly establishes the scientific basis for each vampiric manifestation – from an encounter with Amazonian vampire bats and consequent US military experimentation to, in The Twelve, the appearance of "familiars" – and builds a supernatural mythology from there. Interestingly, this sense of opposites meeting in the middle extends even to the root cause: in I Am Legend it's bacteriological, while in The Passage and The Twelve it's viral.

Anyway: onwards. And next, two paperback editions of a key work of dystopian science fiction, featuring an introduction by Kingsley Amis...

Public Service Announcements: Changes to Existential Ennui, and the London Paperback and Pulp Bookfair, Sunday 28 October, 2012

All being well, next week I'll be posting that promised Peter Bryan George piece, and I'll also hopefully be adding to the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s page, with two lovely Lewes-bought illustrative wrappers which will edge the total number of covers on the page ever closer to 100. But before all that, and to round off the working week, a couple of announcements...

ITEM 1: You may, or may not, have noticed some minor changes to Existential Ennui this week, namely a slight widening of the blog and a new subtitle. The former I've been meaning to get round to for a while now; computer screens are a lot wider these days, so it seems daft to unnecessarily restrict the width of EE, especially when it makes it easier to position two book covers side by side in a post. The latter is also something I've been mulling for some time; to my mind the old, rather prosaic subtitle of "Crime and spy fiction, SF, book collecting, comics" had become a bit stale, and wasn't properly explaining what Existential Ennui is all about. So instead I've settled on the more narrative, yet still descriptive "The chronicle of an obsessive book collector*: crime, spy, suspense, thrillers, SF, comics". I think it does the job, and hey: it's tailor made for any eventual Existential Ennui blook. Ahem.

ITEM 2: If you'd care to cast your minds back to November of last year, you might recall my having written about the books I bagged at the 2011 London Paperback and Pulp Bookfair. Well I'm pleased to say the event is returning again this year, and will take place on Sunday 28 October at the Park Plaza Hotel, near Victoria Station. For anyone interested in old crime fiction, spy fiction, science fiction, horror and western paperbacks and pulp magazines, it really is an event not to be missed, and I'm reliably informed – by book dealer Jamie Sturgeon, who'll be hawking his splendid wares at the show – that horror editor Stephen Jones, acclaimed artist Les Edwards and fantasy author Adrian Cole will all be in attendance and signing. More importantly than that, however, I'll be there, so if you see this lanky streak of piss wandering about:

come and say hello. Although not in the first hour. I'll be too busy rifling through boxes of paperbacks.

Until next week.

* Since changed to the more alliterative "The chronicle of a compulsive book collector..." Although I reserve the right to change it back again, or indeed change it to something else entirely – "chronic book collector"**, perhaps. I'm mercurial like that.

** And indeed that's what I did change it to. Told you.

The Ilex Gift Giveaway: The Three Winners!

As is now traditional with my competitions (well, I've done it once before, anyway): drum roll, please! It's time to unveil the winners of my magnificent Ilex Gift giveaway!

To recap: two weeks ago I gave you all, you lucky Existential Ennui readers, you, the chance to win an, if I do say so myself, impressive amount of swag, courtesy of Lewes-based publisher Ilex Press and their new imprint, Ilex Gift. The haul comprised:

6 x Little Books:
• Little Book of Vintage Romance 
• Little Book of Vintage Sci-Fi 
• Little Book of Vintage Combat 
• Little Book of Vintage Crime 
• Little Book of Vintage Sauciness 
• Little Book of Vintage Horror 

2 x Journals:
• Lovelorn Journal
• Tales of Terror Journal 

2 x Postcard Books:
• Lovelorn: 30 Postcards
• Tales of Terror: 30 Postcards 

1 x Magnet Pack
• Lovelorn: 16 Classic Romance Comic Magnets 

each, for three Existential Ennui readers. Well with the competition now closed, and the entries all deposited in a fetching chapeau, I can now reveal which three winners were drawn from that hat. They are:

Dan Lester, Leeds, UK
Mark Bennett, Brighton, UK
Karl A. Russell, Widnes, UK

Well done to all three of you! Your prizes will be winging their way to you shortly. Thank you to everyone who took part – there were quite a lot of you – and don't despair if you didn't win: the Ilex Gift range will be available in all good bookshops soon!

Ilex Gift Giveaway! WIN! Classic Comics Journals, Postcard Books, Little Books and a Magnet Set!

NB: COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

It's giveaway time on Existential Ennui! Woo-hoo! And unlike the last competition I ran, where American readers could win Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie merchandise, this time the giveaway is open to all Existential Ennui readers across the globe: US, UK, European, Australian – you name it. (Go on: tell me where you're reading this post from in the comments; I dare you.) And even better, there's no daft question to answer!

I've got quite the haul of swag this time, too, all courtesy of Ilex Gift, the newly launched gift (er, obviously) line of Ilex Press, the Lewes-based publisher where I work. Shameless self-promotion? You betcha! But who cares when the prizes on offer are so numerous and splendorous.

Here's what you can win: 

THREE lucky readers will each receive:

6 x Little Books:

• Little Book of Vintage Romance 
• Little Book of Vintage Sci-Fi 
• Little Book of Vintage Combat 
• Little Book of Vintage Crime 
• Little Book of Vintage Sauciness 
• Little Book of Vintage Horror
Each bijou book contains classic 1950s comic strips, original adverts, short stories and more besides, plus an introductory essay about the source material. (Counter pack not included, I'm afraid.)

2 x Journals:

• Lovelorn Journal
• Tales of Terror Journal
Featuring quirky quotes from '50s romance and horror comics on lined, gridded and blank paper, and a pocket in the back for keeping ephemera, souvenirs and letters.

2 x Postcard Books:

• Lovelorn: 30 Postcards
• Tales of Terror: 30 Postcards
Each of the 30 postcards – or rather, 60 postcards, seeing as there are two sets – sports a classic romance or horror comic book cover, with artist and publication info on the back, all wrapped in a fold-out die-cut cover.

1 x Magnet Pack:

• Lovelorn: 16 Classic Romance Comic Magnets
Kitsch and kooky romance comic covers to slap on your fridge, plus a booklet revealing the stories behind the covers.

That all adds up to a not-to-be-sniffed-at £76 – or US$120 – worth of swag!

So how do you enter? Simple! Just email your name and address (or leave a comment on this post, although you'll still need to send your address in) using the subject line "I WANT TO WIN THE ILEX GIFT STUFF" to:

existentialennui@gmail.com

The competition closes Thursday 29 March at midnight EST – giving you just under two weeks to enter – with all entries going into Ilex Gift supremo Tim Pilcher's vintage RAF pilot's hat, from which the three winners will be drawn. And I'll be announcing those winners (barring mishaps) on Friday 30 March. Good luck! Oh, and the Ilex Gift range will be widely available online and at all fine book emporiums from next month, so follow the above links for more info.

Next on Existential Ennui: Geoffrey Household...