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Long before Quentin Tarantino popularized the term, there once was a real world of "pulp fiction." For the first half of the 20th century, magazines printed on cheap "pulp" paper with names like Black Mask, Manhunt and Argosy thrilled readers with lurid covers and often equally lurid tales of crime and violence, among other illicit subjects. The pulps were what businessmen read to relax on trips and teenage boys read with flashlights late at night in their rooms.
The pulps didn't pay much to writers, only pennies per word --- some things never change --- and most highbrow literary types considered these writers "hacks." Some were. But the best pulp writers created the modern American mystery novel, hard-boiled crime fiction and film noir. They became literary greats like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and Ed McBain.
McBain, best known as the author of the 87th Precinct police procedurals, died in July 2005. But one of his last works was to put together LEARNING TO KILL, an anthology of 25 short stories he wrote between 1952 and 1957. These stories give not only a glimpse into the long-lost world of the pulps, but also show the emergence of a great writer learning his craft.
For anyone who has ever enjoyed an 87th Precinct novel, this is essential reading. The stories were carefully selected by McBain and organized into seven mystery genres. As an added bonus, McBain wrote an introduction to each story that, unfortunately for his millions of fans, will have to serve as a memoir. The stories and commentary make this book an enjoyable, entertaining read.
Like in a great noir film, things were never quite what they seemed in the world of the pulps. For instance, when the stories in LEARNING TO KILL were originally published, Ed McBain was not credited as the author of any of them. They were written under two pen names and the name Evan Hunter, which in 1952 became the legal name of the fellow who grew up as Salvatore Lombino in East Harlem, New York.
Indeed, we learn here that nom de plum McBain was not even created until 1956. About a decade ago, I interviewed McBain and asked him why he had so many names. He told me, "When I was writing for the pulps, I used a lot of different names because I wanted to sell as much as I could."
From 1952 to 1953, he was making $40 a week working at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. If a pulp wanted a 2,000-word western or mystery or science fiction story, and the agency didn't have anything like that written by a client, McBain would go home that night, write the story himself and put another name on it.
For pennies a word, a writer had to be creative. In those days, before television killed the pulps and short stories in general, a writer could learn his craft in these magazines. And we see many examples of this in LEARNING TO KILL. McBain tells us early on that the collection "is about learning to write crime fiction."
Twenty of these stories were printed in Manhunt, which McBain described as the "hottest detective magazine of the day." And one thing that Manhunt did was not just go in for the titillation and plot twists common to the genre; they also emphasized the development of character in stories.
And this is evident in McBain's early work, a clear precursor to what will follow in the 87th Precinct series. There are stories about Kids and Women in Trouble. We find stories about Innocent Bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time along with chilling tales of Loose Cannon psychopaths. There is a story featuring a deaf mute girl who eventually will be reincarnated in the 87th series as the beloved Teddy Carella, wife of lead cop Steve Carella.
All the elements are present in these stories. "The Big Day" is a perfectly planned heist-gone-wrong story, which will be repeated and expanded upon in the five deaf man novels of the 87th series. There are three fascinating Private Eye stories included here, as we see McBain struggling with that genre before reaching the conclusion that "cops were the only people who have any right to be sticking their noses in murder investigations."
In "Kiss Me, Dudley" McBain imitates an over-the-top Mickey Spillane story. As McBain wisely notes, "When you start writing parodies of private eye stories, it's time to stop writing them." And he did, fortunately for us.
This collection also contains three of his first cop stories. He acknowledges "that I knew nothing about cops or police routine except what I had learned from "Dragnet" on radio and television." That would change soon enough. He started work on the first 87th Precinct in 1955 and published the last one, FIDDLERS, in 2005.
McBain was always an excellent recorder of the times he wrote about, and that is evident here as well. We meet 1950s gang bangers with their studded leather jackets and slicked back hair, using words like "dig" and "dad."
But there is something else here. Hunter/McBain was not just a "pulp" writer; he was a serious "literary" author as well. While writing these "pulp" stories, Hunter published a novel in 1953 called THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. He had left the literary agency by then. I was amazed when he told me in 1996 that he had just $300 left in his bank account when he sold 90 pages of that book.
Even in the 1950s, the life of a writer could be a precarious one, economically, especially when Manhunt was paying, he tells us in Learning, "two or three cents a word."
But somehow, great writing prevails. There are two stories that close this collection --- "On the Sidewalk, Bleeding" and "The Last Spin --- that transcend the world of the pulps altogether and become examples of great American writing. When McBain writes from the point of view of a 16-year-old gang member bleeding to death alone in the pouring rain in an alley, the writing is as powerful and eloquent and beautiful as any short story ever written in American literature. These last two stories are heartbreaking.
"I told myself, I am going to write these well," he said during our interview about those early days. "That's going to be the first thing." This collection proves that he certainly did that and more.
In the afterword to LEARNING TO KILL, written in December 2004, McBain says a simple goodbye: "From the first offense to the last spin, it was a remarkable journey. Thank you for sharing it with me all over."
The world of the pulps might be gone and so is Ed McBain. But his work, as demonstrated in LEARNING TO KILL, will live on and be read for generations. For that, we should be thanking him.
--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan
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