What do you think?
Rate this book
Black Wings Has My Angel
During the 1950s, Gold Medal Books introduced authors like Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, and David Goodis to a mass readership eager for stories of lowlife and sordid crime. Today many of these writers are admired members of the literary canon, but one of the finest of them of all, Elliott Chaze, remains unjustly obscure. Now, for the first time in half a century, Chaze’s story of doomed love on the run returns to print in a trade paperback edition.
When Tim Sunblade escapes from prison, his sole possession is an infallible plan for the ultimate heist. Trouble is it’s a two-person job. So when he meets Virginia, a curiously well-spoken “ten-dollar tramp,” and discovers that the only thing she cares for is “drifts of money, lumps of it,” he knows he’s met his partner. What he doesn’t suspect is that this lavender-eyed angel might just prove to be his match.
Black Wings Has My Angel careens through a landscape of desperate passion and wild reversals. It is a journey you will never forget.
When Tim Sunblade escapes from prison, his sole possession is an infallible plan for the ultimate heist. Trouble is it’s a two-person job. So when he meets Virginia, a curiously well-spoken “ten-dollar tramp,” and discovers that the only thing she cares for is “drifts of money, lumps of it,” he knows he’s met his partner. What he doesn’t suspect is that this lavender-eyed angel might just prove to be his match.
Black Wings Has My Angel careens through a landscape of desperate passion and wild reversals. It is a journey you will never forget.
209 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 1953
About the author
Elliott Chaze
26 books44 followersLewis Elliott Chaze (November 15, 1915 – November 11, 1990) was an American war veteran, journalist, and novelist. After nearly half a century, his "long lost" 1953 noir classic Black Wings Has My Angel (originally issued as One For The Money), a legend among noir buffs, was reissued in 2005, sparking new interest in this talented and prolific author.
Elliott Chaze was born to Lewis and Sue Chaze in Mamou, Louisiana. In 1932, Chaze graduated from Bolton High School in Alexandria, Louisiana. He attended Tulane University, Washington and Lee University, and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1937.
Chaze began his journalism career as a reporter for the New Orleans Bureau of the Associated Press.[2] During World War II, he served as a paratrooper and technical sergeant in the 11th Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. After hostilities ended, Chaze continued to serve for a time in the Occupation of Japan.
After the war, Chaze rejoined the Associated Press (AP) in New Orleans, then transferred to the APs Denver Bureau. In 1951, Chaze moved to Mississippi, began working as a reporter and became an award-winning columnist for the Hattiesburg American newspaper in the city of Hattiesburg. While at the Hattiesburg American, Chase received the Hal Boyle Memorial Award for the best personal newspaper column.
Chaze was married to Mary Vincent Armstrong with whom he had five children.
Chaze became City Editor of the Hattiesburg American in 1970 and remained in that position through 1980. Chaze wrote articles, essays, and short stories for popular magazines of the time, including Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Life, Reader's Digest, Redbook, and The New Yorker.
Chaze's works of fiction reflected many of his own experiences and were praised by reviewers as being authentic and filled with local color. The Stainless Steel Kimono, published in 1947, was Chaze's first novel. His most controversial novel, Tiger in the Honeysuckle, dealt with the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. He continued writing well into the 1980's with a series of Southern crime novels set in a newspaper office, but it is the newfound cult hit status of his Black Wings Has My Angel from 1953 that has finally brought him the literary acclaim and fame he so richly deserves.
In an interview regarding his motivation for writing fiction, Chaze is reported to have responded: “Primarily I have a simple desire to shine my ass — to show off a bit in print.” During his career, Chaze produced at least ten novels that were published.
Elliott Chaze was born to Lewis and Sue Chaze in Mamou, Louisiana. In 1932, Chaze graduated from Bolton High School in Alexandria, Louisiana. He attended Tulane University, Washington and Lee University, and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1937.
Chaze began his journalism career as a reporter for the New Orleans Bureau of the Associated Press.[2] During World War II, he served as a paratrooper and technical sergeant in the 11th Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. After hostilities ended, Chaze continued to serve for a time in the Occupation of Japan.
After the war, Chaze rejoined the Associated Press (AP) in New Orleans, then transferred to the APs Denver Bureau. In 1951, Chaze moved to Mississippi, began working as a reporter and became an award-winning columnist for the Hattiesburg American newspaper in the city of Hattiesburg. While at the Hattiesburg American, Chase received the Hal Boyle Memorial Award for the best personal newspaper column.
Chaze was married to Mary Vincent Armstrong with whom he had five children.
Chaze became City Editor of the Hattiesburg American in 1970 and remained in that position through 1980. Chaze wrote articles, essays, and short stories for popular magazines of the time, including Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Life, Reader's Digest, Redbook, and The New Yorker.
Chaze's works of fiction reflected many of his own experiences and were praised by reviewers as being authentic and filled with local color. The Stainless Steel Kimono, published in 1947, was Chaze's first novel. His most controversial novel, Tiger in the Honeysuckle, dealt with the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. He continued writing well into the 1980's with a series of Southern crime novels set in a newspaper office, but it is the newfound cult hit status of his Black Wings Has My Angel from 1953 that has finally brought him the literary acclaim and fame he so richly deserves.
In an interview regarding his motivation for writing fiction, Chaze is reported to have responded: “Primarily I have a simple desire to shine my ass — to show off a bit in print.” During his career, Chaze produced at least ten novels that were published.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 536 reviews
March 22, 2020
Goodreads friend William Donelson boldly asserts this isn’t a novel to be read; this is a novel to be felt and a novel to be lived. After my own experience with Elliott Chaze's noir black angel, feeling its dramatic intensity and living through every single page with narrator Tim Sunblade and his beautiful babe Virginia, the slender, poised gal with skin the color of pearls melted in honey, I couldn’t agree more. In order to do such a powerful, complex book a measure of justice, a book spilling its guts out in insatiable greed, voracious gluttony, self-indulgent lusts and a ravenous craving for freedom and thrills, please read on.
Tim Sunblade, the name he takes on as his tribute to a love of the great outdoors, is not only a big hunk of a good-looking tough-guy but a World War Two vet who served in the Pacific and still carries a piece of metal lodged in his skull. Tim is also an escaped convict from a Mississippi penitentiary, having been sent there in the first place after a tongue-thrashing by an FBI agent about making off with other people’s cars.
Picture a man in 1953 who slapped down his quarters and dimes at the corner drug store for a copy of this recently published Gold Medal paperback. Chances are such a man was himself a war veteran and knew the intensity and toughness of battle and might even have had his own brush with the law. All this to say, a reader back then felt an immediate kinship with big, tough, adventurous Tim Sunblade when he spoke to men as intimates, addressing them directly, as in “Virginia had told me – did I tell you her name was Virginia?" and "You hear and read about legs. But when you see the really good ones, you know the things you read and heard where a lot of trash."
Although we discover Tim’s real name along the way, no compelling reason to mention it here since Tim would like nothing more than to shove his past identity in an incinerator, watch it go up in smoke and be done with it forever. However, it is worth mentioning, wartime and jail-time gave Tim added layers of toughness beyond the likes of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Hammett’s Sam Spade and Cain’s Walter Huff. And since so much of noir revolves around violence, crime and the rough and tumble, this is one good reason to judge Black Wings Has My Angel, by far Elliott Chaze’s best novel, as a king of noir.
Looking at the bigger picture, there’s no question all the returning veterans with their wartime experiences made a serious impact on American society and Tim Sunblade gave voice to what these men faced as civilians in postwar America. And if men supporting a wife and kids by working a dead-end job at the local factory or office or warehouse couldn’t have their own Tim Sunblade-style adventures, at least they could read Chaze’s novel and live through Sunblade vicariously. Additionally, Black Wings can be read as a keen social commentary on the state of how American character and mythology played itself out during the 1950s in the home of the brave.
Right up front in Chapter 3 Mississippi born and bred Tim gives us a little foreshadowing by getting down to some good old boy Southern philosophizing, telling us how facing death at his twenty-seven years isn’t that much different from dying as an old man since life, real life, is all about forgetting all the junk and living and remembering the delicious moments, and he has had plenty of delicious, luscious moments with Virginia. In this way, the stark reality and blackness of death coats every page we read from this point forward like ugly on an ape (cliché, I know, but in Tim's case it works).
Tim Sunblade is a rebel with a cause and his rebellion is against staleness, routine and depending on anyone other than himself. Ah, the American myth of the self-made man, standing without any props, standing strong and tall. Here are Tim’s reflection on his knock-out, sexy babe as he speeds along the highway under an open sky: “I was all for dumping her along the way in a day or so. Now I didn’t know for sure, but I still thought I would, because a woman had no place in my plans.” Even as Tim’s heart pounds with more and more love for Virginia, all the rest of him screams for boundless freedom.
Oh, Virginia! You femme fatale! Tim’s gorgeous lady is a study in contrasts, as refined and elegant as Lauren Bacall but with a wild-crazy-mad streak a mile long. Here she is after a successful big-time, masterful robbery: “She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being. It was a scream that was a whisper with a laugh that was a cry. Over and Over. The noise and the scooping. The slippery, sliding bills against her rigid body.”
Interestingly, it was exactly the above scene that made the deepest impression on prepubescent Jean-Patrick Manchette, the author who would revitalize French crime fiction in the 1970s and have his slim, athletic, fetching thirty-year-old Aimée Joubert in Fatale take a bath with her own stolen bills. Black Wings, a serious novel with serious influence, and New York Review Books (NYRB)'s republication provides a great service in bringing this classic to a wider audience. The NYRB edition also includes a colorful introductory essay by Barry Gifford.
“Virginia was in bed, all frou-froued up in a pink robe with some kind of white fur around the collar. The fur was so silky the air-conditioning made it move. She was eating a thick cube of a kind of candy they call Heavenly Hash in New Orleans, and now and again she took a straight raw sip of bourbon and turned the page of her book.” Did I mention greed, gluttony, lust, freedom and thrills? Black Wings is dripping with it. And since Virginia is such an huge part of each and every chapter, Elliott Chaze’s two hundred page angel is supercharged, a book that can be enjoyed nowadays by both men and women (I mention this since men were definitely the target audience back in 1953).
Lastly, I’d like to extend an especial thank to my Goodreads friend William Donelson for his own inspiring review. If you liked reading my review, you will love reading his – link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
October 16, 2020
Those who abide in the noir world are meaner and greedier and their thoughts are always blacker and even the angels there fly on the black wings.
This is the angel…
The dark grand hero has the grand dark plan. And the hero meets the angel…
The hero doesn’t wish to wait… He wants to live fast… He wants everything and at once.
However, those who use evil devices to achieve their grandiose goals are prone to bump into yet greater evil than theirs and then everything drowns in darkness.
This is the angel…
The brown speckles in the lavender-gray eyes, floating very close to the surface when I kissed her, the eyes wide open and aware. But not caring. The eyes of a gourmet offered a stale chunk of bread, using it of necessity but not tasting it any more than necessary.
The dark grand hero has the grand dark plan. And the hero meets the angel…
After all, no matter how long you live, there aren’t too many really delicious moments along the way, since most of life is spent eating and sleeping and waiting for something to happen that never does.
The hero doesn’t wish to wait… He wants to live fast… He wants everything and at once.
However, those who use evil devices to achieve their grandiose goals are prone to bump into yet greater evil than theirs and then everything drowns in darkness.
April 6, 2018
”I came back and searched dizzily under the trailer, muttering the way drunks do, and then I heard it. A shuffling around inside the trailer. The little tramp had knocked me in the head with her Southern Comfort and now she was in there loading up…. I saw the light inside the armored car, glowing in slitted shapes through the steel. The rustling was louder. She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills. Beyond her was the custodian, still simpering in death. She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being. It was a scream that was a whisper and a laugh that was a cry. Over and over. The noise and the scooping. The slippery, sliding bills against the rigid body. She didn’t know I was alive.”
Tim Sunblade breaks out of prison one leap ahead of a spray of machine gun bullets. One of his buddies isn’t so lucky. His face pulped with bullet holes. His body left sprawled over the wall. His eyes no longer able to see the freedom that beckoned. Sunblade isn’t his real name, but he wants a name that represents his love of the outdoors and the freedom to romp around in it.
Now once a guy gets out of prison, what does he want?
A juicy steak with mounds of potatoes.
Some new clothes that don’t smell of starch and prison mold.
A long hot bath.
And most of all….
”Her eyes were lavender-gray and her hair was light creamy gold and springy-looking, hugging her head in curves rather than absolute curls. She wore a navy-blue beret of the kind you associate with European movies. Then there was the hair and face and a long loose stretch of metal-colored raincoat, very wet, and the cold smell of it plain in the mustiness. Then there were the legs and the bellhop wasn’t kidding about them.”
What is a woman like this playing the ten dollar tramp in Krotz Springs, Mississippi?
”She said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blow that cheese-colored room to smithereens.”
Sunblade isn’t expecting anything like her to walk through his door. He is just wanting some help slaking some of that lust that has built up in him like an atomic bomb while he stacked time in prison.
Now he has Virginia, but whether she loves him or is simply using him is something he will have time to ponder on at the end of the road. Every time the song ”If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time” comes on the radio, he has the sneaking suspicion he is still only buying her by the hour. Sunblade has the big score in mind, and a woman is just a distraction. “I was all for dumping her along the way in a day or so. Now I didn’t know for sure, but I still thought I would, because a woman had no place in my plans.”
Maybe that would be true of a woman, but Virginia is more than just a woman. When she walks into a bar, she owns the bar. She is gorgeous, but tainted, and with that stain on her character, she is an attainable dream, making men weak in the knees and stupid, and making women want to be her or beat her.
She is also one helluva driver, and that will come in handy.
This is one of those hard luck stories where enough goes right to give them a glimpse of a future living the way they want to live, but those things that go right are balanced out by a couple of pieces of bad luck at the wrong moments, almost as if a petulant God flicks his fingernail and changes the scope of their fate.
Cops have a little more leeway while interrogating prisoners in Mississippi in the 1950s.
”When he came back to me he broke the fingers of my left hand, one by one, neatly and with no wasted action, the way you’d snap celery at the table, almost politely. That finished me for the day, but I remember I hung on until he reached my thumb, and I thought as I floated off into the screaming pain and grayness that if I had taken this much of it I could take whatever else there was, without talking, and that maybe I’d be stronger, strong enough to butt the brains out of my head on the stone walls.”
I had a real physical reaction to a lot of the action in this book. Returning servicemen from World War II, the author Elliott Chaze among them, didn’t want to read about men of impeccable character and women who kept their knees together. That wasn’t real life to them, not anymore. They might settle in at night with a few fingers of Scotch behind the white picket fence in front of their house and watch their wives in their perfectly ironed poodle skirt walk across the room, but in their hand would be a book like Black Wings Has My Angel, where people aren’t waiting around to live, but living like the end of the world was chasing hot on their tails.
Back in 2012 there was talk of making a movie of this book, starring Anna Paquin and Tom Hiddleston. Something happened, and talks stalled, but hey Hollywood, here is one guy ready to buy a ticket.
I’m going to give you one last look between the bars. Tilt your head slightly to the left, and maybe you, too, can see it.
”But no one's immune to thinking. Try drawing a blank for any length of time, emptying your head of everything and still you land on a color, a shape, a personality, a grievance. I can sit here on this cot in my cell and stare at the plaster wall, go absolutely limp in my head, and the story, the story of Virginia and me is there in the plaster.”
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
This book was later released under the title One for the Money with the enticing cover showing the scene quoted above.
Tim Sunblade breaks out of prison one leap ahead of a spray of machine gun bullets. One of his buddies isn’t so lucky. His face pulped with bullet holes. His body left sprawled over the wall. His eyes no longer able to see the freedom that beckoned. Sunblade isn’t his real name, but he wants a name that represents his love of the outdoors and the freedom to romp around in it.
Now once a guy gets out of prison, what does he want?
A juicy steak with mounds of potatoes.
Some new clothes that don’t smell of starch and prison mold.
A long hot bath.
And most of all….
”Her eyes were lavender-gray and her hair was light creamy gold and springy-looking, hugging her head in curves rather than absolute curls. She wore a navy-blue beret of the kind you associate with European movies. Then there was the hair and face and a long loose stretch of metal-colored raincoat, very wet, and the cold smell of it plain in the mustiness. Then there were the legs and the bellhop wasn’t kidding about them.”
What is a woman like this playing the ten dollar tramp in Krotz Springs, Mississippi?
”She said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blow that cheese-colored room to smithereens.”
Sunblade isn’t expecting anything like her to walk through his door. He is just wanting some help slaking some of that lust that has built up in him like an atomic bomb while he stacked time in prison.
Now he has Virginia, but whether she loves him or is simply using him is something he will have time to ponder on at the end of the road. Every time the song ”If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time” comes on the radio, he has the sneaking suspicion he is still only buying her by the hour. Sunblade has the big score in mind, and a woman is just a distraction. “I was all for dumping her along the way in a day or so. Now I didn’t know for sure, but I still thought I would, because a woman had no place in my plans.”
Maybe that would be true of a woman, but Virginia is more than just a woman. When she walks into a bar, she owns the bar. She is gorgeous, but tainted, and with that stain on her character, she is an attainable dream, making men weak in the knees and stupid, and making women want to be her or beat her.
She is also one helluva driver, and that will come in handy.
This is one of those hard luck stories where enough goes right to give them a glimpse of a future living the way they want to live, but those things that go right are balanced out by a couple of pieces of bad luck at the wrong moments, almost as if a petulant God flicks his fingernail and changes the scope of their fate.
Cops have a little more leeway while interrogating prisoners in Mississippi in the 1950s.
”When he came back to me he broke the fingers of my left hand, one by one, neatly and with no wasted action, the way you’d snap celery at the table, almost politely. That finished me for the day, but I remember I hung on until he reached my thumb, and I thought as I floated off into the screaming pain and grayness that if I had taken this much of it I could take whatever else there was, without talking, and that maybe I’d be stronger, strong enough to butt the brains out of my head on the stone walls.”
I had a real physical reaction to a lot of the action in this book. Returning servicemen from World War II, the author Elliott Chaze among them, didn’t want to read about men of impeccable character and women who kept their knees together. That wasn’t real life to them, not anymore. They might settle in at night with a few fingers of Scotch behind the white picket fence in front of their house and watch their wives in their perfectly ironed poodle skirt walk across the room, but in their hand would be a book like Black Wings Has My Angel, where people aren’t waiting around to live, but living like the end of the world was chasing hot on their tails.
Back in 2012 there was talk of making a movie of this book, starring Anna Paquin and Tom Hiddleston. Something happened, and talks stalled, but hey Hollywood, here is one guy ready to buy a ticket.
I’m going to give you one last look between the bars. Tilt your head slightly to the left, and maybe you, too, can see it.
”But no one's immune to thinking. Try drawing a blank for any length of time, emptying your head of everything and still you land on a color, a shape, a personality, a grievance. I can sit here on this cot in my cell and stare at the plaster wall, go absolutely limp in my head, and the story, the story of Virginia and me is there in the plaster.”
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
![Profile Image for Orsodimondo [part time reader at the moment].](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1528452721i/10490224._UY200_CR39,0,200,200_.jpg)
April 3, 2024
SE GUARDI A LUNGO NELL’ABISSO, ANCHE L’ABISSO TI GUARDA DENTRO.
“Anybody got a match?”. Si presentava così Laureen “The Look” Bacall appoggiata allo stipite della porta della stanza d’albergo (alberghetto) di Humphrey Bogart. Lui la guardava per bene e senza aprire bocca le lanciava la scatola dei fiammiferi.
Secondo me aveva già deciso di sposarla in quel preciso momento. Anche perché, se non l’avesse fatto lui, c’era sicuramente una fila di aspiranti, che davanti a quello ‘sguardo’ si sentivano sciogliere dentro tutto quanto. Per la cronaca, la relazione cominciò proprio su quel set e le nozze furono celebrate l’anno dopo l’uscita del film.
Tutto ciò succedeva nel film di Howard Hawks To Have and Have Not – Acque del Sud, dall’omonimo romanzo di Hemingway, con la sceneggiatura co-firmata dallo stesso Hem e William Faulkner (e Jules Furthman): prima e unica sceneggiatura firmata da due premi Nobel.
Era il primo film per la Bacall, che al tempo delle riprese non aveva ancora vent’anni.
Tutto questo perché la perfezione di quel film, che nel caso vuol dire rispettare le regole del genere e aggiungere elementi, invenzioni, metterci del proprio, mi rimanda alla perfezione di questo romanzo noir. Noirissimo. Come secondo me il titolo rivela all’istante.
E quello che Chaze, giornalista e reporter, porta al genere noir è lo stile, cioè una maledetta qualità di scrittura che gli serve a cesellare personaggi fuori dalla norma, descrizioni e situazioni di notevole pregio. Leggerlo è un piacere, viene voglia di assaporare, di rileggere e lasciarsi risuonare dentro molte sue frasi. Ma questo senza dimenticare di apparecchiare gli ingredienti caratteristici del genere: femme fatale, coppia maledetta, rapina-fuga-inseguimento, vicissitudini carcerarie, omicidi e sparatorie, sbirri sadici, crudeltà/senso di colpa, cinismo/sentimentalismo, con uno stile e un’autenticità uniche. Chapeau. E gioia per me che l’ho finalmente incontrato.
Come in ogni buon noir che si rispetti quella che conta non è la trama, ma i personaggi, e l’atmosfera. È quello che chi scrive sa racchiudere in una frase, in un pensiero.
Quanto alla trama, qui sono in scena due classici emarginati, loser, anche se ci provano in ogni modo, oh se ci provano, e come! Lei potrebbe essere scambiata per Lana Turner, bella e sensuale. Sono entrambi attratti dalla bella vita, quella facile, che solo i soldi possono portare. E per i soldi sono disposti, forse non a tutto, ma a un bel po’ oltre quello che la maggior parte della gente sarebbe disposta a compiere. E quindi rapina, fuga, arresto, ecc.
Ma come dicevo non sono tanto questi classici ingredienti che rendono la lettura saporita: è come Chaze li maneggia, e come sa metterli sulla carta, è la sua affascinante scrittura.
Trattasi di repêchage: il romanzo uscì nel 1953, apprezzato ma poco venduto, fino a una riedizione alcuni decenni dopo. In ogni caso, Chaze rimane autore ancora da valorizzare appieno, i suoi libri sono fuori catalogo, in Italia ne sono stati tradotti solo due
Il noir è quasi uno stile di scrittura più che un genere, anche perché la parola genere puzza tanto di sottovalutazione, e il noir invece è grande letteratura.
Così dice nella postfazione il traduttore Nicola Manuppelli. Io sottoscrivo, la penso proprio come lui.
Starsene da soli è una faccenda delicata, l’intimità va calibrata in modo così fragile che – anche se uno l’ha desiderata – quando ne hai anche appena un poco di più di quello che ti serve, non è più affatto intimità. Non è più un lusso. Diventa solitudine, e la solitudine non è in alcun modo simile all’intimità, sebbene l’una e l’altra siano fatte della stessa sostanza.
“Anybody got a match?”. Si presentava così Laureen “The Look” Bacall appoggiata allo stipite della porta della stanza d’albergo (alberghetto) di Humphrey Bogart. Lui la guardava per bene e senza aprire bocca le lanciava la scatola dei fiammiferi.
Secondo me aveva già deciso di sposarla in quel preciso momento. Anche perché, se non l’avesse fatto lui, c’era sicuramente una fila di aspiranti, che davanti a quello ‘sguardo’ si sentivano sciogliere dentro tutto quanto. Per la cronaca, la relazione cominciò proprio su quel set e le nozze furono celebrate l’anno dopo l’uscita del film.
Tutto ciò succedeva nel film di Howard Hawks To Have and Have Not – Acque del Sud, dall’omonimo romanzo di Hemingway, con la sceneggiatura co-firmata dallo stesso Hem e William Faulkner (e Jules Furthman): prima e unica sceneggiatura firmata da due premi Nobel.
Era il primo film per la Bacall, che al tempo delle riprese non aveva ancora vent’anni.
Tutto questo perché la perfezione di quel film, che nel caso vuol dire rispettare le regole del genere e aggiungere elementi, invenzioni, metterci del proprio, mi rimanda alla perfezione di questo romanzo noir. Noirissimo. Come secondo me il titolo rivela all’istante.
E quello che Chaze, giornalista e reporter, porta al genere noir è lo stile, cioè una maledetta qualità di scrittura che gli serve a cesellare personaggi fuori dalla norma, descrizioni e situazioni di notevole pregio. Leggerlo è un piacere, viene voglia di assaporare, di rileggere e lasciarsi risuonare dentro molte sue frasi. Ma questo senza dimenticare di apparecchiare gli ingredienti caratteristici del genere: femme fatale, coppia maledetta, rapina-fuga-inseguimento, vicissitudini carcerarie, omicidi e sparatorie, sbirri sadici, crudeltà/senso di colpa, cinismo/sentimentalismo, con uno stile e un’autenticità uniche. Chapeau. E gioia per me che l’ho finalmente incontrato.
Come in ogni buon noir che si rispetti quella che conta non è la trama, ma i personaggi, e l’atmosfera. È quello che chi scrive sa racchiudere in una frase, in un pensiero.
Quanto alla trama, qui sono in scena due classici emarginati, loser, anche se ci provano in ogni modo, oh se ci provano, e come! Lei potrebbe essere scambiata per Lana Turner, bella e sensuale. Sono entrambi attratti dalla bella vita, quella facile, che solo i soldi possono portare. E per i soldi sono disposti, forse non a tutto, ma a un bel po’ oltre quello che la maggior parte della gente sarebbe disposta a compiere. E quindi rapina, fuga, arresto, ecc.
Ma come dicevo non sono tanto questi classici ingredienti che rendono la lettura saporita: è come Chaze li maneggia, e come sa metterli sulla carta, è la sua affascinante scrittura.
Trattasi di repêchage: il romanzo uscì nel 1953, apprezzato ma poco venduto, fino a una riedizione alcuni decenni dopo. In ogni caso, Chaze rimane autore ancora da valorizzare appieno, i suoi libri sono fuori catalogo, in Italia ne sono stati tradotti solo due
Il noir è quasi uno stile di scrittura più che un genere, anche perché la parola genere puzza tanto di sottovalutazione, e il noir invece è grande letteratura.
Così dice nella postfazione il traduttore Nicola Manuppelli. Io sottoscrivo, la penso proprio come lui.
Starsene da soli è una faccenda delicata, l’intimità va calibrata in modo così fragile che – anche se uno l’ha desiderata – quando ne hai anche appena un poco di più di quello che ti serve, non è più affatto intimità. Non è più un lusso. Diventa solitudine, e la solitudine non è in alcun modo simile all’intimità, sebbene l’una e l’altra siano fatte della stessa sostanza.
June 17, 2019
Black Wings Has ("hath") My Angel
You don't read this story, you live it.
This is a ten-star masterpiece of noir, a work of art, it is literature not pulp, a modern greek tragedy, a tale of life and love and hunger and fear which comes from the deepest heart of the author, Elliott Chaze. Astounding.
No other work by Chaze comes close to this.
Indeed, no other noir comes close to this master work.
(See comments for more pictures etc)
We are Tim, first-person, living his life after an escape from prison, working an oil field, filthy and exhausted and then to the tiny town of Krotz Springs to recover. Soaking in a tub, the rain lashing the little hotel, scrubbing the dirt from my body and my soul. Awaiting carnal pleasures after so long.
The whore appears, surprisingly exquisite, beautiful in every way, in her stance and movements, her eyes and form, but she is dark inside, unmoved, ready for work, ready for me. We drink and begin and drink again.
Quote:
The rain beat against the windows and against the tin roof of the hotel. It came down in hissing roars, then in whispers, then in loud shishes like sandpaper rubbed against wood. She drank the second glassful, climbed off the bed and began undressing, and then we were together, the cheap naked bulb still blazing down on the bed.
Thinking back, I remember the stupidest things; the way there was a taut crease just above her hips, in the small of her back. The way she smelled like a baby's breath, a sweet barely there smell that retreated and retreated, so that no matter how close you got to it you weren't sure it was there. The brown speckles in the lavender-gray eyes, floating very close to the surface when I kissed her, the eyes wide open and aware. But not caring. The eyes of a gourmet offered a stale chunk of bread, using it of necessity but not tasting it any more than necessary.
I remember getting up and coming back to her, and of throwing a shoe at the light bulb, later, when the whisky was gone. I remember the smell of rain-darkness in the room and her telling me I'd cut my feet on the light-bulb glass on the floor. And how she said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blown that cheese-colored room to smithereens.
This angel has dark wings though, like mine. Buried in her flesh, owning her, owning me. My black wings own me, as her black wings own her. We leave together, afraid of what lies ahead, afraid of each other, but unable to part, our wings binding us to each other.
We travel across the country, small towns, becoming closer and resisting. Tiny golden threads between our hearts are drawing us together, while our black wings plot betrayal, greed, and fear.....
I live this life. I am Tim. I love her, I hate my greed, I need her, and I think too much about it. It eats inside of me, as she becomes more bound to me, and I to her.
And as we travel, and plan the horror to come, she becomes my Angel. I refute it, I deny it, but it's true. A part of me dumps her again and again in my mind, the greedy part of me, the black wings of me. I ache for her, I need her, she completes me and I complete her. And my black wings beat against hers as I struggle with the golden threads of love and life, but the greed drives me, makes me feel alive, energises me and her, compels us both.
I continue my plan, with her. She is part of the plan now, part of me, our wings beat in terrible synchrony.
And we carry our own destruction inside us.
-------
I will read this book again and again, live this book again, love her again, fear our plan, hate our success, love our escapes, and I will be forever startled by her rescue of me, again and again. If only I had believed in her more, we could have let go of the wings.
The treasure is in love, not wings. We learn this too late.
My Angel now will always have black wings, and so will I. We will never know where she got hers or why, and my story in this book gives a glimpse of where I got mine. Terrible power, hunger, Black Wings, owning us.
Black Wings Hath My Angel, and me, forever.
--------
I love this book. It's full of magic and life and love, and a black deeply buried fear of the inevitable future.
Please also see my good friend Glenn Russell's terrific review here
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just a few more quotes I love:
If your life can hang from a chewing gum wrapper it can hang from anything in the book. It can hang from a bullet no bigger than a bean, or from a cigarette smoked in bed, or a bad breakfast that causes the doctor to sew the absorbent cotton inside you. From a slick tire tread or the hiccups or from kissing the wrong woman. Life is a rental proposition with no lease. For everybody, tall and short, muscles and fat, white and yellow, rich and poor. I know that now. And it is good to know at a time like this.
----------------
He said solitary itself was nothing but a room and a cot and you; and the room was a blank to begin with and a blank was comfortable as being asleep or dead. But that if you began filling the room with crazy thoughts you came out of it crazy. Jeepie said perhaps my biggest trouble was I could never forget I'd been to school: "They've taught you that to think is to be smart but my friend there's times when it's smart to be stupid."
But no one's immune to thinking. Try drawing a blank for any length of time, emptying your head of everything and still you land on a color, a shape, a personality, a grievance. I can sit here on this cot in my cell and stare at the plaster wall, go absolutely limp in my head, and the story, the story of Virginia and me is there in the plaster. At night in the dark it unreels very clearly even as I try to suck the darkness into my head hoping to blot the other out of there.
Writing it down brings me no relief from thinking, but it does somehow take the curse off the blackest parts of it so that later when they flash on the screen inside me they do not burn me so, and I can say: I admitted I did it. I confessed it on a piece of paper. I never told any of it in the courtroom. I didn't tell it before that when they strapped me Over the car and used the burning cigars on me. I didn't say anything. But I've put it all on the paper and the paper under my mattress and while it doesn't get it out of me, it dilutes it.
----------------
Now that I was rich I worried a lot more than I had [ before ] .... Or let's say I didn't worry more, but that I worried harder, because all my life I'd wanted to live lazily and glossily, and now I had it and didn't want it taken away from me. Before I became rich it was only a matter of hanging onto life, a good, rugged, animalistic, instinctive thing that kept me hard and on my toes. This was different, this petulant, craven business of sweating over my wealth, and over what it was doing ...
You don't read this story, you live it.
This is a ten-star masterpiece of noir, a work of art, it is literature not pulp, a modern greek tragedy, a tale of life and love and hunger and fear which comes from the deepest heart of the author, Elliott Chaze. Astounding.
No other work by Chaze comes close to this.
Indeed, no other noir comes close to this master work.
(See comments for more pictures etc)
We are Tim, first-person, living his life after an escape from prison, working an oil field, filthy and exhausted and then to the tiny town of Krotz Springs to recover. Soaking in a tub, the rain lashing the little hotel, scrubbing the dirt from my body and my soul. Awaiting carnal pleasures after so long.
The whore appears, surprisingly exquisite, beautiful in every way, in her stance and movements, her eyes and form, but she is dark inside, unmoved, ready for work, ready for me. We drink and begin and drink again.
Quote:
The rain beat against the windows and against the tin roof of the hotel. It came down in hissing roars, then in whispers, then in loud shishes like sandpaper rubbed against wood. She drank the second glassful, climbed off the bed and began undressing, and then we were together, the cheap naked bulb still blazing down on the bed.
Thinking back, I remember the stupidest things; the way there was a taut crease just above her hips, in the small of her back. The way she smelled like a baby's breath, a sweet barely there smell that retreated and retreated, so that no matter how close you got to it you weren't sure it was there. The brown speckles in the lavender-gray eyes, floating very close to the surface when I kissed her, the eyes wide open and aware. But not caring. The eyes of a gourmet offered a stale chunk of bread, using it of necessity but not tasting it any more than necessary.
I remember getting up and coming back to her, and of throwing a shoe at the light bulb, later, when the whisky was gone. I remember the smell of rain-darkness in the room and her telling me I'd cut my feet on the light-bulb glass on the floor. And how she said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blown that cheese-colored room to smithereens.
This angel has dark wings though, like mine. Buried in her flesh, owning her, owning me. My black wings own me, as her black wings own her. We leave together, afraid of what lies ahead, afraid of each other, but unable to part, our wings binding us to each other.
We travel across the country, small towns, becoming closer and resisting. Tiny golden threads between our hearts are drawing us together, while our black wings plot betrayal, greed, and fear.....
I live this life. I am Tim. I love her, I hate my greed, I need her, and I think too much about it. It eats inside of me, as she becomes more bound to me, and I to her.
And as we travel, and plan the horror to come, she becomes my Angel. I refute it, I deny it, but it's true. A part of me dumps her again and again in my mind, the greedy part of me, the black wings of me. I ache for her, I need her, she completes me and I complete her. And my black wings beat against hers as I struggle with the golden threads of love and life, but the greed drives me, makes me feel alive, energises me and her, compels us both.
I continue my plan, with her. She is part of the plan now, part of me, our wings beat in terrible synchrony.
And we carry our own destruction inside us.
-------
I will read this book again and again, live this book again, love her again, fear our plan, hate our success, love our escapes, and I will be forever startled by her rescue of me, again and again. If only I had believed in her more, we could have let go of the wings.
The treasure is in love, not wings. We learn this too late.
My Angel now will always have black wings, and so will I. We will never know where she got hers or why, and my story in this book gives a glimpse of where I got mine. Terrible power, hunger, Black Wings, owning us.
Black Wings Hath My Angel, and me, forever.
--------
I love this book. It's full of magic and life and love, and a black deeply buried fear of the inevitable future.
Please also see my good friend Glenn Russell's terrific review here
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just a few more quotes I love:
If your life can hang from a chewing gum wrapper it can hang from anything in the book. It can hang from a bullet no bigger than a bean, or from a cigarette smoked in bed, or a bad breakfast that causes the doctor to sew the absorbent cotton inside you. From a slick tire tread or the hiccups or from kissing the wrong woman. Life is a rental proposition with no lease. For everybody, tall and short, muscles and fat, white and yellow, rich and poor. I know that now. And it is good to know at a time like this.
----------------
He said solitary itself was nothing but a room and a cot and you; and the room was a blank to begin with and a blank was comfortable as being asleep or dead. But that if you began filling the room with crazy thoughts you came out of it crazy. Jeepie said perhaps my biggest trouble was I could never forget I'd been to school: "They've taught you that to think is to be smart but my friend there's times when it's smart to be stupid."
But no one's immune to thinking. Try drawing a blank for any length of time, emptying your head of everything and still you land on a color, a shape, a personality, a grievance. I can sit here on this cot in my cell and stare at the plaster wall, go absolutely limp in my head, and the story, the story of Virginia and me is there in the plaster. At night in the dark it unreels very clearly even as I try to suck the darkness into my head hoping to blot the other out of there.
Writing it down brings me no relief from thinking, but it does somehow take the curse off the blackest parts of it so that later when they flash on the screen inside me they do not burn me so, and I can say: I admitted I did it. I confessed it on a piece of paper. I never told any of it in the courtroom. I didn't tell it before that when they strapped me Over the car and used the burning cigars on me. I didn't say anything. But I've put it all on the paper and the paper under my mattress and while it doesn't get it out of me, it dilutes it.
----------------
Now that I was rich I worried a lot more than I had [ before ] .... Or let's say I didn't worry more, but that I worried harder, because all my life I'd wanted to live lazily and glossily, and now I had it and didn't want it taken away from me. Before I became rich it was only a matter of hanging onto life, a good, rugged, animalistic, instinctive thing that kept me hard and on my toes. This was different, this petulant, craven business of sweating over my wealth, and over what it was doing ...
April 28, 2014
Black Wings Has My Angel was originally published in 1953 as a Gold Medal mass-market paperback, one of the hundreds of pulpish novels aimed at male readers that filled paperback book racks in drugstores and other such places all over the country in the Fifties. For whatever reason, though, and unlike so many of the other of these books that can still be found in used bookstores, this one has become extremely scarce, which is a tragedy because it's a classic of the hard-boiled school. Kudos, then, to the folks at Stark House who have reprinted the book in a new edition, along with One Is a Lonely Number, by Bruce Elliott.
The story is narrated by a man who’s initially calling himself Tim Sunblade. We quickly learn that Tim has recently broken out of prison and that he has a plan to pull off a crime that will leave him on easy street for the rest of his life. In a fleabag motel, he sends out for a ten-dollar hooker. The woman who arrives with the bellboy calls herself Virginia and appears to be much too beautiful and skilled at her trade to be working this low-rent circuit.
Sunblade is entranced by the woman and so takes her along when he hits the road. He tells himself that he will dump her before too long, but he never gets around to doing so. She’s gotten under his skin and in a novel like this, we know that's going to mean a whole lot of trouble not too far down the road. "I wanted Virginia," he says. "She was a creature of moonlight, crazy as moonlight, all upthrusting radiance and hard silver dimples and hollows, built for one thing and only one thing and perfectly for that."
Virginia has secrets of her own and in a relationship like this, neither party can afford to trust the other very far. It’s bound to be a rocky ride, and more than a little bit dangerous, but Tim ultimately concludes that Virginia is just the partner he needs for the big job he intends to pull off.
Through the early part of the book, we watch the two travel cross country and make the necessary preparations for the crime they intend to commit. In the interim, they see a lot of the country, vividly described by Chaze, and they also have a lot of fairly rough sex, which is also fairly vividly described, at least for 1953.
In many respects, of course, this is a fairly familiar story, but in the hands of Elliott Chaze, it rises to something extraordinary. The writing is visceral and cuts close to the bone. As my friend, William Johnson, has suggested, this is a book that you feel rather than simply read.
My only reservation has to do with the crime itself. Without giving anything away, there's a development that took me out of the story just enough to make me give this four stars rather than five. But still, it's an excellent read and one that any fan of classic crime fiction should race out and discover for him or herself.
The story is narrated by a man who’s initially calling himself Tim Sunblade. We quickly learn that Tim has recently broken out of prison and that he has a plan to pull off a crime that will leave him on easy street for the rest of his life. In a fleabag motel, he sends out for a ten-dollar hooker. The woman who arrives with the bellboy calls herself Virginia and appears to be much too beautiful and skilled at her trade to be working this low-rent circuit.
Sunblade is entranced by the woman and so takes her along when he hits the road. He tells himself that he will dump her before too long, but he never gets around to doing so. She’s gotten under his skin and in a novel like this, we know that's going to mean a whole lot of trouble not too far down the road. "I wanted Virginia," he says. "She was a creature of moonlight, crazy as moonlight, all upthrusting radiance and hard silver dimples and hollows, built for one thing and only one thing and perfectly for that."
Virginia has secrets of her own and in a relationship like this, neither party can afford to trust the other very far. It’s bound to be a rocky ride, and more than a little bit dangerous, but Tim ultimately concludes that Virginia is just the partner he needs for the big job he intends to pull off.
Through the early part of the book, we watch the two travel cross country and make the necessary preparations for the crime they intend to commit. In the interim, they see a lot of the country, vividly described by Chaze, and they also have a lot of fairly rough sex, which is also fairly vividly described, at least for 1953.
In many respects, of course, this is a fairly familiar story, but in the hands of Elliott Chaze, it rises to something extraordinary. The writing is visceral and cuts close to the bone. As my friend, William Johnson, has suggested, this is a book that you feel rather than simply read.
My only reservation has to do with the crime itself. Without giving anything away, there's a development that took me out of the story just enough to make me give this four stars rather than five. But still, it's an excellent read and one that any fan of classic crime fiction should race out and discover for him or herself.
February 19, 2017
Black Wings has my Angel by Elliot Chaze is a NYRB Classics publication.
I ran across a post on PEN America about this book a few weeks back. It was originally published back in 1953 and is considered to be a ‘lost classic’, a book that is not necessarily well known to mainstream noir audiences, but is now considered to be one of the best crime novels written in the prime of pulp fiction. Its reputation has become almost mythic, apparently, but I had never heard of it, so as a collector and lover of noir crime novels I began to search for a copy.
So, did the book live up to its reputation?
I have to say the book is definitely a winner, even though there are some problems with the plot.
‘Tim’, after his stint in prison, plans to pull off a caper that will leave him set for life financially.
But, of course, things do not exactly work out quite the way he planned, due in part, to his having made the acquaintance of Virginia, a woman with a troubled past, who gets under his skin and quickly turns into an obsession.
After a bumpy start to their relationship, the two end up as partners in crime. The couple’s relationship is volatile, but the two flawed characters play well against each other in class noir fashion.
For fans of pulp fiction or noir this book is almost a textbook example of those genres, and may put you in mind of Jim Thompson, in some ways. It's gritty and dark, juxtaposed against a vivid scenic backdrop and occasional sprinkles of humor. It’s harsh, but has style, and despite its brevity, really packs a punch.
I was amazed by the storytelling and am so glad I stumbled across it!
4 stars
I ran across a post on PEN America about this book a few weeks back. It was originally published back in 1953 and is considered to be a ‘lost classic’, a book that is not necessarily well known to mainstream noir audiences, but is now considered to be one of the best crime novels written in the prime of pulp fiction. Its reputation has become almost mythic, apparently, but I had never heard of it, so as a collector and lover of noir crime novels I began to search for a copy.
So, did the book live up to its reputation?
I have to say the book is definitely a winner, even though there are some problems with the plot.
‘Tim’, after his stint in prison, plans to pull off a caper that will leave him set for life financially.
But, of course, things do not exactly work out quite the way he planned, due in part, to his having made the acquaintance of Virginia, a woman with a troubled past, who gets under his skin and quickly turns into an obsession.
After a bumpy start to their relationship, the two end up as partners in crime. The couple’s relationship is volatile, but the two flawed characters play well against each other in class noir fashion.
For fans of pulp fiction or noir this book is almost a textbook example of those genres, and may put you in mind of Jim Thompson, in some ways. It's gritty and dark, juxtaposed against a vivid scenic backdrop and occasional sprinkles of humor. It’s harsh, but has style, and despite its brevity, really packs a punch.
I was amazed by the storytelling and am so glad I stumbled across it!
4 stars
July 1, 2019
First published in 1953, this crime noir novel is a real crackerjack. Rundown juke joints, generous servings of I.W. Harper bourbon whiskey, cigarette smoke wafting in the air. He goes by the handle of Tim Sunblade; her name is Virginia. She's gorgeous, brainy, and greedy as all get out. And boy howdy, she can drive a car like nobody's business. Working at cross purposes, and then in tandem, this unlikely alliance may be doomed to fail, but the ride is not to be missed.
February 3, 2018
One of my GR friends, Denny, said that this is in a genre he thinks of as sordid noir. That’s accurate. I just like the way Elliot Chaze tells a story.
Trigger warning for violence against women, although taken as whole there's plenty of violence to go around.
In Dallas I got turned around somehow and drove out through a plush Home-and-Garden-Club kind of neighborhood, where all the houses were of long thin wafers o Roman brick or blotchy fieldstone and were set far back from the road, their picture windows shining like gold foil in the late sun. We passed what must have been some kind of club, and there were limber-legged young kids on a strip of fine clay, stroking brand-new white tennis balls with a beautiful laziness, their expensively coached strokes almost insolent. Then we came out of that part of town and there were some grubby youngsters batting an old gray ball around a gray asphalt court, a public one with chicken-wire backstops. These kids played aggressively, jumpy and fast, the movements ugly and determined. They beat the ball as if they were killing a snake.
“It’s funny,” she said to me, “they can be playing the same game and yet an altogether different one. It’s the money.”
“Yes.”
“Everything stinks without the money.”
“Almost everything.”
“Some day I’m going to wallow in it again. I’m going to strip down buck naked and bathe in cool green hundred-dollar bills.”
“You said again.”
“Did I?” she asked it teasingly.
Trigger warning for violence against women, although taken as whole there's plenty of violence to go around.
February 6, 2017
As I am fond of saying, plot isn't always everything in a good crime novel, and Elliot Chaze's Black Wings Has My Angel is a great case in point. It's also now the best crime novel I've read so far this year, and anyone who knows me knows that I do not say those words lightly. Written in 1953, it is still a masterpiece, in my opinion; dark, dark, and more dark -- the perfect noir novel.
After a sixteen-week gig working as a roughneck on a drilling rig in Louisiana, Tim Sunblade has his first bath in four months in his flea-bitten hotel in Krotz Springs. A knock on the door later he meets prostitute Virginia; three days later they're on the road together, Virginia having warned him that "when the money's gone ... I'm gone too." When Tim tells her in return that when that day comes, he'll probably be sick of her, she replies in what turns out to be prophetic words: "It'll be better if you're sick of me." The two begin to make their way west where Tim has big plans that initially don't include Virginia, but as they make their way first to Colorado and later, to the Big Easy, their relationship takes on a strange, twisted life of its own, ultimately sealing both of their fates. Chaze has offered up a deadly match up in Tim and Virginia, both of whom have self-destructive tendencies, both of whom are flawed people with dark pasts. Tim and Virginia are two of a kind: they have a healthy love of cash; both have a "horror of being broke," and each has the measure of each other.
But as I said, it's not so much the plot here but the ongoing, deepening interplay between these two characters that makes this story, as well as Chaze's excellent writing. Black Wings Has My Angel is one of those books that kicks you directly in the gut and doesn't let up. Reading it, I knew that happy endings probably weren't in the cards for either Tim or Virginia; I knew something terrible was coming down the pike, and I once again had that feeling of watching an unavoidable, inevitable train wreck, unable to look away. It's not pretty -- it's very dark, filled with an overarching sense of doom and gloom, and god help me, I absolutely loved it. I'd say that someone needs to make a movie out of this book, but they'd probably mess it up, so never mind. This is noir reading perfection and it seriously just does not get better than this.
(I've written more about this book at my reading journal if anyone feels like clicking.)
July 3, 2016
This is a genuine most noirest of noir novels! Written in 1953 by Elliott Chaze, it has just the right amount of lowlife atmosphere and humor that is required. Melancholy drips from the pages and you just know from page one onwards that this story will end in regret and misery. It is not a story about a private detective a la Raymond Chandler, but about a guy escaped from jail. He has a plan which he worked out in detail in jail and is determined to bring to a good end. It is unfortunate, but perhaps not entirely, that he meets and falls in a great way for a blonde femme fatale with violet eyes. Virginia's aim in life is to literally bathe in cash. Bad ending, not a cop and robber story as such, more the recounting of a crime and the unromantic love story of Tim, the protagonist, and the shapely, but deadly Virginia. I would have liked more deadly one-liners, but I should not complain about it. Tim is not that sort of guy. I enjoyed it very much!
March 20, 2018
ON SALE FOR 99 CENTS ON KINDLE TODAY....seriously, get this and stockpile it for later!
I really love stumbling over flawed characters in dark, surprising stories, but to do so in a rare re-release of a 1953 crime noir was off the charts. This was like buying a cheesy 99 cent print at the flea market, just for its old, funky frame, and finding 50 bucks behind the mildewed mat - my brothers from other mothers, Doug and Kirk, are to thank here! It would never have occurred to me to pick up this obscure book had they not discovered and shared it. LOVED IT.
Some of my buddies know that I'm a retired petroleum geoscientist and spent a lot of time offshore and onshore on drilling rigs. Imagine my thrill to find this in the first couple of pages..."..I’d been roughnecking on a drilling rig in the Atchafalaya River for better than sixteen weeks, racking the big silver stems of pipe, lugging the sacks of drilling mud from barge to shore, working with my back and guts and letting my mind coast. It needed a lot of coasting."
So yeah, my bias to like this kicked in, but I wasn't sold.
But then I read about his bath water...
"I hadn’t had a hot-water bath in almost four months. The soap was oily and fragrant and it slid down my chest making little zeros of suds, each filled with the milky-green color of the water. "
He describes the first time he laid eyes on Virginia, one strong and scary and beautiful woman.
"... the bellhop had me all wrong, that what I wanted was a big stupid commercial blob of a woman; not a slender poised thing with skin the color of pearls melted in honey."
And how he describes the time period after she finally seems to love him, swimming in an icy river.. "It must have been about nine feet deep and cold, achingly cold. It felt so fine to my head I’d take a deep breath and go limp and sink down to the bottom and squat there. From below the surface was a sheet of mercury and then I’d see it break roughly as she kicked against it coming down to me. It was like watching her through a sheet of clean green cellophane. She came and curved around me and slid along my back and shoulders. A futuristic kind of love. Love with all the heat taken out of it."
I'm a bit of a sucker for stories with strong females in them, but when reading a "period piece" (if one can call the 1950s a period - can we?) there is not going to be a politically correct tidiness involved. One can read a tale written now that is set in the past and again see females being described or treated by other characters (obviously, the author is the ultimate puppeteer) in the tale as someone who does not exactly fit the role of Catniss Everdeen. I can see some female readers today being a bit annoyed with the little marital slap on the rump or a woman using sexuality to get what she wants. I promise, though, that if you knew Virginia she would precisely be this way.
Anybody who has spent time in Cripple Creek, Colorado or New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf Coast will get an extra kick out of this. I did! In fact, his representation of New Orleans and the coast was so spot on that I dug up a bit of info on Chaze. He is from Mamou, Louisiana!!! Not that anybody on but we locals knows where the heck that is, but..still. If you're curious about him, this explains his accuracy in painting a scene. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/el...
Lots of tension and suspense with a fab ending. I guess I love old crime noir! 5 stars and on my favorites shelf.
I really love stumbling over flawed characters in dark, surprising stories, but to do so in a rare re-release of a 1953 crime noir was off the charts. This was like buying a cheesy 99 cent print at the flea market, just for its old, funky frame, and finding 50 bucks behind the mildewed mat - my brothers from other mothers, Doug and Kirk, are to thank here! It would never have occurred to me to pick up this obscure book had they not discovered and shared it. LOVED IT.
Some of my buddies know that I'm a retired petroleum geoscientist and spent a lot of time offshore and onshore on drilling rigs. Imagine my thrill to find this in the first couple of pages..."..I’d been roughnecking on a drilling rig in the Atchafalaya River for better than sixteen weeks, racking the big silver stems of pipe, lugging the sacks of drilling mud from barge to shore, working with my back and guts and letting my mind coast. It needed a lot of coasting."
So yeah, my bias to like this kicked in, but I wasn't sold.
But then I read about his bath water...
"I hadn’t had a hot-water bath in almost four months. The soap was oily and fragrant and it slid down my chest making little zeros of suds, each filled with the milky-green color of the water. "
He describes the first time he laid eyes on Virginia, one strong and scary and beautiful woman.
"... the bellhop had me all wrong, that what I wanted was a big stupid commercial blob of a woman; not a slender poised thing with skin the color of pearls melted in honey."
And how he describes the time period after she finally seems to love him, swimming in an icy river.. "It must have been about nine feet deep and cold, achingly cold. It felt so fine to my head I’d take a deep breath and go limp and sink down to the bottom and squat there. From below the surface was a sheet of mercury and then I’d see it break roughly as she kicked against it coming down to me. It was like watching her through a sheet of clean green cellophane. She came and curved around me and slid along my back and shoulders. A futuristic kind of love. Love with all the heat taken out of it."
I'm a bit of a sucker for stories with strong females in them, but when reading a "period piece" (if one can call the 1950s a period - can we?) there is not going to be a politically correct tidiness involved. One can read a tale written now that is set in the past and again see females being described or treated by other characters (obviously, the author is the ultimate puppeteer) in the tale as someone who does not exactly fit the role of Catniss Everdeen. I can see some female readers today being a bit annoyed with the little marital slap on the rump or a woman using sexuality to get what she wants. I promise, though, that if you knew Virginia she would precisely be this way.
Anybody who has spent time in Cripple Creek, Colorado or New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf Coast will get an extra kick out of this. I did! In fact, his representation of New Orleans and the coast was so spot on that I dug up a bit of info on Chaze. He is from Mamou, Louisiana!!! Not that anybody on but we locals knows where the heck that is, but..still. If you're curious about him, this explains his accuracy in painting a scene. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/el...
Lots of tension and suspense with a fab ending. I guess I love old crime noir! 5 stars and on my favorites shelf.
May 19, 2018
And there she was. I guess I'll always remember the first time I saw her, standing there in the half-gloom of the corridor, with the country-town bellhop dressed like an organ-grinder's monkey, almost leaning against her, smirking.
"She's a looker, ain't she, Bub?"
For some reason, the meeting between Tim (an oil-rig worker) and Virginia (a cheap hooker in a small town) made me think of Roger Vadim's "Et Dieu ... crea la femme" . Certainly, the introduction of the blonde bombshell Virginia may warrant associations with Brigitte Bardot, but I was thinking more of the snake parable, of trouble in store for Tim.
Except that both of them are not what they appear at first glance. Under the pen of Elliott Chaze they are revealed as complex, haunted by their past, unpredictable and much more intriguing than I have come to expect from a classic noir. My friends in the 'Pulp Fiction' group have been praising the novel for years, calling it a hidden gem and a cult classic. Now, after reading it through, I wonder why the book and the author are not better known and recognized as some of the best the genre has to offer.
What in the devil had hounded her into taking a ten-dollar-a-call job in a backwoods hotel? She was running, too, but from what?
Tim is running from prison, working hard jobs to save money for the perfect heist one of his inmates had planned before being gunned down by the prison guards. He keeps his cards close to his chest, yet he is hooked the moment he lays eyes on Virginia.
For her part, she is as close-mouthed as Tim about her past, but is willing to play along and to be his mistress, as long as he can afford it.
"If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time."
In the beginning, the relationship is the usual cat-and-mouse game between good looking crooks that I have seen in countless movies. You get to wonder which one is double-crossing the other. They are both young, despite their scars, and really attracted to each other. But the gold fever in their eyes trumps love, most of the time.
"Everything stinks without the money."
"Almost everything."
The one thing about Tim and Virginia that sets them apart from a slew of other Bonnie & Clyde clones is the fact they they are both highly educated and have come to a life of crime not from the bottom of the ladder, but from somewhere quite comfortable. It's true, Tim was born in a small, impoverished Southern town, but he clawed his way out of the pit and finished university. What went wrong after is less clear (or I stay away from the subject to avoid spoilers). Likewise, Virginia is not only attired in very expensive clothes, but talks and acts like someone born into old money.
"Don't be tiresome."
"That's what I mean, words like tiresome. I never in my life heard a tramp say tiresome."
also,
... that's a lot of money for a fellow who worked his way through school ghost-writing themes and sweeping out dormitories and serving tables in the fraternity houses for the kids in three-dollar socks and the Harris tweed jackets.
The Harris tweed jackets are a symbol for both of them of what they stand against: the establishment, the smooth arrogance of the moneyed class. But what are they standing for? The key scene regarding Virginia has her keening and screeching in a pile of stolen money (you can easily find the quote on Goodreads and on blurbs for the novel). For Tim, money represents a means, not an end, a way to achieve freedom. My favorite scenes are of the couple of criminals camping out in the high passes of the Colorado Rockies, once they come to a tentative truce between double-crossers.
The trees got shorter and skinnier and the grass thinner. The air crisped and cooled despite the sunshine, which near the peak of the pass seemed almost to crackle among the rocks.
These things registered with me because I am something of a fool about the outdoors. I feel the same way about the sky and clouds, and being able to move around, as an evangelist feels about religion. I guess freedom and the money to enjoy it are a kind of religion, a very exclusive kind.
The novel is roughly structured in three parts, with the first part getting to know Tim and Virginia, the second describing in detail a daring heist in Denver, and the third the 'Karma Strikes Back' moment that was obligatory in classic noir, as Tim and Virginia struggle in vain to evade their Fate.
The second part is extremely well written, especially for fans of the detailed description of a robbery. I was never bored during this (lengthy) section, since Chaze seems to know very well what he is talking about, both about the technical and the psychological aspect of the planning.
Your target's perfect. What could be more perfect than an armored car? It's stinking with money and it's got wheels on it. The getaway and the haul are all wrapped up in one package. If you play it cool.
Since I worked most of my professional hours in and around metal workshops, some of them dwarfing the one described in the book, I was particularly thrilled to read about Tim's job as a metal-cutter in a local shop.
The first five days were the roughest, getting accustomed to breathing the powdered rust that came up off the sheet metal when you slid it off the dolly onto the cutting table. We handled the metal in sheets that sometimes were more than eighteen feet long and three feet wide.
My own hands bear witness to the accuracy of his observations:
I went back to the stacking job, careful to avoid the raw steel burrs along the edges of the triangles. They'll lance through leather like a scalpel.
In order to balance these (arguably) less gripping sections of the book, Chaze puts the spotlight on the changing dynamic in the relationship between Tim and Victoria. For his part, Tim doesn't mind so much the boring lifestyle of pretending to be a young married couple in a nosy neighborhood. Virginia though has a fiery temper and could explode at any moment. Yet, subtly, the reader is kept on edge on whether she is still faking her passion for the 'ungentlemanly' Tim. The question will keep right up to the very last page of the novel.
The last third of the story (I'm leaving out the actual heist) is heavy with foreshadowing of doom. I was even tempted to keep one star back for some heavy-handed use of portents and obvious markers, but then I realized that the whole story is told in flashbacks by Tim from a point somewhere after these events, and his hindsight is actually explained and justified, as is the pervasive despair.
A slow sickening whirl seemed to move around and past us, as if the air itself had become so thick with evil as to be a tangible force, emptying into the pit, tugging at us, wanting to take us with it. [...] The ultimate in horror is, for some unworldy reason, attractive. Hypnotic. For this reason you stare at the face of a leper at Carville. You are riveted at the scene of an automobile smash-up. You may loathe high places and leap irresistibly into the very space that fills you with nausea. A man terrified of snakes may spend hours watching the green metallic head of the python in the cage.
This closing quote may explain the appeal pulp fiction, especially the classic ones where you know from the start that the actors are doomed to failure, and also should serve as a fine example of Chaze writing style – purplish in places, but also informed and insightful. I wonder if his other books are as good as this one?
January 29, 2016
When it comes to noir crime fiction, Black Wings Has My Angel is a cult classic. First published in 1953 by Gold Medal Books (known for drugstore paperbacks with curious titles like Dig that Crazy Grave, Meanwhile Back at the Morgue, Dig My Grave Deep, Death Takes the Bus, and Don’t Speak to Strange Girls), it is being reissued later this month as a NYRB classic. I received my copy today, and read the entire novel in a single sitting. Timothy Sunblade is an escaped convict, a car thief, and a war veteran with a permanent head injury, which has left him somewhat unstable. After meeting Virginia, a “ten-dollar tramp” turned complicated femme fatale, the two damaged lovers then travel west in a blue Packard convertible, scheming to pull off an armored car heist in Denver, that is, unless Tim doesn't first decide to ditch Virginia somewhere along the way. They are memorable characters, and their dialogue crackles. Black Wings Has My Angel is darker than noir. It is a page turner full of unexpected plot twists, and literary quality aside, it is pulp fiction at its most sensational.
May 19, 2017
“If you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time”—Lefty Frizzell song Timothy/Kenneth and Virginia/Jennie sing
This is a deliciously wicked (and I guess recently rediscovered or re-appreciated) noir story published in 1953 from a guy I had never heard of about a vet just escaped from prison who picks up a prostitute and takes her on the road. He has a plan for a Big Heist he wants to pull off. They fall in love, and do knock off an armored car, but early on he isn’t committed to her:
“I was all for dumping her along the way in a day or so. Now I didn’t know for sure, but I still thought I would, because a woman had no place in my plans.”
Why stay with her? For short term fun, initially. In short, Bourbon, sex and money. And, well,
“She had the face of a Madonna and a heart made of dollar bills.”
"But I still planned to leave her in the ladies john of some filling station," he explains. "Because you can't kiss your way out of prison and I knew that for sure. For dead sure."
Tim, on Virginia: "She was a lousy little tramp. God knows I'm an authority on tramps." And Virginia, to Tim: "You move around like a damned tormented tomcat and your eyes aren't right. You're just about perfect. And you're just about horrible."
And how about this?!: “She said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blown that cheese-colored room to smithereens.”
Ha! Noir writing, eh? Ain’t it grand?
Or this: “Life is a rental proposition with no lease. For everybody, tall and short, muscles and fat, white and yellow, rich and poor. I know that now. And it is good to know at a time like this.”
“Because I felt so different myself. As if I were charged with cool electricity that washed me down inside and out and at the same time scared me and relieved me. That’s fancy as hell, isn’t it? But it’s fancy because it’s so and not because I want to dress it up for you.” Tim writes this story in a journal more for himself than us.
Chaze, a journalist, wrote ten crime novels. Why? "Primarily I have a simple desire to shine my ass—to show off a bit in print." Ha! Love it. And can he write to entertain, with a literary flair? Be your own judge:
Virginia: “’I want to make it plain as the nose on your face. I can stand anything in the book but gentlemen. Because I've spent a lot of time, too much time with them, and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals.’”
“I picked her up then and took her back to the room and threw her down on the bed. Then I spent the next three hours proving to her that I would never be a gentleman.”
I laughed out loud reading that. I LOVE that.
And this:
“She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills. Beyond her was the custodian, still simpering in death. She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being. It was a scream that was a whisper and a laugh that was a cry. Over and over. The noise and the scooping. The slippery, sliding bills against the rigid body. She didn’t know I was alive.”
Over the top noir writing. Perfectly ridiculous and ridiculously perfect..
But later in the book: “I had so much stuff I couldn’t concentrate on any of it long enough to enjoy it, so I became sick of all of it. I was sick of Virginia, too, and of what the money had done to the both of us, changing a tough, elegant adventuress with plenty of guts and imagination into a candy-tonguing country club Cleopatra who nested in bed the whole day long and thought her feet were too damned good to walk on.”
A gem, a masterpiece of noir crime fiction. I had never heard of it, but thanks to hearing about it through Goodreads, I read it, laughing aloud along the way. A hoot.
This is a deliciously wicked (and I guess recently rediscovered or re-appreciated) noir story published in 1953 from a guy I had never heard of about a vet just escaped from prison who picks up a prostitute and takes her on the road. He has a plan for a Big Heist he wants to pull off. They fall in love, and do knock off an armored car, but early on he isn’t committed to her:
“I was all for dumping her along the way in a day or so. Now I didn’t know for sure, but I still thought I would, because a woman had no place in my plans.”
Why stay with her? For short term fun, initially. In short, Bourbon, sex and money. And, well,
“She had the face of a Madonna and a heart made of dollar bills.”
"But I still planned to leave her in the ladies john of some filling station," he explains. "Because you can't kiss your way out of prison and I knew that for sure. For dead sure."
Tim, on Virginia: "She was a lousy little tramp. God knows I'm an authority on tramps." And Virginia, to Tim: "You move around like a damned tormented tomcat and your eyes aren't right. You're just about perfect. And you're just about horrible."
And how about this?!: “She said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blown that cheese-colored room to smithereens.”
Ha! Noir writing, eh? Ain’t it grand?
Or this: “Life is a rental proposition with no lease. For everybody, tall and short, muscles and fat, white and yellow, rich and poor. I know that now. And it is good to know at a time like this.”
“Because I felt so different myself. As if I were charged with cool electricity that washed me down inside and out and at the same time scared me and relieved me. That’s fancy as hell, isn’t it? But it’s fancy because it’s so and not because I want to dress it up for you.” Tim writes this story in a journal more for himself than us.
Chaze, a journalist, wrote ten crime novels. Why? "Primarily I have a simple desire to shine my ass—to show off a bit in print." Ha! Love it. And can he write to entertain, with a literary flair? Be your own judge:
Virginia: “’I want to make it plain as the nose on your face. I can stand anything in the book but gentlemen. Because I've spent a lot of time, too much time with them, and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals.’”
“I picked her up then and took her back to the room and threw her down on the bed. Then I spent the next three hours proving to her that I would never be a gentleman.”
I laughed out loud reading that. I LOVE that.
And this:
“She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills. Beyond her was the custodian, still simpering in death. She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being. It was a scream that was a whisper and a laugh that was a cry. Over and over. The noise and the scooping. The slippery, sliding bills against the rigid body. She didn’t know I was alive.”
Over the top noir writing. Perfectly ridiculous and ridiculously perfect..
But later in the book: “I had so much stuff I couldn’t concentrate on any of it long enough to enjoy it, so I became sick of all of it. I was sick of Virginia, too, and of what the money had done to the both of us, changing a tough, elegant adventuress with plenty of guts and imagination into a candy-tonguing country club Cleopatra who nested in bed the whole day long and thought her feet were too damned good to walk on.”
A gem, a masterpiece of noir crime fiction. I had never heard of it, but thanks to hearing about it through Goodreads, I read it, laughing aloud along the way. A hoot.
August 4, 2015
One thing I love about classic paperback originals are the super pulpy taglines! And this one has a great one:
"She had the face of a Madonna and a heart made of dollar bills."
I love this stuff. :)
The tagline really captured the tone of this hardcore noir, about a convict on the lam named Tim, who spends what was supposed to be one lovely night with a sexy, money-hungry call-girl named Virginia, but which turns into a three-night long love-making session. Afterwards, they're joined at the hip, as she accompanies him across the country and on a heist that could take them both down a fast-lane to easy money, or on a highway to hell.
One really interesting thing about the novel was how volatile Tim and Virginia's relationship was from the very beginning. In many crime novels, the man is initially head over heels for the woman. Not so in Chaze's book! Although the sex is good, both Tim and Virginia seem to hate one another right from the start, even resorting to beating the living hell out of each other one moonlit night on the side of the road. Throughout the course of the story, there are many times Tim even thinks about killing her or abandoning her. But there is some distant attraction that keeps them drawn to one another, and after they become criminal accomplices, they are destined to stay together until the bitter end, whether they want to or not. This aspect really kept me interested to see how their relationship would play out.
The writing and atmosphere in this novel is really similar to a Jim Thompson book, and fans of his would love this one. Like most great noirs, the outlook and themes are bleak but the pacing is speedy with an exciting heist. It was also one of the most graphic, and button-pushing noir classics I've read (although I've only just started getting into them). I really enjoyed it!
"She had the face of a Madonna and a heart made of dollar bills."
I love this stuff. :)
The tagline really captured the tone of this hardcore noir, about a convict on the lam named Tim, who spends what was supposed to be one lovely night with a sexy, money-hungry call-girl named Virginia, but which turns into a three-night long love-making session. Afterwards, they're joined at the hip, as she accompanies him across the country and on a heist that could take them both down a fast-lane to easy money, or on a highway to hell.
One really interesting thing about the novel was how volatile Tim and Virginia's relationship was from the very beginning. In many crime novels, the man is initially head over heels for the woman. Not so in Chaze's book! Although the sex is good, both Tim and Virginia seem to hate one another right from the start, even resorting to beating the living hell out of each other one moonlit night on the side of the road. Throughout the course of the story, there are many times Tim even thinks about killing her or abandoning her. But there is some distant attraction that keeps them drawn to one another, and after they become criminal accomplices, they are destined to stay together until the bitter end, whether they want to or not. This aspect really kept me interested to see how their relationship would play out.
The writing and atmosphere in this novel is really similar to a Jim Thompson book, and fans of his would love this one. Like most great noirs, the outlook and themes are bleak but the pacing is speedy with an exciting heist. It was also one of the most graphic, and button-pushing noir classics I've read (although I've only just started getting into them). I really enjoyed it!
"She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills. Beyond her was the custodian, still simpering in death. She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being. It was a scream that was a whisper and a laugh that was a cry. Over and over. The noise and the scooping. The slippery, sliding bills against the rigid body.
She didn't know I was alive"
September 19, 2022
The best noir stories are filled with sadness and desperation, loneliness, suspicion, and distrust. In Black Wings Has My Angel, Chaze offers us the perfect mix of blues and hardboiledness.
It is the story of two people all alone in this world and filled with an absolute desperate longing to jump naked in piles of cold green cash. There's a society all its own of the really money-hungry people, we are told and here's two of them.
Like Bonnie and Clyde or Starkweather and his young girlfriend, this pair is rootless, drifting, running, trying to grab something better. Tim is a ex-GI, an ex-con, an ex oil rig worker. Virginia has vestiges of upper class speech, lavender eyes, blonde hair, and the best legs in town, but she's only staying till the money runs out. He rents her for the night and they take off on a lark. Tim ( or Kenneth) thinks he'll leave her when she stops in the ladies' room at some filling station. She tries to leave him when she has the chance. They're no damn good for each other, but they are almost powerless to walk away.
Tim has a job in mind he's been dreaming about even before he broke out of the penitentiary and she might just be the one to help. And, even when they try middle class life, it's just no good. Virginia says it's just like laying down and going to sleep. She wants to be wild and free. Of course, the tragedy is that all the money in the world doesn't make them free or happy and, just as in every good noir story, they tumble bit by bit into the pits of hell.
It is the story of two people all alone in this world and filled with an absolute desperate longing to jump naked in piles of cold green cash. There's a society all its own of the really money-hungry people, we are told and here's two of them.
Like Bonnie and Clyde or Starkweather and his young girlfriend, this pair is rootless, drifting, running, trying to grab something better. Tim is a ex-GI, an ex-con, an ex oil rig worker. Virginia has vestiges of upper class speech, lavender eyes, blonde hair, and the best legs in town, but she's only staying till the money runs out. He rents her for the night and they take off on a lark. Tim ( or Kenneth) thinks he'll leave her when she stops in the ladies' room at some filling station. She tries to leave him when she has the chance. They're no damn good for each other, but they are almost powerless to walk away.
Tim has a job in mind he's been dreaming about even before he broke out of the penitentiary and she might just be the one to help. And, even when they try middle class life, it's just no good. Virginia says it's just like laying down and going to sleep. She wants to be wild and free. Of course, the tragedy is that all the money in the world doesn't make them free or happy and, just as in every good noir story, they tumble bit by bit into the pits of hell.
July 6, 2017
The real deal! You can almost smell the gunpowder wafting up from every page.
April 27, 2018
Damn good writing! Listen to this my brothers and sisters: "You've never heard a siren until you've heard one looking for you and you alone. Then you really hear it and know what it is and understand that the man who invented it was no man, but a fiend from hell who patched together sounds and blends of sounds in a way that could paralyze and sicken. . . . But when it is after you, it is the texture of the whole world. You will hear it until you die."
Also, "Baby, just about anywhere you die there's somebody watching. It doesn't make any difference whether they're watching you die in bed or in a chair, somebody's going to be there. It's strictly a spectator sport."
And my favorite, "Whenever I used to see married men jerking their lawful wedded wives in and out of cars and steering them down the sidewalks like wheelbarrows it tickled me," she said. " There's something so comical about that kind of possessiveness. Because you can't own anybody by shielding them and bullying them and spying on them. It's just the other way 'round. "
A rousing good take on bad uns on the run, there's quite a few twists and turns along the rollicking ride too.
Also, "Baby, just about anywhere you die there's somebody watching. It doesn't make any difference whether they're watching you die in bed or in a chair, somebody's going to be there. It's strictly a spectator sport."
And my favorite, "Whenever I used to see married men jerking their lawful wedded wives in and out of cars and steering them down the sidewalks like wheelbarrows it tickled me," she said. " There's something so comical about that kind of possessiveness. Because you can't own anybody by shielding them and bullying them and spying on them. It's just the other way 'round. "
A rousing good take on bad uns on the run, there's quite a few twists and turns along the rollicking ride too.
May 18, 2021
Book 19: Mid-20th Century American Crime Readathon
"Unavailable since 1953...except in France!" screams one cover. I had to read this a second time to ensure this unheard of author (by me) and this unheard of book (by me) was really this great.
HOOK=4 Stars: The opening lines are>>>>>"I'd been roughnecking on a drilling rig in the Atchafayala River for better than sixteen weeks, racking the big silver stems of pipe, lugging the sacks of drilling mud from barge to shore, working with my back and guts and letting my mind coast. It needed a lot of coasting. Down around six thousand feet we twisted the pipe off in the hold and they abandoned the well, paid us off, and said to come back in two months...I hadn't had a hot water bath in almost four months...I always cut my hair short, so short I can use it for a fingernail brush when I wash my head. ...The bellhop beat on the door of the bedroom..."Here she is," he said. And there she was. I guess I'll always remember the first time I saw her...Her eyes were lavender-gray and her hair was light creamy gold...I said, "I'd've worn a nicer towel if I'd known this was going to be formal."..."Never joke with a tired tramp," she said. "No one gets as tired as a tired tramp." And she sticks around...for the money, that is...<<<<<
So opens this novel: two exhausted people ALMOST at the end of their ropes. They get a glimpse of being saved, of saving each other. A great start by Chaze.
PACE=4: After about 3 pages, and after they've made love, this one kicks into gear and never lets go: a barn-burner if there ever was one. By page 20 or so, he buys her a wedding ring. And in 5 pages things start falling apart.
PLOT=5: There was a big radio song at the time entitled "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time." And that's the plot, rather, the plot for a while. A crime caper goes good/bad/good/bad....as does this sizzling relationship. Then that song changes to 'Kiss of Fire." Oh no...by page 33 "she began fighting in earnest..." But on the next page we read, from the guy's view, "It was a long time before I got her out of the jeans." Then they are headed nowhere, everywhere: "Cripple Creek...sounded right for us." There is more in the first 40 pages of this book than in some entire novels.
PEOPLE=5: Tim Sunblade and Virginia blaze through this story: this is Bonnie and Clyde on steroids. This is every male/female criminal combo you've ever crossed, turned up to '11' on the emotional/pain level. Both Tim and Virginia are up to no good with the world and each other. She says at one point, "So I put two and two together and the answer was: he's going to kill me." And a few pages later, living in the real world, she says, "Tim, don't ever be a gentleman again...it made me want to puke..." Tim's response? "Don't worry about it." She explains: "A gentleman is a doormat with all the scratch gone from it." Somebody might make it out of this mess alive. My guess was Virginia at the mid-point. Your guess is probably "no one."
PLACE=5: Dallas "Home-and-Garden" to New Orleans wrought iron to bottomless goldmines of Colorado, and more, Chaze gets it all just right. In Colorado Springs: "There was the damnedest sunset, smeared like sirup of opals over everything and dripping and dripping off the clouds the way molten metal comes out of the ladle in a steel mill. It lit up Virginia's face and filled the car with pink."
SUMMARY: This heaven/hell road trip is not to be missed if you like noir/crime thrillers. The sex is steamy, but Virginia is on top of the world rolling around in lots and lots of money, literally. There is a sensational scene in which a reverend leads a group of thugs through a hymnal sing-along while Tim and Virginia tweak the words a bit so they can plot and plan while each are in separate jail cells. It's the kind of scene that wins a movie Best Picture: Chaze creates a number of images that will stay with you. My average rating is 4.6, or 5 stars here on goodreads. And this is the best crime/road trip/love story/emotional roller coaster ride I've ever come across.
"Unavailable since 1953...except in France!" screams one cover. I had to read this a second time to ensure this unheard of author (by me) and this unheard of book (by me) was really this great.
HOOK=4 Stars: The opening lines are>>>>>"I'd been roughnecking on a drilling rig in the Atchafayala River for better than sixteen weeks, racking the big silver stems of pipe, lugging the sacks of drilling mud from barge to shore, working with my back and guts and letting my mind coast. It needed a lot of coasting. Down around six thousand feet we twisted the pipe off in the hold and they abandoned the well, paid us off, and said to come back in two months...I hadn't had a hot water bath in almost four months...I always cut my hair short, so short I can use it for a fingernail brush when I wash my head. ...The bellhop beat on the door of the bedroom..."Here she is," he said. And there she was. I guess I'll always remember the first time I saw her...Her eyes were lavender-gray and her hair was light creamy gold...I said, "I'd've worn a nicer towel if I'd known this was going to be formal."..."Never joke with a tired tramp," she said. "No one gets as tired as a tired tramp." And she sticks around...for the money, that is...<<<<<
So opens this novel: two exhausted people ALMOST at the end of their ropes. They get a glimpse of being saved, of saving each other. A great start by Chaze.
PACE=4: After about 3 pages, and after they've made love, this one kicks into gear and never lets go: a barn-burner if there ever was one. By page 20 or so, he buys her a wedding ring. And in 5 pages things start falling apart.
PLOT=5: There was a big radio song at the time entitled "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time." And that's the plot, rather, the plot for a while. A crime caper goes good/bad/good/bad....as does this sizzling relationship. Then that song changes to 'Kiss of Fire." Oh no...by page 33 "she began fighting in earnest..." But on the next page we read, from the guy's view, "It was a long time before I got her out of the jeans." Then they are headed nowhere, everywhere: "Cripple Creek...sounded right for us." There is more in the first 40 pages of this book than in some entire novels.
PEOPLE=5: Tim Sunblade and Virginia blaze through this story: this is Bonnie and Clyde on steroids. This is every male/female criminal combo you've ever crossed, turned up to '11' on the emotional/pain level. Both Tim and Virginia are up to no good with the world and each other. She says at one point, "So I put two and two together and the answer was: he's going to kill me." And a few pages later, living in the real world, she says, "Tim, don't ever be a gentleman again...it made me want to puke..." Tim's response? "Don't worry about it." She explains: "A gentleman is a doormat with all the scratch gone from it." Somebody might make it out of this mess alive. My guess was Virginia at the mid-point. Your guess is probably "no one."
PLACE=5: Dallas "Home-and-Garden" to New Orleans wrought iron to bottomless goldmines of Colorado, and more, Chaze gets it all just right. In Colorado Springs: "There was the damnedest sunset, smeared like sirup of opals over everything and dripping and dripping off the clouds the way molten metal comes out of the ladle in a steel mill. It lit up Virginia's face and filled the car with pink."
SUMMARY: This heaven/hell road trip is not to be missed if you like noir/crime thrillers. The sex is steamy, but Virginia is on top of the world rolling around in lots and lots of money, literally. There is a sensational scene in which a reverend leads a group of thugs through a hymnal sing-along while Tim and Virginia tweak the words a bit so they can plot and plan while each are in separate jail cells. It's the kind of scene that wins a movie Best Picture: Chaze creates a number of images that will stay with you. My average rating is 4.6, or 5 stars here on goodreads. And this is the best crime/road trip/love story/emotional roller coaster ride I've ever come across.
May 18, 2012
Musical accompaniment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJppsc...
I love thunderstorms. Something about all that rumbling and crashing, the amazing light show in the sky and the ominous threat of tragedy in the air really gets me going. There is something sinister about thunderstorms, but also something magical. The tap tap tapping on the rooftop. The gratitude I feel for my shelter. The wonder of nature, that I can experience the terror of the storm and yet at the same time feel so safe.
What do thunderstorms have to do with this book you ask? Well for one, they both kept me up into the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t want to go to sleep and miss anything! Both are dark and frightening and yet there is something so beautiful about them. And of course there’s the tragedy in the air…
No, this isn’t great literature and yes at times the writing is god awful and yes there are dozens upon dozens of ridiculous typos but the thing is, I really didn’t care. I could practically smell the whiskey on Tim’s breath and hear Virginia’s smoky voice. The buildup of suspense was masterful.
This is the first “pulp” novel I’ve read and I have no way of knowing how to rate it (so I will stick to the middle of the road) but if you’re a fan of hardboiled crime novels, this is probably right up your alley. And if you’ve been curious about the genre, I imagine this is as good a place as any to start!
I love thunderstorms. Something about all that rumbling and crashing, the amazing light show in the sky and the ominous threat of tragedy in the air really gets me going. There is something sinister about thunderstorms, but also something magical. The tap tap tapping on the rooftop. The gratitude I feel for my shelter. The wonder of nature, that I can experience the terror of the storm and yet at the same time feel so safe.
What do thunderstorms have to do with this book you ask? Well for one, they both kept me up into the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t want to go to sleep and miss anything! Both are dark and frightening and yet there is something so beautiful about them. And of course there’s the tragedy in the air…
No, this isn’t great literature and yes at times the writing is god awful and yes there are dozens upon dozens of ridiculous typos but the thing is, I really didn’t care. I could practically smell the whiskey on Tim’s breath and hear Virginia’s smoky voice. The buildup of suspense was masterful.
This is the first “pulp” novel I’ve read and I have no way of knowing how to rate it (so I will stick to the middle of the road) but if you’re a fan of hardboiled crime novels, this is probably right up your alley. And if you’ve been curious about the genre, I imagine this is as good a place as any to start!
September 11, 2023
A Noir Masterwork Preserved
American writing is so broad and deep that it is easy to find new works in unexpected places. This is particularly so in noir and other forms of pulp fiction. In the early 1950s, Gold Medal Books published a series of 25-cent paperbacks some of which are outstanding literary works. Among these is "Black Wings has my Angel", a rare work by Elliott Chaze (1915 -- 1990), first published in 1953 and recently reissued in the New York Review of Books Classics series. The work deserves to be preserved and read.
This is a story told in the first person by one Tim Sunblade, an escaped convict from the notorious Parchman Prison in Mississippi. The book focuses on Tim's relationship with Virginia, a prostitute whom he hires for $10.00 and who becomes his lover and companion in the course of the novel. In Tim's beat-up Packard, the couple travel cross-country from Louisiana to Denver, New Orleans, and Mississippi. The book offers a depiction of low life on the run in these places and in life on the road. The road scenes are a tawdry version of Kerouac's later novel, "On The Road".
Tim and Virginia have their eye on the money and plan a heist which will make them rich. The two engage in intense lovemaking but both Tim and Virginia struggle to be out primarily for themselves. In the course of the book, Tim frequently plans to abandon or kill Virginia while she more than returns the complement. The two are uneasy together, joined by the crime and by feeling.
The novel develops the characters well and has a noir atmosphere in its depiction of places. It is written in a tough hard-boiled style which manages to convey feeling and poetry. The book is tautly written and held my attention and interest throughout.
The author, Elliott Chaze, spent most of his life as a journalist in Mississippi. He wrote nine novels as well as many short stories, but "Black Wings has my Angel" appears to be his one work that will survive.
The New York Review of Books is to be commended for making this work accessible. The book will appeal mostly to lovers of noir. But, as does the best of noir, "Black Wings has my Angel" transcends its genre.
Robin Friedman
American writing is so broad and deep that it is easy to find new works in unexpected places. This is particularly so in noir and other forms of pulp fiction. In the early 1950s, Gold Medal Books published a series of 25-cent paperbacks some of which are outstanding literary works. Among these is "Black Wings has my Angel", a rare work by Elliott Chaze (1915 -- 1990), first published in 1953 and recently reissued in the New York Review of Books Classics series. The work deserves to be preserved and read.
This is a story told in the first person by one Tim Sunblade, an escaped convict from the notorious Parchman Prison in Mississippi. The book focuses on Tim's relationship with Virginia, a prostitute whom he hires for $10.00 and who becomes his lover and companion in the course of the novel. In Tim's beat-up Packard, the couple travel cross-country from Louisiana to Denver, New Orleans, and Mississippi. The book offers a depiction of low life on the run in these places and in life on the road. The road scenes are a tawdry version of Kerouac's later novel, "On The Road".
Tim and Virginia have their eye on the money and plan a heist which will make them rich. The two engage in intense lovemaking but both Tim and Virginia struggle to be out primarily for themselves. In the course of the book, Tim frequently plans to abandon or kill Virginia while she more than returns the complement. The two are uneasy together, joined by the crime and by feeling.
The novel develops the characters well and has a noir atmosphere in its depiction of places. It is written in a tough hard-boiled style which manages to convey feeling and poetry. The book is tautly written and held my attention and interest throughout.
The author, Elliott Chaze, spent most of his life as a journalist in Mississippi. He wrote nine novels as well as many short stories, but "Black Wings has my Angel" appears to be his one work that will survive.
The New York Review of Books is to be commended for making this work accessible. The book will appeal mostly to lovers of noir. But, as does the best of noir, "Black Wings has my Angel" transcends its genre.
Robin Friedman
May 27, 2017
Until recently I could count my top pulp novels on one hand even though that hand is missing a finger. That list included:
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Pop. 1280
A Rage in Harlem
Build My Gallows High
Now, though, I need to use the hand that has all five fingers. I have never read anything by Elliott Chaze, haven't even heard of him before, but he wrote one humdinger of a story, even if the title does sound like something created by Yoda. Kenneth is an escaped con with plans for a big score. Virginia is a sultry sister with lavender-gray eyes and a past she's trying hard to outrun. Put them together and the sparks ignite an inferno that destroys everyone it touches.
Don't be a rube. Glom yourself a copy of this book and read it today.
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Pop. 1280
A Rage in Harlem
Build My Gallows High
Now, though, I need to use the hand that has all five fingers. I have never read anything by Elliott Chaze, haven't even heard of him before, but he wrote one humdinger of a story, even if the title does sound like something created by Yoda. Kenneth is an escaped con with plans for a big score. Virginia is a sultry sister with lavender-gray eyes and a past she's trying hard to outrun. Put them together and the sparks ignite an inferno that destroys everyone it touches.
Don't be a rube. Glom yourself a copy of this book and read it today.
July 20, 2023
Some of the best writing I've ever experienced. More people need to read this. It's pacy, heart achingly beautiful and riveting as all the heck.
------
My surprise find of the year. Absolutely superb! Can't recommend highly enough.
------
My surprise find of the year. Absolutely superb! Can't recommend highly enough.
December 6, 2020
Very rarely do I wander outside of contemporary fiction but "The Bookclub" selected this forgotten noir gem and it was a dark little trip.
It’s best to go in with minimal knowledge, so all I will say is: get ready for a femme fatale with noirs best legs!
You hear and read about legs. But when you see the really good ones, you know the things you read and heard were a lot of trash
Black Wings Has My Angel is a book of its time in many ways and I am fairly sure a feminist book club might tear it limb from limb. However, I tend to agree with the LARB, it’s one of “the great secret noirs of the 20th century”.
Impeccable pacing, gritty, and spare.
It’s best to go in with minimal knowledge, so all I will say is: get ready for a femme fatale with noirs best legs!
You hear and read about legs. But when you see the really good ones, you know the things you read and heard were a lot of trash
Black Wings Has My Angel is a book of its time in many ways and I am fairly sure a feminist book club might tear it limb from limb. However, I tend to agree with the LARB, it’s one of “the great secret noirs of the 20th century”.
Impeccable pacing, gritty, and spare.
December 27, 2016
The best of the hopeless hardboiled noir heist-novels.
Way up there with the best of the best hardboiled greats: Charles Williams, David Goodis, Jim Thompson.
Pitiless and gripping.
Dead beat dread that drips like moisture from a clammy cavern wall.
Action packed yet layered in several coats of suffocating suspense... two losers who can't keep themselves from tickling Fate's low hanging fruit.
To quote my favorite Bob Dylan lines: "Waiting to find out what price/You have to pay to get out of/Going through all these things twice".
The absolute utmost noir fiction has to offer.
April 23, 2018
Is this the perfect noir? Twisted characters who commit a sordid crime and carry on a passionate and violent relationship as they shuffle towards their inevitable doom, wrapped up in dark, poetic prose worthy of Hemmingway. You decide.
A slow sickening whirl seemed to move around and past us, as if the air itself had become so thick with evil as to be a tangible force, emptying into the pit, tugging at us, wanting to take us with it.
A slow sickening whirl seemed to move around and past us, as if the air itself had become so thick with evil as to be a tangible force, emptying into the pit, tugging at us, wanting to take us with it.
May 7, 2023
01/2017
Very good noir from the early 1950s (which I'd never heard of until I started noticing it on Goodreads). Cripple Creek and the mine shaft are just terrific. I did feel the book lost its way in the middle, but it came right back so everything was right in the end.
Very good noir from the early 1950s (which I'd never heard of until I started noticing it on Goodreads). Cripple Creek and the mine shaft are just terrific. I did feel the book lost its way in the middle, but it came right back so everything was right in the end.
December 4, 2020
Quintessential, classic noir fiction still in search of classic status. From the opening cad-meets-minx scene
"Here she is", he said.
And there she was. I guess I'll always remember the first time I saw here, standing in the half-gloom of the corrider, with the country-town bellhop dressed like an organ-grinder's monkey, almost leaning against her, smirking.
"She's a looker, ain't she, Bub?"
to the closing act , there is a hell of a story in this compact thriller.
James Ellroy once wrote, "The thrill of noir is the rush of moral forfeit and the abandonment to titillation. The social importance of noir is its grounding in the big themes of race, class, gender, and systemic corruption. The overarching and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun."
With that in mind, this is the best piece of noir fiction I've read to date. And, of all the determinants mentioned above, Chaze takes the top prize here for making doom fun.
4.5 stars
"Here she is", he said.
And there she was. I guess I'll always remember the first time I saw here, standing in the half-gloom of the corrider, with the country-town bellhop dressed like an organ-grinder's monkey, almost leaning against her, smirking.
"She's a looker, ain't she, Bub?"
to the closing act , there is a hell of a story in this compact thriller.
James Ellroy once wrote, "The thrill of noir is the rush of moral forfeit and the abandonment to titillation. The social importance of noir is its grounding in the big themes of race, class, gender, and systemic corruption. The overarching and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun."
With that in mind, this is the best piece of noir fiction I've read to date. And, of all the determinants mentioned above, Chaze takes the top prize here for making doom fun.
4.5 stars
December 6, 2020
(4.5) Wonderfully deranged noir in which a long-doomed and finally insane protagonist submits to an inevitably bloody and treacherous demise via his fatally irresistible--and mutually destined--agent of death.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 536 reviews