I’m nearly finished reading Donald Westlake’s Richard Stark Parker books (that’s the books written by Westlake using the name Stark about a heister named Parker). When I’m done I may celebrate by rewatching POINT BLANK (the best film adaptation) or THE GRIFTERS (scripted by Westlake) or by watching THE STEPFATHER, which I’ve never seen. At present, since I’ve been reading the books in the order I could get them, I have The Seventh and Butcher’s Moon left to go. The last-named was the climax of the first phase of Stark’s work, after which he disappeared for twenty-three years, unbidden, leaving Westlake to subsist on the less lucrative novels published under his own name.
So this was a near-perfect time for The Getaway Car to turn up. This is a collection of Westlake’s non-fiction work — interviews, introduction, essays and letters — collated by my online friend, regular Shadowplayer Levi Stahl, who blogs at I’ve Been Reading Lately. Despite having never met face to face, we’re perhaps chummy enough to make this not so much a review as just an appreciation. I was never comfortable with the consumer guide aspect of criticism anyway, so please just regard this as an enumeration of some of the things in this tome, and make your own decisions.
Westlake had a brilliant criminal mind (after reading some of his stuff, the problem-solving part of his skillset becomes very noticeable in John Boorman’s adaptation, POINT BLANK), and if there’s any disappointment to be had from the collection it’s that he isn’t able to pass the gift on to the rest of us. He writes about writing a bit, but it’s not a book of tips — except you will get some good hints about other crime writers worth checking out. You learn about Westlake’s influences and who he rated, and it’s a surprise to find a passing swipe at PG Wodehouse since Westlake from Plum the notion of characters being referred to by beverage (from Wodehouse’s Mulliner stories —> Westlake’s Dortmunder novels). But there are great appreciations of Hammett and Poe and Willeford and someone I didn’t know called Peter Rabe, and some fascinating insights into Westlake’s screenwriting career. He credits Stephen Frears’ persuading him to adapt Jim Thompson for THE GRIFTERS as triggering the reemergence of hardboiled Stark, for which we can all be grateful.
And we can be grateful for Westlake’s perfect summation of Dortmunder as “a capable and workmanlike professional criminal who lives under a black cloud (me).”
We also learn the complicated and amusing circumstances under which Jean-Luc Godard’s MADE IN USA, an adaptation of Stark’s The Jugger (which he dismisses as his worst book — I liked it fine) wound up with its US rights owned by Westlake. A story which might be salutary and helpful to movie producers, somehow.
My copy of the book is an uncorrected proof. My favourite typo = a reference to something called “Cayenne paper.” The kind of hot, strongly flavoured, spicy paper Westlake/Stark typed on, no doubt.
The typo will be corrected by the time you go here and buy: The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany
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