Spurred on by the spate of interest in the work of Emerson LaSalle after his recent death, I dug out one of the two books I have by him, the only one I really enjoyed—Never Again, Forever, his 1949 crime fiction work that many fans consider his best in that realm (as opposed to his much more prominent work in science fiction).
Never Again, Forever involves the plight of a thinly-disguised Sam Spade/Flash Gordon analogue named John Tindime, a by-the-numbers (if not by the book) private detective who likes his women hot, his beer cold, his gun action fast, yadda yadda yadda. The notable LaSalle “twist” in this first-person novel is that Tindime was apparently a demi-god in the Greek fashion; rather, a demi-demi god, as the half-son of Aeneas. The somewhat direct link to Aphrodite gave the writer license to script particularly ludicrous, if eminently readable, romantic encounters between Tindime and his unfailingly female clients (and, in one notable case, his Swedish twin-sister clients).
These scenes appear, as do many sex scenes in the LaSalle continuum, to be written in a style slightly more refined then the author of such clunkers as Guns of Old Mars and Zeppelins of the Sea. There has been much ink spilled over the years over whether LaSalle wrote these scenes himself at one sitting—not unlike Bret Easton Ellis with the violent imagery in American Psycho—whether they were part of a larger, solely pornographic work, or whether they were actually the work of another writer completely.
Over his long career, LaSalle was long linked to a host of eminent female authors, notably Dorothy Parker and Anaïs Nin, neither shy about the expression of female sexuality in their written work, nor shy about their private lives (LaSalle famously attacked Henry Miller once after Nin flirted with him at a salon in New York, calling him “four eyes” and attempting to spear Miller with his hook; ironically, LaSalle was notoriously near-sighted himself, gaining him a 4-F deferment in World War II). Personally, I find it highly interesting that Tindime’s historical connection is to Aeneas, a near-cognate of Anaïs to the tin-ear of the man from Le Fils de Vainqueur, Missouri.
Aside from the mythological context, there are many allusions to Tindime having lived a number of centuries, grappling with a “son of the devil” type character over millenia for the soul of Aphrodite, his grandmother. Tindime continually bears the brunt of loss—he appears variously via flashback as a knight fighting under Harold II at the ruinous Battle of Hastings in 1066; a Confederate solider from Alabama who took part in the First Battle at Manassas in 1861; and more recently captured as a French soldier at Fall Rot in 1940. Tindime is, in short, a born loser, with a penchant for jazz and “race music” and bourbon whiskey.
He’s not much of a lovable one at that, prone to fits of violence (dished out via ancient emerald-encrusted Colt .45’s, apparently a legacy from his days in the War Between the States) against almost passers-by in the book, all of whom are saddled with spiteful and obvious names of known LaSalle “conspirators.” Most gruesome of these is the murder of the so-called “Barry Ross,” who was described as a
[S]limily fat, perspiring, gluttonous-yet-effete bastard of a man. Barry edited a local rag known for publishing shit poetry with bad meter and worse metaphor, and me and him had crossed paths twice before. On the last occasion I mashed a rocks glass full of sweet rye and two luscious cherries into his leering face as he craned that mashed potato neck to get a better look at the gams of my secretary, Gladys. He called the fuzz, who promptly ran me in on three parking tickets, but I don’t regret nothing except for not drinking that Old Fashioned before I done hit him with it.
Of course, the New Yorker at the time was known to have a standing rule that any package originating from LaSalle was to be returned, unopened, owing to the long-simmering feud between Harold Ross and LaSalle that began at a meeting of the Algonquin Round Table. LaSalle accompanied Parker there, and was simply shredded by the rapier wit of that Vicious Circle. The only drink ever thrown was by Parker, into LaSalle’s face: she was repulsed by his misanthropic behavior, acceptable on its own, but not without a bon mot. LaSalle was as lead-footed as his prose, and simply posed no challenge for her; she dumped him immediately, and LaSalle always blamed the loss on the famed editor.
This is why he dies later in the book, literally emasculated and mutilated, after being betrayed
As a goddman patsy by the Ratzis. Damn it, Barry, you always were what we called a, slow-witted sonofabitch, but did you have to, you know, go and try and ruin it for the rest of us, with this wailing and whining? I kept thinking to myself that these Fifth Column bastards wouldn’t have heard us if not for Barry’s mewling. I pulled Old Man Colt and—even tho’I was low on lead at this point—put one right into Barry’s marshmallow puss, just to shut him up.It was too damn late. The Ratzis had heard, and there was blood in their eyes.
All told, Never Again, Forever is a pretty decent read if you like a little science fiction and mythology mashed up in your detective novels. You can tell from the cover that Dell thought it had legs—it’s styled as a “John Tindime Mystery Novel, Uncut and Unabridged,” but it seems no others were published. The rumors are that LaSalle almost immediately sold television rights to the character, losing total legal control over it. He did retain creative control, but his increasing bitterness and alcohol intake mangled the property; when it finally limped to the silver screen in 1960, as “Johnny Midnight,” the detective was a former Broadway star (!) who had a Japanese houseboy (!!). We Were Seamen, indeed! A series of comic books, printed by Dell around the same time, that featured “Jonathan Midnight, Space Detective,” set in the future with a costumed (and apparently immortal) Tindimesque character were also short-lived.
I recommend reading Never Again, Forever, but be forewarned that it drags pretty badly at times, and—in the LaSalle fashion—the prose is wooden, the violence horrifying, and the sex pretty awesome. Certainly worth a Saturday night. Sadly, it appears the official LaSalle blog, In Last Mine Heart Is Murder, suffered a crash, all posts lost. They had a great scan of the legendary cover to Never Again, Forever. I’ll try to post the cover when I get back in town and stop preparing for Stereo.
I really enjoyed this retrospective, gorj. I know you say you’re not a huge LaSalle fan, but what you lack in fervor you more than make up for in critical acuity and thoughtful even-handedness. Incidentally, Adam Oppenheimer’s A Twisted Cosmos: Emerson LaSalle, World Building, and Destruction makes a pretty compelling case that LaSalle did write those controversial sex scenes—though probably not, as LaSalle liked to claim puckishly in interviews, during a series of automatic writing seances in which he channeled the spirit of the poet of Songs of Songs.
well I have zero experience with him, but it sounds right up my alley. Demi-god private investigators with sex…what’s not to like?! I’ll have to hunt up a copy.
Okay, I get it. I should let go of all my critical faculties and just have fun with the gorgeously awful writing, hey? I was about to suggest that maybe a way to approach his ouevre—if you can use a word like that to refer to LaSalle’s writing—was to go for comic book or graphic novel editions. Then Gorjus tells me there ARE comic books out there.
There is a certain splendid rottenness about the sex in Plague of Lust—it is juicy, bloody, and full of minutely described incestuous, necrophiliac, and transspecies copulations, all the more vivid because they are described as occurring in one-tenth gravity, which is apparently what LaSalle thought was the moon’s surface gravitation instead of one-sixth—there is a certain splendid rottenness, I was going to say, that convinces me Professor Fury is correct, and LaSalle did write all these scenes himself. He certainly had the libido and the language.
And can anybody explain to me the role that Cheesemaster Gideon plays on board the good ship Emerson Redux in The Moon Runs Down? Or has anybody else ever read the book? Or even heard of it? Anyone?
When we lived in Hattiesburg, I went to a Halloween party as Cheesemaster Gideon. One person got it. Everyone else stood far away from me, as you might expect. It was a very faithful costume.
One thing that’s interesting…whne you google LaSalle…this website is the first thing that comes up. I guess the internets focus their beam on the enlightened crew of Pretty Fakes.
well, now its number three or so…guess it was just fickle internet love…