Soul Pulp: Shaft Among The Jews by Ernest Tidyman (Corgi, 1972)

Adding to my small collection of blaxploitation paperbacks, we have what I believe is the second of seven Shaft novels written by the character’s creator Ernest Tidyman, and… yes, the title here’s a little on the nose, to say the least.

As anyone who has read much about mid-century New York will appreciate, the city’s working class Jewish community was still just as much of a marginalised, ghetto-bound culture as NY’s African-American milieu at this point, and underworld interactions between the two were generally characterised by a spirit of resentment and distrust, so… I don’t think the title and plot synopsis here indicate that Tidyman’s novel is inherently racist, but when it comes to a WASP writer addressing this kind of subject matter, the title is at best misguided, and it’s a safe bet that 21st century readers who dare venture between these pages are liable to encounter some pretty, uh, ‘salty’ content.

Believe it or not though, I didn’t just pick up ‘Shaft Among the Jews’ just in order to shock people by leaving it sitting on the coffee table – that symmetrical, proto-disco montage cover painting – attributed online to Fred Pfeiffer - is absolutely swell.

Oh, and I think we get a glimpse of Tidyman’s sense of humour via his dedication:

Soul Pulp: Keller # 1: The Smack Man by Nelson De Mille (Manor Books, 1975)

Bloody hell. As if to demonstrate the scarcity of these ‘blaxploitation pulps’ in my collection, not to mention the frighteningly rabid conservatism prevalent in these ‘70s ‘men’s adventure’ series books, we’re already down to this one for our second (and thus far, final) Soul Pulp post.

Born in 1943, Nelson De Mille began writing series detective books from the mid ‘70s onward and is still writing thrillers at a prolific rate to this day.

Trying to determine exactly how many ‘Keller’ novels he turned out is however complicated by the fact that some if not all of these books seem to have first been published as outings for the author’s on-going character Joe Ryker, and were sometimes credited to his Jack Cannon pseudonym, except when they weren't. For reasons unknown, these Ryker books were then retooled as Keller books, with “Joe Keller” taking over as the protagonist.

From the late ‘80s onward, it seems that De Mille revised and republished all of these books as Ryker novels, and removed all mention of “Keller” from his bibliography, with most online sources following suit. Currently, some ‘Ryker’ books being sold on Amazon even have ‘Keller’ cover art attached to them, so… who knows. I have no idea what was going on with all that, to be honest.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, ‘The Smack Man’ usually seems to be listed as the fourth Ryker book, despite appearing here as the first Keller one.

As to the book itself…. well it seems to be yr standard trudging police procedural business, enlivened largely by frequent and bold use of expletives, detailed drug use and other such tough guy shit, with some rampant misogyny, bone-crunching violence and ugly racial stereotyping thrown in for good measure. As such, there's probably some good, cynical fun to be had here, if you're nasty enough to dig it.

For a pure dose of 1975, just check out this central card ad page and the text that surrounds it. Nice.

Soul Pulp: Superspade # 2: Black is Beautiful by B.B. Johnson (Paperback Library, 1970)

As our previous post here touched upon the sparks that flew when the aesthetic of the early ‘70s ‘black action film’ hit the literary world, I thought I might as well pull a few choice volumes off the shelf and instigate a (sadly very short) mini-series looking at what I suppose we’re contractually obliged to term “blaxploitation pulp fiction”.

First up then, we’ve got one of my favourite recent finds, and to begin with a quick note on the cover art - I wash my hands of even trying to find an art credit for this one, but I quite like the effect the artist has created by leaving most of the secondary figures as pencil sketches, just filling in (presumably) the main protagonist and antagonist.

This gives it a kind of dynamism that sets it apart from yr average example of this early ‘70s ‘action collage’ style, although whether we should treat this as the result of deliberate artistic intent or merely “we need this at the printers by Friday goddamnit, put the fucking brush down and gimme what you got so far”, I will leave to your discretion.

Moving on the the book itself, it is notable I think that it appeared in the same year that the movie version of ‘Cotton Comes To Harlem’ set about gently lampooning the Black Power movement.

The Black Panther Party, needless to say, had been big news in the U.S.A. in 1969, with the organisation’s membership reaching an all time high and Panther-related violence making waves in Chicago, New York and L.A. Bobby Seale meanwhile was under arrest charged with ordering the murder of a suspected police informant, and December saw Fred Hampton gunned down in an exchange of fire with cops in Chicago.

Clearly the editors at Paperback Library wasted no time in exploiting the publicity surrounding these events to the max, and the enigmatic B.B. Johnson knocked out no less than five ‘Superspade’ novels for them in 1970, with one further book following in ’71.

Like Ossie Davis’s aforementioned movie, ‘Black is Beautiful’ obviously takes a pretty cynical view of Black Power, skirting the fringes of libel (“Ridge Hatchett”? - c’mon) as it “exposes” the allegedly self-serving con men behind the revolutionary rhetoric.

At least Davis (and Chester Himes before him) had the advantage of actually being black when they expressed such opinions however; though Paperback Library may have dug up the coolest author photo in recorded history for “B.B. Johnson”, I will eat my neckerchief if the individual behind these books was actually a gentleman of colour.

Skim reading a few chapters of ‘Black is Beautiful’ in fact, the authorial voice seems more suggestive of a middle-aged, white divorcee typewriter jockey mopping his brow with a gingham handkerchief in a back office somewhere, scouring the local black community paper to try to get the right lingo down whilst cursing his editors for not just letting him do another Bond rip-off. (The book eventually runs with the idea that the Panthers – sorry, ‘Jaguars’ – are a front for Castro’s Cuba incidentally, which puts my hypothetical author back on the more familiar ground of good ol' anti-commie paranoia.)

But, who am I to make such assumptions? Prove me wrong if you dare, and if it turns out ‘Superspade’ actually WAS a side-gig for Melvin Van Peebles or Isaac Hayes or somebody, I’ll be on neckerchief sandwiches all week.

Either way, I fear this book is no classic, but its value as a cultural artefact is mighty indeed.

200% Cotton.

(Penguin, 1974 / Cover by Paul May / John Claridge)

(Dell, date unknown [presumably 1970] / artwork taken from the movie poster by Robert McGinnis.)

Normally, I’d try to avoid putting two copies of the same book side by side on my shelves, but when I scoped the exquisite American Dell copy of Chester Himes’ ‘Cotton Came To Harlem’ - featuring artwork taken from the superb poster for the 1970 movie, courtesy of Robert McGinnis, as well as a rather nice font - I knew I had to make an exception and stack it up next to my Penguin copy.

I like the Penguin cover too, but the Dell really is a thing of beauty. I only wish my crappy scanner could do justice to the detail of McGinnis's illustration. And no, I’m not sure what “the wild new ‘inside’ movie” is supposed to mean either, but hey – that’s 1970 for you.

If you’re unfamiliar with Himes and his work, I’ll save you most of the hyperbole and simply state that I consider him one of the best American crime writers, period, and that this 1964 belter is a great place to start.

Need more info before committing? I’ll let the back office boys at Penguin and Dell step in to do their damnedest;

The inspiration for this post by the way comes from the fact that I recently got around to watching the aforementioned movie adaptation of ‘Cotton Comes To Harlem’, directed by Ossie Davis. It’s not a bad effort by any means, but whilst it keeps the events and characters of the novel pretty much intact, it falls well wide of the mark when it comes to actually capturing the tone of Himes’ writing.

True, the broadly comic elements and madcap chase antics prioritised by Davis’s film are certainly present in the novel, but the difference is, Himes managed to put them across whilst remaining hard-boiled as fuck, with a burning rage against those who seek to take advantage of the black, urban poor boiling under every page. The movie, essentially, does not.

Significantly downplaying the wanton bloodshed and sweaty, sexualised energy of Himes’ book, as well as the grittier elements of his social realism, the movie plays safe, largely limiting its social criticism to a rather mild lampooning of the contemporary Black Power movement. Meanwhile, the white establishment largely gets off scot-free, with Digger and Ed’s clueless superiors eventually rewarding them for their zany, crook-catching ways much has you’d expect at the conclusion of any light-weight buddy cop movie.

Such compromises though are perhaps inevitable when we consider that ‘Cotton..’ was a major studio venture released several years before ‘Shaft’ and ‘Superfly’ helped make the black action film a viable proposition at the U.S. box office. If Davis was required to take a somewhat whimsical approach to ghetto life and black criminality in order to get his project to the screen though, he and his collaborators nonetheless pulled out all the stops to deliver a eminently entertaining picture, full of solid performances, wild action scenes and evocative location shooting, all of which make it well worth checking out, even if it fails to hit the lofty heights of its source material.

What I liked about the film most of all though is that it reminded me of reading the book – and when the book in question is this good, that alone is enough to earn the movie a pass.