Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2013 September 06 • Friday

Evan Hunter, who also wrote as Ed McBain, seemed like a nice guy when I met him about eleven years ago. So far this is the only one of his books that I've read. It was quite good.

The first line is "We spent last summer, when I was just sixteen, on an island mistakenly named Greensward, its shores only thinly vegetated with beach grass and plum, its single forest destroyed by fire more than twenty years before".

It's about these kids Sandy, Peter and David, and eventually a girl named Rhoda, and what they get up to. They are interested in sex, and even violence to a certain extent, but the book is neither sensationalism nor exploitation, despite the covers trying to sell it that way.

This edition looks like a movie tie-in, which is possible since it was printed in April, 1969, and a movie version of the novel came out in June of that same year. The movie was rated X, which at that time didn't mean exactly what it meant later. Midnight Cowboy (from the same year) was also rated X, for example.

(Barbara Hershey, who plays the part of Sandy, was apparently so affected by the actual death of a seagull during filming, that she changed her name to Barbara Seagull for a few years.)

The book is divided into two parts, "The Gull" and "Rhoda". Hunter cleverly and fairly unobtrusively makes these two parts more or less the same story told twice, with the main difference being that one character is a seagull in the first half and a human being in the second half.

This transformation is sufficient to introduce a significant amount of anxiety, even dread, in the reader. The climax is awful.

Hunter is especially good at character and has several set pieces in which a single person holds court and shows us what's in his or her mind. There's also a brilliant description of a presumably made-up movie that the kids go to see. It sounds exactly right for the late '60s.

And when it comes to describing a late-'60s drunken adult cocktail party, who can top this?

Mr. Patterson, who was a television executive, said, "Yes, but why do you think kids today are experimenting with all this crap?" and Mrs. Anhelm, who ran a notions shop in Queens, asked, "Why?" Mr. Patterson, grateful for the cue, nodded and said, "I'll tell you why," and Mr. Mannheim, who taught speech and dramatics at Columbia University, said, "I deal with youngsters every day of the week." Mr. Patterson said, "It's rebellion," and Mrs. Anselm said, "It's their sex drive, that's what it is," and a woman wearing high-heeled shoes and a black bikini over which she had thrown a lacy robe that looked like a peignoir, said, "I'm from St. Louis." Mr. Patterson said, They simply refuse to accept adult responsibilities." Mr. Mannheim said, "You'd be surprised how many of them are smoking pot," and Mrs. Anhelm said, "I once smoked Mary Jane at a party," and the woman in the black bikini said, "It's the Gateway to the West," and Mr. Mannheim said, "Did it turn you on?" and Mrs. Anhelm said, "I only smoked half a joint," and Mr. Patterson said, "They refuse to emulate," and Mr. Mannheim said, "It isn't hep to call it Mary Jane any more," and the woman in the black bikini said, "Hip."