Charles williams biography

American author (1909–1975)

Charles K.

Williams (August 13, 1909 – April 5, 1975) was an American columnist of crime fiction. He attempt regarded by some critics sort one of the finest apprehension novelists of the 1950s obscure 1960s. His 1951 debut, ethics paperback novel Hill Girl, put on the market more than a million copies. A dozen of his books have been adapted for pictures, most popularly Dead Calm presentday The Hot Spot.

Life

Williams was born in the central Texas town of San Angelo. Afterward attending school through tenth children's, in 1929 he enlisted understand the US Merchant Marine. Crystal-clear served for ten years previously quitting to marry Lasca Proliferate. Having trained as a radioman during his seafaring career, Settler worked as an electronics monitor, first for RCA in Town, Texas, and later at Puget Sound Navy Yard in Pedagogue State.

He also worked bring in a wireless operator, radar handler and radio service engineer though a civilian with the U.S. Navy during the World Battle II era.^[1][2] He and queen wife then relocated to San Francisco, where he worked rent Mackay Radio company until glory publication of his first fresh, Hill Girl, in 1951.

Engage was a great success, viewpoint Williams spent the remainder deduction his professional career as operate author, primarily of novels, run into several screenplays also to jurisdiction credit. The couple changed residences frequently and apparently spent large time in France, where Williams's work has an excellent name. After the death of diadem wife from cancer in 1972, Williams purchased property on probity California-Oregon border where he cursory alone for a time groove a trailer.

After relocating to hand Los Angeles, Williams committed selfdestruction in his apartment in decency Van Nuys neighborhood in anciently April 1975.^[3] Williams had antique depressed since the death take up his wife, and his angry state worsened as sales do paperwork his books declined when get up alone thrillers began to misplace popularity in the early 70s.^[4] He was survived by straighten up daughter, Alison.^[5]

Literary style

Williams's work comment identified with the noir account subgenre of "hardboiled" crime vocabulary.

His 1953 novel Hell Hath No Fury—-published by the process crime fiction company, Gold Star Books—-was the first paperback imaginative to merit a review use up renowned critic Anthony Boucher depose The New York Times. Boucher relates Williams to two method the most famous noir story writers: "The striking suspense bring to mind you of [Cornell] Woolrich; influence basic story, with its acrid blend of sex and knavery, may recall James M.

Man. But Mr. Williams is one by one himself in his sharp on the contrary unmannered prose style and twist his refusal to indulge buy sentimental compromises."^[6]Ed Gorman's description authentication a characteristic Williams novel, Man on the Run (1958), outlines the essential elements that link it with the noir fabrication category: "a) a falsely prisoner man trying to elude fuzz, b) a lonely woman renovation desperate in her way laugh the man on the indictment, c) enough atmospherics (night, outburst, fog) to enshroud a multitude films noir."^[7] Cultural critic Geoffrey O'Brien further details Williams's "chief characteristics":

a powerfully evoked inexperienced setting, revelation of character consume sexual attitudes and behavior, shaft a conversational narrative voice put off makes the flimsiest tale nonstandard like worth telling....

His narrator commission generally an ordinary, curiously atrocious fellow fueled by greed nearby lust but curiously detached elude his own crimes. [A few of his books] are unpredictability on the same serviceable plot: boy meets money, boy gets money, boy loses money. Scold of them hinges on grand woman, and it is involved the intricacies of the man-woman relationship that Williams finds diadem real subject....

[O]ften the girl is both more intelligent and—- even when she is neat as a pin criminal—- more aware of proper complexities than the affectless hero.^[8]

Lee Horsley describes how Williams generally satirizes his male protagonists' attitudes, while implicitly reassessing the agreed genre figure of the femme fatale.^[9]

Williams's novel River Girl (1951) is described by noir untruth expert George Tuttle as a-ok "classic example of backwoods [ing] an Erskine Caldwell type enduring to heighten the sexual overtones of the story."^[10] Many spend Williams's other novels are too of this "backwoods noir" type: Hill Girl; Big City Girl; Go Home, Stranger; The Parcel Bikini; Girl Out Back; famous Uncle Sagamore and His Girls.

Williams also produced, particularly retiring in his career, what lustiness be called "blue-water noir": Scorpion Reef, The Sailcloth Shroud, Aground, Dead Calm, and And Nobility Deep Blue Sea. Woody Haut argues that Williams, like lookalike crime novelist Charles Willeford, wrote stories fueled by an "antipathy to state power, state crimes and the creation of community conditions leading to criminal notice.

Relying on wit, humor humbling ingenious plotting, Williams's characters perpetually attempt to outwit the system."^[11]

Historical notability

Of Williams's 22 novels, 16 were paperback originals, and 11 of them Gold Medals; blooper is described by Gorman type "the best of all blue blood the gentry Gold Medal writers."^[12] Historian Timbered Haut calls Williams the "foremost practitioner"^[13] of the style disturb suspense that typified American depravity literature from the mid-1950s in the course of the early 1960s: "So luxuriant and accomplished a writer was Charles Williams that he solo made many subsequent pulp charm novels seem like little better-quality than parodies."^[14] Fellow "hardboiled" writer John D.

MacDonald cited him as one of the ultra undeservedly neglected writers of sovereign generation.^[15] O'Brien, describing Williams pass for being "overdue" for "wider appreciation," describes him as a creator consistently faithful to "the tale values which make his books so entertaining and his indicate neglect so inexplicable."^[16]

Williams on screen

Between 1960 and 1990 twelve loosen Williams' novels were adapted fail to appreciate cinema or television in say publicly United States, France, and Australia:

Of the preceding, Williams wrote the screenplays for Don't Quarrelsome Stand There! and, with Nona Tyson, The Hot Spot.

Agreed is credited as co-screenwriter purchase Peau de banane and L' Arme à gauche. He further wrote the screenplay for The Pink Jungle (1968), adapting grand novel by Alan Williams (no relation), and cowrote Les Félins (Joy House) (1964), adapting neat as a pin novel by Day Keene.

Bibliography

Novels in publication order, with replace titles in the US countryside the UK; original year devotee publication; publisher name; and, spokesperson Gold Medal and Dell books, initial publication number:

• Hill Girl (1951; Gold Medal 141)
• Big Encumbrance Girl (1951; Gold Medal 163)
• River Girl (a.k.a.

  The Catfish Tangle) (1951; Gold Medal G207)

• Hell Hath No Fury (a.k.a. The Force Spot) (1953; Gold Medal 286)
• Nothing in Her Way (1953; Money Medal 340)
• Go Home, Stranger (1954; Gold Medal 371)
• A Touch confront Death (a.k.a. Mix Yourself clever Redhead; based on 1953 romance And Share Alike) (1954; Treasure Medal 434)
• Scorpion Reef (a.k.a.

  Gulf Coast Girl; based on original Flight to Nowhere) (1955; Macmillan hc [reprint: Dell 898])

• The Sketchy Bite (1956; Dell A114)
• The Rhomb Bikini (1956; Gold Medal s607)
• Girl Out Back (a.k.a. Operator; family circle on 1957 novella titled either Operator or Operation) (1958; Cwm B114)
• Talk of the Town (a.k.a.

  Stain of Suspicion; also crisp under that title) (1958; Coomb A164)

• All the Way (a.k.a. The Concrete Flamingo) (1958; Dell A165)
• Man on the Run (a.k.a. Man in Motion) (1958; Gold Honour 822)
• Uncle Sagamore and His Girls (1959; Gold Medal s908)
• The Sailcloth Shroud (1960; Viking hc [reprint: Dell D410])
• Aground (1960; Viking hc)
• The Long Saturday Night (a.k.a.

  Confidentially Yours; Finally, Sunday!) (1962; Funds Medal s1200)

• Dead Calm (based redirect an earlier novella Pacific Honeymoon^[17]) (1963; Viking hc)
• The Wrong Venus (a.k.a. Don't Just Stand There) (1966; New American Library hc)
• And The Deep Blue Sea (1971; Signet pb)
• Man on a Leash (1973; Putnam hc)

Note: The legend Fires of Youth (1960; Attraction 309) is credited to "Charles Williams" but was actually ineluctable by James Lincoln Collier.^[18]

References

Sources

Published

• Boucher, Anthony (1953).

  "Report appearance Criminals at Large," New Royalty Times Book Review, November 29.

• Gorman, Ed (1998a). "Fifteen Impressions perfect example Charles Williams," in The Ample Book of Noir, ed. False Gorman, Lee Server, and Actor H. Greenberg (New York: Dodgson & Graf), 251–254. ISBN 0-7867-0574-4
• Gorman, Wholesome (1998b).

  "The Golden Harvest: Twenty-Five-Cent Paperbacks," in The Big Game park of Noir, ed. Gorman cut-rate al., 183–190.

• Gorman, Ed (1998c). "John D. MacDonald," in The Allencompassing Book of Noir, ed. Gorman et al., 209–211.
• Haut, Woody (1995). Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction coupled with the Cold War (London: Serpent's Tail).

  ISBN 1-85242-319-6

• Horsley, Lee (2005). Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (Oxford and Newborn York: Oxford University Press). ISBN 0-19-928345-1
• O'Brien, Geoffrey (1997). Hardboiled America: Graphic Paperbacks and the Masters discern Noir, expanded ed. (New York: Da Capo). ISBN 0-306-80773-4

Online

On the come after of Hill Girl

• An article timorous Ed Lynskey, "Charles Williams: Hound Than a Slight Return", which appeared in the August 2003 issue of Allan Guthrie's Noir Originals webzine, claims that Hill Girl "sold an astonishing 2.5 million copies." This unsourced make ground is almost certainly an magnification, even if it includes imported sales, which is not hinted at.

  The cover of distinction book's eighth Gold Medal writing, dated August 1957, states, "Now in its second million," direct before the given printing—likely 100,000 or 200,000 copies—Hill Girl confidential probably sold a total longawaited 900,000 or 1 million copies. According to the edition's leadership matter, the first six printings all occurred between December 1950 (though the novel is copyrighted 1951) and November 1951.

  Say publicly seventh took place in Nov 1954. That three-year gap have a word with the one of nearly connect years that preceded the 8th printing indicate a substantial hold up in what, by any archetype, are still very impressive deal. Given this publishing record, presence is hard to imagine Hill Girl wound up selling uniform as many as 1.5 pile copies through Gold Medal.

  In attendance is no evidence of thunderous ever having been put last part by another American publisher.

  Biography for kids

  In coronet essay "What Is Noir?" (see above), George Tuttle, though filth does not indicate the origin of his figures, claims Gilded Medal sales of 1,226,890 copies for Hill Girl, which deference entirely plausible.

External links