Long Live the Dead (3 page)

Hugh described how his relationships with the folks at Popular Publications were strengthened through “Count” Blassingame:

“Count” was a Southerner. Always a gentleman. Born in Alabama, I believe. We hit it off from the start and became close friends. He introduced me to a good buddy of his, Ken White. Ken became one of my closest friends of all time. The “Count” and I came to call him “Dr. Livingstone.” I had a house up in Rhode Island by then and I loved to go fly-fishing in northern New England and Canada. So the three of us would go fresh-water fishing all the time. And we invited various friends and acquaintances, mostly in the publishing business, to join us. Once Whit Burnett, the famous editor of
Story
magazine, the fellow who taught and discovered J. D. Salinger, among others, went fishing with us. But the best adventure we had was when we hired two Indian guides and explored and fished the Canadian wilderness in canoes. We went to places the Indians had never seen before. The experience became the background for my first novel called Fishermen Four, published by Dodd Mead in 1942. I turned the story into an expedition by four boys in Kekekabic country in Minnesota.

By all accounts, Harry Steeger gave Ken White
Dime Detective
to edit in 1932. By that year, Hugh was already writing for a number of Popular Publications’ shudder pulps, including
Terror Tales
,
Horror Stories
, and my favorite,
Dime Mystery Magazine
, which featured a kind of hard-boiled detective terror tale. Hugh reminisced fondly about Ken White:

Ken was a great editor. And very kind. Loving and much loved by others in return. I am sure I had him in mind when I suggested to my wife that we name our first son Kenneth. Ken White later became editor of
Adventure,
then fiction editor of Esquire, and finally an agent. He died much too young.

Back in 1975, Harry Steeger told me his plans for
Dime Detective
when he gave Ken White editorial responsibility for the magazine. Steeger told Ken to compete head on with
Black Mask
with a two fisted strategy. First, he told White to offer a penny a word more to the
Black Mask
authors to pull those star writers over to
Dime Detective.
Secondly, Steeger told White to get the new
Dime Detective
writers to create original series characters that could appear only in
Dime Detective.
The strategy worked. By 1936, the year Cap Shaw left
Black Mask
, Raymond Chandler was writing exclusively for
Dime Detective
, and although he did write a few stories later for other magazines, Chandler never returned to
Black Mask.
Hugh’s response to my
Dime Detective
history was concise:

Well, I invented my alcoholic, hard-boiled detective, Peter Kane, for Ken’s
Dime Detective.
It was in August of 1934 that my first story, a Peter Kane tale, appeared in
Dime Detective.

I tried to get more
Black Mask
information from Hugh. His first story for
Black Mask
, “Too Many Women,” was published by the most famous editor of
Black Mask
, Cap Shaw, in May of the same year Hugh first appeared in
Dime Detective
, 1934. I asked what he thought of Shaw as an editor:

Well, he bought my first story offered to him (Hugh answered succinctly). But I never had any personal dealings with Shaw. The “Count” was handling things for me by then.

In some ways, that is a shame. Hugh is the last living author to write for Captain Joseph T. Shaw.

A letter from Hugh to his writer pal, Carl Jacobi, postmarked February 27, 1933, reproduced along with four others in Audrey Parente’s brief biography of Hugh,
Pulp Man’s Odyssey
(Starmont, 1988). The letter includes some interesting observations by Hugh on
Dime Detective
, the toils of a pulp author, and on the
Black Mask
school of writing:

Dime Detective
? As you know, I wrote a novelette for them. Got it back with the comment “too much woman.” Mowre, of
All Detective,
refused it because it was too long. Dorothy Hubbard, of
Det. Story Mag.,
said too much sex. Right now it’s at
Rapid-Fire Detective.
You’re right in thinking
Dime Detective
uses weird plots. They like the weird element, but—as they say—the story must have a logical conclusion… . Their best writer by a million miles is Fred Nebel, who has also written for the
Saturday Evening Post.
Nebel uses the Dashiell Hammett style, but does Hammett one better. Economy of words is the secret, plus brutality of treatment, bluntness, and vivid character portrayal. His Cardigan is a better character than Hammett’s “Spade.”

Apparently at the time this letter was written the “Count” had not taken over the story sending chores from Hugh. And perhaps Hugh’s sexy novelette was rejected before Ken White fully took over the reigns of the publication. In any case, Hugh published ten stories for Ken White’s
Dime Detective
during his three-year hiatus from
Black Mask.

I asked Hugh whether he thought those lost years from contributing to
Black Mask
happened because Harry Steeger’s strategy for
Dime Detective
was successful. Hugh got a penny a word more from
Dime Detective
, and a sure slot with the six popular Peter Kane stories that appeared during his absence from
Black Mask.

Well, it could be. The “Count” was handling the submissions by that time. And Ken and the Count and I had become good buddies, and it was a penny per word more. But I also contributed many stories for less money than
Dime Detective
during this same time to
Dime Mystery,
and
Horror Stories,
and
Terror Tales
for Popular Publications, where I was well-known. The reason wasn’t that I didn’t have time to write the stories for
Black Mask.
I was aware of the prestige of
Black Mask.

It is a good question and I’m not sure what the answer is. From 1934 to 1937, I didn’t return to
Black Mask.
Then I appeared regularly for five more years under two different editors. And even after Ken White took over
Black Mask
, I never appeared again after 1941. And I never created a series character for
Black Mask.

Many authors spoke of the extra care they put into writing for
Black Mask.
Dashiell Hammett (over fifty appearances) and Raymond Chandler (eleven stories) spoke of the special attention they brought to the creation of a good
Black Mask
story. Yet these two most famous creators of the
Black Mask
tradition narrated very different, but, at the same time, very typical
Black Mask
stories. Hammett wrote fast, terse tales that revealed character through action—and through the dialogue, especially the natural speech each character used. His narration was objective, flat, and realistic—despite the underlying melodrama of his very well-made plots.

For Chandler, as reported in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder”: “The scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one which made good scenes.” Chandler’s tales were fast, but confusing. His narration was beyond realistic to the point of graphic poetry. He used similes like sledgehammers to describe a world gone wrong, a world filled with fear. But his dialogue was amusing with clever repartee that Hammett never used until he wrote
The Thin Man
, after his
Black Mask
days.

I asked Hugh if he did anything special to prepare to write his
Black Mask
stories. Unlike Chandler and Hammett, Hugh wrote for just about every fiction magazine genre that ever existed. Did he develop special strategies for each different kind of story? Did he ever emulate Hammett’s, or Chandler’s, or Fred Nebel’s writing strategies?

Hugh gave a very interesting, and I believe, a very revealing answer:

I really don’t know what strategies different kinds of stories require. I’ve read so many tales of all kinds—good ones, I mean, by great authors—that when I get what seems to be a promising idea, I just start writing. I have a very developed sense of how a good story is supposed to work on a reader.

In Hugh’s correspondence with me about his ten
Black Mask
stories collected in this book, he used a rating system. I asked him to tell us how he rates and evaluates his own stories.

How do I rate my stories? I simply re-read them and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. A story has to be pretty darned good to win a 10 from me, whether it was published in
Nickel Western
or
The Saturday Evening Post.

Hugh and I reviewed some of the comments he originally sent to me as he first re-read and rated the stories in this collection. I wanted to pull out some specific standards Hugh might use when he analyzed what made a story work for him. I think an important idea about good story writing is revealed in Hugh’s first comments to me for “Smoke in Your Eyes,” from
Black Mask
, December 1938. Hugh wrote in part:

The hero owns a greeting card company. Girlfriend is a lovelorn columnist. Their hobby is detecting. There is a complicated plot here on several levels, but I didn’t get much feeling of suspense or urgency. The story is cleanly written, however, so I gave it a 5. (My emphasis, KHD)

Despite the fact that this long tale (10,000 words) is cleanly written, and the central characters are unique and engaging with lots of background color, Hugh severely faulted the story, it seemed to me, primarily because it didn’t make him feel any strong emotion. I thought this such an important topic that I dropped Hugh’s rating review of his other
Black Mask
stories to follow through on this point. I thought I was really on to something. Here is what I wrote to him:

Hugh, tell us about the importance of creating emotions in the reader—what kind of emotions are needed for a successful horror/terror story vs. a detective tale, or a western, or a romance. You have written hundreds of great stories in all these different fields. Does each type of story require a different set of techniques to create the appropriate emotions in the reader?

I was surprised and educated by Hugh’s written response:

I’m not sure the word “emotions” is the right word here. Obviously, the reader has to
feel
something if a story is to be successful. And the reader is going to feel different things when reading different kinds of stories. A sense of adventure for a South Seas tale, for instance. Of the great outdoors when reading a western. Of suspense and mystery when dealing with a detective yarn. And so on. It is very important, essential to a satisfying reading experience, essential to a successfully written story.

That is an important answer for me. I think it speaks for itself and touches a chord that runs through all satisfying fiction. My misguided focus on “emotion” contrasts sharply with Hugh’s understanding of what a good story must do, at minimum, for the reader.

I next asked about one of Hugh’s areas of expertise:

You are associated with horror and terror stories of every kind by a very large audience of readers and fans. Despite your enormous achievements in so many other fields, you do seem to have a great affinity for the frightening, the “scary” fantasy story. And you’ve won more awards in the horror and fantasy fields than any other. Is there a difference in your mind between “terror” and “horror”? Harry Steeger, publisher of Popular Publications, and inventor of the shudder pulps, told me “horror” was the emotions of disgust, fear, etc. the reader feels watching what happens to a character in the story. He said “terror” is what the reader feels when he identifies with the evil forces or the villain, and feels the fear that terrible things might happen to him. What is your opinion?”

Harry Steeger had it right, Keith (Hugh responded). “Horror” is what you feel when you see a monster devouring a stranger. “Terror” comes when the monster is about to devour
you
.

What about villains? (I asked.) Alfred Hitchcock said something like the hero is nothing without the villain, and the story, no matter how interesting, will only make as strong an impact on the audience as the villain is interesting, dangerous, and threatening.

Villains? (Hugh replied.) They have to be convincingly villainous, of course. If the monster in your previous question about “terror” and “horror” is merely papier-mâché, nobody is going to feel either horror or terror. Hitchcock, of course, had it right. There has to be tension between conflicting forces for a story to create suspense, and a sense of urgency. The more real and interesting the evil forces are, the more opportunities the writer has to create exciting moments of action filled with suspense, or fear, or mystery, or horror, or terror, or adventure. Even in stories that don’t require villains in the traditional sense, like some romances, there have to be conflicts to create anticipation or surprise or a satisfying resolution. Boy gets girl—or boy doesn’t get girl because he doesn’t deserve her. Just like Hitchcock’s villains, if these conflicts are not interesting, or do not seem real, then the resolutions will be duds and the story won’t work.

My last question to Hugh related to traditional villains. My next:

But in horror/fantasy stories, instead of a human villain, there is often an evil force. Something like what Hitch-cock tried to do with birds, but often more obviously sinister and fantastic. Evil taken to an inhuman level. If that assumption is true, what can you tell us about story teller techniques that will make that evil come alive for reader?

Well, Keith, in the best horror-fantasy the evil force is a threat all through the story and the reader is kept constantly aware of it. H. P. Love-craft was good at this sort of thing.

I wrote back: