Pick-Up

by Charles Willeford

He Holed Up With a Helpless Lush

Prowling the grimy streets of San Francisco low-life, Helen is a beautiful, sensuous drunk - and a pathetically easy pick-up. Harry just wants to help, but before long he and Helen are both adrift in a sea of alcohol - until Harry conceives the ultimate crime...

Genres: Noir, Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Hard Boiled, Pulp, Thriller

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Charles Willeford was a remarkably fine, talented and prolific writer who wrote everything from poetry to crime fiction to literary criticism throughout the course of his impressively long and diverse career. His crime novels are distinguished by a mean'n'lean sense of narrative economy and an admirable dearth of sentimentality. He was born as Charles Ray Willeford III on January 2, 1919 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Willeford's parents both died of tuberculosis when he was a little boy and he subsequently lived either with his grandmother or at boarding schools. Charles became a hobo in his early teens. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps at age sixteen and was stationed in the Philippines. Willeford served as a tank commander with the 10th Armored Division in Europe during World War II. He won several medals for his military service: the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Luxembourg Croix de Guerre. Charles retired from the army as a Master Sergeant. Willeford's first novel "High Priest of California" was published in 1953. This solid debut was followed by such equally excellent novels as "Pick-Up" (this book won a Beacon Fiction Award), "Wild Wives," "The Woman Chaser," "Cockfighter" (this particular book won the Mark Twain Award), and "The Burnt Orange Heresy." Charles achieved his greatest commercial and critical success with four outstanding novels about hapless Florida homicide detective Hoke Moseley: "Miami Blues," "New Hope for the Dead," "Sideswipe," and "The Way We Die Now." Outside of his novels, he also wrote the short story anthology "The Machine in Ward Eleven," the poetry collections "The Outcast Poets" and "Proletarian Laughter," and the nonfiction book "Something About A Soldier." Willeford attended both Palm Beach Junior College and the University of Miami. He taught a course in humanities at the University of Miami and was an associate professor who taught classes in both philosophy and English at Miami Dade Junior College. Charles was married three times and was an associate editor for "Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine." Three of Willeford's novels have been adapted into movies: Monte Hellman delivered a bleakly fascinating character study with "Cockfighter" (Charles wrote the script and has a sizable supporting role as the referee of a cockfighting tournament which climaxes the picture), George Armitage hit one out of the ballpark with the wonderfully quirky "Miami Blues," and Robinson Devor scored a bull's eye with the offbeat "The Woman Chaser." Charles popped up in a small part as a bartender in the fun redneck car chase romp "Thunder and Lightning." Charles Willeford died of a heart attack at age 69 on March 27, 1988.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”’I’ve had terrible luck with women, Helen,’ I said, ‘and for the last two years I’ve kept away from them. I didn’t want to go through it all again--you know, the bickering, the jealousy, nagging, that sort of thing. Am I scaring you off?’

‘You couldn’t if you tried, Harry. You’re my kind of man and it isn’t hard to say so. What I mean is--you’re somebody underneath, a person, and not just another man.’”

After the war, Harry Jordan came back a different man. He didn’t go home to his wife and child. At the time, it seemed more important to paint. ” An artist paints and a husband works.” He expected his interrupted artistic expression to pick-up where it left off, but what seemed so clear before is now a muddled mess. He lives in squalid, cramped apartments and works at skilless jobs, like bartending, waitering, and slinging hash on a grill. He is staring down the gunbarrel of oblivion.

And then she walks in. ”Of all the gin joints in all the towns all over the world, she walks into mine.” Harry certainly isn’t Humphrey Bogart, and she isn’t Ingrid Bergman, but she is the best looking dame he has seen in a long time and the most beautiful woman who has ever deigned to give him more than a passing glance. She is the type of woman who makes a man want to paint masterpieces. ”The hard part was to paint her in the way I wanted to express my feelings for her. I wanted to capture the mother-of-pearl of her body, the secret of her smile, the strand of silver in her hair, the jet, arched brows, the tragedy in her brown, gold-flecked eyes.”

Harry’s a heavy drinker, but she is a full blown alcoholic. He doesn’t care. He’ll do anything to be with her. Joseph Heller won’t publish Catch-22 until 1961, but if Harry by some miracle can live long enough to read it, he will know exactly what Heller is talking about because he is living it with Helen. He needs money to pay for her alcohol, but when he leaves to go to work, she puts her “red dress” on and goes out on the town. She doesn’t need money to drink. There are plenty of sailors in San Francisco who will gladly buy her drinks with the hope that they will, before the evening ends, ride her ocean wave. Harry belongs to her, heart and soul, but that concept is a difficult one for Helen. To believe that you belong to someone, you have to first believe you are worth having.

I thought about Helen the other night when we were rewatching To Have and Have Not when Slim, played by Lauren Bacall, picks-up an officer to cage some free drinks. Now Slim has problems, but not anything like the problems that Helen has given herself. I would hope that Slim never finds herself spiralling downward on a slippery slope of booze, sex, and hopelessness, but sometimes people become trapped before they even know they are being hunted by the seamy side of life.

I’ve read several Charles Williford novels and plan to read the rest as well. Library of America is doing such a great job of preserving American literature and needs to add Willeford to their future publishing list. Some of his novels are becoming difficult to find, and reading copies are starting to command prices that are daunting. Most of his characters are sad sacks, but he makes you care about them. He makes you realize that none of us are as far removed from their despondent desperate lives as we would prefer. He writes with such honesty and verve that I feel he eclipses many of the hardboiled writers that are considered to be the best of the genre.

Just when you think you might have the plot figured out, Willeford hits you with one more final twist that turns your mouth into a flytrap and leaves bees buzzing around in your head. Willeford will hardboil your brain and give you a smack on the ass that will lift you up on your toes.

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[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

". . . I hit the bottle so hard I'm not sure whether I came to San Francisco on the bus or on the train."

Stunning, though massively depressing tale of what happens when two self-destructive souls collide. This is bleak as all-get-out, though Willeford's writing is beyond amazing. I was reading this at the same time I was listening to The Sun Also Rises (well, not at the exact same time, but you know what I mean), and I couldn't help musing on which characters could drink one another under the table - the duo from this book, or Jake Barnes and his peeps. And, I also couldn't stop thinking about what a much better writer Willeford is than Hemingway . . . yet which author is shoved down every young person's throat in school?

Maybe it's better this way. Discover Charles Willeford on your own, and let his words wrap themselves around you.

[Julie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw the cover of this book on my friend Alex's TBR list, I knew immediately I had to read it.

I can't resist almost any hardboiled fiction from the 40s and 50s, and this one came with this particularly enticing promotion:

Helen is a beautiful, sensuous drunk - and a pathetically easy pick-up.

Wow, I was in.

Before you could say “good-looking dame,” I had roped two of my favorite Goodreads friends, Robin and Alex, into a snarky, literary threesome and we were ready to have some laughs, doing a buddy read at this book's expense.

I mean, let's start with the cover:



He holed up with a helpless lush?

Helen's a helpless lush? Okay. But, what's wrong with her dress in the picture? Is the gravitational pull that much stronger in San Francisco that she can't pull her dress up? Is she that overcome with desire at the sight of Harry or is she just so damn drunk she doesn't care anymore?

We all had a few laughs in the beginning. If you have a sense of humor and you don't get too tied up with a feminist viewpoint (or spend too much time cringing at the casual racial stereotypes), you can easily get a good case of the giggles with noir fiction from the 1950s. Helen is described. . . over and over again. . . in childlike terms that are just revolting. A woman during this time period just can't seem to do anything but crawl into her man's lap and babble like a baby.

Only thing is. . . Helen also likes to suck a bottle like a baby. . . and I don't mean milk, y'all, I mean whiskey. Helen is a serious alcoholic and so's her new pal, Harry (who prefers gin). . . and getting to know Harry and Helen is like watching two people with SERIOUS arrested development stumbling drunk all over town, refusing to accept any responsibility as adults.

Before you know it, it's a Leaving Las Vegas situation. You know. . . death by alcohol? Man, this book turned dark quickly and it wasn't what I was expecting at all.

But, here's the kicker: I loved this weird-ass book. Loved it. Not only the edgy, hardboiled writing, but the heart and soul of the story. Yes, it's dated and disturbingly misogynistic, but it kept me flipping the pages fast and furious and it made me think over and over again, about different scenarios.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't cheering on the hapless Harry in his sad rented room at Mrs. McQuade's boarding house.

Sad Harry, kicking back another shot of gin, observing that “Noisy children were playing in the streets, shouting, screaming, laughing; all of them unaware of money and security and death.”

You know. . . adulting is a back-breaking, nail-biting business and many, many people are not cut out to succeed at it.

There's an ache here, a wistfulness. God, why can't so many people find just one little slice of pie left for them on the plate?

This was a sad business that struck a chord in my heart and I felt committed to the victims of this particular train wreck.

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Updated 1/21/17)

Here's my 1992 Futura mass-market (187 pages), which isn't listed here. Not quite as nifty as that 1955 edition up top, but unless anyone has an extra $60 lying around that they could do without, I guess I'll just have to stick with this one.

Without a doubt one of the three or four best classic -era noir novels I've ever read, Pick-Up is a bleak, heartbreaking story about a newly-met alcoholic couple who are seemingly doomed, spending their days and nights in various bars drinking themselves into oblivion in order to forget the world and their lives. It's like watching a car accident, in that as much as you may want to look away, you can't.

I found myself connecting with these two right away, becoming wrapped up in their lives and really rooting for them to make it work, which is astonishing considering the entire novel is less than 200 pages, and is a testament to Willeford's proficiency at characterization. The descriptions of the seedier side of San Francisco in the 50s really pulled me in as well, and added to the depressing and hopeless atmosphere.

Willeford has a clean, unobtrusive prose-style that disappears while reading, allowing the reader to become fully enveloped in the story, a story that kept me glued to the pages til the final, game-changing line.

Highly recommended for any and all fans of noir.

5 Stars.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noir is so much fun. It can commit ALL MANNER OF SINS and people are still like, yes! Awesome book! At least, that seems to be the way for me.

Here are just a few of the sins found in this book:

1) Misogyny - our femme fatale Helen is described like a thirteen year old, with pudgy hands, who needs to use "the potty". Ick!

2) Purple prose / so-so writing - no wonderful Chandler-esque similes to be found here, folks

3) Nonsensical twist ending - don't look at the last page! It'll ruin everything for you - oh wait, not really, because the 'twist' has no real meaningful affect on the book whatsoever

4) Breaking noir rules and rules of the world in general - the world seems to go out of its way to be fair to the point of ludicrousness

I'm waving all the sins away with a magic wand, though. Why? I don't really know, except the fact is, I couldn't put this book down. It started off like a scene in Barfly, with two self-destructive characters who find something akin to love, then morphed into something much darker, in pretty quick paces. Willeford (who, as you'll see in Alex's astute review, looks like Wilford Brimley's drunk, evil twin) succeeded at delivering all the things that we want from a noir, without an overly complex plot (which you might see in classics like The Maltese Falcon and others). Plus, this cover, which I just can't help but include here, in all its pulpy glory:



Special thanks to dear friends Julie and Alex, for this fun, noir romp! This wouldn't have been on my radar at all, if it weren't for you guys. xoxo

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I start reading noir I think oh, man, I'd forgotten how dumb noir is. And every time I finish it I think where's more noir?


Game: describe your favorite book in a pulpy tagline. "Her husband was dead in bed - and then he was just dead!" - Middlemarch

So it goes with this batshit Noir Bingo winner. Harry is - what else? - a loser. Noir writers got themselves into a race to see whose antihero could be the anti-est, and Harry's way down there. He meets - who else? - a woman who is not good for him. Helen is a HELPLESS LUSH trapped in the body of a thirteen-year-old, and that's thirteen on a good day - check out these totally normal things a grown man typed to describe a grown woman:

- "She had the figure of a teen-age girl."
- "It was the smile of a little girl who knows a secret and isn't going to tell it. I held her hand in mine. It was a tiny, pudgy hand, soft and warm and trusting."
- "If it hadn't been for the single strand of pure silver hair she wouldn't have looked more than 13 years old."

Pudgy hand. The thing with noir is that a lot of it seems like it was written by incels. Dude draws her naked portrait (this book is weirdly into art) and she's like, "It looks like me when I was a little girl." Later he'll gaze longingly at a picture of her when she was seven. BTW if someone doesn’t bite someone hard enough to “feel the blood spurt into my mouth,” it’s not real noir. Did we say we were going to play Noir Bingo? Let's play noir bingo.

NOIR BINGO

with help from Robin and Julie

Pick-Up (1955) is an archetypal noir, by the minor legend Charles Willeford. I heard of it in The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, no stranger to pulp fiction herself. It owes its biggest debt to The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) but really, its roots are deep. It pulls no punches: that helpless lush pisses herself in a cab. Willeford wanted to call it "Until I Am Dead."


famous author and, as Robin points out, Wilford Brimley's evil drunk twin

It's unquestionably dumb and silly, but it also crushes noir bingo so what do you want? I hope not a believable plot! lol, "You choked her and then she was dead immediately after the choking, but it was actually a heart attack so...totally unrelated, you're free to go." And then there's this absolutely bizarre final twist: he was a black guy all along! Which doesn't reframe the story in any meaningful way at all. It makes the stenographer girl he punched in the face a little racist as well as weird? Julie thinks he's a metaphorical Negro but I don't buy it. It certainly does take some twists.

It usually takes me a minute to get into noir. That overblown prose - before you give yourself up to it, it reminds you that it's all basically silly. "I didn't try to pull myself together," says Harry, "because I knew that I would never cry again." That's not a good sentence, and many of the sentences are not good. But stacked up on top of each other, their teetering cumulative effect is...not better exactly, but entertaining. Grungy. Addictive. I kindof love this book. Where's more noir.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, that was depressing! A bleak and nihilistic look at a destructive relationship and the negative effects of alcoholism. I imagine that if David Goodis and Jim Thompson teamed up to write the screenplay for the movie Days of Wine and Roses, they would've churned out this novel!

Failed painter and alcoholic Harry Jordan meets a pretty blonde lush named Helen in the bar and grill where he works. They almost instantly fall head over heels for each other, but anyone with common sense can tell that their relationship is doomed and will be mutually destructive, feeding off of one another's depression and their unhealthy need for alcohol and each other. They soon start down a dangerous path of self-destruction.

The synopsis reads like a standard noir novel but Willeford puts his own spin on it. The femme fatale is as tragic as the protagonist she "seduces", and Willeford treats the plot elegantly and with little melodrama. The book is carefully crafted, with the author doling out exposition and back-story about Harry just when it's necessary.

And then there's the ending...man, that ending! I won't spoil it here, but I'll say that one moment, I'm finishing up an already well-written tragedy about alcoholism and doomed love, and the next, I read the last two lines and it drops a bomb, changing the entire way I viewed the story, making me want to read it again. Some people may see it as a cheap gimmick but I disagree. While a gimmick ending like the one in the movie The Usual Suspects negates the entire rest of the story, I think that this book can still work without its denouement, the conclusion acting as a cherry on top, forcing you to consider the story from a whole new angle!

This is my first book by Charles Willeford. I've heard that in most of his novels he takes interesting new looks at the noir and hard boiled genres. If any of them are even close to being as awesome as Pick-up, I can't wait to read them!

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago I read Willeford's Miami Blues. It was good crime novel, that kind of reminded me of Elmore Leonard (second drawer), or Carl Hiasson. (The Hare Krishna scene at the airport was a keeper). It was made into a good movie with Fred Ward and Alec Baldwin (still the best thing I've seen Baldwin in). As I said, the book was solid, but it perplexed me a bit, because I was aware that Willeford was held in high regard by crime writers like Leonard. Looking back, I'm guessing at this late point in his career, Willeford was cashing in. Miami Blues was the kind of novel Willeford could write in his sleep.

Pick-Up is an entirely different affair. It's like a completely different writer. Clearly, at this point in Willeford's career, he wasn't playing it for laughs. Pick-Up is a short novel, where every word counts. It's an extremely sad story about two losers, Harry and Helen, caught in an alcoholic spiral. The term "losers" is perhaps too harsh since both Harry and Helen seem more damaged by life rather than by their choices. But that's probably a distinction with a blurred line, and yet one by the novel's end that I felt necessary to underscore. One of the nice(?) things about Pick-Up is that it's pure noir, but noir that will cut against your expectations of just what noir is. I'm reluctant to say much about the novel itself, though there is crime, booze, sex and, surprisingly, Art. Harry Jordan, the narrator, is a former art teacher. (Even that little detail is more than I want to reveal, since it came as a surprise, further underscoring Willeford's masterful accumulation of detail, and slow reveal of his characters. Another nice touch is the portrait Willeford supplies of late 1950s San Francisco. What a gritty time capsule! The one thing that may bother some (but not me), is the last sentence surprise. It's a gimmick, no question, but to my mind, it's entirely earned. Pick-Up is such a tight effort, that I can easily slot this one up there with Jim Thompson's best. It's a classic.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m really going for my nihilistic 50’s/early 60’s books at the minute. Hot on the heels of Hard Rain Falling I read this, my first Willeford. It’s short so to say too much about it is to divulge too much, suffice to say it is like a 50’s trainspotting with alcohol in place of heroin. Lives with promise wasted in the pursuit of inebriation, days spent sourcing money to drink with, love being nothing more than a drinking buddy and someone to help fund the need. (As an aside I am fascinated by these old 40’s/50’s movies and novels where a woman walks into a café, orders a coffee and by the time the cup is drained she’s living with the guy who made it!).
More interesting is the depiction of talent, particularly artistic talent. Are successful artists merely those who have the required self-belief in their own genius? To what extent do you follow that talent if it is not recognised and isn’t paying the bills? Is it better to give up completely rather than be half-hearted about it (Harry gives up teaching rather than encourage those who had less talent than himself)?
A book about desperation and hopelessness, about how no matter the low to which you think you’ve sunk there are those that are looking up at the soles of your feet. Do not read when you are at a low ebb or when you are in walking distance of an off licence.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Willeford' 1954 novel "Pick-Up" is a shocking tour de force of desolation and nihilism. On its surface, it's the tragic ballad of Harry and Helen, two sad drunks with nothing to live for. Harry works as a fry cook in San Francisco, a long journey down from his former occupation as an artist and an art teacher at a private school. He works so he can drink. Helen's a lush who walks into the dive where Harry's working. He quits on the spot so they can go drink. "Who wants to sober up," she asks.


She came from money and an overbearing mother and a marriage that lasted one night. She has no interest in working, no plans, no dreams. But, she can't be left alone in the room cause she'll lose her mind. For Helen, alcohol is better than oxygen and better to go to a bar and accept a drink from any sailor or group of sailors. And, when Harry discovers who Helen is, he realizes he can't leave her alone and work a full day. Better to quit and be with her than risk losing her.


It's a tragic romance of two people who are just no good for each other and who wallow in depression together. Indeed, the only answer seems suicide because there's not enough left in the world to keep them going. And, one of the shocking things is how easily both if them accept the idea of suicide.
These two characters after all are rootless and disconnected. Though both are married to others on paper, they have no cares about what happened to their spouses or, for Harry, the child he left behind. A few years before Timothy Leary told the world to tune in and drop out, these two have dropped way down the rabbit hole. There's a strain running through pulp fiction of people who have dropped out of normal life and these two, Harry and Helen, are way out on that edge.


Willeford also uses this novel as a vehicle to poke fun at psychiatrists and attorneys. The doctors are all quacks who want your know if he had suffered sexual abuse as a child and are so deep in their Rorschach's that they can't talk to an actual person. The legal system doesn't know what to do with someone like Harry who just doesn't fit the mold.


What's interesting is the whole tale is told from Harry's point of view where he justifies what he does and the reader feels sympathetic towards him. An outsider telling the tale might explain things differently, explaining that Harry's a no-good bum who'd rather drink than hold a job, who left his family on a whim, who takes advantage of vulnerable lush Helen, and commits what are really horrible deeds.


Willeford thus tells this tragic tale of star-crossed lovers on all these levels, but on the very last page reveals something that flips the entire story and gives the reader yet one more level to absorb this story.


It's solidly noir in the sense you got these two drowning in the gutter. There's few who tell it so well and so passionately.


[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor”--Charles Willeford

I began reading Willeford only fairly recently, though as it turns out I actually read this book and maybe a couple others many many years ago. The recent Willeford reading was of his later, more comic novels, written in the eighties. Willeford preferred his early, hard-boiled books to the later ones, the Hoke Moseley series that made him way more money, as some of them were made into popular movies. (An anecdote related to one of those books, Sideswipe: Willeford got a package in the mail, a copy of Sideswipe that someone had shot six times, and a note, written in all-caps, saying “It’s a crime to charge $15.95 for shit like this.” It was signed, “A Dissatisfied Customer.” Funny, right?)

I picked up Pick Up (see what I did there?!) based on the salacious, pulpy cover, hoping to read a trashy hard-boiled mystery, expecting to see macho perspectives subverted as I encountered in all of his other books, but it was less fun and more somewhat nihilist noir, beautifully written, so no complaints. The book grabs you right away through the main character, Harry, who works the counter at a restaurant and drinks the rest of his day. Harry meets a woman, Helen, who also drinks all day, and says to her, as they fall into bed together:

“I’m pretty much of a failure in life, Helen. Does it matter to you?”

“No. Nothing matters to me.” Her voice had a resigned quality and yet it was quietly confident. There was a tragic look in her brown eyes, but her mouth was smiling. It was the smile of a little girl who knows a secret and isn’t going to tell it. I held her hand in mine. It was a tiny, almost pudgy band, soft and warm and trusting. We finished our drinks.

Sound fun enough yet? Willeford writes a taut and compelling post-war damnation of the world available for the lost and alienated and broke such as are Harry and Helen. Harry is also a failed artist and former art teacher, now in a kind of Leaving Las Vegas despair:

“As far as I was concerned the world we existed on was an overly-large, stinking cinder, a spinning, useless clinker. My life meant nothing to me and I wanted to go to sleep forever and forget about it.”

But drink first; Harry is a big drinker, and Helen is an alcoholic.

At one point, Harry compares himself to a car without a driver, a machine, without feeling or desire. And this feeling of alienation in part comes from this post-war Capitalist drive to success:

“The Great American Tradition: You can do anything you think you can do! All Americans believe in it. What a joke that is!”

I love it how Harry increasingly sees things through the conventions and history of the art world that deserted him. Elsewhere, the former art scholar Willeford also writes about the art world in the more satirical Burnt Orange Heresy.

I think this is a terrific book, one of the best of a series of noir indictments of American society that I have read. I guess I was more interested in the Helen and Harry scenes than the hospital scenes with its fifties rejection of psychology, and you know, there is a murder in the book, though I’d hardly call it a mystery. But there are a couple of real surprises, twists, the greatest happening in the last two lines, maybe in the last five words where an aspect of Harry's identity is revealed which makes you rethink every single thing in the book. And because it is such a surprise, I of course can’t tell you what it is, though at this very moment that is the main thing I want to talk about.

Oh, and that sleazy cover that seduced me? I learned that Willeford, working with often low-end presses, had little control over the covers or marketing in general of his books, especially early on. Sometimes even the titles were changed. This book is not really focused on the "pick-up" tease in the title, though the girl featured on the cover is somewhat suggestive (ahem!) of Helen in a bar, on a few occasions, when drunk, which is always. But it's not as pulpy or outrageous or sexy as you'd expect, or maybe hoped for; false advertising! It's an actual serious novel, damn it!

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A far cry from the Hoke Moseley novels this bleak piece of nihilism is a novel that astounds with its dedication to the central theme of despair, anguish, alienation and self destruction. Harry meets Helen in a diner, they are high functioning alcoholics, they get together and proceed to push each other further in to oblivion until suicide is a very real option for both of them and Willeford doesn't flinch once from his evocative descriptions of their state of mind. A lack of respect and understanding of depression and substance dependency has been in the public consciousness recently with the high profile deaths of two incredible actors and, apparently, wonderful men but Willeford was clearly somebody who could treat the subject with an objective calm and an understanding of why and how people from various walks of life can all fall to the same weaknesses with no respite in sight beyond the promise of peace brought by that final moment when you stop fighting. There's no hysteria here, no glamourising of the subject, but also nobody to tell them that they're wrong, not one character attempts to divert them from their destiny, they're just two kids living in their own insulated bubble of pain. This is the stuff that elevates Willeford above your modern run of the mill literary types who pack their novels with interventions and worried family members, psycho babble bullshit and happy endings, Pick-Up just paddles on out in to hell on Earth and keeps rowing without a look back to the comforting shadow of shore. I'm going to keep coming back to this book, I know it.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tragically poignant tale of a couple's alcohol fueled depression, punctuated with intensity as they sense a deep emptiness in themselves and search for an escape. One feels both repulsion and sympathy for the couple as they spiral together deeper into the abyss, seemingly fueling each other's descent. Willeford's writing is vivid and affecting, taking digs against contemporary notions of love, American exceptionalism, religion and faith, mental health care and more but never getting distracted from telling a very gripping personal tale of self destruction. The twist at the very end was likely shocking in it's day, but to modern readers I think come across as more of a cheap gimmick.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
Book 67 (of 250)
Do NOT look at the final page. No matter what! But when the second to the last line comes around, you might think 1) all this to work up for that reveal? or 2) the entire narrative now spins the story into a different light I hadn't even considered, and just how important, really, is that reveal? Well, it's huge, really, given that most villians in noir books are never given a chance. And the big reveal begs the question: what about the rest of the characters?
HOOK=3 stars: A man and a woman meet in a bar. Standard opener.
PACE=3 stars: Willeford keeps the story steady even after a whopper of a denouement just over half way through the story.
PLOT=4: Man meets woman, they attempt suicide, then there is a murder, then jail time. So far, typical. Then a twist, then another.
PEOPLE=5: Names, oddly, aren't important here: you will remember them for a different reason.
PLACE=3: San Francisco bars, jails, and cheap apartments all feel just right.
Summary: I'm giving this an average rating of 3.8. And I'm questioning the author's final twist. Yes, it gives the book a completely different spin. But at the same time, it neither makes the book itself, the writing, better or worse. A person gets fair treatment, and that is unusual for a noir novel.

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sort of loved this. It's well-written and readable. The subject matter is depressing, verging on disgusting. I mean, it could be worse, but it's not exactly charming. It's not much of a crime story, more one man's issues, psychosis and guilt. As such it calls strongly to mind Highsmith and Thompson - Willeford was their contemporary, and very similar, but also talented. I read one of his books before this, and would like to read more ...

[Jason Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took a detour from Brothers Karamazov to read this thing and, shallow person that I am, preferred it. There is a crime at the center of this story, but for a noir writer, Willeford is too interested in character and setting to be distracted by crime-story clichés. At one point the hero is held at gunpoint, but eventually he turns around and finds that the guy with the gun has wandered off, so he just goes home. During a spell in a psychiatric hospital, he goes up to the roof with a male nurse for a smoke; asks the guy why he does this work, and the male nurse says, “For the girls.” Funny thing about nurses, he says—the women nurses—is that when they’re not in their uniforms they’re horrible dressers. The book has many great casual, lived-in observations like this. But it's no breezy read. We're firmly in Lost Weekend territory here, a long and inevitable descent into alcoholic crash and burn, living day to day, even minute to minute, the only reckoning coming when there’s no change left to buy a drink with. The hero and his girl attempt to kill themselves in a harrowing wrist-slashing episode that suddenly comes out of nowhere (I’m not giving much away here—it happens early in the book, and the chapter is called “Suicide Pact”), and it is powerfully imagined. After their failure, they rip up the bed sheets and bandage each other; her bandaging is neater than his, Willeford points out (women tend to wrap Xmas presents better than men, too). Some people complain about the gimmick ending, but it's inconsequential; the book has already done what it needed to do.

[Blair Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pick-Up is a first-person, alcohol-induced, romantic noir trainwreck served by the indomitable Charles Willeford.

• “Sober, I was always embarrassed about my appearance, but I didn't intend I stay sober very long.”

• “Food cost money and money spent for food is money wasted.”

• “What kind of world did I live in, anyway? Everybody seemed to believe that money was everything, that it could buy integrity, brains, art, and now a man’s soul.”

• “Love is in what you do, not in what you say. Couples work themselves into a hypnotic state daily by repeating to each other over and over again that they love each other. And they don't know the meaning of the word. They also say they love a certain brand of tooth paste and a certain brand of cereal in the same tone of voice.”

[Malum · Rating 5 out of 5]

A noir Greek tragedy. The ink to print this book was probably made from children's tears. Just when you think that Willeford is done surprising you he pulls something else out of left field, all the way to the last sentence.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lost Souls In San Francisco

Charles Willeford's 1956 novel "Pick-Up" tells the story of two sad, lonely, alcoholic people, Harry Jordan, 32, and Helen Meredith, 33, who find each other briefly while wandering the streets and bars of San Francisco. The novel has a nihilistic, almost hopeless feel in places, as both characters say they want to die and twice attempt a double suicide. Here is a passage, before the first suicide attempt that gives much of the sense of despair of the book.

"What a rotten, stinking world this is we live in, Helen. And we don't have the answer to it either. We aren't going to beat it by drinking and yet, the only way we can possibly face it is by drinking!"

Harry Jordan tells the story in the first person, as his story and Helen's unfold gradually and by indirection. Harry has been living in San Francisco in a cheap rooming house for about a year holding a series of jobs such as short-order cook or counterman. When the novel opens, Harry has held a job as counterman in a cheap restaurant for two months, something of a record for him. Soon after they meet Harry tells Helen "when I'm not working, I drink." Helen responds, "I don't work at all. I drink all of the time."

The story recounts their brief, calamitous love affair. Harry is a frustrated painter with talent. Helen, the daughter of a wealthy, overbearing mother, has left her marriage to drink and wander the streets. Together they frequent the grimy underlife of San Francisco. The book portrays the world of rooming houses, bars, delicatessens, and hash houses.

The novel has a highly psychological cast with two substantial sections in which the Harry undergoes therapy. In the first, Harry and Helen commit themselves to a public mental hospital after a failed double suicide attempt. Harry is reminded of his former life during this stay, both by chance and by his attempted treatment from a Doctor Davidson. In the second, Harry is treated by a therapist retained by the state criminal justice system, a Doctor Fischbach, while he is being held on charges of the murder of Helen after another failed double suicide. Harry claims he wants to die. The reader learns more about Harry from his stormy sessions with Fischbach.

In many ways, "Pick-Up" is highly but not entirely successful. The book offers effective portrayals of its two primary characters and several secondary characters. There is a strongly atmospheric sense of place. The novel describes well the power of art and the destructive force of alcohol. It offers a sense of almost unredeemed despair. The denouement of the book weakens the effect of the work. Part of the theme of the book does not become fully apparent until the end, although Harry foreshadows it in many places. The book is too facile in its resolution of the murder charge brought against Harry after the failed double suicide.

The author, Charles Willeford (1919 -- 1988), had a varied life and career. "Pick-Up" was Willeford's second novel written while he was in the Air Force. After leaving the military, Willeford pursued his education and earned both an undergraduate and a graduate degree. He became a professor of English and philosophy at a junior college in Florida. Willeford wrote many novels and other works which became better known than this early effort.

I read this book because I wanted to learn more about American noir writing. In its portrayal of unhappy lost characters and of San Francisco streets in the 1950s, "Pick-Up both captures and adds to the genre. The book does not appear to be in print currently in a single edition. Instead, the novel is included in a Library of America collection of American noir from the 1950's which offers an excellent way to get to know the world of noir. Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s: The Killer Inside Me / The Talented Mr. Ripley / Pick-up / Down There / The Real Cool Killers (Library of America) (Vol 2).

Robin Friedman

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just jaw hanging open, wow. Willeford's description of the wrist slitting suicide attempts must be one of the purest expressions of literary decadence this side of Yukio Mishima's description of seppuku in his story "Patriotism." And that is just one of the many surprises in this novel that was originally published as a pulp in 1955, but one has to wonder if the publisher had any idea what they were publishing. Despite the in your face downward spiral of despair, depression, and alcoholism that is the main focus, Willeford delivers a fully realized literary novel whose moments of caring are a blinding light against the unrelenting darkness portrayed. To read this novel from the perspective of "it is a noir, a pulp novel" would, I think, completely miss the point. And, although I'm not sure on this, it is hard to imagine that the audience reading all those other noir pulps in 1955 would even get through Pick-up. Yes, you eventually get to a crime and it's aftermath, but the unrelenting early focus is depression and drinking and the path to suicide. Willeford's counterpoints to that focus, however, are crushingly brilliant. Wish I'd read this in grad school days; could essay the hell out of this book!

The little trick at the end - that's an essay, too. Don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't read the book yet. But some thoughts. My first thought was why would Willeford do that? Making a point, right? Look at how Jordan is treated throughout. Most books of this era are full of epithets. So, striking. There are a couple of clues, for those who want to go back and look. Towards the end of the interview with the doctor at the first hospital. And also carefully reread the dialogue with the old stenographer. Overall, though, the ending did not make me reconsider the whole book, and I don't think that is supported by the text. What it does do is make, in the most simple and elegant way, a gigantic point that probably could not be made in any other way. I mean, there have been whole novels written trying to do just that. Makes me curious how it came about. Part of the intent all along? Or added at the end in response to something?

Could write so much more on this novel!

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

It might have been titled ‘When Harry Met Helen’. Harry picks Helen up and they slowly make there way down the road of alcoholic destruction. There are no upturns in the story. It’s a whisky sour, but it’s a whisky sour with a twist. Not a fun read, but one that stays with you long after you finish it. I wouldn't be surprised if I came back and upgraded to four stars at sometime in the future.

[Ruth Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story felt a bit rushed to me. The downwards spiral, after Harry and Helen met, seemed to happen too fast; just a few weeks.

The ending came as no surprise, although the second last line was, but that didn't effect my overall view of the book.

A quick read, but not an easy one. In fact, it was downright depressing.

[X · Rating 1 out of 5]

The way this book went was, when the protagonist tried to commit suicide in Chapter 13 I was crossing my fingers like “good luck buddy, hope it sticks this time!”

CWs for misogyny (subtypes: creepy Lolita stuff; domestic/intimate partner violence), anti-Semitism, brief anti-Asian racism, brief fatphobia, and a HORRIFICALLY anti-Black racist kicker that will make you want to burn things. Needless to say I will be spoiling the entire plot of this “classic”, originally published in 1955. (Yes, apparently, it’s a noir crime fiction classic which has inspired such luminaries as Quentin Tarantino. Draw your own conclusions about that one.)

Also spoilers for a few books from that same era, including The Expendable Man and In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith, and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I also reference the show Beef on Netflix, but only with general spoilers as to tone.

This book follows Harry Jordan, a failed “non-objective” i.e. modern artist working in a diner in San Francisco, as he makes a series of more and more ridiculously nihilistic choices, including in roughly chronological order the following: quitting his job to spend every day getting drunk with a beautiful alcoholic named Helen, ranting internally about how fake the American Dream is, viciously assaulting someone, painting Helen nude in the style of Manet’s Olympia, making a suicide pact with Helen that involves him slitting both their wrists only for it to fail because he didn’t cut deep enough, checking into a psychiatric hospital with Helen, being offended by the psychiatrist’s creepy sexual questions, checking himself out of the hospital, finding Helen drunkenly out with various men at various bars including a memorable time with her and three Marines which makes Harry “perspire” as he imagines what they might be getting up to, strangling Helen to death as she passively goes along with it, trying to commit suicide by leaving the gas on in the apartment but again failing because he forgot to close the transom, confessing to Helen’s murder so that he can be “pleasant[ly]” executed, making friends with his jail guard, drawing portraits of various guards and detectives for free or in exchange for cigarettes, being sexually propositioned by and then violently assaulting a 21-year-old court stenographer (who is turned on by all of it), being offended by a foreign psychiatrist’s creepy sexual questions, finding out that he didn’t actually kill Helen because she had a heart condition (which killed her when he strangled her, but it’s not murder anymore), and being released again into the pointless fog of the world……. At which point we learn, in the last two lines of the novel, that he was Black the whole time!

!!!!!!!!!

Okay, this book is written for the audience to follow Harry along his journey, being shocked by some of the things he does but still finding themselves laughing at the ridiculousness of it. The audience is supposed to ask themselves whether they *like* Harry, whether they *should* like him, and what can really be expected of people who have no prospects for stability in this meaningless world… and then the last two lines are supposed to throw the audience’s conclusions on their head, making them question their own assumptions, biases, and understanding of the previous events of the book by 1) revealing that he isn’t white, and 2) painting him as a sympathetic figure, “tall, lonely” and “Walking in the rain.”

Because I guess Black men don’t have many prospects so it’s totally understandable (natural, even…) for them to viciously assault and/or kill people, especially white women - because yes, Helen is *very* explicitly described as white.

I will say briefly that all the references to how young Helen looks (“If it hadn’t been for the single strand of pure silver hair she wouldn’t have looked more than thirteen years old.” etc. etc.) are super creepy, if not unexpected for a book of this origin. I think this is intentional, i.e., Willeford intends this to be an aspect of the protagonist’s character that he is attracted to the child he sees in Helen (e.g., “The girl in the portrait [Harry painted] was Helen, a much younger Helen, and if possible, a much prettier and delicate Helen, but it was Helen as she appeared to me. Despite my attempts to create the faint, tiny lines around her eyes and the streak of silver hair, it was the portrait of a young girl.”) which just compounds the horrificness of the twist ending. Are we supposed to think he’s into young girls because he’s Black, or are we supposed to think he’s relatable and sympathetic even though he’s Black because he’s into young girls… I really don’t want to consider this further.

Now I actually heard of this book via a review of another book from this genre and era, which has the same “he’s Black actually” twist - The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, published in 1963. In that book, the protagonist, Hugh, is a medical resident at UCLA driving home to Arizona for a relative’s wedding. On the way, he picks up a hitchhiker, a teenage girl, and then spends the rest of the drive alternately feeling bad for her and worrying that someone will see her in his car and get the wrong idea. She turns up dead after a botched abortion, and when the cops show up and are super racist to Hugh, you realize he’s Black. He of course gets named the number one suspect, and he has to spend the rest of the book investigating the crime himself so that he can prove who really did it before he gets framed for a murder he didn’t commit (all while hiding this from his family because he doesn’t want to disappoint them).

I’m giving all that context to say that actually a white author from that era *can* write noir crime fiction about a Black protagonist where the protagonist’s race is a plot point but the protagonist is still portrayed as an actual human being. 

Charles Willeford, on the other hand, was clearly just a racist and I’m sure if he was alive today that would 100% still be the case. (Getting ahead of those “it’s of its time” arguments.)

Even before the twist ending, I spent most of this book writing notes like “sure, some of the plot points are funny in a shock value kind of way, but this protagonist resists all interiority because he’s just a patchwork of traits - hardboiled, violent, drunk, friendly, artistic, cynical, etc. as the scene calls for.” A sequence where the protagonist justifies his violence by comparing himself to a car that almost hits someone (“It was the man or woman *driving* the Buick who almost hit him. Not the Buick. And that was me. I was the automobile, a machine, a well-oiled vehicle now matured to my early thirties”) is particularly bad in hindsight.

The anti-Semitism was also wild, especially considering this book was written post-WWII and Willeford actually *fought in Europe* during the last year or two of the war and apparently won multiple awards following his actions in the Battle of the Bulge. Both psychiatrists in this book are portrayed super weirdly, inevitably asking Harry disgusting, invasive sexual questions, but Harry particularly hates the second one, the “swarthy” European Doctor Fischbach with his “cultivated, but definitely foreign accent” (“this refugee from Aachen”). Is Willeford trying for some commentary on how Black people must be anti-Semitic? Actually, it’s worse (better?) - because the questions the psychiatrists ask are so graphic and offensive that Harry’s hatred of them seems entirely justified. Yet given Harry’s unwillingness to open up emotionally and his general opacity as a character, you’re left with this impression that Willeford’s point is simply that Jewish people are perverts and Black people are objects, and we the readers should find that very comedic and then not think about it further. 

……..

Here’s something I thought about as I was perusing Willeford’s Wikipedia page - is Harry him? Is this character just a way for him to fantasize about what he would like to do if he were Black and therefore, in Willeford’s white supremacist delusion, able to “get away with it”?

This occurred to me because a major aspect of Harry’s character is the fact that he is a failed modern artist. He attended the Chicago Art Institute before the war (although his paintings never sold), and afterwards, in order to continue painting, he skipped out on his wife and child in Chicago to go to art school in Los Angeles. However, he only managed to get an A.A. degree and then quit art altogether because he found himself unable to paint the way he wanted. He still has high (if vague) artistic standards and takes great pride in finding a magazine article where a former teacher of his praises him. However, he is never able to make a living from his art (although when he’s in jail his sketches go for $10 each, which he is annoyed and then amused to learn), and he never seriously considers going back to painting.

Willeford apparently dreamed about being a poet from a young age, and enrolled in an art and art history grad program in 1949, but was dismissed from the university after they learned he had not graduated high school (much less undergrad). He then re-enrolled in the military, where he remained until 1956, after this novel had been published. (He did eventually complete an advanced degree and become a professor; the only anecdote I could find about his teaching career indicates there’s a non-zero chance he would have been #MeToo’d if he’d still be alive.)

Harry and Willeford’s shared artistic aspirations, the shared veneration of higher education/advanced degrees in art combined with the failed attempt to pursue them… 

Interestingly, Harry is written as having served during WWII but not seen combat, or at least that’s what he claims when he’s asked. Instead, he says army officials discovered his artistic skills and assigned him to paint inspirational murals in mess halls in the US. As I was reading I found that to be an odd detail because this book’s concept - WWII vet with unsuccessful artistic dreams who turns to vicious acts of violence - reminded me of, for example, In a Lonely Place, the (legitimate) noir crime fiction classic also by Dorothy B. Hughes, published in 1947, which follows a WWII vet, wannabe screenwriter, and serial killer of women who spends the book trying to romance his beautiful neighbor and outsmart the police detective investigating the murders. “He brought the violence of the war back to peaceful American soil”, “is masculine violence incompatible with the feminine domestic sphere”, etc. etc. - In a Lonely Place is probably the best iteration of this out there (you really see the selfishness of the protagonist, and the women win in the end) but it’s a very common theme. Why wouldn’t Willeford draw on that? Well, although according to his wife Willeford saw some horrific things in the war and didn’t like to talk about it so many he just didn’t want to address the topic head-on.

If any theme in the books seems related to the events of WWII, it’s actually, horrifically, Harry’s obsession with dying by gas/in a gas chamber: “The faint hissing of the gas jets grew louder. It filled the room like a faraway waterfall” when he tries to commit suicide, and later, fantasizing about his execution: 

“What a nice, easy way to die! So painless. Silent and practically odorless and clean! [...] When I writhed on the floor and went into convulsions I wouldn’t even know about it. Actually, it would be a much more horrible experience for the witnesses than it would be for me. This knowledge gave me a feeling of morbid satisfaction.”

Right.

I did some research on Willeford (I felt like I shouldn’t definitively call him a monster until I checked to see if I’d missed something… although apparently he described *himself* as a sociopath in a memoir so I guess he got there ahead of me) and I discovered that surprise, surprise, he was known personally for his dark, crude, extreme sense of humor… and by the way, that he wrote an unpublished sequel to his most famous book, Miami Blues, in which the protagonist strangles his daughters to death and happily faces his arrest and sentence. Just like the protagonist strangles his “common-law” wife to death and happily faces his arrest and sentence in this book. Guess the possibility was on Willeford’s mind a lot?

Frankly the best-case scenario for Willeford/this book is that he wrote it to be racist and sexist and anti-Semitic because he thought it would be funny. 

So why did I even put in the time to finish this book? Well, the plot itself was engaging. It was interesting (although more and more grotesque) to watch what Harry was going to do next - what he was going to fail at, and what he was going to get away with - and the twist ending was certainly shocking. The writing (from a style perspective alone) was decent. 

But I actually started this book just a few days before I started watching the show Beef on Netflix - which is *also* about a man and woman who commit (and often fail at) more and more shocking acts of self-destruction and nihilistic violence as the story goes on. It was an unexpected and very odd parallel!

Of course Beef heads in a very very different direction from this book, tonally, and is better on a story/character level in pretty much every way. (It helps for the writers to believe their protagonists are actual human beings rather than sociopathic killing machines, as it turns out.)

Tonally this book turns out less like Beef and more like, say, The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith, published a year earlier in 1954. An unsympathetic failure - in work, with women, in life - makes a series of poor choices that make his life worse and worse. The main difference, I would say, is that in *her* twist ending, Highsmith had the spine to kill him off. But hey, why *would* Willeford kill off Harry? That’s his hero, after all.

I’m talking about all these other books here because I want to make it super clear - it’s not the era. It’s not the genre. It’s not the tone. It’s not the premise. It’s not even the twist. All of these things can be done well - and have been, by other authors. (And for the record, if you wanted to read a post-WWII-era book about a Black man spiraling into what many would see as madness due to problems in American society, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man had been published two years earlier, in 1952.) When I criticize *this* book, I am criticizing it, and the choices and beliefs of its author, *very* specifically.

So read something (anything) else! Don’t read this.



(P.S. All that said, I did genuinely laugh when Harry, in both the psychiatric hospital and jail, is given “a fresh package of king-sized cigarettes furnished by the Red Cross.”)

[Krok Zero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dayumn. Willeford was one subversive motherfucker in the '50s. Like his contemporaneous masterpiece The Woman Chaser , this is a dark novel with serious ambition and zero pretense toward the pulp thrills promised by its original marketing--or even its current marketing, deceptively packaged in the Library of America's 1950s crime-novel volume. But unlike The Woman Chaser, which was basically a very deranged comedy, Pick-Up is pure nihilism, a sustained howl of bleak, hopeless agony. Honestly, it's not for the faint of heart. But if you're willing to follow Willeford down the darkest alleys of the soul, there are ample rewards.

Another reviewer mentioned Leaving Las Vegas as a reference point, and that film occurred to me as well. But while the premise and tone is quite similar, I daresay Willeford went in a considerably ballsier direction with the narrative. The concept of suicide is introduced early enough in the book that it's not a spoiler to say that death plays a major role in this story of lovestruck, alcoholic depressives in '50s San Francisco. It's fair to say that the characters spend all their time either dead or wishing for death. Or drinking till they black out. Like I said, not for the faint of heart.

So why is this brutal stuff so compelling? Willeford treats depression with respect. There's not a trace of hysteria or melodrama here--nor, on the other end of the spectrum, is there a romanticization of the characters' self-destructive lifestyle (a crime of which some have accused Leaving Las Vegas, though I've never been sure I agree). The psychology, while simple, feels heartbreakingly authentic. Willeford writes with the cool, readable propulsion of a pulp master. And he builds up to an absolutely devastating final-page twist that, as the AV Club's Keith Phipps noted, changes everything and nothing about what comes before.

It's so weird to think that the Willeford who wrote this and The Woman Chaser went on to pen the near-geriatric Miami crime novels about Hoke Moseley in the '80s. I've read 3/4 of that series now, and they're perfectly fine as light cop thrillers go, centered on an everyman detective besieged by a midlife crisis. But they're so tame compared to this early subversive stuff. Funny parallel between this and the Hoke Moseley book Sideswipe, written 30 years later: both have characters who are "non-objective painters." Dude really likes that phrase.

[AB · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to pretend that I am well-read/watched on noir. It’s one of my passions and something that I can always return to. It’s irresistible. It lives in this world of being both pulp and high art. It’s both hyper realistic and surrealist at the same time. Over time, I’ve been drawn towards the strain of noir that deals with a tortured soul and Pick Up fits this perfectly.

As noir fiction goes, Pick Up was pretty damn good. An alcoholic meets and alcoholic and they slowly descend to contemplating suicide. It’s a touching story to begin with and Harry Jordan’s painfully tragic attempts at dealing with his predicaments amplifies how awful everything is. The story has got it all, seedy areas of San Francisco, vivid descriptions of sex, the stereotypical distrust felt towards psychoanalysis, and very poetic descriptions. It was a short book, only 166 pages, but its subject matter was heavy and felt much longer.

Pick Up had a very interesting twist, although plot wise unimportant, at the end. I’m not one for twists but I really enjoyed it. There’s no meandering plot here, it stays on the rails and it hits hard. I’d highly recommend this book.

[Jim Reddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story about two sad, lonely, self destructive people. After a strong start I lost interest, but then I was drawn back in. Pretty depressing at times but the hard boiled writing kept me reading and every time I thought I knew where the story was going it went in a different direction. 3.5 rounded to up to 4.

[The Professor · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We’re going away, aren’t we, Harry?” Absolutely not the novel promised by the (deliciously) salacious mass-market covers although you just know those publishers must have thought “how the hell are we going to market this?”. This is a compulsively readable – and, in digital-age 2019, all too familiar – account of two lost souls embarking on a dance of death which ends up having more than a little in common with Sartre's "Nausea". Noir and French Existentialism have always shared a Venn diagram and you can’t tell me someone with Willeford’s academic credentials didn’t know exactly what he was doing here.

I could not have come at this novel from a more different place, I had my head in 1,000 pages of 90s SF and fancied a quick detour and a shot of the hard stuff. As usual my old friend American noir did not let me down. Quite why beard-strokers have orgasms over Steinbeck or Kerouac is a mystery to me when they could be enjoying Willeford or Jim Thompson or Dan J Marlowe or Gil Brewer but, hey, live and let live. Living is what Harry Jordan is barely doing when we meet him in “Pick-Up”, making single-figure dollars in bars and kitchens and catastrophically encountering va-va-voom alcoholic Helen. Make no mistake, Helen’s drinking is not pretty. Some of the blurbs may have sensationalistically described her as a lush but when this girl isn’t drinking herself to sleep she’s hooking up with marines in bars and having sex with sailors in restaurant booths. Harry stupidly jacks his job in when he gets together with Helen, both of them having a high old time on the whisky, beer and cheese-sticks…until the dollars run out. Broke, self-dramatising, suicidal and, more to the point, out of drink, they check themselves into the nearest booby house where lots of laffs ensue. When they emerge, desperation sets in and then the novel goes places you really don’t expect. You’re looking for the moment Helen asks Harry to kill some rich type for her but this girl is too gonzoed out of her coconut to be designing and all Harry wants to do is drink and paint. As they see it, life leaves them with only one, terrible, option.

There is a distinct sense of the God-awfulness of depression-era American here, of two unskilled twenty-somethings throwing their hands up in despair and settling for Freud’s thanatos, the death instinct. There is also something very more-ish about the way Willeford writes. There is no pretension, no look-at-me literariness, just compassion, wisdom, a lot of humanity and a willingness to look darkness square in the eye. For example:

“The man, Harry Jordan, was a very collected individual, a man of the world. Nothing bothered him now. He was about to withdraw his presence from the world and depart on a journey into space, into nothingness. Somewhere, a womb was waiting for him, a dark, warm place where the living was easy, where it was effortless to get by. A wonderful place where a man didn’t have to work or think or talk or listen or dream or cavort or play or use artificial stimulation. A kind old gentleman with a long dark cloak was waiting for him. Death. Never had Death appeared so attractive...”

That is insidiously readable. In the last third of the novel – during which Willeford clearly invites you to start hating Harry – the novel starts deploying a lot of “wait, what?” character reveals until a penultimate last line reveal attempts to go “ta-daa!” and set the novel in a new light. I didn’t quite buy the last reveal – I took it more figuratively than literally – and there’s a tiny sense of tricksiness to it; is this a shaggy dog story? Indeed, despite “Until I Am Dead” being Willeford’s preferred title “Pick-Up” ends up feeling like Beelzebub himself picked up Harry Jordan, had a lot of devilish fun with him then dumped him back down in San Francisco to pick up the pieces. Life’s great joke ends up being on Harry. This short novel is a piece of exceptionally dark chocolate that, as with so much noir, you could hand to anyone feeling lost, unskilled, done over by life and they would completely get it: “We did this on purpose. It isn’t accidental.”

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first experience with a Willeford novel. A few decades after the publication (in 1955) of this second book of his, the author hit his stride with the popular 'Hoke Moseley' series. I can only hope he got better.

'Pick-Up' brought to mind the kind of pulp fiction which, in the '50s, was most easily found on 'spinning tree' racks in airports and pharmacies: disposable; neither good nor bad but serviceable in the days when the noir style was popular.

It's certainly a 'cherchez la femme' tale and here, in the pathetic form of Helen Meredith, one immediately finds the femme. When first released as a paperback original, there was a tagline: "He hooked up with a helpless lush." And there you have it; that's it for plot. Equally nihilistic Harry Jordan finds his soulmate and, before long, they reveal a mutual death wish.

Needless to say, things don't bode well for the couple during the instant-courtship:

"I'm pretty much a failure in life, Helen. Does it matter to you?"

The two share genuine attraction and desire but inside both of them nobody's home. Harry has a certain interest in painting and Helen revels in a welcome opportunity to nurture - but it's not like either one has a personality to speak of. They're pretty much ciphers who basically live to drink. (Harry takes and drops jobs to keep them in booze and rent money.)

It's only because Willeford is a reasonably competent writer that the novel's first half is of mild interest. (The 3 stars is for basic literary know-how.) But the doomed lovers decide on a suicide pact that fails. They later try again and partially succeed, landing Harry with the law and a protracted period of observation - when all he wants is execution. (This latter section is particularly languid.)

Unfortunately, most of the novel's second half is a nosedive. Once or twice there's a minimal perk-up - and (considering the period) the so-called twist ending feels unearned and tacked on.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable noir novel. Brutal, stark, terse, unforgetable; and could possibly lead to drinking.

[Stephen J. Golds · Rating 5 out of 5]

A manic depressive failed artist and a beautiful alcoholic Runaround Sue, it sounds almost like a Bukowski novel without the dark humor.

This is a dark story about two hopeless people at the bottom of a hole digging themselves deeper, but there is a lot of human kindness and love written about in a very relatable way.

Highly recommended