‘Pulp’ Fiction Gore Vidal Style

‘Pulp’ Fiction Gore Vidal Style

April 29, 2015 0 By EVA

Gore Vidal is known widely for his very polished style of writing, a high minded intellectual, political commentator and essayist, who focused most of his writing on the United States and its history and society. Vidal is also known for writing several films as well like Caligula. When Vidal passed away in 2012 he was referred to as a “literary juggernaut” by the Los Angeles Times.

Well things were not always the case for the controversial writer: before all the essays, plays, screenplays and novels there was a time in the 1950s just as he was making a name for himself, Vidal was down on his luck and cash as well. At the time, Vidal went for advice Thieves-fall-outto William Faulkner on his next move and was advised to avoid Hollywood, so in turn Vidal began to write pulp fiction. Vidal wrote three novels under the pseudonym Edgar Box, and even wrote under the name Katherine Everard for one of his pulp fiction novels.

In 1953, Vidal wrote one more pulp fiction novel under the name of Cameron Kay, Thieves Fall Out. Over the course of his life, Vidal tried to distance himself from this specific book and refused to ever reprint it in his own name. Every other pulp fiction novel he produced during that time have subsequently been reprinted in Vidal’s name. Thieves Fall Out on the other hand seems to be the bastard child of the family that no one wants to acknowledge. However, death has a way of bringing everything to the table and Thieves Fall Out has been revived and given a second life to be seen on book shelves bearing the name of Gore Vidal.

The book follows a man, Peter Wells, caught up in events that are much bigger than he is. He’s a down on his luck American hired to smuggle a relic out of Cairo when revolution is about to explode in the streets and heads could roll any minute, described as one part Casablanca and one part torn from the headlines tabloid reportage.

The question we really need to ask is, does this book deserve to be revived or should it have been left the unacknowledged bastard child that Vidal had intended?

Having read Vidal’s work back in college it seems unfair to compare Thieves Fall Out to something like 1876, Burr or Lincoln: the best way to approach this is to think of it as it is intended, a pulp novel. This is like a B-movie created to be sleazy, cheesy, and full of cliches.

You can tell this easily by the characters involved in the book; you have a hunchback piano player, a gold toothed criminal mastermind, a French siren described as “lovely but bad”, and a Cairo police officer who is basically playing all sides for his own gain. The characters may be cheesy and the book may be trash in the eyes of literary minds, but it can be a relatively entertaining read regardless.

If you look back to interviews with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg when they were working on Indiana Jones, they stated that they took inspiration from the pulp novels of the 50s when they were piecing together their masterpiece. When reading Thieves Fall Out, you can see there were similarities. The main character Peter Wells, while not the archaeological dynamo like Indy, does still possess that confidence and suave approach like Indy. One could also draw parallels with Peter Wells to Nathan Drake as well. Peter Wells is a great character that you want to pull for, as he attempts to complete his quest while looking for love in all the wrong places.

The book is very well paced, never lingering too long and can be easily read through without any difficulty. The fact that Vidal spent time in Cairo in 1948 really shines through as he adds a lot of colour to the city.

Vidal has shown in his other books that he can create a mood and set a scene like few writers can and this shines through in Thieves. A problem I found with my first read through is that are a few plot lines that seemingly disappear; primarily the one tied to the plots MacGuffin, the necklace of Queen Tiy. It is failed plot points like this that tend to hurt this book, never to the point that makes it unenjoyable, but it is a little bit of a let down.

So why should you read this book? It really shows a glimpse of where Vidal was at in his career at the time; he was coming off a series of successes and was forced to find a way to survive in a depressed book market, so he gave the public what it wanted in something that played out like the B-movies of the time. This is not a book that will go down for the ages as a masterpiece of Gore Vidal, but rather a great writer choosing to put out something for mass appeal. While the cheesiness and cliches are very much a prominent part of this book, it is a great quick read that never lags.

3stars