This is a very fine appreciation of the man behind Parker, who shows up yet again on the big screen this week. It includes this beautifully formatted footnote:
A list of Westlake’s most prominent novelistic pseudonyms: Richard Stark (Parker, inspired by the actor Richard Widmark), Alan Marshall (erotica), Edwin West (erotica), Curt Clark (science fiction), Tucker Coe (private-eye series featuring detective Mitch Tobin), and Samuel Holt (about a former TV detective named … Sam Holt). This does not include several more he used for one-shot books and magazine stories, including Ben Christopher and Grace Salacious.
Grace Salacious! Has there ever been a finer pseudonym?
No.
I read a couple of those Dortmunder novels a couple of years back, but not the Parker ones. Thanks for the tip.
I highly recommend the Darwyn Cooke (authorized) graphic novel adaptations. I found ’em one morning in June of last year in Angelico’s apartment (Angelico, mysteriously, was not home at the time), and later bought ’em for myself.
Cool, thanks for that as well. Casting Statham seems an odd choice, as the Dortmunder books had more humor than I associate with the esteemed actor. And I didn’t know the Gibson movie was from Westlake … I really enjoyed that one.
‘I found ‘em one morning in June of last year in Angelico’s apartment (Angelico, mysteriously, was not home at the time)[.]
You’ve been snooping.
You want to get to know a guy, it doesn’t hurt to start with his living room bookshelf.
The Darwyn Cooke adaptations rank among the best comics produced in the last ten years.
Sounds interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwyn_Cooke
Her name’s divine, but she was so hellacious:
This is the story of a Grace Salacious….
Every curve she had was tres bodacious
But it’s “Look, don’t touch” with Grace Salacious…
With a Frigidaire spacious, and a hunger rapacious,
It’s no wonder, the curviness of Grace Salacious…
Curviness?
Curvaciousness, surely.
Surely.
But the frigid cold grace
Of the frigidaire space
Surely kept Salacious
From feverish sebaceousness.
Out of thin air, and into the thick.
Re-entry problems make a writer sick.
Rotating pen-names is a clever trick
When you’re out of thin air and into the thick.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.