Making Adjustments

Whenever I start reading a crime or mystery novel, the first thing I do is take a look at the copyright date. My reason for doing this is twofold. First, I need to know whether the film that will play out in the theater of my mind will be in color or black and white. My rule of thumb is that anything before 1960 will be B&W, while anything from the Sixties forward will be in color. Needless to say, that will also affect the garb of the characters and the vehicles they drive. Second, I need to understand the context of the currency, and that's the hardest part of reading a period crime novel. 

For example, Philip Marlowe is always paying off some informant, slipping him a dollar for some valuable information. Nowadays, try to buy info for a buck and your stoolie might say, "Hey, buddy, where's the other nineteen to go along with that?" On the other hand, he might decide to loosen someone's tongue with some liquor, some slugs of Old Forester. Even then, it's a cheap investment, since he can get an informant drunk, have a few shots himself, and still get change back from his $5...and that includes sliding a dime to the bartender as a tip. Even Marlowe's rates ($25 a day, plus expenses) sound picayune by today's standards, where a lunch can cost that much easily. It helps, though, when I remember that my grandfather was at the time making $3,500 per year, and that was a excellent salary, him being a stationary engineer. In comparison, a journalist on the same census report was listed as making $2,800 a year, with a teacher earning slightly less. Understanding Marlowe's rates also helps me to understand his clients. Somebody who could pay him $25 a day, plus expenses (let's call it $35) is pretty well heeled. Could you hire a detective for $450 a day? It explains why Marlowe's clients often wore diamonds.

In crime books, there are often robberies, kidnappings and murders. More often than not, the motive is money. When I read about a robbery that nets a cool $5,000 or even $10,000, my first thought is, You could have got that with a job at Burger King...no guns involved. Even a ransom demand of $50,000 seems petty, less than a year's salary in a mediocre job. I remember an episode of the old TV series The Saint where an actress and an actor were kidnapped from the stage of an Italian sword & sandal film. The kidnappers wanted $25,000 for the actress, but only $5,000 for the musclebound actor. When the aggrieved actor complained to the kidnappers, he was told, "Well, we had to ask for something we thought they would pay." An insult in comparison, perhaps, but still a princely sum, equal to about $60,000 today...well, I guess it was rather insulting after all since that's still a mediocre job these days. When you move into the rather rarefied air of millions you begin to get away from actual sums and start dealing with ideas and concepts. A title like Million Dollar Murder evoked a response from a reader that had nothing to do with the actual sum. A million dollars was an unreachable amount, a synonym for "more money than you can imagine"...which was also a common line in crime novels back in the day. Today, a million bucks is a lot of money only in an abstract sense, a tenuous tie with tradition. In reality, it's not much to get excited about. Anyone in a mediocre job ($50,00/year) will earn that much in just twenty years. The whole point of citing a million dollars was to evoke the feeling that that was more than the average reader could ever make...doing something legal,

Even the lofty billion ($1,000,000,000) is on the verge of becoming an endangered species. If a million bucks was unimaginable, then a billion was inconceivable, the sort of thing that might cause an embolism if a crook considered it too long. Nowadays, billion has become the new million, which has become the new thousand. If this keeps up, the next time you pay your bill at McDonald's, you might have to say, "Sorry, I don't have anything smaller than the new Booker T. Washington $20,000,000 bill." It can get quite depressing reading a period crime novel, not for any action in the book itself, but because the devolution of our money really hits home. Sure, wages were low, but so were prices, and the money you earned actually had value. People might look down on what my grandfather earned in the Thirties, but his six kids never went hungry and always had shoes. 

So, when I read crime novels and money invariably enters the picture, I have to make adjustments to keep the amounts in perspective. However, it's too depressing to think of what that would be equal to now. I find it is better to immerse myself in the story and the times, adjusting myself to the book rather than the book to me. Yeah, I'm happier that way.

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Unique Powers

If you read any science fiction at all during the 1950s & 1960s, you've seen the astonishing work of artist Richard M. Powers (24 February 1921 - 9 March 1996). His style was arresting and unique, and he was allowed freedom of expression and design by publishers -- particularly Ian Ballantine -- such as was no other artist. So stunning was his work that he shaped the world of mass market paperbacks for more than two generations, and inspired both writers and other illustrators. If Powers is less known today than he should be, it's possibly because publishing is less individual in nature now and more corporate; also, although there is still a strong following for surrealism among collectors, those who purchase mass market paperbacks have been so bombarded by photo-realism and photography they won't respond to anything else.

My encounter with Richard Powers was years ago at an American Booksellers Association convention, where he was empaneled with science fiction writers and artists. I had been invited to cover the event for a small trade magazine I then edited. I wanted to meet the artist I had admired for such a long time, as well as writer Larry Niven, another member of the panel; as far as the other artists and writers scheduled, they could come if they wanted, but I had no strong feelings, one way or another. But those two, yes, very much, and, honestly, Powers more than Niven, for I had met Niven before, and would again. 

What brings Richard Powers to my immediate attention after all these years is a recent acquisition of first edition paperbacks. The scans on this page are some of the treasures that found their way to me. One of the innovations ushered in by Powers was the use of both the cover and back of the book to showcase the artwork. A case in point is this wraparound art for Damon Knight's Hell's Pavement, published in 1955 by Lion Books. As you can see, one of Powers' fortes was conjuring landscapes that were alien in the extreme. There is a certainly irony in this as the uncle who mentored him was a landscape painter, though painting billboards put bread on the table

Richard Powers received formal training at the University of Illinois' School of Fine Art. After a stint at the Army Signal Corps' studio in NYC during WW2, he studied under New England artist Jay Connaway, a painter known for landscapes and seascapes, and I think we see something of that influence in this full cover wraparound for the Ballantine edition of Out of the Deeps (1953) by John Wyndham, a British writer more famous for his novel Day of the Triffids (1951), which was made into an okay film in 1966 by Allied Artists and a better serial by the BBC in 1981. Ballantine gave Powers full control over art, design and typography, to stunning effect.

The panel discussion at the ABA convention took place before a large audience, mostly science fiction enthusiasts, as well as a smattering of publishers, writers, artists and distributors. Now, 1990 seems so very long ago, and a different world, not just for the end of the Cold War and apartheid, or the start of the Gulf War and the IMDB, but in science fiction as well -- Ballard published The Atrocity Exhibition, and the now-raging sub-genre of steampunk got a big boost with Gibson's & Sterling's The Difference Engine; giants like Silverberg, Pohl, Leiber and Le Guin were experiencing new heights of popularity; and Powers was back from Jamaica, where he had lived since the late 1960s, after the death of his wife, concentrating on gallery work. When the subject of book cover art arose, discussion inevitably turned to styles, motifs and trends. When Powers drew upon his vast and protean experiences in publishing, one of the younger artists remarked that times, tastes and standards had changed, which was why Powers' work was no longer popular. Powers took the affront with grace and wit and did not break the whelp's nose, and I was too far away to throw anything. Later, privately, when I asked about it, Powers just smiled shyly and shrugged.

This cover for Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human (1953) is another example of Powers taking full control of the publishing process, creating a full wraparound cover, designing the typeface for the title and author credit, as well as creating a "void" in the art on the reverse so the description of this novel of human mutations can be displayed in white print. The main portion of the painting is extremely dramatic and a close examination reveals that many of the novel's thematic elements were incorporated with various levels of subtlety on and around the gripping right hand. Of all the publishers with whom Powers worked, Ian Ballantine was the most permissive, and the more freedom he was given, the more liberties he took.

Although Powers eventually returned to providing covers for some paperback books in the 1970s & 1980s, most of his work was for better paying companies such as Easton Press, and in some instances he convinced publishers to use paintings he had previously created for gallery sales as covers for hardbacks. He also provided work for periodicals, record albums (and compact discs), comic books, advertising, brochures, collectible plates and porcelain figures, calendars and convention guides; and his original paintings are still very popular in gallery sales and auctions. He was fully employed and vitally involved in art and publishing right up to 1996, when he died from an aneurysm.

It was a real thrill listening to Richard Powers talk about his long career and the many people he had known, and the chance to meet and speak with him, however briefly, is really what sticks most in my mind about that trek to Las Vegas for the ABA convention. One thing I've leaned from a life lived in the pages of books is that it's generally very easy to meet an author; sometimes you can't avoid them, no matter how much you try (just surrender or commit harakiri if approached by the author of a self-help  or how-to-gamble book -- there's no escape), but artists are much more difficult to track down, especially the good ones. During Powers' paperback heyday, artists were never credited and were discouraged from leaving a personal mark on the art, so it's an indication of Powers' influence that a goodly number of his covers may be identified by the word "POWERS" placed discretely within the design.