Sat 12 Sep 2009
A Review by Geoff Bradley: JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS – The Red Right Hand.
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Reviews[22] Comments
JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS – The Red Right Hand. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1945.
First published in New Detective Magazine, March 1945. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft. Shown: Pocket 385, pb, 1946; Dell D203, pb, Great Mystery Library #9, 1957.
It’s been a while since I despaired of catching up with all the books I would want to read so I have piles of books by old favourites that I haven’t yet got around to, books that I have acquired over the years meaning to try, and new books whose descriptions seem tempting for one reason or another.
This fell into the second category, an impossible crime story that comes highly recommended from some quarters including that indefatigable searcher of impossible crime themes, Bob Adey.
Indeed it was a visit from Bob, who persuaded my son to try the book, even finding a copy in a local second-hand book shop, that led to me finally getting around to it.
I had heard that it was a difficult book to read, that the language was turgid and the action was slow-moving, but in fact I was soon into things and though the layout was rather unusual it never lost my interest.
The story is told by Harry Riddle, a medical doctor, starting with him sitting at the desk of Adam MacComerou in the wilds of Connecticut recounting the story of what has happened in order to try make sense of it.
His recollections are not in chronological order as he muses over what he has been told: the story of Inis St. Erme, a rich young man, and Elinor Darrie, his bride to be, who are driving overnight to Vermont in order to be married, and how a tramp that they give a lift to kills St. Erme and drives off creating much mayhem before impossibly disappearing in the region of MacComerou’s house.
Finally the story catches up to current time and Riddle’s writings finally allow him to explain what has happened.
There would appear to be a few coincidences abounding, unless I’m missing something here, but the denouement is comprehensive and clears up the mysteries pretty well.
An unusual style, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I’m glad I can now add it to my list (still being compiled) of books read.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Ramblehouse.com has information on Joel Townsley Rogers. Click on his name. There also is a link to the website hosted by Roger’s son which gives many details on the stories and novels.
I’ve read the pulp magazine version of THE RED RIGHT HAND in NEW DETECTIVE and had fun comparing it to the novel. This novel is very strange and some consider it to be one of the best mysteries ever written.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Walker
Do you remember any significant changes between the pulp story and the novel, other than being expanded, of course?
— Steve
September 13th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
This almost surreal novel is one of those that really pays off if you stick with it to the end when it turns out the confusion is by design and not accident or lack of skill. This is a rare one that deserves the the accolade tour de force.
And to prove the book is no fluke try and find his 1946 novel The Lady in the Dice. Not quite a tour de force, but worth reading.
IMDB also lists a story “The Murderer” by Rogers adapted for television in 1949 as an episode of Suspense and again in 1955 for Star Tonight.
Re the changes from the pulp to the paperback editions I was always amused by the changes between the original book and the Detective Book Club selections. Most of the Perry Mason titles got by with little changes, but there were substantial differences between the DBC version of the Lam and Cool books and the racier text of the paperback and hardcover editions.
Though I can’t think of the title off hand, there is at least one Lam and Cool title where a girl tears her clothes and cries rape in order to get Donald in trouble, and in the DBC version it is toned down to the point you almost miss the what’s going on.
Guess that was the Reader’s Digest version.
September 13th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
You’re certainly right about the Detective Book doing a considerable amount of censorship in their editions. Whole sections of the James Bond books simply disappeared, just to provide another example.
On the other hand, for a lot of mystery fiction published in the 1940s through the 1960s, though, those DBC 3-in-1’s are the only inexpensive way of reading books that can be awfully difficult to come by otherwise.
But what I wondering about in my comment to Walker was if he remembered any significant plot twists that were changed and so on — things that Rogers himself was responsible for in expanding the novel, not cuts that were made as part of an editor’s wishes.
(I don’t think any trimming should have developed in going from pulp story to hardcover, but you never know.)
September 13th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
One of my favourite crime novels, as unique as The Face on the Cutting Room Floor.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
I agree about DBC, and I understood what you were asking regarding the pulp to book changes. I’ve been told there are even some minor changes from the Black Mask serialization to the final printed version of The Maltese Falcon, but I don’t know personally.
It’s interesting to see how some books changed from an initial pulp appearance to book form, or even in the cases where books were adapted and reprinted in the pulps.
I would also be curious about books by Gardner, Stout, Christie, Biggers, Marquand, and others who were often serialized in the slicks. It’s always interesting to see what different editors do to a work for different markets — a bit like the notorious title changes of so many American editions of Christie novels or EQMM’s infamous habit of title changes on reprints and original shorts.
Re DBC those, and sometimes even the Reader’s Digest Condensed books can be a good place to find hard to find books cheap, and in the case of RDCB often with fine full color illustrations.
There are substantial changes between some Brit and American editions of works too, often going well beyond things like changing gas to petrol or trunk to boot.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I looked at my notes concerning the magazine version and the novel but they don’t go into detail about the two versions. I did notice the revision seemed very extensive as far as changing the words used, language, etc. The magazine length was very long, far longer than the usual novelet in NEW DETECTIVE.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Martin —
I was glad to have Geoff’s review to post, and in large part because his situation was similar to mine. He had to be nagged into it, and I thought running it here on the blog might just be the push I need to read it myself.
I started it once and didn’t get very far, as I recall — don’t know why — but maybe, just maybe, next time.
Trouble is, there are too many books to read, and the older I get, the more there are. THE FACE ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR is only another.
David —
Reader’s Digest has always gotten a lot of flack for condensing their books, but obviously they were always upfront about it. The people at DBC only did a little bit of trimming, but so far as I know, they never revealed it in their advertising or the books themselves.
Walker or others can probably tell us more about Hammett and Black Mask, but going back to the original magazines sources for a number of authors has always seemed like a worthwhile project to do, whether the pulps or the slicks.
Walker —
Thanks for the input on RED RIGHT HAND. I’d remembered the pulp story as being longer than usual. It’s good to have that confirmed.
To anyone who’s read the book —
Is it filmable? Or is the book’s impact so dependent on its structure that trying to make a movie out of it wouldn’t even be worth trying?
I see on IMDB that only one story of Rogers has been adapted for film, “The Murderer,” and that twice on TV. It would seem that more of his work should have picked up than that.
September 13th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
If Memento worked then the right director could probably handle this one, though you have to wonder.
I’ll grant they may take some getting into, but read both The Face on the Cutting Room Floor and this one, and if you have never read it You Play the Red and the Black Comes Up. The latter a bit easier to get into than the others.
Face isn’t the tour de force the Rogers book is, but well worth reading.
Someday one of us should compile a list of the genre classics everyone has heard of, but only a few have actually read. I’m sure we would all be surprised at some of the titles on the list.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
From what little I’ve seen of the Nero Wolfe novellas by Rex Stout that usually appeared first in The American Magazine—-the magazine stories seemed much shorter (abridged) in the magazines. Don’t know if Stout first wrote a short version for the magazine then filled it out for book publication or vice versa.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Bob
Now that’s interesting. They were billed as novellas or short novels, and (as far I can remember) described as “complete in this issue.”
I suppose one way to research the question is to do a line-by-line comparison, just to know if any two versions ARE different — but from there? I confess I don’t know either.
— Steve
September 13th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I know some of the Stout novellas were considerably changed from their first appearance to book publication. Some of the earlier incarnations were included in one or two anthologies of uncollected Stout material.
Some of the novellas Philip Wylie wrote were expanded a bit when they appeared alone in paperback (Experiment in Crime, The Smuggled Atom Bomb …) even from their collected appearance in hard covers. And Leslie Charteris was always tinkering with the Saint stories, updating them mostly, though he was persuaded to leave The Last Hero alone despite its obvious age.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
I guess that if it’s the author that’s doing the tinkering, it’s all right — with one exception that I can think of.
When John D. MacDonald put together some collections of pulp stories from the 1940s, he couldn’t be talked out of updating them. Things like changing a radio studio to a TV studio, but by switching one word for another without updating the whole ambiance as well.
It was like colorizing black-and-white movies. A terrible idea, as far as I was concerned — not that he asked me! — and who can argue with the author?
September 14th, 2009 at 12:05 am
An author isn’t always the best judge of his own material. Ask any editor.
My favorite example of an editor saving an author from himself was Maxwell Perkins talking Hemingway out of the masturbation scene he wanted in For Whom The Bell Tolls (see the Carlos Baker bio).
Sometimes the writer is just too close, like MacDonald updating those old pulp shorts.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:48 am
David I guess Hemingway didn’t agree completely with the advice of Maxwell Perkins because I remember the Colonel masturbating in the 1950 novel by Hemingway, Across the River and Into the Trees.
But maybe even a better example of Perkins saving an author from himself involves Perkins editing and cutting the immense manuscripts that Thomas Wolfe submitted.
Of course an argument can be made that Perkins was wrong in his advice to both Hemingway and Wolfe.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I have seen some of the Wolfe novellas in the American Magazine. I did quick paragraph to paragraph comparisons and there were omissions from the magazine stories but since I was looking at someone elses magazines and time was limited, I could not make a close study of the situation. Maybe the “complete in this issue” meant that the story was not to continue in the next issue?
Re: the John D. MacDonald story collection that you referred to. I read those collected stories and also believe it was a big mistake for him to have “updated” them.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
There is a masturbation scene in To Have and To Have Not too, but I don’t think it would have worked in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and frankly neither To Have and To Have Not or Across the River Into The Trees are Hemingway’s best.
Perkins didn’t just edit Wolfe, he cut-and-pasted him into something like an actual narrative instead of just a flow of words.
I’ve always wondered if he was as hands-on editing Van Dine as he was his big three Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Wolfe — all of whom Van Dine’s sales helped pay for.
Still, while I don’t always agree with them, I can’t think of an example where an editor’s hand didn’t improve my work. A good editor sees things the writer misses.
Leslie Charteris went so far in praise of Monty Haydon at Thriller as to include him as a major character in the Saint saga. And while Hammett used to try to slip things by him, I suspect even he would have agreed Joe Shaw’s work in Black Mask had a major impact on his eventual success.
But back to the original subject, like Steve the differences between pulp and magazine versions and book versions of certain writers are always interesting, and you have to wonder if it is editorial input or self-editing on writers part.
Writers like Carter Brown and Frank Kane used to regularly have their books run in the men’s sweat mags, and in some cases there are major changes from the magazine appearance to the paperback original, beyond the needs of abridgment.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
David
In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve just edited your last comment.
— Steve
September 14th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Another editor, this time with a pulp connection, that used to edit, rewrite, and even change the endings of stories, was H.L. Gold, editor of GALAXY. I’ve read some writers were reluctant to submit work because of his habit of rewriting, even though he probably improved the work.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I may have to read The Red Right Hand after all. A friend and I tried many years ago and agreed it wasn’t worth the effort … but I can always be convinced.
On the discussion of differences between pulp and book versions of the same story or the DBC editions vs the original publications or even the American Magazine novellas vs the book publications, I am reminded of George Harmon Coxe’s experiences with the latter situation. I have discussed this briefly in my book on Flashgun Casey, but basically Coxe wrote both versions himself, usually the novella first and then expanded it to book length. In the case of one of the Murdock novels, The Camera Clue, he wrote the novel first and then cut his own text for The American Magazine. George told me once that sometimes he would make major changes between the versions (including the name of the murderer), but I have to admit I’ve never taken the time to go back and make the textual comparisons to test that assertion. Perhaps you have just given me a new project — as though I needed new projects.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I’d like to take on a project like that for Stout’s Nero Wolfe novellas but it is very time consuming to read stories side by side. I only had the chance to do a line by line comparison for “Help Wanted, Male”. The longer book version was much superior to the shorter magazine version because of the added descriptions and scenes. If I remember correctly, the magazine version was about 15,000 words. The book version was about 25,000 words. The plot points were exactly the same in both versions.
May 12th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
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