REVIEWED BY TONY BAER:

   

ERSKINE CALDWELL – The Bastard. Heron Press, hardcover, 1929. Novel Selections #51, paperback, 1953.

   In a review of Harold Q. Masur’s Bury Me Deep, the PaperbackWarrior blog criticized the protagonist’s supposed lack of virility, claiming “The problem is that American crime fiction really hadn’t grown a set of balls by 1947.” They go on to credit Mickey Spillane as the tonic.

   The claim is so false it makes me want to cry. But I won’t for fear they’d impugn my manhood or something.

   Anywho, no one reading The Bastard could accuse the protagonist of “lacking balls.”

   Gene, who I’ll refer to as “the bastard,” is a bastard. In all the senses.

   We’re introduced to him as he murders a patron of his whore (literally — I’d never use the word figuratively unless I was really really mad (which I am not at the moment)) of a mommy.

   Then, his mother either not knowing or not caring, the bastard decides to become a client.

   And that’s the light humor to begin the tale that only gets darker from there.

   It’s an episodic book that just goes from scene to scene of aimless, conscienceless rape and murder.

   Then, like Alex in Clockwork Orange’s final chapter (the one deleted from the film and American edition of the novel), he falls in love and decides to settle down.

   But karma’s a bitch. And his wife births a freak whose sheer hideousness destroys his wife, and sets the bastard once more adrift.

   If you like to rubberneck car wrecks, this one’s for you.