Tue 27 Sep 2022
Reviewed by Tony Baer: CHARLES WILLEFORD – Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
CHARLES WILLEFORD – Kiss Your Ass Goodbye. Dennis McMillan, hardcover, 1987.
What Willeford left us with is a series of novels demonstrating the psychopathology of everyday life. The anti-heroes that populate his books aren’t weirdos. They are more often than not quite socially acceptable. Even exemplary. They’re not the ex-cons of Jim Thompson who the reader can always dismiss with a: “well — of course there ARE psychos out there—I’m just lucky I’ve never met one of these crazy people.” Willeford’s psychopaths are frequently very successful in business: art critics, pharma executives, preachers, used car salesmen. Even the most successful.
Add to this that unlike Jim Thompson’s anti-heroes, who nearly always perish at the end (with a nod to the Hays Commission) — Willeford’s psychos are frequently still out there. There’s no justice in Willeford’s world. Just ick. You’d better watch your step.
Willeford shows us that rather than being the exception to the rule; rather than being a hindrance to social climbing — sociopathology is a time-worn path to success. And it’s out there. Objects appearing in the mirror are closer than you think.
Here Willeford excerpts and amends Hank’s story from The Shark Infested Custard. Where Custard is a woven narrative of four friends in Miami and the dark side of the wild oats they sow, Kiss Your Ass Goodbye focuses only on one of the players: Hank. My understanding is that Willeford was having trouble finding a publisher for Custard — so this constitutes a pared down version (in word count — not misanthropy) for Dennis McMillan Publications.
It’s got a great first paragraph:
When Hank, a highly successful big-pharma sales rep (and renowned cocksman) first encounters Jannaire he finds himself ineluctably drawn to her reek “of primeval swamp, dark guanoed caves, sea water in movement, armpit sweat, mangroves at low tide, Mayan sacrificial blood, Bartolin glands, Dial soap, mulberry leaves, jungle vegetation, saffron, kittens in a cardboard box, YWCA volleyball courts, conch shells, Underground Atlanta, the Isle of Lesbos, and sheer joyâ€.
Jannaire has a big surprise for Hank, however. And not the kind he’s hoping for.
It’s very Willefordian. But it’s not my favorite of the Willefords just because Hank is so unlikeable. I felt the same as I did reading Custard awhile back. I grew up in Miami in the 80’s and I knew these guys and I hated them then. I hate them now. I hate that there’s frequently no justice in this world and this book only serves to remind me. None of the characters are likeable. I’m rooting for no one. And I’m left not giving a shit one way or the other.
Which probably is just the way Willeford wanted.
September 28th, 2022 at 1:02 pm
“I hate that there’s frequently no justice in this world and this book only serves to remind me.â€
I struggle to read fiction from the last 30 years or so because I simply don’t like 95% of the post-1990 world, and don’t like to be reminded that I am and have been living in it. I turned 32 in 1990, so this is not just a case of old fogeyism. I already felt at that point that the world I cared about was disappearing, in fact a lot of it was already gone by the time I was a teen. I have always had nostalgia for the times before I was born (with, yes, the understanding that there are aspects of those times I would find problematic from my current perspective).
During my young manhood in the Eighties I just about found a balance between the way things were and the way I would have them be, but as time went on, that completely fell apart.
Post-1990 was bad enough, but post-2010 is that much worse, so I have withdrawn from the world a lot.
September 28th, 2022 at 1:16 pm
Patrick,
I think your sentiments are kind of what I was trying to express here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=80456
September 28th, 2022 at 2:04 pm
Definitely so! I certainly agree that we don’t currently live in a confident era. I consider myself neither a social justice liberal nor a reactionary, but I find it telling that both those camps these days seem to think that they can eventually live in a utopia of their own devising. I think that’s ridiculous, and no wonder therefore that everyone seems to be angry and miserable.
September 28th, 2022 at 3:32 pm
My Aunt was Howard Hughes secretary in Houston when I was small, and I grew up between the oil business and the custom buyers end of the department store business, so I had enough of these types of charming sociopaths of both sexes well before I became an adult.
There were no few of them in the diplomatic world either, so I understand how limiting their charm can be in a book like this. Case histories of awful people, no matter how well written, can be limiting in all but the most brilliant of hands.
But damn Willeford can write. He has the poetry of that world down and the oily charm of that type for whom there really is no Karma, just another mark or victim.
October 1st, 2022 at 10:54 pm
His non-fiction book Proletarian Laughter contains admissions of some horrendous war crimes by his unit according to some internet commentary I’ve read over the years. Few copies exist and they’re costly.
October 2nd, 2022 at 8:51 am
curri,
I have not read that one—but my understanding was that “Proletarian Laughter†was a poetry collection. Which certainly doesn’t preclude war crime confessions—but it would certainly be a weirdly willeford-y way of doing it.
I read “something about a soldier†by willeford—his memoir of his time in the service. I don’t recall any mention of war crimes in it though. He did get time in the stockade though for shouting during a Bobby Jones backswing.