Last month crime fiction author and leading critic Martin Edwards found space on his blog to give two sentences of about 100 words over to a consideration of my essay collection Nothing Darker Than the Night, which was published nearly a year ago in 2025. Here's the full notice:
I'd also like to squeeze in a mention of another worthwhile Stark House Press title, Nothing Darker Than the Night, which focuses on hardboiled and noir fiction and collects essays by Curtis Evans that have appeared elsewhere in the past. Many of the authors featured, such as Hammett, Chandler and Woolrich, have been discussed extensively by leading critics, and the absence of an index is a shame, but it's good to see pieces about such writers as Fredric Brown, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and Edna Sherry, all of whose novels novels I find very interesting, and all of whom deserve to be remembered.
It's good to see a book of mine get a review notice, however brief, that deems the book "worthwhile" and I agree with Martin of course that writers like Brown, Holding and Sherry deserve to be remembered (it's why I wrote about them), but I was a little puzzled by the position that Martin seems to have adopted, at least in my case, that writers who "have been extensively discussed extensively by leading critics" need not be discussed anymore by subsequent critics, leading or otherwise (or, some might dare say, scholars).
Certainly this is a position that Martin has never adopted in his own work, which contains a great deal of entertaining and informative opining from him on famous, much previously discussed writers, like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, for example. To his credit, Martin, with whom I have discussed these matters for some 25 years now (though very little in the last decade), never automatically deferred to leading critics, even ones whose writing he grew up with and he patently admired, like Julian Symons.
In my case I brought both original thought and research to my work on such writers as Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Highsmith and Woolrich; and, reading Martin's notice, I had to wonder whether he had actually yet read any of these essays on them. If he does, I think it's possible he might find some of them interesting. I'll list a few of the things I do with them here.
I look into the life of the woman, Elise De Viane, who brought and won an assault case against Dashiell Hammett. Poor Elise's claims have tended to get swept under the rug by "leading critics." I gave a portrait, for the first time, of this shunned woman.
I analyze Dashiell Hammett's Op Tales as true detective fiction, definitely not an interest of "leading critics."
I look at the this history of American violence that informed Hammett's fiction, specifically Red Harvest, citing many specific cases.
With Chandler, I take a revisionist stance of his criticism of English detective fiction. This essay has received a lot of favorable commentary over the years and certainly challenges the received wisdom of his "leading critics." I provide very in-depth analysis of Chandler's literary feud with Ross Macdonald and correspondence with minor mystery writer James M. Fox. Again, these were pieces that received much favorable attention when published in their original form at the website Crimereads.
I could go on--I won't say anything about how I think the pieces are well-written and entertaining, how immodest that would be of me--but I want to get to what I think is the nub of the matter here, which I suspect is my revisionist take on Cornell Woolrich and criticism of Francis Nevins' 1988 Woolrich biography, First You Dream, Then You Die, now nearly forty years old.
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| Cornell Woolrich at age 21 in 1925 |
Concerning Woolrich and Nevins, who have been linked in people's minds for decades, and himself Martin in 2021 nostalgically recalled:
I discovered Cornell Woolrich in the 1980s when many of his books were published in paperback with insightful introductions by Francis M. Nevins. I became a real fan and when Mike Nevins published Woolrich's biography I also devoured that. Two years ago, at [the] Bouchercon I had the pleasure of meeting Mike Nevins at long last and took the chance to thank him for helping to enthuse me about Woolrich.
So Nevins is all bound up in Martin's nostalgia about a younger Martin, pushing thirty and discovering noir crime fiction. It's kind of like me and John Dickson Carr and his biographer, my friend Doug Greene, in the 1990s.
To be sure, I'm younger than Martin but I remember those Woolrich books too, specifically those editions--to be honest the evocative cover illustrations have lingered with me more favorably than the introductions--but I certainly can't say I hungrily "devoured" Nevins' biography of Woolrich, which, whatever its merits, is one of the most indigestible doorstop books I have ever read.
I wrote about this, among many other matters, in my 2022 Woolrich essay at Crimereads, which appears, in even more expanded form, in my book:
Ironically there is comparatively little personal detail about Cornell Woolrich [in the biography], especially given the mammoth size of the book (613 pages of smallish type, including a microscopically printed index). Most of Dream...is given over to minute detail on almost every piece of fiction Woolrich ever wrote, as well as the numerous film, radio and television adaptations that have been made from his work, with the result that what information is provided on Woolrich's life is dully buried in the dead weight of bibliographical data and plot summaries. Much of Nevins' influence on the general public's perception of Cornell Woolrich probably can be traced more directly to the introductions he contributed, beginning in 1971, three years after the authors death, to myriad Woolrich short fiction anthologies and novel reprints (particularly publisher Ballantine's lauded early Eighties paperback reissues, the moody cover art for which, rendered by Larry Schwinger, recalls the haunting isolation of painter Edward Hopper's urban art, especially his 1942 painting Nighthawks).
Crucially and to his credit Nevins was able to provide us with interviews with contemporaries of Woolrich, but primary research in newspapers, census records and other data was sorely lacking. Disappointingly, there is also little surviving personal correspondence from Woolrich. Perhaps somewhat uncharitably the late sci-fi writer Barry N. Malzberg, who met and admired Woolrich, backhandedly referred to Nevins' book as "bibliographically useful." To me Barry referred to Nevins' book as a bibliography, not a biography.
What Nevins did accomplish, when it came to getting into the life and psyche of Woolrich, is establish what on my blog in 2014 I called the "black legend" of Woolrich as a miserable, rotten, self-hating, mother-obsessed, closet queer. Malzberg bluntly termed this treatment Nevins' "incessant fag-baiting," asserting that Woolrich's biographer regarded and treated homosexuality as a "pathological condition." It's not an exaggeration to say that although Nevins loves much of Woolrich's work (while also ridiculing a fair chunk of it), he loathes the man himself and seemingly draws enjoyment from mocking him. I find it a strange attitude in a biographer. I'm rather reminded of the old Charles Atlas comic book ads of the beach bully kicking sand at the 98-pound weakling. And a dead one at that, who can not even attempt to defend himself.
As I looked at the "evidence" which Nevins provided for his thesis I was unpersuaded. Indeed I became appalled that "leading critics" for decades had been proclaiming what I deemed an essentially rather speculative homophobic line of argument as factual. I methodically tested Nevins' narrative and provided my own researched counter take in my essay. I also established, I think, that Nevins' literary analysis of Woolrich's alleged self-hating homosexuality was astoundingly puerile. Surely this wasn't what impressed Martin when he "devoured" the book.
My piece became one of Crimereads' most read and discussed essays and to date has generated over forty comments, only one of which, mere invective, was critical of me. Today on Google's search engine it is the fifth hit for the term "Cornell Woolrich," after Wikipedia, IMDB, Amazon and Goodreads. It frankly astonished me that Martin could implicitly dismiss this essay as unneeded because a "leading critic" had already written extensively about Woolrich. It's precisely because of that critic that my own piece needed to be written. Maybe Martin hasn't read it, but many other people have, including individuals who are at least as notable critics as Nevins.
But then it wouldn't be the first time that an older straight boomer has felt completely comfortable peddling as fact Nevins' really remarkably homophobic views of Woolrich's alleged homosexuality. This seemingly went by so unnoticed in 1989 that Nevins' book, published by Otto Penzler's Mysterious Press, was awarded an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. I like to think of my 2018 Edgar nomination for editing the critical LGBTQ+ essay collection Murder in the Closet as something of a penance for that.
Despite the entrenched views of some of the mystery field's leading septuagenarian and octogenarian critics, however, I think I have managed to shift the dialogue. Certainly Barry Malzberg, himself then no youngster, thought so, as he told me in email correspondence three before his death at age 85 in December 2024. I won't quote all his correspondence with me but here is part:
Dec. 13, 2021
[X] forwarded your brave, thorough, exceedingly welcome work. Thanks. I have been waiting for someone to stand with me...it has taken more than a quarter of a century....
Dec. 15, 2021
Brilliantly parsed and transcribed defense of Cornell as a survey of the blasted landscape Nevins left behind. Harry Harrison wrote me in a different context half a century ago "You can never catch up with a lie." The lie becomes the canon.
But you tried as I did in my small way and maybe there will be a later verdict if humanity survives.
Jan. 10, 2022
Read it carefully, completely, slowly an hour ago. (CRIMEREADS put it online as you know.) It is masterful. You have performed a great service to humanity....
Jan. 12, 2022
Magnificent job. Hopeless but the Iliad and for that matter LEAR teach us the grandeur of hopeless causation and its enactment.
These words meant a lot to me, though I try not to share Barry's fatalism about the black legend's imperishable supremacy, despite notices like Martin's. I agree with Malzberg about "lies" (or shall we say errors) becoming canon, that's why sometimes we have to challenge canonical interpretations by "leading critics." The absolute worst thing we can do, in Woolrich's case, is to say that since Nevins wrote a lot of stuff about him, no one else ever need write about him (except maybe Martin).
And Malzberg is not the only person from his generation to have told me this. Still I place my greatest hope with writers from the younger generation, writers like Lucynka, who is a much keener analyst of Woolrich's writing than his "leading critic." That is, as Barry wrote, "if humanity survives."
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| Stop what you're doing! scene from Cornell Woolrich's "Momentum," televised on Alfred Hitchcock Presents |
So please pardon my for thinking that my essays on crime writers "discussed extensively by leading critics" have some value and are at least worth reading. I think my frequently revisionist body of work has value, just as Martin's does. Martin may be more tactful and diplomatic than I, but he has done much, as have I, to discredit many of the contentions made by earlier "leading critics" of British crime fiction like Julian Symons. Sometimes received wisdom needs to be challenged, even if it means stepping on some toes.
I especially appreciated this onsite comment from "Kevin" on my Woolrich essay. I don't know whether or not he's a "leading critic" but he does seem to know what he's talking about:
This is really fascinating, and I applaud your rigor and doggedness in doing the kind of research that Nevins never bothered with. As a former physician/psychiatrist, I think your suggestion that Woolrich likely suffered medical issues leading to lifelong anemia is very astute. I found myself also entertaining a possible diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder. Most of Woolrich's nature and quirks are consistent with this diagnosis, and people with schizoid personality disorder often evoke distrust and even revulsion in others. People sometimes find them "creepy" and "unlikeable."
Good points all, from someone evidently more qualified to expound on this subject than even Woolrich's "leading critic." (Critics! What don't they know?). Seriously, though, how on earth did we come for decades to delegate to Francis Nevins the last word on the psychological state of Cornell Woolrich? Or so easily come to accept that all his evident mental and physical problems are attributable simply to self-loathing homosexuality?
That may be good enough for Nevins, who did the exact same thing with crime writers Patricia Highsmith and Milton Propper, and others and perhaps it's good enough for Martin as well, but it shouldn't be good enough for the rest of us. Good history is a synthesis of ideas, not a closed private club of proclaimed higher authorities who brook no further argument.
By the way, I'm pleased to announce that Silent as the Grave, Centipede Press' latest high-end collection of Cornell Woolrich short fiction, will be out soon. I wrote the introduction for the volume, and it's one of the rare times someone has written about Woolrich in a high-profile publication without analyzing everything about him under the self-loathing homosexual lens (a prevalent approach among straight male critics around sixty years ago). I think I manage to get through the whole piece without even referring to that matter. We can and should do better by the man.
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