A Madwoman's Diary
Page 16
First, years before there was John Warren Wells, there was Dr. Morton A. Benjamin of Chicago, Illinois. You may not have heard of him, and indeed it would be remarkable if you had, because the only people on earth who knew of his existence were an editor at Monarch Books and, later, an editor at Lancer Books. The public knew Mort Benjamin as Benjamin Morse, M.D., which is the name he put on the books he wrote—or would have written, if he’d ever existed in the first place.
I was the one who wrote the books. I made up his name and I made up his pen name and I made up all the characters in all the books he wrote. The books consisted of the stories of the doctor’s patients and told how each person had gotten the way they were and how Dr. Morse led them out of the darkness and into, oh, hell, I don’t know where he led them. Where do you go when you emerge from the darkness? Into the din and the glare, I suppose.
We never learned much about Benjamin Morse, not even his false real name, but it was evident that he was a kind and thoughtful therapist, and insightful and perceptive in the bargain. Now I had never been to a therapist at the time, and the only psychiatrist I knew was a man in Buffalo, New York. His two boys were in my scout troop, and he and his wife played bridge occasionally with my parents.
After one such evening at the doctor’s home, my father reported that he thought the fellow was nuts. “The kids went upstairs around nine thirty,” he said, “and fifteen minutes later they called down that they couldn’t sleep. ‘The boys can’t sleep,’ he announced. ‘I’d better go give them each a sleeping pill.’ And he did.”
Ben Morse would never do a thing like that. Or Mort Benjamin, either. No fucking way.
I was all of twenty-two when I began life as Mort Benjamin, or Ben Morse, or whoever the hell I was. My then-agent, Henry Morrison, came to me with an assignment from Charles Heckelmann, the genius who would later come up with the notion of Fidel Castro Assassinated (now Killing Castro). Heckelmann wanted a doctor to write a book of case histories on female homosexuality, probably figuring this was a way to get on newsstands where lesbian novels wouldn’t be tolerated.
Well, I’d already written lesbian fiction, so why not write some more in the sheep’s clothing of nonfiction? Henry assured me it was legal to be a fake doctor, as long as I didn’t usurp medical privileges by diagnosing or prescribing. So Ben Morse wrote The Lesbian, and a companion volume called The Homosexual, and, God help us, a marriage manual.
Then Heckelmann read a book called The Power of Sexual Surrender, by a psychiatrist named Marie Robinson—a real one, evidently. He decided Monarch ought to publish it—but since someone else already had, he wanted Dr. Morse to rip it off. Henry sold him on the notion of another doctor, one Walter C. Brown, as being better suited to the subject matter. Then he told me to get busy being Walter C. Brown.
I used a different typewriter. I wrote the book—God knows how, I couldn’t really make out what Marie Robinson was getting at. And Heckelmann took it, but he told Henry he wasn’t nuts about Walt Brown, that he just wasn’t on the same level as Mort Benjamin. I could only conclude that he liked me better with a larger typeface, and that was the end of the short and happy life of Walter C. Brown.
John Warren Wells came into being after I split with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Benjamin Morse hadn’t limited himself to Monarch and had done a book or two for Lancer, and I got in touch with Larry Shaw at Lancer, whom I knew through mutual friends in the Village. I said I was Dr. Benjamin’s collaborator. I proposed a book—Eros & Capricorn, a Cross-Cultural Survey of Sexual Techniques. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded good to Larry, who suggested that I might want to leave the good doctor out of this and do it on my own. Well, okay—and the name I came up with was John Warren Wells.
J. W. W. went on to produce a considerable body of work, most of it for Lancer but some for such A-list houses as NAL and Dell Publishing. For the better part of a year he had a monthly column in Swank, a magazine published by Lancer; it was something like Penthouse Forum, with letters from readers. I could tell you a great deal more about John Warren Wells, and may if I decide to epublish some of his work, but that’s enough for now.
In one of the books for Lancer—and don’t ask me which one, because I haven’t the faintest idea—one of the fabricated case histories stayed with me. It came to mind when it was time for Jill Emerson to work up a third novel for Berkley. So I took this figment of my imagination, which I’d spun out as a supposedly true case history, and recycled it as a work of fiction, itself presented in the form of a document—a diary.
The book went pretty well. It evolved, of course, and owed less to the Wells case history by the time it was done, but it seemed right to acknowledge the debt, if obliquely. Jill did the right thing, and the book bears this dedication:
To JOHN WARREN WELLS
a jack-of-all-trades
and master of me …
J. W. W. returned the favor, dedicating at least one of his works to Jill Emerson.
Berkley called the book Sensuous. It’s not a terrible title. (I Am Curious—Thirty, which is what they called Thirty—now that’s a terrible title.) Sensuous is merely a pedestrian title. But I’m fairly confident the same keen mind was responsible for both of these retitlings. The first was an attempt to tie in with I Am Curious—Yellow, a faintly pornographic Swedish film that got a lot of press when Jackie Kennedy decked a photographer who snapped a shot of her emerging from the theater where it was shown. That made it a nine-day wonder, and a lot more than nine days had passed by the time Jill’s book came out with its remarkably lame title.
And Sensuous was someone’s way to cash in on the great success of The Sensuous Woman, written by Joan Garrity under the pseudonym “J” and published brilliantly by Lyle Stuart. You liked The Sensuous Woman? Well, here’s Sensuous. Maybe you’ll like this one, too.
Still, not a terrible title. But I like A Madwoman’s Diary better, perhaps because I’m the one who thought it up. Or Jill did. Or maybe it was Jack Wells …
—Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village
Lawrence Block (lawbloc@gmail.com) welcomes your email responses; he reads them all, and replies when he can.
A Biography of Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Block attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Leaving school before graduation, he moved to New York City, a locale that features prominently in most of his works. His earliest published writing appeared in the 1950s, frequently under pseudonyms, and many of these novels are now considered classics of the pulp fiction genre. During his early writing years, Block also worked in the mailroom of a publishing house and reviewed the submission slush pile for a literary agency. He has cited the latter experience as a valuable lesson for a beginning writer.
Block’s first short story, “You Can’t Lose,” was published in 1957 in Manhunt, the first of dozens of short stories and articles that he would publish over the years in publications including American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and the New York Times. His short fiction has been featured and reprinted in over eleven collections including Enough Rope (2002), which is comprised of eighty-four of his short stories.
In 1966, Block introduced the insomniac protagonist Evan Tanner in the novel The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep. Block’s diverse heroes also include the urbane an
d witty bookseller—and thief-on-the-side—Bernie Rhodenbarr; the gritty recovering alcoholic and private investigator Matthew Scudder; and Chip Harrison, the comical assistant to a private investigator with a Nero Wolfe fixation who appears in No Score, Chip Harrison Scores Again, Make Out with Murder, and The Topless Tulip Caper. Block has also written several short stories and novels featuring Keller, a professional hit man. Block’s work is praised for his richly imagined and varied characters and frequent use of humor.
A father of three daughters, Block lives in New York City with his second wife, Lynne. When he isn’t touring or attending mystery conventions, he and Lynne are frequent travelers, as members of the Travelers’ Century Club for nearly a decade now, and have visited about 150 countries.
A four-year-old Block in 1942.
Block during the summer of 1944, with his baby sister, Betsy.
Block’s 1955 yearbook picture from Bennett High School in Buffalo, New York.
Block in 1983, in a cap and leather jacket. Block says that he “later lost the cap, and some son of a bitch stole the jacket. Don’t even ask about the hair.”
Block with his eldest daughter, Amy, at her wedding in October 1984.
Seen here around 1990, Block works in his office on New York’s West 13th Street with, he says, “a bad haircut, an ugly shirt, and a few extra pounds.”
Block at a bookstore appearance in support of A Walk Among the Tombstones, his tenth Matthew Scudder novel, on Veterans Day, 1992.
Block and his wife, Lynne.
Block and Lynne on vacation “someplace exotic.”
Block race walking in an international marathon in Niagara Falls in 2005. He got the John Deere cap at the John Deere Museum in Grand Detour, Illinois, and still has it today.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1972 by Lawrence Josephson
cover design by Elizabeth Connor
ISBN: 978-1-4532-0943-1
This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media
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