Long Live the Dead

by Hugh B. Cave

  I asked Hugh to go back to his early experiences as a writer. By July of 1929, the same year Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon was serialized in Black Mask, he made his first professional pulp sale, “Island Ordeal,” to Brief Stories. He followed that up the next month with “The Pool of Death” also in Brief Stories.

  By 1930 and 1931 he was selling stories all over the place in many diverse markets. He favored Short Stories, a general pulp, just a tier below Argosy and All Story. (I should point out, however, Hugh did sell to Argosy as early as 1931 with “Steal a Dog’s Bone,” and made nine more appearances in the great magazine through 1950.) Even at this early stage in his career, the titles of many of these stories conjure visions of horror and fantasy: “The Pool of Death” (1929) and “Condemned to a Living Tomb” (1930) in Brief Stories; “The Corpse on the Grating” and “The Murder Machine” (both 1930) in Astounding Stories. And two tales in Ghost Stories in 1931, “The Strange Case of No. 7” and “The Affair of the Clutching Hand,” that were collected forty-six years later in Hugh’s award-winning horror/ fantasy book Murgunstrumm and Others.

  Within two years of turning professional, Hugh B. Cave had dozens of stories published, and in tough markets. How does he explain such an early and immediate success as a professional writer? Did he study the markets, analyze what editors were buying, or use successful short stories as practice models—as so many of the great early pulp writers report they did?

  I have to tell you and the readers more about myself and my early experiences to explain the influences that I believe made me an early and successful writer. When I was not quite five years old my adventurous parents decided to move to America, where they knew no one. The ship landed in Boston. I grew up around Boston in Cambridge, Winchester, Brighton, Brookline (I went to Brookline High School), Maiden, and Back Bay.

  As a boy, I sang in Boston’s Emmanuel Church choir for several years. For two weeks every summer we choir kids went to a church camp on Cape Cod. The choirmaster, Mr. Albert Snow, who also played the organ for the Boston Symphony, taught me a love for music. At camp, he also read to us every evening around a camp fire—creepy stories by Poe, Bierce, Conan Doyle, etc. Is it any wonder I wrote for Weird Tales, Strange Tales, Terror Tales, and all the others, when I began writing for the pulps? Or that I wrote stories such “The Silent Horror” for The Saturday Evening Post, and similar tales for other slicks? Or that I wrote detective-mystery tales for Black Mask and other publications?

  When I was in grammar school, living in Brighton, we kids used to walk a couple of miles to go to the movies every Saturday afternoon at a theater, which, if I remember right, was called the Billy Woods. (Also, if I remember right, admission was a dime!) My favorite movies featured Tom Mix and William S. Hart. I read Owen Wister and other fine Western writers also. Is it any wonder I wrote for Western pulp magazines?

  In Brookline, where I graduated from high school at age sixteen (just a month short of seventeen) we lived within walking distance of the public library. My brother Geoff and I spent many hours in that library. (My brother Tom was then away at sea, all over the world as a radio operator on ships.) Also, the various homes I grew up in were always filled with books. My mother knew Kipling.

  I read Kipling and Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hugh Walpole (I was named after him), Stevenson, Dickens, Maugham, London, Dumas, Conrad, Wells, Scott, and many other fine writers. You learn to write by reading, not by taking courses in “Creative Writing.” If my memory serves me well, a fellow war correspondent, J. C. Furnas, once wrote an article to that effect that was published in Atlantic Monthly.

  At Brookline High I won a scholarship to Boston University, but had to go to work, instead, because my father was nearly killed by a runaway street car. A vanity-publishing house in Boston gave me a job designing book jackets and editing manuscripts. That lasted about a year. Then I began selling to the pulps and turned to writing full time, attending college evenings.

  I later went from the pulps to the slicks to books—war books first, as a correspondent in World War II, then a book on Haiti, where I lived for several winters, and one on Jamaica, where I bought a run-down coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains and restored it over the years to produce prize-winning coffee. Then I moved on to mainstream novels, paperback novels, and collections of short stories. All this time I maintained a home base in the States, first in Rhode Island, then in Florida to be closer to the islands.

  Did Hugh have to do much rewriting for editors to get his early stories placed?

  No, I didn’t do much rewriting, but I never hesitated to do so if an editor suggested changes in a story and I agreed with him. The idea was to get those stories out and move them from the highest paying markets to the lower until they sold.

  Writing for Black Mask

  “The Reader Has to Feel Something”

  Things changed for Hugh in 1931 when he acquired an agent to do “the story moving” and “accounting” for him. In an August 1931 letter, Hugh wrote to his good friend and fellow writer, Carl Jacobi:

  I’m letting one of NY’s best agents handle my stuff (some of it) just now, and the son of a gun sold a dud, which had been out 17 times, to American Boy (slick paper) for three cents per.

  In correspondence with me, Hugh explained how he acquired his new literary agent to help sell his stories and to aid in the massive job of keeping records for so prolific an author as himself.

  Rogers Terrill, an important editor at Popular Publications, told me I ought to have an agent, and he recommended Lurton Blassingame. Everyone in the business knew Lurton as “Count.”

  I was lucky to interview Lurton Blassingame in 1974. At that time, Robert Heinlein was his major client. His brother, Wyatt, was also a writer, mainly for the horror pulps. The “Count” and I talked about the pulp publishing days. I remember that he was impeccably dressed and very cordial. He knew a lot about the history of Harry Steeger’s Popular Publications, the publishing house I was most interested in because I was gathering material about Black Mask and Dime Detective and Popular’s shudder pulps at the time.

  Hugh described how his relationships with the folks at Popular Publications were strengthened through “Count” Blassingame:

  “Count” was a Southerner. Always a gentleman. Born in Alabama, I believe. We hit it off from the start and became close friends. He introduced me to a good buddy of his, Ken White. Ken became one of my closest friends of all time. The “Count” and I came to call him “Dr. Livingstone.” I had a house up in Rhode Island by then and I loved to go fly-fishing in northern New England and Canada. So the three of us would go fresh-water fishing all the time. And we invited various friends and acquaintances, mostly in the publishing business, to join us. Once Whit Burnett, the famous editor of Story magazine, the fellow who taught and discovered J. D. Salinger, among others, went fishing with us. But the best adventure we had was when we hired two Indian guides and explored and fished the Canadian wilderness in canoes. We went to places the Indians had never seen before. The experience became the background for my first novel called Fishermen Four, published by Dodd Mead in 1942. I turned the story into an expedition by four boys in Kekekabic country in Minnesota.

  By all accounts, Harry Steeger gave Ken White Dime Detective to edit in 1932. By that year, Hugh was already writing for a number of Popular Publications’ shudder pulps, including Terror Tales, Horror Stories, and my favorite, Dime Mystery Magazine, which featured a kind of hard-boiled detective terror tale. Hugh reminisced fondly about Ken White:

  Ken was a great editor. And very kind. Loving and much loved by others in return. I am sure I had him in mind when I suggested to my wife that we name our first son Kenneth. Ken White later became editor of Adventure, then fiction editor of Esquire, and finally an agent. He died much too young.

  Back in 1975, Harry Steeger told me his plans for Dime Detective when he gave Ken White editorial responsibility for the magazine. Steeger told Ken to compete head on with Bla
ck Mask with a two fisted strategy. First, he told White to offer a penny a word more to the Black Mask authors to pull those star writers over to Dime Detective. Secondly, Steeger told White to get the new Dime Detective writers to create original series characters that could appear only in Dime Detective. The strategy worked. By 1936, the year Cap Shaw left Black Mask, Raymond Chandler was writing exclusively for Dime Detective, and although he did write a few stories later for other magazines, Chandler never returned to Black Mask. Hugh’s response to my Dime Detective history was concise:

  Well, I invented my alcoholic, hard-boiled detective, Peter Kane, for Ken’s Dime Detective. It was in August of 1934 that my first story, a Peter Kane tale, appeared in Dime Detective.

  I tried to get more Black Mask information from Hugh. His first story for Black Mask, “Too Many Women,” was published by the most famous editor of Black Mask, Cap Shaw, in May of the same year Hugh first appeared in Dime Detective, 1934. I asked what he thought of Shaw as an editor:

  Well, he bought my first story offered to him (Hugh answered succinctly). But I never had any personal dealings with Shaw. The “Count” was handling things for me by then.

  In some ways, that is a shame. Hugh is the last living author to write for Captain Joseph T. Shaw.

  A letter from Hugh to his writer pal, Carl Jacobi, postmarked February 27, 1933, reproduced along with four others in Audrey Parente’s brief biography of Hugh, Pulp Man’s Odyssey (Starmont, 1988). The letter includes some interesting observations by Hugh on Dime Detective, the toils of a pulp author, and on the Black Mask school of writing:

  Dime Detective? As you know, I wrote a novelette for them. Got it back with the comment “too much woman.” Mowre, of All Detective, refused it because it was too long. Dorothy Hubbard, of Det. Story Mag., said too much sex. Right now it’s at Rapid-Fire Detective. You’re right in thinking Dime Detective uses weird plots. They like the weird element, but—as they say—the story must have a logical conclusion… . Their best writer by a million miles is Fred Nebel, who has also written for the Saturday Evening Post. Nebel uses the Dashiell Hammett style, but does Hammett one better. Economy of words is the secret, plus brutality of treatment, bluntness, and vivid character portrayal. His Cardigan is a better character than Hammett’s “Spade.”

  Apparently at the time this letter was written the “Count” had not taken over the story sending chores from Hugh. And perhaps Hugh’s sexy novelette was rejected before Ken White fully took over the reigns of the publication. In any case, Hugh published ten stories for Ken White’s Dime Detective during his three-year hiatus from Black Mask.

  I asked Hugh whether he thought those lost years from contributing to Black Mask happened because Harry Steeger’s strategy for Dime Detective was successful. Hugh got a penny a word more from Dime Detective, and a sure slot with the six popular Peter Kane stories that appeared during his absence from Black Mask.

  Well, it could be. The “Count” was handling the submissions by that time. And Ken and the Count and I had become good buddies, and it was a penny per word more. But I also contributed many stories for less money than Dime Detective during this same time to Dime Mystery, and Horror Stories, and Terror Tales for Popular Publications, where I was well-known. The reason wasn’t that I didn’t have time to write the stories for Black Mask. I was aware of the prestige of Black Mask.

  It is a good question and I’m not sure what the answer is. From 1934 to 1937, I didn’t return to Black Mask. Then I appeared regularly for five more years under two different editors. And even after Ken White took over Black Mask, I never appeared again after 1941. And I never created a series character for Black Mask.

  Many authors spoke of the extra care they put into writing for Black Mask. Dashiell Hammett (over fifty appearances) and Raymond Chandler (eleven stories) spoke of the special attention they brought to the creation of a good Black Mask story. Yet these two most famous creators of the Black Mask tradition narrated very different, but, at the same time, very typical Black Mask stories. Hammett wrote fast, terse tales that revealed character through action—and through the dialogue, especially the natural speech each character used. His narration was objective, flat, and realistic—despite the underlying melodrama of his very well-made plots.

  For Chandler, as reported in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder”: “The scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one which made good scenes.” Chandler’s tales were fast, but confusing. His narration was beyond realistic to the point of graphic poetry. He used similes like sledgehammers to describe a world gone wrong, a world filled with fear. But his dialogue was amusing with clever repartee that Hammett never used until he wrote The Thin Man, after his Black Mask days.

  I asked Hugh if he did anything special to prepare to write his Black Mask stories. Unlike Chandler and Hammett, Hugh wrote for just about every fiction magazine genre that ever existed. Did he develop special strategies for each different kind of story? Did he ever emulate Hammett’s, or Chandler’s, or Fred Nebel’s writing strategies?

  Hugh gave a very interesting, and I believe, a very revealing answer:

  I really don’t know what strategies different kinds of stories require. I’ve read so many tales of all kinds—good ones, I mean, by great authors—that when I get what seems to be a promising idea, I just start writing. I have a very developed sense of how a good story is supposed to work on a reader.

  In Hugh’s correspondence with me about his ten Black Mask stories collected in this book, he used a rating system. I asked him to tell us how he rates and evaluates his own stories.

  How do I rate my stories? I simply re-read them and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. A story has to be pretty darned good to win a 10 from me, whether it was published in Nickel Western or The Saturday Evening Post.

  Hugh and I reviewed some of the comments he originally sent to me as he first re-read and rated the stories in this collection. I wanted to pull out some specific standards Hugh might use when he analyzed what made a story work for him. I think an important idea about good story writing is revealed in Hugh’s first comments to me for “Smoke in Your Eyes,” from Black Mask, December 1938. Hugh wrote in part:

  The hero owns a greeting card company. Girlfriend is a lovelorn columnist. Their hobby is detecting. There is a complicated plot here on several levels, but I didn’t get much feeling of suspense or urgency. The story is cleanly written, however, so I gave it a 5. (My emphasis, KHD)

  Despite the fact that this long tale (10,000 words) is cleanly written, and the central characters are unique and engaging with lots of background color, Hugh severely faulted the story, it seemed to me, primarily because it didn’t make him feel any strong emotion. I thought this such an important topic that I dropped Hugh’s rating review of his other Black Mask stories to follow through on this point. I thought I was really on to something. Here is what I wrote to him:

  Hugh, tell us about the importance of creating emotions in the reader—what kind of emotions are needed for a successful horror/terror story vs. a detective tale, or a western, or a romance. You have written hundreds of great stories in all these different fields. Does each type of story require a different set of techniques to create the appropriate emotions in the reader?

  I was surprised and educated by Hugh’s written response:

  I’m not sure the word “emotions” is the right word here. Obviously, the reader has to feel something if a story is to be successful. And the reader is going to feel different things when reading different kinds of stories. A sense of adventure for a South Seas tale, for instance. Of the great outdoors when reading a western. Of suspense and mystery when dealing with a detective yarn. And so on. It is very important, essential to a satisfying reading experience, essential to a successfully written story.

  That is an important answer for me. I think it speaks for itself and touches a chord that runs through all satisfying fiction. My misguided focus on “emotion” contrasts sharply with H
ugh’s understanding of what a good story must do, at minimum, for the reader.

  I next asked about one of Hugh’s areas of expertise:

  You are associated with horror and terror stories of every kind by a very large audience of readers and fans. Despite your enormous achievements in so many other fields, you do seem to have a great affinity for the frightening, the “scary” fantasy story. And you’ve won more awards in the horror and fantasy fields than any other. Is there a difference in your mind between “terror” and “horror”? Harry Steeger, publisher of Popular Publications, and inventor of the shudder pulps, told me “horror” was the emotions of disgust, fear, etc. the reader feels watching what happens to a character in the story. He said “terror” is what the reader feels when he identifies with the evil forces or the villain, and feels the fear that terrible things might happen to him. What is your opinion?”

  Harry Steeger had it right, Keith (Hugh responded). “Horror” is what you feel when you see a monster devouring a stranger. “Terror” comes when the monster is about to devour you.

  What about villains? (I asked.) Alfred Hitchcock said something like the hero is nothing without the villain, and the story, no matter how interesting, will only make as strong an impact on the audience as the villain is interesting, dangerous, and threatening.

  Villains? (Hugh replied.) They have to be convincingly villainous, of course. If the monster in your previous question about “terror” and “horror” is merely papier-mâché, nobody is going to feel either horror or terror. Hitchcock, of course, had it right. There has to be tension between conflicting forces for a story to create suspense, and a sense of urgency. The more real and interesting the evil forces are, the more opportunities the writer has to create exciting moments of action filled with suspense, or fear, or mystery, or horror, or terror, or adventure. Even in stories that don’t require villains in the traditional sense, like some romances, there have to be conflicts to create anticipation or surprise or a satisfying resolution. Boy gets girl—or boy doesn’t get girl because he doesn’t deserve her. Just like Hitchcock’s villains, if these conflicts are not interesting, or do not seem real, then the resolutions will be duds and the story won’t work.