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So Many Doors
The legendary lost crime novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Oakley Hall, instructor of Ann Rice, Amy Tan, Richard Ford, and Michael Chabon, who calls SO MANY DOORS "Beautiful, powerful, even masterful."
It begins on Death Row, with a condemned man refusing the services of the lawyer assigned to defend him. It begins with a beautiful woman dead, murdered - Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all simply as V. That's where this extraordinary novel begins. But the story it tells begins years earlier, on a struggling farm in the shadow of the Great Depression and among the brawling "cat skinners" of Southern California, driving graders and bulldozers to tame the American West. And the story that unfolds, in the masterful hands of acclaimed author Oakley Hall, is a lyrical outpouring of hunger and grief, of jealousy and corruption, of raw sexual yearning and the tragedy of the destroyed lives it leaves in its wake. Unpublished for more than half a century, So Many Doors is Hall's masterpiece, an excoriating vision of human nature at its most brutal, and one of the most powerful books you will ever read.
It begins on Death Row, with a condemned man refusing the services of the lawyer assigned to defend him. It begins with a beautiful woman dead, murdered - Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all simply as V. That's where this extraordinary novel begins. But the story it tells begins years earlier, on a struggling farm in the shadow of the Great Depression and among the brawling "cat skinners" of Southern California, driving graders and bulldozers to tame the American West. And the story that unfolds, in the masterful hands of acclaimed author Oakley Hall, is a lyrical outpouring of hunger and grief, of jealousy and corruption, of raw sexual yearning and the tragedy of the destroyed lives it leaves in its wake. Unpublished for more than half a century, So Many Doors is Hall's masterpiece, an excoriating vision of human nature at its most brutal, and one of the most powerful books you will ever read.
318 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1950
49 people are currently reading
399 people want to read
About the author
Oakley Hall
42 books92 followersOakley Hall also wrote under the nom de plume of O.M. Hall and Jason Manor.
Oakley Maxwell Hall was an American novelist. He was born in San Diego, California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the Marines during World War II. Some of his mysteries were published under the pen names "O.M. Hall" and "Jason Manor." Hall received his Master of Fine Arts in English from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Oakley Maxwell Hall was an American novelist. He was born in San Diego, California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the Marines during World War II. Some of his mysteries were published under the pen names "O.M. Hall" and "Jason Manor." Hall received his Master of Fine Arts in English from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
February 27, 2019
Oakley Hall's So many Doors, first published in 1950, seems an odd choice for the Hard Case Crime series because, while there is a murder in the book, this is not by any means a crime novel in the traditional sense. It immediately reminded me of Understudy for Death, by Charles Willeford, an excellent crime novelist. But that particular Willeford book was not a crime novel either. Originally published as Understudy for Love, it was really a psychological study of the characters who populated the novel. Hard Case Crime published it for the first time in over fifty years, changing the title and clearly implying that it was one of Willeford's crime novels.
Like the Willeford book, So Many Doors is another "long lost manuscript," that's being republished for the first time in fifty or sixty years, It opens with a prologue in which we find a man named Jack Ward in jail for a murder to which he has confessed. When his court-appointed lawyer arrives, Jack refuses to cooperate and kicks the guy out, claiming that he's anxious to be punished for his crime and simply wants to get it over with.
With that, the main story begins, told from the perspective of five different people, the last of which is Jack Ward. At the center of the story is a young woman named V, whom we first meet when she is seventeen. V. lives alone with her father on a struggling ranch near Bakersfield, California in the 1930s. Her mother has died years earlier and her father has done the best he can to raise V, but clearly he hasn't a clue as to how to go about it.
We we first meet V, she is a very attractive girl who is on the brink of becoming a woman that no man can resist. That includes an elderly and wealthy man named Denton who lives on the property that adjoins that of V's father. Denton likes to entertain V and gives her a valuable horse. He tells V's father that when the girl graduates from high school, he would like to pay for her college education. Ultimately, he would like to marry her. (Yeah; it's beyond creepy.)
Oddly V's father is not as upset about Denton's proposal as one might expect. It is the Depression; times are hard and V's prospects for the future are not all that great. Ultimately, marrying Denton might be a good thing for her, but it will have to be her choice.
Shortly thereafter, V's father hires a bulldozer operator, Jack Ward, to clear some stumps from his property. Jack is young, virile, and very attractive, and the reader immediately understands what's about to happen. The story unfolds from that point, through the eyes of people who are clearly captivated by V, for better or for worse.
This is, at heart, a story of star-crossed lovers that simply cannot end well. Reading the book is like watching some natural disaster unfold from which you simply can't avert your eyes. Parts of the book are fascinating, particularly the insights that it offers into lower-class life in the United States through the years of the Depression and World War II. The story is clearly dated, though, and Hall sometimes tries too hard to get into the heads of these characters.
In the end, then, I have mixed feelings about the book. I don't regret having spent the time it took to read it, but I really didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked. Most of all, though, I wish that the folks at Hard Case Crime would get back to their original mission of publishing excellent crime novels and leave books like this one in the dusty bins of antiquity where they probably best belong.
Like the Willeford book, So Many Doors is another "long lost manuscript," that's being republished for the first time in fifty or sixty years, It opens with a prologue in which we find a man named Jack Ward in jail for a murder to which he has confessed. When his court-appointed lawyer arrives, Jack refuses to cooperate and kicks the guy out, claiming that he's anxious to be punished for his crime and simply wants to get it over with.
With that, the main story begins, told from the perspective of five different people, the last of which is Jack Ward. At the center of the story is a young woman named V, whom we first meet when she is seventeen. V. lives alone with her father on a struggling ranch near Bakersfield, California in the 1930s. Her mother has died years earlier and her father has done the best he can to raise V, but clearly he hasn't a clue as to how to go about it.
We we first meet V, she is a very attractive girl who is on the brink of becoming a woman that no man can resist. That includes an elderly and wealthy man named Denton who lives on the property that adjoins that of V's father. Denton likes to entertain V and gives her a valuable horse. He tells V's father that when the girl graduates from high school, he would like to pay for her college education. Ultimately, he would like to marry her. (Yeah; it's beyond creepy.)
Oddly V's father is not as upset about Denton's proposal as one might expect. It is the Depression; times are hard and V's prospects for the future are not all that great. Ultimately, marrying Denton might be a good thing for her, but it will have to be her choice.
Shortly thereafter, V's father hires a bulldozer operator, Jack Ward, to clear some stumps from his property. Jack is young, virile, and very attractive, and the reader immediately understands what's about to happen. The story unfolds from that point, through the eyes of people who are clearly captivated by V, for better or for worse.
This is, at heart, a story of star-crossed lovers that simply cannot end well. Reading the book is like watching some natural disaster unfold from which you simply can't avert your eyes. Parts of the book are fascinating, particularly the insights that it offers into lower-class life in the United States through the years of the Depression and World War II. The story is clearly dated, though, and Hall sometimes tries too hard to get into the heads of these characters.
In the end, then, I have mixed feelings about the book. I don't regret having spent the time it took to read it, but I really didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked. Most of all, though, I wish that the folks at Hard Case Crime would get back to their original mission of publishing excellent crime novels and leave books like this one in the dusty bins of antiquity where they probably best belong.
February 13, 2019
Did you ever hear the one about the farmer’s daughter and the bulldozer driver?
He ends up on Death Row for her murder! Ha! That’s a real knee-slapper, isn’t it?
Jack Ward is awaiting execution for the murder of his lover, Vassillia Baird a/k/a V. Even with an eager lawyer showing up to try and save his life Jack refuses to help and wants his death sentence carried out as soon as possible. The book then proceeds to tell us the long and tangled history of Jack and V. that led them both to their horrible fates.
The story of their doomed romance is related to us from the perspective of a series of people like V.’s father who hires the handsome Jack to remove some stumps from his farm, and then completely freaks out when he catches the two having sexy times together. Then Jack’s friend Ben details the early days of their relationship, and his own crush on V. complicates his feelings about how Jack treats her. We follow this pattern with several other people they cross paths with over the years to see how they become a self-destructive pair that manage to do tremendous damage to each other and almost everyone around them over time.
That structure is the really intriguing part of this with Oakley Hall spending as much time on the characters telling us the tale as he does on Jack and V. By building up the supporting players and then having them watch the evolution of Jack and V.’s love affair it gives a reader the experience of starting from the perspective of an outsider looking into their relationship. Yet over time since we know history that others don’t we begin to understand how they both end up where they do and why they keep coming together even though they often make each other desperately unhappy.
Another element I liked is that this story is mainly set among a nomadic group of heavy equipment operators as they roam from job to job through the Great Depression, during World War II, and then beyond. Following a bunch of blue collar guys driving bulldozers and graders doesn’t sound that interesting, but the routine details of their work and lives reminded me of Steinbeck while the settings of run down farms, cheap rooming houses, noisy bars, and various job sites came fully alive while reading.
This is yet another Hard Case Crime novel that isn’t exactly a hard case crime novel. Yeah, there’s a murder and a guy on Death Row, but it’s really a tragic love story filled with great writing and solid character work. So it feels a little bit like a bait-and-switch although I still liked it quite a bit.
I’d give it 3.5 stars if Goodreads let us, but….well, you know.
He ends up on Death Row for her murder! Ha! That’s a real knee-slapper, isn’t it?
Jack Ward is awaiting execution for the murder of his lover, Vassillia Baird a/k/a V. Even with an eager lawyer showing up to try and save his life Jack refuses to help and wants his death sentence carried out as soon as possible. The book then proceeds to tell us the long and tangled history of Jack and V. that led them both to their horrible fates.
The story of their doomed romance is related to us from the perspective of a series of people like V.’s father who hires the handsome Jack to remove some stumps from his farm, and then completely freaks out when he catches the two having sexy times together. Then Jack’s friend Ben details the early days of their relationship, and his own crush on V. complicates his feelings about how Jack treats her. We follow this pattern with several other people they cross paths with over the years to see how they become a self-destructive pair that manage to do tremendous damage to each other and almost everyone around them over time.
That structure is the really intriguing part of this with Oakley Hall spending as much time on the characters telling us the tale as he does on Jack and V. By building up the supporting players and then having them watch the evolution of Jack and V.’s love affair it gives a reader the experience of starting from the perspective of an outsider looking into their relationship. Yet over time since we know history that others don’t we begin to understand how they both end up where they do and why they keep coming together even though they often make each other desperately unhappy.
Another element I liked is that this story is mainly set among a nomadic group of heavy equipment operators as they roam from job to job through the Great Depression, during World War II, and then beyond. Following a bunch of blue collar guys driving bulldozers and graders doesn’t sound that interesting, but the routine details of their work and lives reminded me of Steinbeck while the settings of run down farms, cheap rooming houses, noisy bars, and various job sites came fully alive while reading.
This is yet another Hard Case Crime novel that isn’t exactly a hard case crime novel. Yeah, there’s a murder and a guy on Death Row, but it’s really a tragic love story filled with great writing and solid character work. So it feels a little bit like a bait-and-switch although I still liked it quite a bit.
I’d give it 3.5 stars if Goodreads let us, but….well, you know.
September 16, 2020
Twisted Love
Ten years after the author’s death, Hard Case Crime has repackaged and republished a sixty year old pulp classic. So Many Doors is an amazing work, capturing a depression-era world of Bakersfield and a desolate sadness that overlays everything. There’s a murder case at the nub of it all. After all, the book begins with a lawyer visiting his reluctant client on death row.
But, the murder isn’t the story so much as how did Jack and V. Travel down the road that led them here to this fateful place. Think of it more as a tale of dreams and youthful innocence being crushed. Think of it as a tale about boundless love being turned into hate and jealousy so much so that everything good and decent in a person dies. Maybe the book doesn’t promise a rose garden, but it’s actually a bed of thorns.
V. Is the femme fatale of the story, the temptress who drives every man mad, most of all Jack. And, in her wake is a crimson tide of pain, death, ruin. But V. Is also the innocent schoolgirl who her father tried to protect and who falls hook line and sinker for the first guy she meets.
The story is about the intricate dance between Jack and V. Is she the innocent virgin who he takes advantage of or the vicious femme fatale who breaks his manhood in two? Can she make him jealous enough to win him back or by doing so will she sow so much distrust that whatever was between them will always be impure and twisted ? Can he stay free or feel trapped? Can he run away and start over? Or are they doomed to repeat their steps over and over again?
This brilliant work captures the sadness and disillusionment of the characters and their eternal despair.
Ten years after the author’s death, Hard Case Crime has repackaged and republished a sixty year old pulp classic. So Many Doors is an amazing work, capturing a depression-era world of Bakersfield and a desolate sadness that overlays everything. There’s a murder case at the nub of it all. After all, the book begins with a lawyer visiting his reluctant client on death row.
But, the murder isn’t the story so much as how did Jack and V. Travel down the road that led them here to this fateful place. Think of it more as a tale of dreams and youthful innocence being crushed. Think of it as a tale about boundless love being turned into hate and jealousy so much so that everything good and decent in a person dies. Maybe the book doesn’t promise a rose garden, but it’s actually a bed of thorns.
V. Is the femme fatale of the story, the temptress who drives every man mad, most of all Jack. And, in her wake is a crimson tide of pain, death, ruin. But V. Is also the innocent schoolgirl who her father tried to protect and who falls hook line and sinker for the first guy she meets.
The story is about the intricate dance between Jack and V. Is she the innocent virgin who he takes advantage of or the vicious femme fatale who breaks his manhood in two? Can she make him jealous enough to win him back or by doing so will she sow so much distrust that whatever was between them will always be impure and twisted ? Can he stay free or feel trapped? Can he run away and start over? Or are they doomed to repeat their steps over and over again?
This brilliant work captures the sadness and disillusionment of the characters and their eternal despair.
December 5, 2018
This classic noir tale of a destructive love triangle set around Bakersfield around the time of WWII was first published in 1950. Cognitive dissonance drew me to this novel that revolves around a cat-skinner (I'm going to let you look that up) and a young farmer's daughter. The lurid cover of this Vintage Crime edition is all pulp and cheesy noir, yet graced with great praise from Michael Chabon, who says "So Many Doors is a beautiful, powerful, even masterful novel by a writer whose work enriched American literature." Even more striking, there is a blurb by Amy Tam on the back cover, saying in part that "he is the master of characterization, narrative immediacy, and the art of luring you into a gripping story." After reading, I was glad to have taken a closer look at the book with the tall busty blonde with a strangely enormous left foot on the cover of an Advance Reader Copy. I've seldom read a book that captured the mad yearning, inchoate confusion, madness and near horror of existence so pitch perfectly. It actually made me feel glad to be north of 50, which doesn't happen too often. I’ve since learned that Oakley Hall’s work included the novel Warlock, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1958. The Downhill Racers, a 1969 movie starring Robert Redford, was based on another of his books. Hall taught at the University of California, Irvine, where he mentored Richard Ford, in addition to Chabon and Tan. Hall received lifetime achievement awards from the PEN American Center and the Cowboy Hall of Fame, and died in 2008.
August 5, 2019
Gustave Flaubert may have invented realism in modern fiction, but realism was perfected in the mid-twentieth century by the writers of what some call hard case crime fiction. Oakley Hall seems to have been a grandmaster. Hard case fiction is one of my escapes and I have read a lot of it. I don't mind saying that Hall's SO MANY DOORS stands out as one of the very best hard case novels that I have ever read. I recommend it enthusiastically.
I will say too that DOORS is a realistic portrayal of love as a sort of hopeless madness. The couple in its clutches cannot escape their self-destruction. When it arrives, it does so with finality and consequence that could only ever have been inevitable.
I will say too that DOORS is a realistic portrayal of love as a sort of hopeless madness. The couple in its clutches cannot escape their self-destruction. When it arrives, it does so with finality and consequence that could only ever have been inevitable.
Read
August 8, 2020fewer doors than advertised
March 13, 2021
A complex game of love and hate fueled by jealousy, deceit and death.
So Many Doors beings on death row with Jack Ward and his unwanted lawyer engaging in a one sided discussion about a possible defense to combat the Ward's murder charge. From there the novel unravels the murder mystery through the eyes of the characters, each telling their story about the events prior, during, and after the murder. It's a clever approach to storytelling which adds depth to a relatively straight forward plot.
V, the naïve, wholesome American farm girl is the centerpiece of this story; her 'tools' traps for the inexperienced and easily swayed by the swing of hip - her journey to self awareness is an exciting, heady evolution which ultimately lands Jack at death's end.
So Many Doors is a character driven story which lends itself more towards period-drama (set around WW2) than crime fiction.
So Many Doors beings on death row with Jack Ward and his unwanted lawyer engaging in a one sided discussion about a possible defense to combat the Ward's murder charge. From there the novel unravels the murder mystery through the eyes of the characters, each telling their story about the events prior, during, and after the murder. It's a clever approach to storytelling which adds depth to a relatively straight forward plot.
V, the naïve, wholesome American farm girl is the centerpiece of this story; her 'tools' traps for the inexperienced and easily swayed by the swing of hip - her journey to self awareness is an exciting, heady evolution which ultimately lands Jack at death's end.
So Many Doors is a character driven story which lends itself more towards period-drama (set around WW2) than crime fiction.
February 27, 2019
This book is terrible. Do not waste your time. Good luck finding something better to read.
"So Many Doors" by Oakley Hall has a lot of front and back cover blurbs from famous authors, but that doesn't make it a good book. Not by a long shot.
As I've said before about other Hard Case Crime duds, this is a "lost novel" that should have remain buried. Deeply buried. Things have changed a LOT in the 60 years since this novel was first published. Fiction has changed significantly--for the better--as well.
I'll start by saying shame on you Hard Case Crime for publishing this as a crime novel. It is not. It is a novel where a crime occurs. That does NOT make it a crime novel. Shame! And most of the "crimes" in this book are emotional ones, not literal ones. This is a novel from before bad Lifetime movies that made those bad Lifetime movies possible.
"So Many Doors" is a dated and pathetic and bathetic (look it up) melodrama set in the world of bulldozer operators in the Depression and post World War 2 eras. Are you still awake? I'm not. The author picks a world so dull and uninteresting that it is hard to imagine a worse setting. I have read more bulldozer-related lingo in this book (like Cat-Skinner...what the hell does that mean?) than I ever thought existed. Ugh!
Every different character that tells their part of this meandering, doomed love story--equal parts dull and turgid--has some similar flaws. None of them are that bright and all of them are neurotically obsessed with either the male (Jack) or the female (known as V) in the doomed romance. And all of them seem to want to hurt the other people involved because they are frustrated with their own dull, dead-end, workaday lives.
The writing itself is technically competent, but the author chooses over and over to wallow in the ongoing misery of his characters and subject the reader to the who-gives-a-damn world of roughneck heavy machinery operators.
This novel reminds me (in the bad way) of something that would be written by the type of author satirized in the Coen Brothers movie "Barton Fink."
PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW (scroll down to skip them)
V is a beautiful young woman trapped on a crappy farm. The neighboring rancher wants to basically buy her from her father as a nurse and wife. He's sickly and rich. And probably a pervert. But her father vaguely encourages V to go for the young, virile bulldozer operator--Jack--instead. Yet, when he catches Jack and V having sex, the father kicks V out in a jealous rage. I think the father wanted V for himself in some way. Jack and V are over 18, but far too young to start a life together. Jack begins to resent V and won't marry her. He drives her away by cheating. Yet she uses her hold on Jack to keep reeling him back in by making him jealous. V marries the sickly rancher. Jack marries some clueless girl. The rancher dies. V gets rich from it. There is minor speculation that she sexed him to death. What a way to go! The clueless girl has an abortion that leaves her barren. Earlier, Jack kills a guy in a fistfight, sort of, because he's overwrought about V. That toxic pattern Jack and V get into ruins a lot of lives around them. Until someone kills V. By the time the killer was revealed, I couldn't have cared any less.
END SPOILERS
I would give this book zero stars if I could. It's headed for the recycle bin.
"So Many Doors" by Oakley Hall has a lot of front and back cover blurbs from famous authors, but that doesn't make it a good book. Not by a long shot.
As I've said before about other Hard Case Crime duds, this is a "lost novel" that should have remain buried. Deeply buried. Things have changed a LOT in the 60 years since this novel was first published. Fiction has changed significantly--for the better--as well.
I'll start by saying shame on you Hard Case Crime for publishing this as a crime novel. It is not. It is a novel where a crime occurs. That does NOT make it a crime novel. Shame! And most of the "crimes" in this book are emotional ones, not literal ones. This is a novel from before bad Lifetime movies that made those bad Lifetime movies possible.
"So Many Doors" is a dated and pathetic and bathetic (look it up) melodrama set in the world of bulldozer operators in the Depression and post World War 2 eras. Are you still awake? I'm not. The author picks a world so dull and uninteresting that it is hard to imagine a worse setting. I have read more bulldozer-related lingo in this book (like Cat-Skinner...what the hell does that mean?) than I ever thought existed. Ugh!
Every different character that tells their part of this meandering, doomed love story--equal parts dull and turgid--has some similar flaws. None of them are that bright and all of them are neurotically obsessed with either the male (Jack) or the female (known as V) in the doomed romance. And all of them seem to want to hurt the other people involved because they are frustrated with their own dull, dead-end, workaday lives.
The writing itself is technically competent, but the author chooses over and over to wallow in the ongoing misery of his characters and subject the reader to the who-gives-a-damn world of roughneck heavy machinery operators.
This novel reminds me (in the bad way) of something that would be written by the type of author satirized in the Coen Brothers movie "Barton Fink."
PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW (scroll down to skip them)
V is a beautiful young woman trapped on a crappy farm. The neighboring rancher wants to basically buy her from her father as a nurse and wife. He's sickly and rich. And probably a pervert. But her father vaguely encourages V to go for the young, virile bulldozer operator--Jack--instead. Yet, when he catches Jack and V having sex, the father kicks V out in a jealous rage. I think the father wanted V for himself in some way. Jack and V are over 18, but far too young to start a life together. Jack begins to resent V and won't marry her. He drives her away by cheating. Yet she uses her hold on Jack to keep reeling him back in by making him jealous. V marries the sickly rancher. Jack marries some clueless girl. The rancher dies. V gets rich from it. There is minor speculation that she sexed him to death. What a way to go! The clueless girl has an abortion that leaves her barren. Earlier, Jack kills a guy in a fistfight, sort of, because he's overwrought about V. That toxic pattern Jack and V get into ruins a lot of lives around them. Until someone kills V. By the time the killer was revealed, I couldn't have cared any less.
END SPOILERS
I would give this book zero stars if I could. It's headed for the recycle bin.
June 26, 2022
So Many Doors was written by Oakley Hall. Hall taught writing to, among others, Amy Tan. It’s embarrassing that I did not know who this gentleman was. That’s why I love the Hard Case Crime line of books- I have been introduced to a number of authors who were new to me whose work I really enjoy. As for Too Many Doors: This is a tale of obsession. To me the title laments all the other choices that Vassilia “V” Baird could have made. She becomes a kind of destroyer instead-envision her as antimatter annihilating those around her. I feel sorry for her and I think you will too but there comes a point when V can no longer be thought of as a victim. Could she ever have chosen a different path? It’s a damn tragedy. This story is told through the perceptions of five other characters we never step inside V’s mind. Put simplistically Hall allows us to draw our own conclusions about V. This book was well written and powerful. Composed over 60 years ago it packs a punch. Keep in mind this novel is a child of its’ time- there are some words here that are no longer used in polite society for instance. Four stars.
October 12, 2023
“He had left the one debt unpaid to pay the other in counterfeit coin.”
December 29, 2018
Oakley Hall je autor Warlocka, jednog od mojih omiljenih romana, koji je za mit o Vajatu Erpu učinio ono što je Andrić za naše epske junake u Putu Alije Đerzeleza.
So Many Doors je njegov prvenac koji je Hard Case Crime nedavno reizdao i sačuvao od zaborava. Premda je ovaj izdavač ustremljen isključivo na krimi romane -- za uvu knjigu su kazali da je najbolja koju su ikad publikovali -- So Many Doors nije krimić. Ili nije samo krimić. U pitanju je roman sastavljen iz 5 novela u trećem licu, različitih fokalizatora, a središte im je V, devojka čiji ćemo razvoj od krhkog devojčurka do fam-fatal sagledati kroz njihove oči i njihovu povezanost s njom, odnosno ono što je naposletku eskaliralo zločinom.
U pitanju je doba Velike depresije, nemaštine, slabo plaćenih šljakera i devojaka koje se na sve moguće načine dovijaju da sastave ovaj i idući mesec. Sjajno je što je ovo prvi roman koji sam ikad pročitao u kojem fam-fatal nije tek tako data, kao završena i "vanzemaljskog" porekla, nego neko kome su okolnosti pokrenule ono najdublje i inače verovatno i neslućeno žensko-demonsko.
Mizanscen ove knjige je noar, cigarete, zamračene prostorije, pa i fam-fatal, ali njegova suština je znatno dublja i prefinjenija, a stilski stoji ravnopravno sa bilo kojim velikanom.
So Many Doors je njegov prvenac koji je Hard Case Crime nedavno reizdao i sačuvao od zaborava. Premda je ovaj izdavač ustremljen isključivo na krimi romane -- za uvu knjigu su kazali da je najbolja koju su ikad publikovali -- So Many Doors nije krimić. Ili nije samo krimić. U pitanju je roman sastavljen iz 5 novela u trećem licu, različitih fokalizatora, a središte im je V, devojka čiji ćemo razvoj od krhkog devojčurka do fam-fatal sagledati kroz njihove oči i njihovu povezanost s njom, odnosno ono što je naposletku eskaliralo zločinom.
U pitanju je doba Velike depresije, nemaštine, slabo plaćenih šljakera i devojaka koje se na sve moguće načine dovijaju da sastave ovaj i idući mesec. Sjajno je što je ovo prvi roman koji sam ikad pročitao u kojem fam-fatal nije tek tako data, kao završena i "vanzemaljskog" porekla, nego neko kome su okolnosti pokrenule ono najdublje i inače verovatno i neslućeno žensko-demonsko.
Mizanscen ove knjige je noar, cigarete, zamračene prostorije, pa i fam-fatal, ali njegova suština je znatno dublja i prefinjenija, a stilski stoji ravnopravno sa bilo kojim velikanom.
September 13, 2020
Reminded me of Jim Thompson, in the way that it elegantly makes hurting each other seem like a great love story.
Also, racist and sexist, due to time period
Also, racist and sexist, due to time period
June 19, 2019
COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK 186 (of 250)
The tainted love of "Wuthering Heights" moved to 1950 America.
HOOK - 3 stars: A man is in prison for murder. The following exchange occurs, and it's good enough to grab one instantly:
Lawyer: "Do you know what it is to die in the gas chamber?"
Jack Ward: "Yeah, I die in there all the time. But I wish to hell they'd get me to it."
PACE - 2: The story is told from various POVs and many of the incidences overlap. Many discussions are basically the same. Lots of "woe is me, why oh why, I hate you, I love you, go away, please stay, go, etc."
PLOT - 2: A man and woman psychologically abuse each other for years, paths crossing this time in the deserts of Southern California instead of the moors of England. Young men talk about getting a girl's 'cherry' and finally cherries jubilee is served at a restaurant and the guy goes off the deep end. I kid you not. It's sorta takes the book from good to rather silly.
CAST - 3: V(isalia), the beautiful innocent blonde farmer's daughter (again, I kid you not) is hot for the new farm worker. He is Jack Ward, wide of shoulders, slim of hips, as handsome as she is beautiful. Their lust for each other can never be satisfied by anyone else, and they mistake it for love. The wicked farmer had always been jealous of his now-dead wife, and when he catches V and Jack in the shed, he kicks her out. He's the type that should never have been married, so is the daughter, so is the yard worker. Jack tries to settle down with good girl Gene, V tries to do the same thing with her father's wealthy neighbor, Mr. Denton.
ATMOSPHERE - 3: There are stumps to pull, land to grade, bulldozers, a horse, Pearl Harbor and WW2. Hot, dry, desert and rainy Oregon. The fantasies of men without women, in the desert or in the service, are nicely portrayed: the guys most often don't realize their fantasy is just that...only a fantasy. A perfect life with stupendously hot sex every night? Nope, that's never real, ever.
SUMMARY - 2.6. The author is almost good enough to pull it off, and at times Hall does portray the psychological hell of Heathcliff and Cathy in "Wuthering Heights." But the book is at least 50 pages too long (at 318 pages, an editor could have cut it down to 250 or so, left out the silly stuff, and this could have been a better book). It's readable, though, it's fun, but it's just not cereal enough. Oh, and it's pretty steamy.
BOOK 186 (of 250)
The tainted love of "Wuthering Heights" moved to 1950 America.
HOOK - 3 stars: A man is in prison for murder. The following exchange occurs, and it's good enough to grab one instantly:
Lawyer: "Do you know what it is to die in the gas chamber?"
Jack Ward: "Yeah, I die in there all the time. But I wish to hell they'd get me to it."
PACE - 2: The story is told from various POVs and many of the incidences overlap. Many discussions are basically the same. Lots of "woe is me, why oh why, I hate you, I love you, go away, please stay, go, etc."
PLOT - 2: A man and woman psychologically abuse each other for years, paths crossing this time in the deserts of Southern California instead of the moors of England. Young men talk about getting a girl's 'cherry' and finally cherries jubilee is served at a restaurant and the guy goes off the deep end. I kid you not. It's sorta takes the book from good to rather silly.
CAST - 3: V(isalia), the beautiful innocent blonde farmer's daughter (again, I kid you not) is hot for the new farm worker. He is Jack Ward, wide of shoulders, slim of hips, as handsome as she is beautiful. Their lust for each other can never be satisfied by anyone else, and they mistake it for love. The wicked farmer had always been jealous of his now-dead wife, and when he catches V and Jack in the shed, he kicks her out. He's the type that should never have been married, so is the daughter, so is the yard worker. Jack tries to settle down with good girl Gene, V tries to do the same thing with her father's wealthy neighbor, Mr. Denton.
ATMOSPHERE - 3: There are stumps to pull, land to grade, bulldozers, a horse, Pearl Harbor and WW2. Hot, dry, desert and rainy Oregon. The fantasies of men without women, in the desert or in the service, are nicely portrayed: the guys most often don't realize their fantasy is just that...only a fantasy. A perfect life with stupendously hot sex every night? Nope, that's never real, ever.
SUMMARY - 2.6. The author is almost good enough to pull it off, and at times Hall does portray the psychological hell of Heathcliff and Cathy in "Wuthering Heights." But the book is at least 50 pages too long (at 318 pages, an editor could have cut it down to 250 or so, left out the silly stuff, and this could have been a better book). It's readable, though, it's fun, but it's just not cereal enough. Oh, and it's pretty steamy.
July 1, 2020
Thomas Pynchon had become, in the second half of high school, starting in 1995 or 1996, my preeminent literary light. Certain cults will tend to appear especially attractive to certain lost souls at crucial times, the young always uniquely susceptible. Old song and dance, no need to stop the presses. It is not my intention to waste a whole heap of real estate building monuments to my adolescent habits and obsessions, but it seems judicious to establish that beloved California novelist and creative writing professor Oakely Hall first became known to me when I was a teenager on account of the outspoken enthusiasm Pynchon and Richard Fariña had each expressed for his 1958 literary Western WARLOCK. Fariña is a too-often overlooked counterculture icon who rivalled Bob Dylan and would have continued to had he not died prematurely in a motorcycle accident at twenty-nine, around the time of the publication of BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME, his first and only novel, the edition of which I owned as a teenager featuring a famous introduction by Fariña's good friend Thomas P. (Bob Dylan, who likewise ran in some of the same circles as Fariña, came close to dying in a motorcycle accident three months after Fariña’s.) Pynchon and Fariña met in 1958 as students at Cornell. Oakely Hall was seventeen years older than they, 1958 the year WARLOCK was published. I think what attracted those two young undergrads to WARLOCK was its febrile employment of vernacular language, its archetypal characters who are nevertheless dynamic and highly pressurized, its stylistic prowess generally, and no doubt also its evocation of a space-time both a part of history and outside of it altogether (which is the foundation of mythology). I didn’t get around to reading WARLOCK until New York Review Books brought it back into circulation in 2005, a substantial blurb from Pynchon on the back cover. I had read one other Hall novel before I got to WARLOCK, but have (until now) had occasion to read none since. It is likely I would have bought one had I found it on the shelf at a book seller’s, but that hadn’t happened until I was, fairly recently, somewhat taken aback to discover SO MANY DOORS whilst killing time in a big chain store, perusing the crime section. The edition was eye-catching, to be sure, as these Hard Case Crime editions uniformly are. Pulp-chic design, unusual bonafides. The design incorporates some of the old dime novel elements, including titillating cover art and tawdry tag-lines. This marketing methodology cannot help but remind me of the original halfsheet poster for Samuel Fuller’s SHOCK CORRIDOR, a copy of which I own—it hangs very visibly in my condo—and which makes the film seem like it must be a monumentally disreputable piece of salacious decadence (hardly exactly the hard case). The Hard Case edition of SO MANY DOORS additionally features effusive blurbs from respected writers Michael Chabon and Amy Tan, both of whom studied under Hall at Irvine; they cannot help but present a vivid contrast in this particular context. The novel does turn out to be a powerful and brilliant literary achievement, equally evocative of Henry James as it is James M. Cain. Part of the oldfangled public relations jive that adorns the graphic design involves an all-caps declaration at the top of the front cover, directly above the author’s name: “FIRST PUBLICATION IN 60 YEARS!” It makes for a clean and felicitous pitch, but the math is not strictly correct, its actually being a matter of sixty-eight years. SO MANY DOORS was Oakely Hall’s second novel. It was published in 1950, the year he turned thirty. He was more or less the same age Fariña would be when he arrived speedily at his premature end. In assessing SO MANY DOORS we might begin to fancy that Pynchon may indeed have read it; it may well have measurably influenced V, the younger man’s 1963 debut novel, the titular letter asserting itself unambiguously as a shared asset. Note some of that aforementioned purple tagline prosody, not especially suited to the moral seriousness of the novel itself: “SHE WAS HIS V. SHE WAS EVERY MAN’S V.” SO MANY DOORS begins with a Prologue in which we meet Jack Ward, one of our principals. He’s in his early thirties, has been arrested for the murder of Vassilia Baird (known to most everybody as V), and, this being the case, it can hardly be a matter of my spoiling this decisive plot point for the prospective reader. A lawyer comes to visit Ward in jail. Ward doesn't want legal council. He says he straight-up killed her, intended it and would do it again, and there isn’t much to be done about it. Pressed by the lawyer on the possibility of dying in the gas chamber, Jack puts it bluntly: “I die there all the time. But I wish to hell they’d get me to it.” It is beautiful, exquisitely modulated hard-boiled argot. In these early pages there is already a brilliant attention to details of character business. Gesture, visible indicators of self-censure. Trembling, physical tightening. There can be little doubt that Hall is set on establishing for us that Ward’s existential bitterness has been arrived at honestly and through terminal developments largely out of his control. This has already been foreshadowed by the novel’s epigraph, from which it appropriates its title: a bit of verse from Edwin Arlington Robinson in which “weaklings’ vain distress” finds said weaklings confined to “dungeons where so many doors” will each force them (the weaklings) to “look sheer down / To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness / Where all who know may drown.” This will indeed prove to be Hall’s principle theme, at least at a perfunctory level, and if we consider the commonplace aphorism that ‘character is destiny,’ it will become clear that Hall’s weaklings and their vain distress will come to be a matter of chomping at the bit of a destiny that has produced them and is reproduced through them such that no matter whichever door they pass through of the many on offer, they are liable to reach some variation of the same tragic culmination. This is very much the stuff of the existential crime novel and what would come to be known as American film noir. The critic Tom Gunning, writing about the American films of Fritz Lang, coined the exemplary expression “the destiny machine,” and there can be no doubt that that machine is both social and cosmic, just as there is no ambiguity surrounding that matter of this being a machine that destroys things, primarily people. When, near the end of the Prologue, Jack Ward fully apprehends the predetermination of his doom, or at least its inevitability (irrespective of whichever door he may have opted for at any given interstice of moral weight), he breaks out in something like hysterical laughter, something a number of characters will do repeatedly throughout the rest of the novel. Though this is a novel featuring thoughtful, morally creditable people who suffer pain in the causing of it, much destruction is caused by them, through act or omission, and at the heart of their tragedy is that fact that when forced to make choices (or at least face them), especially when it is most immediately pressing, they must do so in a condition of overwhelm. Overwhelm will tend to manifest less as pure emotion than as complexes of confused (and confusing) emotion. Of the famer Baird, father to V: “He had never known rage and madness and somehow terror like this.” Or Jack Ward’s friend, Ben Proctor: “It was no business of his, he told himself, no business at all, but he had never felt so bitterly and furiously rebellious; at the injustice of life, at the monstrous heedlessness and cruelty and dog-eat-dog of the world. It was not merely at Jack now, it went past Jack, and, too, it was that he felt profoundly sorry for V. And not merely sorrow, but an enormous, impotent, resentful pity; for he could see what was ahead for her as though it were written in a book for him to read and memorize.” Consider Jack’s wife Gene, “weak with helpless rage and self-pity and hate,” who will later herself burst into hysterical laughter in a moment of terrific psychic-emotional suffering: “She stopped, panting, for all at once she was afraid she had gone insane.” And then Jack himself, not terribly long before his arrest: “He got up and closed the door and then he sat down on the bed again, feeling vaguely angry at himself, and then blusteringly angry at V, and then, all at once, he loathed himself.” Emotion and emotional chaos become the living realization of active doom in its conditional becoming, but these tenpestuous emotional atmospherics belong to a novel conceived and executed with great intelligence, supreme care, and breathtaking compassion. Between Prologue and Epilogue, SO MANY DOORS is written in third person quasi-omniscient and consists of five sections containing multiple chapters, each of those principle sections hewing close to the intimate perspective of a different character. Part I belongs to the farmer Baird, Part II to Ward’s friend Ben Proctor, Part III to nosy (repressively jealous) friend Marian Huber, Part IV to Ward’s wife Gene, and Part V to Ward himself. This sort of thing obviously rests comfortably within pop literary practices and crime fiction of the period. Again, however, I believe we must establish that what Hall has accomplished here is more like the incongruous hermeneutic regimes at play in Henry James than what we can find in a very good but comparatively slapdash novel like Jim Thompson’s THE KILL-OFF (which was published seven years after SO MANY DOORS originally appeared). While we do assay the lay of the narrative land from extremely variable perspectives, what is ultimately first and foremost is the dense-in-the-geological-sense humanity of all the various personages, whatever their limitations or character defects. This basic schematic is also a way of showcasing the author’s formidable skill as architect, the recessing of the story within the context of a parallax of perspectives and the steady distribution of plot points throughout the five distinct schema allowing for both a bold, individual way of delivering pleasures to the reader (it is supposed to be a matter of keeping them hooked after all), while also markedly serving as the kind of stuff bound to excite reverence in readers (primarily themselves writers) attuned to nuances of craft. The novel tells the story of the consummation of destiny first mobilized when Jack Ward encounters V at her father’s farm where he has been hired as a temporary labourer. V is a virgin, and Jack, a man in his early twenties whose youthfully cavalier attitude concerning sex relations will be established at the beginning of Part V, seduces her. It is 1938 or thereabouts. Ben Proctor, the principal narrative/narrational agent of Part II, has known Jack since both were teenagers working their first jobs as manual labourers and eventually cat skinners. They are rooming together in Bakersfield in 1938 when V shows up. Ben is the novel’s resident novelist, perhaps its closest thing to an Oakley Hall surrogate. Not that he writes fiction or would ever be likely to. A grader operator and a union man (general secretary of the local), well liked by his peers, Ben is not a diligent pursuer of self-interest. “It was too easy for him to see the other fellow’s side of a matter; it was impossible for him not to see the other side, and seeing it, he must consider it.” Though even early on Ben can apprehend the cracks in Jack’s fun-loving ersatz-masculanist persona, it is not until Part V that we truly come to know of the depths of shame, guilt, hurt, and fear in Jack Ward; that the mask of fear serves most especially to conceal a deep core of tenderness within him, the exposure of which he clearly imagines would make him too utterly naked, perilously vulnerable. Destiny as pertains to Jack and V is in large part precipitated by a primal scene scenario in which the polarities are reversed, the farmer Baird accidentally happening upon his daughter and the young labourer in flagrante delicto. Though Baird will banish his daughter permanently from his life, part of what happens here is the exposure of his own psychic wound, as he comes to superimpose upon the tableau, and his daughter’s figuration within it, the spectral visage of his dead wife, the girl’s mother, and the return of his jealousy toward his wife, a jealously that in the past and suddenly now again fills him with a shame that makes him physically ill (“like hot sour vomit in his head […] and the forbidden closet of his memory burst and overflowed”). To see is not only to misread, but to misread as a particular wounded person, a set of totally individual symptoms. Ben Proctor’s wound is a literal physical wound, one to his right leg, but it too is the corporeal index of a psychic trauma, sustained in a car accident as an adolescent which marked the beginning of the end of his first fumbling experience of romantic love whilst simultaneously ending the lives of his older sister and her boyfriend. In one brief moment in Part V we have an inebriated Jack Ward acting out in a bar, driving V away and behaving belligerently toward his supposed friends, recalling for a frozen instant the horror and disgust he felt the first time he shot a rabbit as a boy: “it had screamed and jerked its mangled body around on the ground until he could get his father’s old shotgun reloaded and kill it.” The images in Jack’s head will tend to project themselves. They too are the stuff of overwhelm, incapacitation, sickness unto death. The fraught entanglement which assures that over the course of a decade (and a World War, and much of California) Jack and V will remain unable to disentangle themselves from each other erotically, psychically, or emotionally, has to do with a variation on the theme of doors we might imagine to lead anywhere other than one hazy but foregone conclusion. In finding V as a young man, Jack is introduced to a confrontation with himself that is his whole life, the messiness of this exemplified in the powerful realization that “all of her was all of him.” The destiny machine destroys. “Anything they did, any time they were together, they were hurting someone. It did not matter that they hurt themselves; that was only of and between themselves and perhaps could pass. But there was always someone else they betrayed, or damaged, or destroyed.” V is going to die. We know this at the outset. It does not play out how we would presumably expect it to. It’s a different door, but the same abyssal destiny. Proctor, who cares very much for both of his old friends, hears about V’s death by way of a crass newspaper headline that jazzes up the scintillating (imputed) surface details. "Murdered Blonde in Love Triangle." The headline is analogous to the tag-lines on the Hard Case paperback. The magnificent novel SO MANY DOORS is something else entire.
November 26, 2018
The late Oakley Hall is no longer a literary household name, but he unquestionably remains an author’s author. At one time he was considered to be the dean of West Coast authors. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and mentored, among others, Amy Tan and Michael Chabon. While he is arguably best known for the Legends West trilogy, a trio of historical westerns published over the course of a quarter-century, Hall contributed excellent novels to the mystery genre as well as nonfiction works devoted to the craft of writing.
Early in his career, Hall also wrote paperback noir novels that were unappreciated classics of their time. SO MANY DOORS, a dark period piece originally published in 1950, is one of those. It has been resurrected by the indispensable Hard Case Crime imprint after being out of print for some six decades and given the respectful revival that it so greatly deserves.
SO MANY DOORS was extremely ambitious for its format and time. The prologue begins at the conclusion of the story. It finds the protagonist, Jack Ward, imprisoned for the murder of his lover, Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all as “V.” Ward has confessed to the crime and eschewed the assistance of an attorney. The book progresses from its past slowly to its present, divided into parts titled after characters --- Baird, Ben, Marian Huber, Gene and Jack --- beginning with Baird, a widowed hardscrabble California farmer in the midst of the Great Depression who is raising his beautiful teenage daughter, Vassilia, on his own.
V is already attracting attention unwelcomed by her father when he hires a “cat skinner” (as heavy equipment operators were known) named Jack Ward to do some work on his farm. She is a quiet force of nature on her own, only beginning to innately understand the sensual power she holds over any male she encounters who has a pulse. Jack, who is older and has been around the block a number of times, has the good looks and self-confidence to attract the comely but inexperienced V. However, the student soon catches up with the teacher and surpasses him, leaving passion, chaos and death in their wake.
While they can’t live with each other, they can’t live apart, either. Their combination is self-destructive, but the damage they wreak isn’t confined to their own lives. That said, there is a rough nobility to Jack that manifests itself occasionally throughout the book, right up to its ultimately redeeming though tragic ending.
SO MANY DOORS may put one in the mind of James M. Cain, but its characters and settings foreshadow Hall’s subsequent literary love affair with the West as a contemporary rather than a historical setting. Of interest is that enigmatic author Thomas Pynchon, who started what he called a “micro-cult” based on Hall’s WARLOCK, titled his first novel V. The catalyst of the book is the obsessive search for a woman, known only as “V,” who is mentioned in the journal of the father of one of the story’s many characters. The similarity cannot be a coincidence.
Hall may be gone, but his haunting influence lives on. Read SO MANY DOORS, and you will understand why.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Early in his career, Hall also wrote paperback noir novels that were unappreciated classics of their time. SO MANY DOORS, a dark period piece originally published in 1950, is one of those. It has been resurrected by the indispensable Hard Case Crime imprint after being out of print for some six decades and given the respectful revival that it so greatly deserves.
SO MANY DOORS was extremely ambitious for its format and time. The prologue begins at the conclusion of the story. It finds the protagonist, Jack Ward, imprisoned for the murder of his lover, Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all as “V.” Ward has confessed to the crime and eschewed the assistance of an attorney. The book progresses from its past slowly to its present, divided into parts titled after characters --- Baird, Ben, Marian Huber, Gene and Jack --- beginning with Baird, a widowed hardscrabble California farmer in the midst of the Great Depression who is raising his beautiful teenage daughter, Vassilia, on his own.
V is already attracting attention unwelcomed by her father when he hires a “cat skinner” (as heavy equipment operators were known) named Jack Ward to do some work on his farm. She is a quiet force of nature on her own, only beginning to innately understand the sensual power she holds over any male she encounters who has a pulse. Jack, who is older and has been around the block a number of times, has the good looks and self-confidence to attract the comely but inexperienced V. However, the student soon catches up with the teacher and surpasses him, leaving passion, chaos and death in their wake.
While they can’t live with each other, they can’t live apart, either. Their combination is self-destructive, but the damage they wreak isn’t confined to their own lives. That said, there is a rough nobility to Jack that manifests itself occasionally throughout the book, right up to its ultimately redeeming though tragic ending.
SO MANY DOORS may put one in the mind of James M. Cain, but its characters and settings foreshadow Hall’s subsequent literary love affair with the West as a contemporary rather than a historical setting. Of interest is that enigmatic author Thomas Pynchon, who started what he called a “micro-cult” based on Hall’s WARLOCK, titled his first novel V. The catalyst of the book is the obsessive search for a woman, known only as “V,” who is mentioned in the journal of the father of one of the story’s many characters. The similarity cannot be a coincidence.
Hall may be gone, but his haunting influence lives on. Read SO MANY DOORS, and you will understand why.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
April 15, 2016
I swear this book wasn't there the last time I searched. This was on my older sister's bookshelf back in the late 1950's. I assumed it had some sex in it and it did. A sordid tale of dissolution set in Steinbeck country as I recall. About the first adult book I read or tried to read. Date read is a guess.
The author was a pretty important writer in his time but has been mostly forgotten these days.
The author was a pretty important writer in his time but has been mostly forgotten these days.
December 20, 2018
This one is tiring.
It's a "relationship" story but I use the term loosely.
It's a crazy affair that treads over some of
the same ground from the semi-viewpoint of
different characters.
In the end the two main characters are a hot bunch
of mess, never mind the actual denouement (regarding
the murder) which you might be able to guess about
two-thirds of the way through the long slog.
Don't bother.
It's a "relationship" story but I use the term loosely.
It's a crazy affair that treads over some of
the same ground from the semi-viewpoint of
different characters.
In the end the two main characters are a hot bunch
of mess, never mind the actual denouement (regarding
the murder) which you might be able to guess about
two-thirds of the way through the long slog.
Don't bother.
April 10, 2020
So Many Door Začíná, jak to bývá u noiru zvykem, člověkem sedícím ve vězení a čekajícím na popravu. Nechce žádného obhájce, nechce žádat o milost. Co se stalo? Ano, tohle je jen prolog, příběh se vzápětí vrací o pořádný kus zpátky a rozjíždí v podstatě klasický příběh femme fatale – až na to, že to není klasický příběh femme fatale. Té dotyčné FF je totiž na začátku jen sedmnáct let a navíc je panna. Aspoň do chvíle, než potká hlavního hrdinu, Jacka Warda, řidiče buldozeru (v angličtině je pro ně hezký termín cat skinner). Ten ji svede, ona s ním uteče z domova, rychle ho přestane bavit… a aby si ho udržela, musí se naučit používat ženské zbraně hromadného ničení. A tím se rozjíždí jejich sebedestruktivní vztah, který je založený na mixu nenávisti a posedlosti, ustavičném opouštění a návratech.
Román vznikl v roce 1950 a přijde mi, že i když je to dobře napsané, tak ta příběhově-emoční linka je už přece jen hodně zastaralá. Když je to ta klasická přepálená noirovka, tak to berete jako součást atmosféry. Tady, jak to přece jen autor bere vážně a noří se do hlav protagonistů, jak to píše víc jako drama než béčkovou detektivku, tak to víc mlátí do zorniček. Ona ta ambicióznost vyplývá i ze způsobu jak je kniha psaná: Příběh se odehrává na ploše nějakých devíti let, cpe se do něj druhá světová, a je vyprávěný z pohledu různých lidí, kteří popisují svůj vklad do téhle šlamastyky.
Takže ano, rozhodně je to na rok 1950 hodně moderně napsaný román, ale přiznávám že mě nebavil a čím blíž konci, tím větším hopem jsem to četl. Zvláště jak člověku začne docházet, že se tam asi nic velkého nestane, že možná na konci dojde k jedné vraždě a jinak se bude autor věnovat ustavičnému scházení a rozcházení hrdinů a jejich emočním bouřím. A jak už jsem nakousl, postavy jsou z dnešního hlediska hodně naivní. I když se tady akceptuje existence mimomanželského sexu, je být manželkou stále hlavní smysl života veškeré ženské populace a svatba se obvykle řeší hned po prvním orgasmu. Plus přece jen pro dnešní čtenáře je to až moc drama. Dneska se člověk i ve vztazích řídí spíš Ericem Cartmanem než Romeem a Julii: „Seru na to, jdu domu.“
Ve výsledku je So Many Doors takový celkem klasický tragický milostný příběh, který je solidně napsán, celkem zajímavě odvyprávěn – ale ani tak se v něm nic zase tak zajímavého nestane.
Román vznikl v roce 1950 a přijde mi, že i když je to dobře napsané, tak ta příběhově-emoční linka je už přece jen hodně zastaralá. Když je to ta klasická přepálená noirovka, tak to berete jako součást atmosféry. Tady, jak to přece jen autor bere vážně a noří se do hlav protagonistů, jak to píše víc jako drama než béčkovou detektivku, tak to víc mlátí do zorniček. Ona ta ambicióznost vyplývá i ze způsobu jak je kniha psaná: Příběh se odehrává na ploše nějakých devíti let, cpe se do něj druhá světová, a je vyprávěný z pohledu různých lidí, kteří popisují svůj vklad do téhle šlamastyky.
Takže ano, rozhodně je to na rok 1950 hodně moderně napsaný román, ale přiznávám že mě nebavil a čím blíž konci, tím větším hopem jsem to četl. Zvláště jak člověku začne docházet, že se tam asi nic velkého nestane, že možná na konci dojde k jedné vraždě a jinak se bude autor věnovat ustavičnému scházení a rozcházení hrdinů a jejich emočním bouřím. A jak už jsem nakousl, postavy jsou z dnešního hlediska hodně naivní. I když se tady akceptuje existence mimomanželského sexu, je být manželkou stále hlavní smysl života veškeré ženské populace a svatba se obvykle řeší hned po prvním orgasmu. Plus přece jen pro dnešní čtenáře je to až moc drama. Dneska se člověk i ve vztazích řídí spíš Ericem Cartmanem než Romeem a Julii: „Seru na to, jdu domu.“
Ve výsledku je So Many Doors takový celkem klasický tragický milostný příběh, který je solidně napsán, celkem zajímavě odvyprávěn – ale ani tak se v něm nic zase tak zajímavého nestane.
January 1, 2022
"When Jack had been in his early twenties the relationship between men and women seemed simple… Men wanted to go to bed with women, and women, in turn, wanted to go to bed with men. But for some reason, perhaps because of the way they were made, women had to put up a fight. So the man's part was the attack, the woman's was defense. … It was a simple and exciting game with one goal and no rules that he knew of, and he was good at it."
When seventeen year old Vassilia (known simply as V) falls for handsome Jack Ward, who is a few years her senior, it feels like a storybook romance. However, their volatile relationship will become a tinder box that will ruin their lives and leave a trail of emotional carnage that wounds everyone else around them…
This novel is set in the community of pre- and post-World War II cat skinners, the men who ran the dozers and graders to build the nation's highway system. Unfolding over the course of a decade, the catastrophic story of Jack and V is told through the eyes of five different point of view characters:
Baird: V's moralistic father who loves her but cannot overcome his pride and jealousy…
Ben: The lovelorn friend who secretly longs for V but unwittingly puts her on the path from innocence to manipulative vixen…
Marian: The busybody neighbor who knows everyone's business and likes to stir the pot…
Gene: The wife who loves Jack Ward and tries to save him from himself…
Jack: A man governed by lusts, impulses, and indecision…
While I find this plot and characters are engaging, the book as a whole seems fatally flawed. At times it is too windy and ruminative, especially the existential angst of the Baird and Ben sections.
At other times, the writer glosses over or skips past essential scenes. For example, the whole plot revolves around V's transformation from timid, virginal schoolgirl to exploitive, home-wrecking seductress. This is the trigger that upends the balance of power between Jack and V. Yet, the entire metamorphosis occurs off the page and is difficult to accept.
The final section retells the whole story from Jack's viewpoint. It clumsily attempts to fill in those gaps and holes, but it is too melodramatic and overwritten ("He could taste grief like brass in his mouth, then the brass mixed with bourbon, then the brass alone again.")
2 stars.
When seventeen year old Vassilia (known simply as V) falls for handsome Jack Ward, who is a few years her senior, it feels like a storybook romance. However, their volatile relationship will become a tinder box that will ruin their lives and leave a trail of emotional carnage that wounds everyone else around them…
This novel is set in the community of pre- and post-World War II cat skinners, the men who ran the dozers and graders to build the nation's highway system. Unfolding over the course of a decade, the catastrophic story of Jack and V is told through the eyes of five different point of view characters:
Baird: V's moralistic father who loves her but cannot overcome his pride and jealousy…
Ben: The lovelorn friend who secretly longs for V but unwittingly puts her on the path from innocence to manipulative vixen…
Marian: The busybody neighbor who knows everyone's business and likes to stir the pot…
Gene: The wife who loves Jack Ward and tries to save him from himself…
Jack: A man governed by lusts, impulses, and indecision…
While I find this plot and characters are engaging, the book as a whole seems fatally flawed. At times it is too windy and ruminative, especially the existential angst of the Baird and Ben sections.
At other times, the writer glosses over or skips past essential scenes. For example, the whole plot revolves around V's transformation from timid, virginal schoolgirl to exploitive, home-wrecking seductress. This is the trigger that upends the balance of power between Jack and V. Yet, the entire metamorphosis occurs off the page and is difficult to accept.
The final section retells the whole story from Jack's viewpoint. It clumsily attempts to fill in those gaps and holes, but it is too melodramatic and overwritten ("He could taste grief like brass in his mouth, then the brass mixed with bourbon, then the brass alone again.")
2 stars.
June 28, 2019
Why I picked this up: I have enjoyed some Hard Case Crime volumes in the past and think of them as providing a guaranteed solid noir experience. I was interested in a reissue of a novel that hadn't been seen in 60 years that had pull quotes from Michael Chabon and Amy Tan!!! But oh, that cover --- more on that later....
What I thought of it: While it takes a while to get going, So Many Doors is a novel about a passionate and highly dysfunctional relationship that dooms both the participants and some of those around them. Jack Ward is a construction worker (specifically, a "cat skinner" who drives tractors --- I learned more about tractors than I expected reading this) who sleeps around a lot and discovers V (short for Vassilia), a sheltered high school graduate on her elderly father's farm. The beginning of the book focuses on the men around V, and I was concerned that this was a male-focused book with no sense of female agency. But Hall gradually works in different narrators, including two women, and the work feels more rounded by the end. I was fascinated by the background Hall gave all of his narrators --- all of them have passages where Hall describes early romantic or sexual experiences and how they were shaped by those times.
At the end, I found it a decent read with a decent amount of noir, but nothing to get overly excited about. And that cover has almost nothing to do with the story. (Yes, that could be V, but why she is posed like that with a collection of necklaces is a mystery.)
What I thought of it: While it takes a while to get going, So Many Doors is a novel about a passionate and highly dysfunctional relationship that dooms both the participants and some of those around them. Jack Ward is a construction worker (specifically, a "cat skinner" who drives tractors --- I learned more about tractors than I expected reading this) who sleeps around a lot and discovers V (short for Vassilia), a sheltered high school graduate on her elderly father's farm. The beginning of the book focuses on the men around V, and I was concerned that this was a male-focused book with no sense of female agency. But Hall gradually works in different narrators, including two women, and the work feels more rounded by the end. I was fascinated by the background Hall gave all of his narrators --- all of them have passages where Hall describes early romantic or sexual experiences and how they were shaped by those times.
At the end, I found it a decent read with a decent amount of noir, but nothing to get overly excited about. And that cover has almost nothing to do with the story. (Yes, that could be V, but why she is posed like that with a collection of necklaces is a mystery.)
January 26, 2025
Originally published in 1950, this novel starts with a prologue with a guy on death row in California. The main character is Jack Ward, who in the opening chapters, seduces the daughter of a widowed rancher named Baird, a teenaged girl named Vassilia Baird ("V", for short, as she is called throughout the book). Her father catches them in a shed hooking up, calls V a whore, and throws them out. Jack is a working-class guy who had been hired by Baird to remove tree stumps from his property. The rest of the book is the story of V and Jack's star-crossed relationship. The book is divided into parts where essentially the same story is told from the viewpoints of several people - Ben Proctor, a friend of Jack's who worked with him but was not entirely approving of his relationships with various women; Marian Huber, whose husband Arch worked with Jack; Gene (Eugenia Geary) who was Jack's other love interest who he marries at one point, and finally, Jack himself, which tells the story of the love triangle between Jack, V, and Gene, and contains the climax of the novel. The novel is set in the 1930s and 1940s in California and reflects the Depression era and then the post-World War II period. During the war, Jack spends a stint with the Navy Seabees. An interesting pulp novel of this era.
January 23, 2021
The version I read contains lurid cover art and is part of the Hard Case Crime collection. But while exceedingly dark, this book is not much of a hard-boiled crime novel at all. Even though a murder is at the center of the plot, this is a work of literary fiction that explores a Depression-era doomed relationship between two lovers who can't live with or without each other.
Some reviewers have said the book is boring and dated. But it wasn't boring in the least to me. And as for being dated, it was written in 1950. The dialogue is from a bygone era, and there are social mores that we could hope are outdated (some of the characters' racism and sexism, for example), but given what we've seen in recent years, those attitudes are very much still with us.
I read a lot of noir crime fiction. This book doesn't fit neatly in that category, lurid cover notwithstanding. But it is a beautifully written tragic love story with a crime at the center and numerous metaphorical, emotional crimes throughout. The characterization is also good, and the text draws you in.
Highly recommended.
Some reviewers have said the book is boring and dated. But it wasn't boring in the least to me. And as for being dated, it was written in 1950. The dialogue is from a bygone era, and there are social mores that we could hope are outdated (some of the characters' racism and sexism, for example), but given what we've seen in recent years, those attitudes are very much still with us.
I read a lot of noir crime fiction. This book doesn't fit neatly in that category, lurid cover notwithstanding. But it is a beautifully written tragic love story with a crime at the center and numerous metaphorical, emotional crimes throughout. The characterization is also good, and the text draws you in.
Highly recommended.
January 8, 2023
Really, 4.5 stars. I’ve recently gotten into the Hard Case Crime series, and So Many Doors was an unexpected experience. It has very few elements of classic noir crime novels, and is instead a rather serious novel. It is ultimately built around sex and violence, but it’s actually kind of a slow (but definitely not boring) character study of many connected people. I was believably transported to another time in American history and into the psyches of multiple distinct personalities.
My only slight hesitation to giving five stars was just my personal experience of a bit too much personal melodrama among the main characters in the chapters leading up to the climax. It was all believable and extremely well written; It was just a bit more than I wanted, and I was ready to get to the climax a little faster during those chapters.
This book leaves an interesting taste afterward. Dark, philosophical. Either before or after, I’d suggest reading about, or just reading, the poem, “The Man Against the Sky” by Edwin Arlington Robinson. The author cites it at the beginning, it’s where the title of the book comes from, and I think it adds something to the experience of the novel.
My only slight hesitation to giving five stars was just my personal experience of a bit too much personal melodrama among the main characters in the chapters leading up to the climax. It was all believable and extremely well written; It was just a bit more than I wanted, and I was ready to get to the climax a little faster during those chapters.
This book leaves an interesting taste afterward. Dark, philosophical. Either before or after, I’d suggest reading about, or just reading, the poem, “The Man Against the Sky” by Edwin Arlington Robinson. The author cites it at the beginning, it’s where the title of the book comes from, and I think it adds something to the experience of the novel.
July 12, 2019
So Many Doors is many things: depression era lit, a crime novel, melodrama, but perhaps is best described, in my view, as noir in the classic sense of decisions made that can never be righted or changed. In a nutshell, it is the story of Jack Ward and Vasilia Baird, who is known throughout the book as "V". V exists only through the words of others: her father, who forsakes her, Ben, Jack's friend, who loves her and feel sorry for her, Gene, Jack's wife, who doesn't understand, and finally, Jack himself. Jack admits to killing her, but as with all these stories, the truth is not always what it seems.
Oakley Hall plays upon depression-era mores, generational differences, the hardscrabble life many were pulled into in those years, and how attitudes and lies, whether to others or yourself, come back to haunt.
Oakley Hall plays upon depression-era mores, generational differences, the hardscrabble life many were pulled into in those years, and how attitudes and lies, whether to others or yourself, come back to haunt.
June 18, 2020
After reading this one, I'm very surprised it was out of print for so many years as it is written so well. The book is structured a bit like a Faulkner novel where sections of the book follow different main characters. This is not to say that the story ever meanders; it always follows the same basic plot. And all though this edition is from Hard Case Crime, it is more of a tragic love story than a crime pulp. Two main characters Jack Ward and V Baird mistreat each other in a doomed romance that ends up not just hurting them, but others close to them as well. If I were to compare this to other writers I am familiar with I would say that this is like a cross between Jim Thompson and Walker Percy. It looses a point for me in that it relies a bit too heavily on sentimentality. Otherwise it is a great story, deserving of more recognition than it has.
July 7, 2021
Having recently read Hall’s western Warlock (1958). I was interested to pick up his earlier (1950) equally acclaimed crime novel, So Many Doors. I am glad I did. At first I expected a classic post-war, American-style murder mystery. But soon, as one progresses past the prologue, the reader realizes that this is a different sort of work altogether. Not really a mystery, this is more an examination of the harsh, hard lives of hard-working, hungry and underpaid, mid-century Americans. The world of SMD is one of working-class people, farmers, construction workers, odd-jobbers, who struggled to stay alive and understand the world around them during the depression, WWII, and the years immediately following that. It is about the cruelty of life, and the cruelty of humans. Hard to put down and hard to read. That being said, read it – you’ll come away with a different view of humanity.
May 23, 2023
Hall, Oakley - So Many Doors
From the Hard Case Crime press, this is not crime, not hardboiled, not even a mystery.
Jack Ward sits in his prison cell, ignoring the lawyer assigned to defend him.
“Yes, I killed her,” he confesses. “I’m not fighting, either. Just get it over with.”
The “her” in question is Vasilia Baird, who goes simply by V.
Their story, told from multiple points of view, is of a toxic relationship.
Jack and V push each other’s buttons, torment each other, flee, and then are drawn back.
This has the makings of a Noir, but underneath the dark trappings this is a melodrama.
Two adults who, for all their experiences, are little more than pouting teenagers.
The phase most of us grew out of by our early 20’s.
About midway, I began envisioning Douglas Sirk adapting this for Hollywood.
Possibly better than this disappointment.
From the Hard Case Crime press, this is not crime, not hardboiled, not even a mystery.
Jack Ward sits in his prison cell, ignoring the lawyer assigned to defend him.
“Yes, I killed her,” he confesses. “I’m not fighting, either. Just get it over with.”
The “her” in question is Vasilia Baird, who goes simply by V.
Their story, told from multiple points of view, is of a toxic relationship.
Jack and V push each other’s buttons, torment each other, flee, and then are drawn back.
This has the makings of a Noir, but underneath the dark trappings this is a melodrama.
Two adults who, for all their experiences, are little more than pouting teenagers.
The phase most of us grew out of by our early 20’s.
About midway, I began envisioning Douglas Sirk adapting this for Hollywood.
Possibly better than this disappointment.
August 20, 2019
All the dummies among us know that noir means ‘dark.’ This foreknowledge is scant preparation for the shadowy fatalism of Oakley Hall’s exponentially noir pulp novel So Many Doors. A recently excavated pitch-dark diamond from a peak noir era (1950 in this instance), So Many Doors is so darkly dark that its primary protagonists need commit no crime other than behave in irresponsible sexual fashion and fall in love obsession! The So Many Doors vision of catastrophic erotic magnetism and its ruinous consequences hearkens back to a quainter time when popular literature was comfortable informing the general reader that innocence is a weak, lame, crippling defense.
August 27, 2020
So Many Doors, so many books. Somehow this one came up as a huge surprise. Having recently read a recommendation and saw comments from Chabon and Tan, and that he was mentor to Richard Ford, I was intrigued. A friend said Oakley was known for a western, Warlock. The prologue seemed a little strange, but from the beautifully written first chapter on, I knew this writer was extraordinary. As the book winds it’s way to its inevitable conclusion, the reader gets a deep dive into the complexity and dangers of human emotion caught and twisted in the mores and principles of the time and place. Hard times and places, yet somehow soft and caring, Oakley serves up his story. Highly recommended. Think Warlock will soon follow.
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