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Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die
Cornell Woolrich was called the Poe of the 20th century and the poet of its shadows. He lived a life of such deep despair and terror that he could do nothing with its experiences but put them between the covers of some of the century's finest novels of suspense.
Born the child of a broken marriage in 1903, Woolrich spent his childhood in revolutionary Mexico, coming to New York in his teens. While still a student at Columbia, he sold the first of several mainstream novels, which led critics to compare him with F. Scott Fitzgerald.
During the 1930s and '40s, when he was acclaimed as the preeminent author of American suspense fiction, Woolrich lived with his mother in an apartment-hotel near Harlem. After her death in 1957, Woolrich became a self-imposed prisoner in a series of lonely hotel rooms until his death in 1968. Few attended his funeral, and his million-dollar fortune was left to Columbia University to establish a scholarship fund.
Though he perceived himself as a failure, Woolrich's work was a critical and financial success. His novels, such as 'The Bride Wore Black,' 'Phantom Lady,' and 'Deadline at Dawn,' inspired the French roman noir and film noir. His novella 'Rear Window' became one of Alfred Hitchcock's most acclaimed films.
In this authoritative study, Edgar Award-winner Francis M. Nevins, Jr., explores the doom-haunted life and world of America's master of suspense.
Born the child of a broken marriage in 1903, Woolrich spent his childhood in revolutionary Mexico, coming to New York in his teens. While still a student at Columbia, he sold the first of several mainstream novels, which led critics to compare him with F. Scott Fitzgerald.
During the 1930s and '40s, when he was acclaimed as the preeminent author of American suspense fiction, Woolrich lived with his mother in an apartment-hotel near Harlem. After her death in 1957, Woolrich became a self-imposed prisoner in a series of lonely hotel rooms until his death in 1968. Few attended his funeral, and his million-dollar fortune was left to Columbia University to establish a scholarship fund.
Though he perceived himself as a failure, Woolrich's work was a critical and financial success. His novels, such as 'The Bride Wore Black,' 'Phantom Lady,' and 'Deadline at Dawn,' inspired the French roman noir and film noir. His novella 'Rear Window' became one of Alfred Hitchcock's most acclaimed films.
In this authoritative study, Edgar Award-winner Francis M. Nevins, Jr., explores the doom-haunted life and world of America's master of suspense.
613 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 1988
3 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Francis M. Nevins Jr.
60 books9 followersFrancis Michael Nevins, Jr. aka Francis M. Nevins, Jr.
Francis Nevins’ areas of expertise straddle the worlds of fact and fiction.
When he created the seminar on “Law, Lawyers and Justice in Popular Fiction and Film” in 1979, it was considered a novel idea. Today, similar seminars and courses commonly are offered in law schools throughout the United States and abroad. If there is a conference on law and film almost anywhere in the world, chances are good that Professor Nevins will be invited as a guest speaker. His paper, “When Celluloid Lawyers Started to Speak: Exploring Juriscinema’s First Golden Age,” presented in 2003 at a University College colloquium in London, is scheduled to appear in a book of essays on law and popular culture published by Oxford University Press.
An expert in estate and copyright law, Nevins was one of the first to explore in depth the legal problems that arise when an author dies. He coined the term “will bumping” to describe how, in certain circumstances, the Copyright Act can “turn an author’s will into a worthless piece of paper.” A famous writer to whom this happened was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie books. Professor Nevins served as a consultant in a federal lawsuit aimed at “unbumping” her will.
Nevins has also written about the interface between copyright and matrimonial law and has argued that a little-known provision of the Copyright Act precludes state courts from treating copyrights as matrimonial or community property when an author divorces. “It’s interesting to see courts squirming all over the place to avoid the plain language of the Copyright Act,” he says. He is currently involved in a case that raises the issue of whether upon the divorce of a successor to an author, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution precludes state courts from treating as matrimonial or community property the termination interest granted by the Copyright Act to authors’ successors.
In addition to his scholarly writing, Professor Nevins is an award-winning author of mystery fiction. His mentor in this field and “the closest thing to a grandfather I’ve ever had” was Frederic Dannay, whose pen name was Ellery Queen. Professor Nevins has published six novels, two collections of short stories and several books of non-fiction. He has edited more than 15 mystery anthologies and collections. His latest book of fiction is titled Leap Day and Other Stories (2003).
Professor Nevins graduated cum laude from New York University School of Law in 1967. He is a member of the New Jersey Bar, and worked as a staff attorney with the state’s Middlesex County Legal Services Corp. before joining the School of Law in 1971.
Francis Nevins’ areas of expertise straddle the worlds of fact and fiction.
When he created the seminar on “Law, Lawyers and Justice in Popular Fiction and Film” in 1979, it was considered a novel idea. Today, similar seminars and courses commonly are offered in law schools throughout the United States and abroad. If there is a conference on law and film almost anywhere in the world, chances are good that Professor Nevins will be invited as a guest speaker. His paper, “When Celluloid Lawyers Started to Speak: Exploring Juriscinema’s First Golden Age,” presented in 2003 at a University College colloquium in London, is scheduled to appear in a book of essays on law and popular culture published by Oxford University Press.
An expert in estate and copyright law, Nevins was one of the first to explore in depth the legal problems that arise when an author dies. He coined the term “will bumping” to describe how, in certain circumstances, the Copyright Act can “turn an author’s will into a worthless piece of paper.” A famous writer to whom this happened was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie books. Professor Nevins served as a consultant in a federal lawsuit aimed at “unbumping” her will.
Nevins has also written about the interface between copyright and matrimonial law and has argued that a little-known provision of the Copyright Act precludes state courts from treating copyrights as matrimonial or community property when an author divorces. “It’s interesting to see courts squirming all over the place to avoid the plain language of the Copyright Act,” he says. He is currently involved in a case that raises the issue of whether upon the divorce of a successor to an author, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution precludes state courts from treating as matrimonial or community property the termination interest granted by the Copyright Act to authors’ successors.
In addition to his scholarly writing, Professor Nevins is an award-winning author of mystery fiction. His mentor in this field and “the closest thing to a grandfather I’ve ever had” was Frederic Dannay, whose pen name was Ellery Queen. Professor Nevins has published six novels, two collections of short stories and several books of non-fiction. He has edited more than 15 mystery anthologies and collections. His latest book of fiction is titled Leap Day and Other Stories (2003).
Professor Nevins graduated cum laude from New York University School of Law in 1967. He is a member of the New Jersey Bar, and worked as a staff attorney with the state’s Middlesex County Legal Services Corp. before joining the School of Law in 1971.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 18, 2013
I also found this book (of over 600 pages) frustrating as well.
I had never read one like it before. Woolrich's books all take
centre stage, all of their plots are described minutely - almost
chapter by chapter. As a person obsessed with silents and early
talkies, I could read Woolrich's love of movies into the plots of
his first novels (1928-1931) - his heroes are putty in the hands
of women who seem only interested in wealth and having a good time,
once the money runs out they are gone and the hero does what it
takes to find more money, usually by unscrupulous means. It all
seemed to stem from his first encounter with a girl - Vera
Gaffney, a meeting that could have been pulled from any of his books!!
By all accounts a pretty unappealing chap, there is a scene in
which one of his fellow pulpsters describes a conversation on the
phone to his mother which is positively chilling (shades of Norman
Bate's mother is not far off the mark!!). It seems the only way
people could get in contact with him was on the phone and they
had to go through his mother!!
There is also a story on the origin of the William Irish pseudonym
- the popular theory was that Woolrich thought of it in the 1940s
so his name wouldn't become a glut on the market (his most prolific
period) but it really originated back in the 1920s when Cornell was in
Hollywood during the filming of his award winning novel "Children
of the Ritz" and a William Irish credit appeared on a couple of
Benjamin Christensen movies.
I had never read one like it before. Woolrich's books all take
centre stage, all of their plots are described minutely - almost
chapter by chapter. As a person obsessed with silents and early
talkies, I could read Woolrich's love of movies into the plots of
his first novels (1928-1931) - his heroes are putty in the hands
of women who seem only interested in wealth and having a good time,
once the money runs out they are gone and the hero does what it
takes to find more money, usually by unscrupulous means. It all
seemed to stem from his first encounter with a girl - Vera
Gaffney, a meeting that could have been pulled from any of his books!!
By all accounts a pretty unappealing chap, there is a scene in
which one of his fellow pulpsters describes a conversation on the
phone to his mother which is positively chilling (shades of Norman
Bate's mother is not far off the mark!!). It seems the only way
people could get in contact with him was on the phone and they
had to go through his mother!!
There is also a story on the origin of the William Irish pseudonym
- the popular theory was that Woolrich thought of it in the 1940s
so his name wouldn't become a glut on the market (his most prolific
period) but it really originated back in the 1920s when Cornell was in
Hollywood during the filming of his award winning novel "Children
of the Ritz" and a William Irish credit appeared on a couple of
Benjamin Christensen movies.
October 29, 2017
First You Dream, Then You Die almost defeated my attempts to complete it, because I found it difficult to slog through detailed plot summaries of 24 novels and about 230 short stories - the verbiage expended on those far outweighs the pure biographical matter. Of course a literary biography will discuss the highlights of an author's publishing career, and examine thematic strands of the work. But Mr. Nevins is much less a literary critic than a simple paraphraser, and his judgments seem arbitrary - as an Amazon commenter put it, he damns Woolrich for certain writing tendencies on one page, then, confusingly, praises him for exactly the same tendencies on another. So: a fail as a biography, a fail as criticism - in this format.
However, the information contained in the massive 613-page volume, including its long Checklist combining bibliography, filmography, and other information, is essential for any serious Woolrich reader (although it could probably stand a little updating now). The plot summaries certainly have their value when you want to know what a given story is about. I just wish the entire book had been arranged quite differently, as a sort of Woolrich handbook containing a tight 150-page biography, the Checklist as it stands, an alphabetically arranged section of the summaries, and maybe a separate critical essay (or several of those by diverse hands).
However, the information contained in the massive 613-page volume, including its long Checklist combining bibliography, filmography, and other information, is essential for any serious Woolrich reader (although it could probably stand a little updating now). The plot summaries certainly have their value when you want to know what a given story is about. I just wish the entire book had been arranged quite differently, as a sort of Woolrich handbook containing a tight 150-page biography, the Checklist as it stands, an alphabetically arranged section of the summaries, and maybe a separate critical essay (or several of those by diverse hands).
May 12, 2010
This book has started out by frustrating me because of the way it was written-it explains all Woolrich's works in chapter by chapter detail. I am more interested in his life and if I want to know about his works I can read them myself. What is written of his life is engaging so I will probably skip alot of detail in this book.
January 25, 2023
I will never understand how this book won an award, and am convinced that 99% of the people who laud it as some great biographical work (Eddie Muller included—Eddie, you disappoint me!) have never actually tried to read it. Structurally, it is a mess, as it is indeed mostly story summaries (as opposed to...you know...actual biographical information), but even more damning is the fact that Nevins makes no distinctions between the two. You’ll be chugging along, and then BAM!—a ten-page summary of Woolrich’s first novel. Do I really want to spoil every single plot point for myself just so I can cobble together three sentences’ worth of personal information? One wonders if Nevins had an editor, and if so, why they didn’t tell him to put the summaries and whatnot in their own separate, easier-to-reference section. Perhaps he didn’t because it would render the formal “biography” part of the book a mere hundred or so pages?
And goodness gracious, let’s talk about that “biography” part, shall we, and how incredibly spurious it is. For starters, Nevins is clearly in love with the idea that Woolrich was gayhe’s seemingly in love with the Tragic Homosexual trope in general, nevermind that there’s absolutely no evidence to support it, just the very dubious verbal claims of a mere two people. Confirmation bias abounds, with Nevins accepting without question the statements that support his pet theory, and dismissing outright or else willfully misinterpreting the ones that contradict it. (Lee Wright says he was gay? Well, it’s incontrovertible TRUTH then, no matter that Lee Wright apparently had her own weird habit of arbitrarily labeling people as homosexual. Acquaintances remember Woolrich making passes at women back in the day? Well, OBVIOUSLY it was because he was desperate to make people believe he was straight; it couldn’t POSSIBLY have been because he was genuinely attracted to women in some respect. I mean, that’s just crazy talk!)
His “homosexual symbol seek[ing]” is whack, to say the least, as he’s not even trying to view these stories within their own cultural context, but is instead interpreting them through a very contemporary lens. (Which is to say that someone needs to tell Nevins that AIDS didn’t exist in the 1930s and ’40s, and so therefore male homosexuality wouldn’t have had the same associations with death that it did in the ’80s; JESUS, THIS ISN’T DIFFICULT.) His interpretations beyond Woolrich’s sexuality are similarly whack, to the extent that I sometimes wonder if Nevins read the same stories that I did. (For instance, his belief that the brother-sister relationship in “Bluebeard’s Seventh Wife” is full of incestuous overtones. Like...is Nevins an only child? Does he not know how sibling dynamics work? Does he not realize you can love and care about a family member without also wanting to bone them?) Suffice it to say, an intelligent, sensitive analyst he is not.
And then! And then! There’s a fuck-ton of casual sexism/misogyny, and a fair amount of casual racism, too. I admittedly haven’t read the whole book (mostly because at this point I can only stomach it in short, two-paragraph bursts on average, before I’m yet again overcome with the urge to throw it across the room), but so far, it’s taught me more about Francis Nevins than it has about Cornell Woolrich. And, hoo boy, let me tell you, this book does not paint a flattering portrait of its author. 😬
So yes, in summary, it’s incompetently structured and incompetently researched by an unpleasant man who’s incompetent at deep literary analysis. It’s actually a pretty solid bibliographic reference once you wade through all the bullshit, but Nevins isn’t selling it as a bibliographic reference, he’s selling it as a biography, so not even a token two stars for you, sir. You FAIL. Utterly depressing to realize this dude has been held up as the preeminent Woolrich expert for the last 30+ years, as he by no means deserves the title.
Hunt down a copy in the event you want to learn about adaptations or else get the basic gist of any particular Woolrich story (though understand that even the summaries should be taken with a grain of salt, because again, a very biased, shit analyst wrote them), and look up Curtis Evans’ biographical writings on Woolrich instead. He’s much more nuanced and balanced (and a better researcher, at that!), and actually comes off as a decent person who doesn’t despise the man he’s writing about. His article for Crime Reads, published in early 2022, is the sort of thing this book should have been, but wasn’t.
01/25/23 UPDATE, as I wrote this at the height of my frustration with the book, and it shows. I do stand by my earlier complaints, but wanted to add a little addendum to clarify: Contrary to what the above may indicate, I’m not sorry Nevins wrote it, as it does include some good biographical information on Woolrich, and he took the time to interview a lot of people who probably never would have gone on record otherwise. What I’m sorry about is how the book has come to be regarded as some alpha-and-omega bible on Woolrich, beyond reproach and beyond question, instead of the jumping-off point it should have been.
And goodness gracious, let’s talk about that “biography” part, shall we, and how incredibly spurious it is. For starters, Nevins is clearly in love with the idea that Woolrich was gay
His “homosexual symbol seek[ing]” is whack, to say the least, as he’s not even trying to view these stories within their own cultural context, but is instead interpreting them through a very contemporary lens. (Which is to say that someone needs to tell Nevins that AIDS didn’t exist in the 1930s and ’40s, and so therefore male homosexuality wouldn’t have had the same associations with death that it did in the ’80s; JESUS, THIS ISN’T DIFFICULT.) His interpretations beyond Woolrich’s sexuality are similarly whack, to the extent that I sometimes wonder if Nevins read the same stories that I did. (For instance, his belief that the brother-sister relationship in “Bluebeard’s Seventh Wife” is full of incestuous overtones. Like...is Nevins an only child? Does he not know how sibling dynamics work? Does he not realize you can love and care about a family member without also wanting to bone them?) Suffice it to say, an intelligent, sensitive analyst he is not.
And then! And then! There’s a fuck-ton of casual sexism/misogyny, and a fair amount of casual racism, too. I admittedly haven’t read the whole book (mostly because at this point I can only stomach it in short, two-paragraph bursts on average, before I’m yet again overcome with the urge to throw it across the room), but so far, it’s taught me more about Francis Nevins than it has about Cornell Woolrich. And, hoo boy, let me tell you, this book does not paint a flattering portrait of its author. 😬
So yes, in summary, it’s incompetently structured and incompetently researched by an unpleasant man who’s incompetent at deep literary analysis. It’s actually a pretty solid bibliographic reference once you wade through all the bullshit, but Nevins isn’t selling it as a bibliographic reference, he’s selling it as a biography, so not even a token two stars for you, sir. You FAIL. Utterly depressing to realize this dude has been held up as the preeminent Woolrich expert for the last 30+ years, as he by no means deserves the title.
Hunt down a copy in the event you want to learn about adaptations or else get the basic gist of any particular Woolrich story (though understand that even the summaries should be taken with a grain of salt, because again, a very biased, shit analyst wrote them), and look up Curtis Evans’ biographical writings on Woolrich instead. He’s much more nuanced and balanced (and a better researcher, at that!), and actually comes off as a decent person who doesn’t despise the man he’s writing about. His article for Crime Reads, published in early 2022, is the sort of thing this book should have been, but wasn’t.
01/25/23 UPDATE, as I wrote this at the height of my frustration with the book, and it shows. I do stand by my earlier complaints, but wanted to add a little addendum to clarify: Contrary to what the above may indicate, I’m not sorry Nevins wrote it, as it does include some good biographical information on Woolrich, and he took the time to interview a lot of people who probably never would have gone on record otherwise. What I’m sorry about is how the book has come to be regarded as some alpha-and-omega bible on Woolrich, beyond reproach and beyond question, instead of the jumping-off point it should have been.
September 19, 2021
This book has been acclaimed as the definitive biography of Cornell Woolrich, one of the greatest writers of suspense and crime fiction. "Definitive" doesn’t mean enjoyable. I can’t recall another biography in which it was so apparent that the author had complete contempt for his subject. The book is most valuable as a careful assessment of Woolrich's substantial body of work, with plot summaries and checklists of movies, radio plays, and TV shows adapted from Woolrich’s work.
For my complete review as well as brief reviews of the 11 classic novels Woolrich published in the Forties, see my blog post: Cornell Woolrich: Master of Gloom and Doom.
For my complete review as well as brief reviews of the 11 classic novels Woolrich published in the Forties, see my blog post: Cornell Woolrich: Master of Gloom and Doom.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews