High Priest of California

by Charles Willeford

"She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced." Russell Haxby is a ruthless used car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue and lust set in San Francisco in the early fifties. In High Priest of California every sentence masks innuendo, every detail hides a clue, and every used car sale is as outrageous as every seduction. First published 1953.

Genres: Fiction, Noir, Crime, Pulp, Hard Boiled, Mystery, 20th Century

Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Charles Willeford was a remarkably fine, talented and prolific writer who wrote everything from poetry to crime fiction to literary criticism throughout the course of his impressively long and diverse career. His crime novels are distinguished by a mean'n'lean sense of narrative economy and an admirable dearth of sentimentality. He was born as Charles Ray Willeford III on January 2, 1919 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Willeford's parents both died of tuberculosis when he was a little boy and he subsequently lived either with his grandmother or at boarding schools. Charles became a hobo in his early teens. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps at age sixteen and was stationed in the Philippines. Willeford served as a tank commander with the 10th Armored Division in Europe during World War II. He won several medals for his military service: the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Luxembourg Croix de Guerre. Charles retired from the army as a Master Sergeant. Willeford's first novel "High Priest of California" was published in 1953. This solid debut was followed by such equally excellent novels as "Pick-Up" (this book won a Beacon Fiction Award), "Wild Wives," "The Woman Chaser," "Cockfighter" (this particular book won the Mark Twain Award), and "The Burnt Orange Heresy." Charles achieved his greatest commercial and critical success with four outstanding novels about hapless Florida homicide detective Hoke Moseley: "Miami Blues," "New Hope for the Dead," "Sideswipe," and "The Way We Die Now." Outside of his novels, he also wrote the short story anthology "The Machine in Ward Eleven," the poetry collections "The Outcast Poets" and "Proletarian Laughter," and the nonfiction book "Something About A Soldier." Willeford attended both Palm Beach Junior College and the University of Miami. He taught a course in humanities at the University of Miami and was an associate professor who taught classes in both philosophy and English at Miami Dade Junior College. Charles was married three times and was an associate editor for "Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine." Three of Willeford's novels have been adapted into movies: Monte Hellman delivered a bleakly fascinating character study with "Cockfighter" (Charles wrote the script and has a sizable supporting role as the referee of a cockfighting tournament which climaxes the picture), George Armitage hit one out of the ballpark with the wonderfully quirky "Miami Blues," and Robinson Devor scored a bull's eye with the offbeat "The Woman Chaser." Charles popped up in a small part as a bartender in the fun redneck car chase romp "Thunder and Lightning." Charles Willeford died of a heart attack at age 69 on March 27, 1988.

Reviews

[James Thane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1953, this curious little book is the first novel by Charles Willeford who would ultimately go on to write a number of excellent hard-boiled crime novels, including a great series featuring Florida homicide detective Hoke Moseley. This is not a crime novel in any traditional sense, although there are a number of crimes committed during course of the story, the bulk of them by the protagonist, a very sleazy San Francisco used car salesman named Russell Haxby.

By day, Haxby cheats both his customers and his boss at the used car lot where he works. By night, he pursues a mysterious and apparently frigid married woman named Alyce Vitale. He is determined to get her into bed by any means, fair or foul. The blurb on the cover of the book promises that "No woman could resist his strange cult of lechery!", but Alyce manages to do so for quite some time.

Haxby is a truly repulsive protagonist who exploits, cheats, and demeans practically everyone he meets. It's impossible to root for the man in any way, shape or form, but it's still a very interesting and entertaining read if just for the glimpse we get of Willeford in his early career. Even then the guy clearly had the chops, and the book is well worth reading simply for some of the great lines he offers, as in, "I took her elbow and guided her through the crowd to the floor. We began to dance. She was a terrible dancer, and as stiff and difficult to shove around as a St. Bernard."

Or, "She was a tall woman with shoulder-length brown hair parted in the center. She looked as out of place in that smokey atmosphere as I would have looked in a Salinas lettuce-pickers camp."

They just don't write 'em like that any more...

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor.” - Charles Willeford

This quote by Willeford, who is one of my favorite writers, escaped me until yesterday. High Priest of California is the kind of book that would be accused of being darkly humorous. Russell Haxby is the quintessential Charles Willeford hero. He is a man of the street, ruthlessly good at his job as a car salesman, a lady’s man and loves the good life – food, alcohol, cigars, and clothes. As recreation, he reads Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”, plays Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin ballet suite while reading T.S.Elliot’s “Burnt Norton” and deciphers the work of James Joyce. But this is only when he is not getting drunk or conducting hostile acquisitions of beautiful women or cheating squares as a car salesman. When he meets the beautiful, tall and lonely Alyce at a dance, he decides that he is going to get her no matter what. Even if he has to dump her dementia plagued husband in an asylum. Even if he knows deep in his heart that he will be bored of Alyce, a night after he acquires her.

This was published in 1953, long before nihilistic Hollywood classics like Bad Santa or any of the Coen brothers’ movies that “oooooooooooh ….. describe the darkness, violence and corruption that lurks behind ….. ooooooh ….. the veil of normalcy worn by the ….. ooooooooh ….. American middle class” were released. Even I wrote crap like this in some of my reviews of Charles Willeford books. I might have to go back and change it all now.

The writer Michel Houellebecq suggested that Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s fantasy masquerading as social satire. Here is his quote - “Everyone says Brave New World is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment of society, but that’s hypocritical bullshit. Brave New World is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society. This is precisely the world that we have tried—and so far failed—to create.”

After reading most of Willeford’s work, I feel that the guy was just having a lot of fun writing all these outrageous novels. If he was alive today, he would get a kick out of reading some of the reviews on Goodreads (written by people like me) that bestow deep meaning upon the nihilistic and cruel acts of some of his all-American heroes. Russell Haxby is a total asshole but some of the things that he does in this novel are things that even I have often fantasized about doing. If there is a message in this novel, it could be that in a world that is full of distractions and easy entertainment, a talented man who is in the prime of his youth might be extremely unhappy when he settles down to a life of domesticity.

I raised my rating of High Priest of California from a 3 to a 4 after this second reading. It is short, fantastically entertaining and put a smile on my face! The Coens have nothing on Charles Willeford.

[Algernon · Rating 3 out of 5]

CREEP ALERT!
"A roaring saga of the male animal on the prowl"
"The world was his oyster—and women his pearls!"

Never trust a used cars salesman, whether they are on the job, selling you a piece of junk for three times what it's worth, or in his spare time, where he is out checking the night scene for more easy marks.

I didn't do any research about the book beforehand. It was chosen for a group read by my friends in the "Pulp Fiction" group. Colour me slightly deflated at finding out the story is not about one of those kinky religious cults that seem to proliferate in California (Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Jonathan Latimer have all explored the theme). What's the connection then between a priest and a used car salesman that justifies the title? They both have the gift of gab, selling their customers a fake image of either salvation or luxury. They both dress carefully for their role. One of the first things that you notice about Russell Haxby is that he is a fussy dresser. He gives himself airs of a sophisticated, man-about-town, smooth operator, but there are cracks in his carefully projected image. He may listen to great classical concerts and read the modern writers (Kafka, Joyce, T. S. Eliot), eat in good restaurants, but he's really a slob, a brawler and an egomaniac.

Russell Haxby is the third bad boy in a row from my pulp reading list this year, after last month's "The Name of the Game is Death" and "Hell on Church Street" . Russell may take the raspberry prize because the two other guys had at least some integrity, principles or scruples in their criminal careers. Mr. Haxby may not rob banks, shoot it out with the cops or steal from the church offering box, but he still fits the definition of a criminal psychopat to a "T".

sidenote The devil is in the details sometimes, and a funny reason I disliked Russell is his atitude to Scotch. I myself enjoy a dram in the evening, single malts preferably, after work is done: but Russel tries to convince me that Anybody who knows something else will never drink Scotch anyway. It tastes like woodsmoke and weeds. ... Well, I'm not buying anything from this guy!


His victim in this debut novel by Charles Willeford (if we're not counting the clients at the used cars business that employs Haxby) is a beautiful, but vulnerable woman. when we first meet Alyce Vitale, in a dingy dancing parlor in San Francisco, she seems like the quintessential femme fatale of pulp fiction : a blonde with alluring curves in an eye-catching red dress. Readers might expect her to trick the first person narrator (Haxby) into a dangerous plot to murder an inconvenient husband or to participate in a high stakes heist. The impression is reinforced by the shifty, secretive manner Alyce displays as she starts to go out with Russell. Soon enough though, we find out that she is a true innocent girl, trapped in a dreary accounting job and in a loveless marriage with an older and ill man. I was still hoping for something along the lines of "The Postman always Rings Twice Here", and Charles Willeford played along with my expectations for awhile, as Russell Haxby plots to remove the inconvenient husband from the scene.

... if you want to find out more about the endgame, I guess you should actually read the story. Willeford is a solid writer, with a straightforward prose and convincing shady characters. After two books, I am still not 100 % sold out on his style. As other reviewers noticed, it is very hard to find a character to identify with or to cheer for in one of his novels, and the action rarely goes into top gear. Willeford prefers character studies with a side dish of social commentaries (there's a chilling scene here mentioning the Red Scare tactics of McCarthysm). But at least, he keeps the pagecount down, and knows how to make the reader keep turning those pages. I finished "High Priest" in two sittings, without straining myself, and some leeway should be given to Willeford considering this is his first published novel. I might try "Pick-Up" (next year), since I still want to discover why so many top writers consider him a master of the trade.

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I know all about guys like you, Russell. You're the High Priest of California. That isn't original with me. It was a caption in Life about the used-car salesmen of California. Did you see it?"

I shook my head. "I'm afraid not, but it makes a good caption."

"And it fits."

Russell Haxby is a sleazy used-car salesman. (Is there any other kind?) He's also a Lothario who gets his kicks by seducing women . . . the more unobtainable the conquest, the better. When he meets the secretive and alluring Alyce, he decides he'll do anything to have her. I've never seen anyone work so hard to get laid. If they handed out medals for maneuvering, Russell'd win the gold.

Honestly, not much happens in this book. No real crime is committed, other than the theft of someone's heart. (Groan! I know. Sorry.) Yet, I couldn't stop turning the pages. There are some great lines - I don't like to waste good sarcasm. and some others that made me cringe, though for a novel written in the fifties, I suppose the following is fairly standard dialogue:

"Why don't you let Russell do your thinking for you," Ruthie said. "It took me long enough to realize that a woman needs a man to run things for her."


Haxby is a horrible, horrible person. Rude to women, waiters, coworkers, and strangers; he's an opportunistic, equal opportunity offender. I lost count of how many times I said, "What a dick!" while reading this. One can only hope that he someday picks up the wrong woman.



Until that happens, I'll just agree wholeheartedly with his boss's assessment of Russell's character - he's a ". . . a no-good bastard!"

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russell is a well mannered bastard of a used car salesman, out for cheap thrills and to cheat and screw (literally) whatever unsuspecting schnook he can. This was a pleasant surprise and not the crime story I was expecting from Willeford, but rather a profile of a scumbag, in the tradition of sleaze pulp master Orrie Hitt. Riveting in that it kept me glued to the page to see what underhanded crap he was going to pull next, though I was always certain he'd get away scot-free and with a clean conscious like the bastard he is.

[Tom Mooney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This shit would never get published now. The world can't accept there are Russell Haxbys out there. But not writing about them doesn't make them disappear. This is a great exercise in nihilism that leaves a satisfyingly bad taste in the mouth. Willeford knew where it was at.

[Jay Gertzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Willeford’s High Priest of California is a lead mine of violence (to let off frustrations), malicious contempt for people in general, cold hearted deception, and betrayal. There is NO redeeming social value as any American politician, clergyman, or social scientist would define it, a complete absence of punishment or re-establishment of moral order. There is something mischievously challenging in Willeford’s story.The challenge is directed both at the censors, and the readers. You want sociopathic behavior? Psychological as well as physical sadism? Sex as a challenge to see if you can get the girl to do it? Gratuitous violence as a release from frustration? Fast cars? A husband with syphilis? You got it. A powerful assertion of will at the expense of destroying an innocent person's inner life. You got it. Willeford continues as he started out, in the Preface to his first publication, Proletarian Laughter (1948):
“We are a cruel nation and we are proud. Let us embrace ourselves. Let us gather ourselves to each other and smile as we kiss. As we smile let us bite into our lips. We are the loved ones of ourselves. The Beautiful Legs and the Wayward Heart and the Singing Sap. We conform to everything. If it is the habit to maim and destroy, we will do it better and in a more thorough and realistic manner than anyone.”
There’s not a drop of romance in this guy. One of his favorite writers, D.H. Lawrence, called the Gothic romance the true pornography. Willeford is noir, and this is for his proletarian readers: “You, the proletariat. The third of the rotten whole. The bottle must be broken at the bottom; to get the skim away from the cream.”

For me this echoes taxi driver's Travis Bickle, "Here is a man who would not take it anymore." Tragically, Travis then goes after the scum, once he finds out he can not get close to the politician.

The High Priest is Richard Haxby, a used car salesman. He drives whatever sharp car meets that day’s fancy. Haxby has the star salesman's ability to convince people, whom he thinks of as “feebs,” that they want what he is offering. At the car lot, he is like a finely tuned Cadillac in his ability to stimulate the customers’ needs, ambitions, and dreams, especially those of feebs such as returning GIs and African Americans without much money. He’s brilliant. One of his goals is making common people understand Ulysses, by rewriting it in the language of the "simple minded." Take the real thing and dumb it down. Less poetry, less nuance, and more basic story. It's going to make him money. So successful is he in life that he is bored. Therefore, special thrills are carefully cultivated. He spends the whole book postponing getting laid, until his girlfriend Alyce, whom responsibilities to a brain-damaged husband have overwhelmed and made frigid, is finally receptive to making love with him. He has solved her problems with murderous resourcefulness.

She has an authentic, long-repressed need for someone who cares about her. Haxby has her so overpowered by his authority that she convinces herself she loves him. Then they have one night of passion.
Only after he has loosed her bonds of inhibition can he be satisfied. He has discovered her real desire–for mutuality. The next morning he dumps her. She also, he describes as "simple minded": an object, like any other customer, to exploit.

The book ends with this exemplar of the “cruel” and “rotten” spin artist getting himself a shave.

Willeford said this was one of his three best books, because of its pure focus on a specific type of person and what he does. Could Willeford’s real purpose be to make Haxby so repulsive that readers can see his story as cautionary; a way of shocking readers into not being like him? No way. This is the ultimate Willeford-style put on, or "gotcha." The end is the opposite of the "crime doesn't pay" formulae, and anyone criticizing the novel would be more likely to accept the complaints of used car salesmen that it gave their business a bad name than to praise it for having a healthy moral. The picture Willeford presents goes much deeper as a criticism, and is aimed at the young male reader, and the publishers, movie distributors, and other pop media who protect the kind of person Haxby is. He’s an American idol: affluent, loves good whiskey, cars, good music, and books (“The Playboy Philosophy”), can talk his way to the top of his field, appreciates the female form, and gets things done (“hire this man!”). He is also a fine observer, sensing people’s authentic needs and how to spin his web so that these people trust him. A high priest. His customers, his lovers, and his friends: while under his spell, they’d vote for him for president.

Of course, he has no conscience, no compassion for anyone, and power is his only aphrodisiac. He’s a product of much deeper forces in post-war America than are newsstand novels with salacious covers and blurbs, the texts of which describe promiscuous sex, theft, or gang fights. Those, especially Willeford’s, are only the messenger. That message—follow the money, model yourself after the cream who can afford the superboxes and the republicrat fundraiders-- could not be as strong as it is without the conventions and vulgar energy of the paperback crime genre: protagonist psychos, “feebs,” the slutty or vulnerable women, ugly fights, casual cheating, teasing sex, coldness, and cruelty. What’s it all mean–Willeford knows as well as Thompson, Goodis, Block, or Highsmith.

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Willeford’s career can be broken down into three parts, his pulp fiction of the 50s and 60s at the start of his oeuvre, to the noir classics of the later 60s and 70s (such as the tremendous Cockfighter), and then after, when he threw the towel in and wrote commercial crime, like the Hoke Moseley novels, still great, just not my preference.

Most of the Willeford I have read is from his pulp period, and this ranks, along with the likes of The Woman Chaser and Pick-Up, as his best.

This is the story of Russell Haxby, in that most entertaining of noir trades, a used car salesman, in San Francisco. He meets a naive woman called Alyce in a dance hall. Haxby is an unpleasant character, an experienced womaniser, but he has never met a woman who resists him in such unusual ways as Alyce does. She is a strange sort, apparently innocent and living a dull and sheltered life, gathering stray cats and keeping them shut up in her apartment. Her goal it seems, is to capture a man, like the cats, and keep him under her control. Haxby susses this out, and plays along. She is not interested in sex, but that merely eggs Haxby on. Both keep secrets from each other, and their respective efforts to get the upper hand in the relationship are highly entertaining.

Alyce it materialises, is married. Her husband Salvatore is very much older than her, and is rapidly losing his marbles from untreated syphilis. Like the cats, Alyce is in complete control of him.
Haxby is a sociopath, and will stop at nothing to get Alyce into bed, be it bribery, adulation, deception, double-dealing or even violence. But he treats everyone with such disdain, not just Alyce.

As obnoxious as Haxby is, his character if compelling to read about. He listens to classical music, reads Joyce and translates ancient Greek to relax. On the car lot he is continually flipping the prices on the various wrecks, waiting for returning Korean War vets with big pay-offs to come calling. The pair are wonderful Willeford creations.

Willeford noticeably had a strange idea of what made a good title. Here, Haxby is nicknamed ‘High Priest’ by a friend in a bar early in the novel. One of his unpublished novels was called ‘A Necklace of Hickeys’, and he wrote a self-published book called ‘A Guide for the Under-haemorrhoided’, an account of his own haemorrhoid operation.

These days, I think this sort of pulp fiction is an acquired taste. This is how things used to be. In our times of cancel culture offence would be taken from page one. You can’t write like this any more. If Willeford was to be rewritten like Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming or Agatha Christie, his work would be unrecognisable.

His later work is where a reader new to him would be better advised to start, Cockfighter, or one of the Hoke Moseley novels.

Here’s a couple of clips..

As I lighted the cigarette I looked at Alyce. Her eyes were too bright. The tragic lines were sharper and were etched deeply from the wings of her nose to the corners of her mouth. she was a woman built for suffering and tragedy.

and

Women don’t eat much, foolish, foolish. I believe a person should take advantage of anything that gives them pleasure. When you figure that this rock we’re living on is spinning around once a day, every day, 365 spins a year, and with each day you get a day older. What the hell does an extra inch or two around the waistline mean? An extra inch or two, period.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I've read all of Willeford, now. They are uniformly interesting, especially as representative of fifties noir. Willeford was a master of language, and I doubt if there is a more unlikeable character than Russell Hixby, used car salesman, who meets a woman and schemes to get her into the sack. Willeford populates his books with truly despicable characters. Russell Hixby spends his time cheating his customers, mistreating the lot's mechanic, taking advantage of people, randomly hitting people in bars, and rewriting Joyce. His way of spending his free time is to take paragraphs from Ulysses and using a thesaurus simplify the words and rewrite for the "simple" people. When he's not at work he's trying to seduce every woman he meets. He listens to Bartok and reads T.S. Eliot. (Let's hope there's no cause-and-effect.) And he likes Kafka because he has a sense of humor.

Alyce Vitale's husband suffers from advanced syphilis, has been to a rehab center where he is on the mend but his brain has been addled. She meets Russell at a dance, he takes her home, and begins his slow seduction, getting her to "fall in love" with him. Russell is intrigued by her "differentness," wondering if "she was mysterious or just plain stupid."

Not a pretty story. If you like feel-good-happy-ending stories, I do not recommend Willeford. Some good writing with an undercurrent of sophisticated sarcasm.

Willeford writes superior pulp fiction and I'm glad they are returning in print. Available ridiculously cheap for your Kindle.

[Edwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to rate. I thought that the writing and dialogue was very good. The narrator is a real jerk, which isn't unusual in these types of novels, although rather than plotting a murder or a heist, he's just looking to score with an attractive married woman. The author does a pretty good job of trying to communicate what motivates this character. I've known jerks, and I've probably been one myself on more than one occasion, so I thought that the character was believable. I suppose the novels weaknesses were with the less than ambitious plot, and the lack of any internal change to the character. Three stars.

[Franky · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was unlikeable on so many fronts.

The story itself is fairly thinly developed with main character Russell (aka scumbag extraordinaire) basically trying to swindle his way through various scenarios and situations. Russell is a used car salesman (surprise, surprise) and the crux of the novel is him trying to figure out a way to get rid of an elderly husband of a girl who he is dating. The plot is sort of repetitive, with inanely ridiculous situations that are forced and doesn’t seem to really have a message other than: in life, avoid people like Russell Haxby.

Secondly, the characters are also predictable and prototypes. This is only my second read from Willeford (read Miami Blues awhile back), but I gather that most of his main characters are losers who lack any sort of dimension or likability. They tend to have zero character arc as well, and are pretty much what they project to be: jerks. Case in point: Russell Haxby. Willeford also tends to make the female characters airheads or naïve to the point of absurdity, as he does in High Priest, willing to go along with the main character at all costs and without ability to see through obvious facades.

The bottom line is that the real world is filled with enough jerks already. I don’t need to hear a first-hand account.

I’ve heard some compare Willeford to other classic noir authors like Cain and Chandler. I’d have to respectfully disagree.

Probably the best thing about this book is that it is only 82 pages, so it is a quick read.

1 1/2 stars

[Carla Remy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This little sliver of a 1953 noir is like half a book. The plot concerns the machinations the "hero" goes through in order to sleep with a lady he met in the opening scene. Reminded me of Jim Thompson more than anything else.

[Dave]

Willeford’s very first published novel is a short piece that is striking for it’s sarcastic oddness. The story (and the plot is a bit thin) is about used car salesman, Russell Haxby, who goes to a San Francisco dance hall — “It was one of those dance halls where men come to pick up something, and women come to be picked up. I was there because I was bored. I looked around.” There, he meets an odd duck – Alyce Vitale- “Besides, she was a new type to me. She must have been close to thirty, but she acted and talked as naive
as a young girl.” He takes her home to an apartment that smelt musky like a zoo where he meets Ruthie, the roommate, and her beau Stanley whose rich wife is an invalid and is just waiting for her to die. Ruthie figures out Russell immediately based on the title of a Life magazine article which referred to his type of salesman as “the high priest of California.” Thus, the title of the book.

The relationship with Alyce is odd. Alyce describes herself as dull and assumes Russell doesn’t really like her. She doesn’t like to eat. She hopes he never finds out about her. Russell for some crazy reason is intrigued and thinks Alyce is an older virgin just waiting for his sacred touch.

The story takes a wild turn when Russell shows up at Alyce’s unexpectedly and meets her husband, a man (Salvatore Vitale) who lost his mind and sits and watches television. Everyone simply refers to him as the “dummy.” Russell, who has shown spots of sudden violence when he gets upset in bars and liquor stores, taking his rage out on the unsuspecting, figures he only has to get rid of the “dummy” and Alyce will wake up and become an exciting woman. He ships the husband off to Marin County, only to find the “dummy” walked all the way back across the Golden Gate Bridge carrying his precious television.

The story about the used car salesman trying to bring dull placid Alyce to life eventually comes to a halt when Russell wakes up in bed with her and realizes “The tragic lines were sharper and were
etched deeply from the wings of her nose to the corners of her mouth.
She was a woman built for suffering and tragedy. It was written in every line of her face.” Indeed, he tells us: “It wasn’t that the catch in her voice was practiced: it was just that I knew it would always be there. It would be there if a man came home drunk; if he missed coming home one night; if he put ashes on the rug or raised his raised his voice. I knew it. In that moment I pitied every married man I’d ever known.”

In the end, Russell finds he really doesn’t want Alyce, that even without Sal around she is just what she advertises- dull, odd, boring – no fun.

Willeford thus pulls the curtain up on the swinging single life in San Francisco. And the dirty secrets everyone is hiding. It’s not all that Golden and it takes a smooth-tongued used car salesman to sell the Golden State.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Willeford's first novel

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Used-car salesman Russell Haxby is the kind of guy you don't want to meet: if you're a man, because he could punch you in the eye for no reason and walk away whistling, if you're a woman because he'll use you up and cast you aside without a moment's concern for your suffering.

He's a sociopath, in other words. But Willeford manages to flesh him out so that he becomes something far more interesting than your average scumbag. He has expensive tastes in food, wine, clothing and cars, yes, but they're matched by intellectual tastes that run from Bartok to Oscar Peterson in music and include Kafka and Joyce in literature.

It slowly dawns on us as we read, however, that none of the best things in life satisfy him once he's attained them. Because of his job he can borrow and then discard one classy car after another. He appreciates his upscale apartment yet can't be bothered to keep it even approximately habitable, paying someone else to clean it every time the filth becomes intolerable. Drinks? "Anybody who knows [their liquor] will never drink Scotch anyway. It tastes like woodsmoke and weeds." His hobby, aside from spreading misery, is rewriting Ulysses in a dumbed-down version.

So, after he picks up the seemingly perfect, unattainable ice princess Alyce in a dance-hall, it eventually becomes plain to us where this will all end. What's absorbing about the tale is that the same doesn't become plain to Russell during his long, complicated campaign to manipulate Alyce's life and emotions until she'll bend to his will. During the campaign he casually beds one attractive, intelligent woman, ejecting her from his life next morning, and decides not to bother bedding, at least not yet, another whom he both fancies and likes; after all, she'll "always be there" when he finally gets round to it. He's forever incapable of appreciating what's there, in other words, of accepting the good things life sends his way.

And he's totally lacking in self-criticism and, perhaps more importantly in terms of what makes him tick, introspection. At the same time as he makes Alyce fall in love with him he persuades himself that he loves, or very nearly loves, her, even after we the reader have become aware that Alyce is merely the latest of a long line of Alyces whose lives he's chewed up and spat out.

There's no major amount of plot in this (very) short novel, but there's a great deal bubbling around beneath the surface. It's a hardboiled novel that uses pulp traditions and language to tackle psychological material that could equally be the focus of a novel found on the "literary fiction" shelves. I found myself quietly impressed by it. Yes, I pretty quickly came to loathe Russell -- he's easy enough to loathe -- yet I also had to acknowledge that there's probably a bit of Russell in all of us: that part of us which wants to scale the impossible height or just see what's round the next corner. The difference between most of us and Russell is that Russell doesn't care who gets hurt in the process.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tough to place, rate, and describe this one, but what first comes to mind is a suggested alternate title: "Portrait of the Artist as a Cad." Russell Haxby, our used car salesman narrator, likes to spend his quiet hours rewriting paragraphs from Joyce's Ulysses with the goal of dumbing it down for the simple people. His real artistry, however, is the miserable way he treats everyone he has contact with. What Willeford accomplished here is a brilliant character portrait as we follow along in the life of Haxby and make our own judgement about what kind of character he is.

This really isn't a crime or noir novel even though Haxby does plenty of conning. Willeford plays with the expectation that something big, some escalation of crime, is coming as the novel progresses, but in the end Haxby is just a heel, a cad, a scummy used car salesman, and a miserable excuse for a human being.

I think if you are expecting the typical crime/noir treatment you will be disappointed.

On the other hand, if it is read on its own terms, as a character portrait, I think it becomes an impressive bit of writing. Willeford truly lets Haxby hang himself with his own words and actions. And it is an exciting page turner as the portrait develops, driven by the what-is-this-jerk-going-to-do-next? energia of the narrative.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars. This is Willeford's first published material and it's definitely not Hoke Mosely material. Quick short read that entails what a thirty something bachelor used car salesman goes through in his efforts to bed down with a woman that is married to a man old enough to be her father and has dementia.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A roaring saga of the male animal on the prowl"--ad copy for the book

"I know all about guys like you, Russell. You're the High Priest of California. That isn't original with me. It was a caption in Life about the used-car salesmen of California. Did you see it?"--Ruthie, to Russell Haxby

High Priest of California is a 1953 pulp noir novel that I decided to read because I have read a few Charles Willeford novels lately and liked them especially for their sardonic view of men. I saw this edition in a used book store the other day and thought it might be deliciously slimy. The cover features a not-unexpected woman-in-peril and below the title: “No woman could resist his strange cult of lechery.” I thought it just might be hilarious.

Then I worried that actual current events would seriously undercut the promise of snickering sleaze from the cover, that Keith Raniere’s “self-help” sex cult NXIVM and Jeffery Epstein and R. Kelly and serious reflection about actual sex-trafficking horrors would make it impossible to enjoy the book, because you know, none of that is funny in the least. But as it turns out the cover is false advertising, there’s no sex cult at all. The culprit in this tale is a somewhat psychopathic or maybe just nihilistic used car salesman who seduces a married woman, and maybe others.

Russell Haxby is a good-looking and sophisticated guy who reads Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” and listens to Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin ballet suite while reading T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” and translating Joyce’s Ulysses for fun into more accessible English. But he has a dark side; he cruises his world looking for women to seduce, and occasionally engages in violent behavior: he coldcocks a guy in a bar for no reason, and throws a bottle at a bartender.

The primary victim here, Alyce, is also not a saint, however; she is married to a man who has become mentally disabled, but she meets Russell, and largely resists him (this is the early fifties) until over time. . . Well, Russell cannot tell the truth to save his soul, so he connives to see how to get the hubby out of the picture. Alyce lives with Ruthie, who is also in a relationship with a married man, Stanley, so there’s no “cult of lechery” (alas!) in this book. Russell is just at the end of the day a well-dressed jerk:

“Mr. Haxby, sometimes I think you ain’t got a conscience.” (Bingo!)

I liked it quite a bit, finally. Some lines:

“She was a woman who was built for suffering and tragedy”--Russell Haxby, about Alyce (and then ensures she will suffer at his hands)

Russell, of Ulysses: “The brilliantly selected words, twisting and turning, force your way into your consciousness and coil like striking snakes.” (like Russell himself, nice)

Ruthie to Alyce: “Why don’t you just let Russell do your thinking for you? It took me a long time to realize that a woman needs a man to run things for her.” (Willeford at his sardonic best).

“‘I know I love you, Alyce.’ I pretended to get a lump in my throat.”

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russell Haxby, 33, is a used car salesman (what Life magazine called them in a photo's caption) living in San Francisco around 1953. He's sleazy enough to make a prosperous living at it. In his spare time, he types up dumbed down chapters as he rewrites James Joyce's Ulysses. Russell likes to read Kafka, therefore he's a smart gent. He's also something of a cad/lounge lizard who lives to romance and seduce married women. Then he meets Alyce and likes her package. The rest of the deceitful tale involves him putting the moves on her and her unusual personal life. Running 30,000 words, this novella is fast-paced, filled with vivid local color of Frisco, and right-on dialogue. I got a big enough kick out of reading it, though the ending was a bit of a letdown for me.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narrator tells us several times when he’s about to fake an avowal of love for Alyce. Here is the funniest one, certified with a theatrical report on the lady’s reaction:

““Did you ever meet a woman like me before, Russell?”
“Frankly, no.”
“Do you think you can put up with me?”
“It’s easy to put up with you. Do you know why?”
The shake of her head was barely perceptible. I said it simply and sincerely. “Because I love you. That’s why.”
That did it. The tears that were waiting in those big brown eyes began to flow freely. I handed her my handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose with a refined honk.”

[Jason McCracken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel filthy after having spent time with this absolute cunt.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Williford populates his books with truly despicable characters. Russell Hixby, a used car salesman, spends his time cheating his customers, mistreating the lot's mechanic, taking advantage of people, randomly hitting people in bars, and rewriting Joyce. His way of spending his free time is to take paragraphs from Ulysses and using a thesaurus simplify the words and writing for the simple people. When he's not at work he's trying to seduce every woman he meets. He listens to Bartok and reads T.S. Eliot. (Let's hope there's no cause-and-effect.) And he likes Kafka because he has a sense of humor.

Alyce Vitale's husband suffers from advanced syphilis, has been to a rehab center where he is on the mend but his brain has been addled. She meets Russell at a dance, he takes her home, and begins his slow seduction, getting her to "fall in love" with him. Russell is intrigued by her "differentness," wondering if "she was mysterious or just plain stupid."

No a pretty story. If you like feel-good-happy-ending stories, I do not recommend Williford. Some good writing with an undercurrent of sophisticated sarcasm.

[WJEP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contrary to the cover art, Russell doesn't need a gun to victimize those who cross his path.

It looks like Bret Easton Ellis borrowed some of Willeford's tricks.

[Lola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sure the author thought he had written an antihero, but no, he's just written about some asshole with interesting taste in literature & music. Characters are thin & their motivations are not believable. Why did I finish this? Atmosphere: I loved all the little physical details of "hard-boiled" 1953 San Francisco.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

With each Willeford title I read, he claws his way up the list of my favorite crime writers. While this doesn't edge out Pick-Up or Whip Hand as my favorite of his early writing, it was just as impossible to put down as they were and Russell Haxby now lives in my head, selling cars, chugging booze, and being an all-around louse, for better or for worse.

[Andrew Monge · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bleak look at a high-functioning sociopath who goes to great lengths to get what he wants. A very slow burn. Not a fun read, but still a great time, if that makes sense? About as noir as it gets.

[Tom Vater · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I parked and went into a bar. I ordered a straight gin with a dash of bitters. Sipping it, I looked over the customers. The man next to me was my size. I put my drink down, raised my elbow level with my shoulder, and spun on my heel. My elbow caught him just below the eye. He raised a beer bottle over his head and my fist caught him flush on the jaw. He dropped to the floor and lay still. I threw a half-dollar on the bar and left. No one looked in my direction as I closed the door.
I felt a little better but not enough. I drove home, and dug through my LP albums till I found the Romeo and Juliet Overture. There are three speakers rigged up around the walls of my living room, and when I put the music on full volume it filled the room like the symphony orchestra was right there. I poured a glass full of gin and played the overture several times while I finished the drink. After this emotional bath I felt wonderful. I went to bed and slept soundly all night. Like a child.”

Charles Willeford wrote a series of great Miami based crime novels featuring police officer Hoke Moseley, a 40-something loser cop with false dentures and a battered heart of gold. His best novel featuring Moseley is probably Miami Blues, the tale of a psychopath who accidentally kills a Hare Krishna in Miami Airport and then enters a relationship, which involves subterfuge and anal sex, with the devotee’s prostitute sister.

Set in San Francisco, High Priest of California is the story of Russell Haxley, a sexist, racist, predatory and violent used-car salesman with a taste for sharp suits and fast living. Haxley routinely cheats his customers, picks fights with strangers and cruises seedy bars in search of casual sex. But he also reckons himself to be an intellectual giant and spends the small hours rewriting James Joyce’s Ulysses for a more simple-minded audience. This perfect American white male post-war consumer is likely to upset sensitive readers.

Haxley meets Alyce, an attractive but lonely and dysfunctional woman who hides a syphilitic, insane husband in her apartment, a man she did not choose to marry. As Alyce doesn’t immediately agree to sleep with Haxley, be pursues her with vigour, like a hunter chasing his prey. He ingratiates himself with her friends by selling them an overpriced car wreck, and pretends to solve her problems until he gets what he wants. There’s no come-uppance. Alyce is ruined and the High Priest moves on.

I am not sure whether High Priest of California is a good novel, but it’s an effective one. The (male) reader is manipulated just enough to find Haxley’s greedy and cruel outlook disturbing, exhilarating and almost desirable. Great in the current economic context, a dream of better times perhaps…Hurray!

The book is also very short; I read it in a couple of hours and it might not have taken Charles Willeford that much longer to write it.

High Priest of California is available as a free ebook and can be downloaded from numerous websites.

Many other Willeford titles are in print as paperbacks.

[Franky · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was unlikeable on so many fronts.

The story itself is fairly thinly developed with main character Russell (aka scumbag extraordinaire) basically trying to swindle his way through various scenarios and situations. Russell is a used car salesman (surprise, surprise) and the crux of the novel is him trying to figure out a way to get rid of an elderly husband of a girl who he is dating. The plot is sort of repetitive, with inanely ridiculous situations that are forced and doesn’t seem to really have a message other than: in life, avoid people like Russell Haxby.

Secondly, the characters are also predictable and prototypes. This is only my second read from Willeford (read Miami Blues awhile back), but I gather that most of his main characters are losers who lack any sort of dimension or likability. They tend to have zero character arc as well, and are pretty much what they project to be: jerks. Case in point: Russell Haxby. Willeford also tends to make the female characters airheads or naïve to the point of absurdity, as he does in High Priest, willing to go along with the main character at all costs and without ability to see through obvious facades.

The bottom line is that the real world is filled with enough jerks already. I don’t need to hear a first-hand account.

I’ve heard some compare Willeford to other classic noir authors like Cain and Chandler. I’d have to respectfully disagree.

Probably the best thing about this book is that it is only 82 pages, so it is a quick read.

1 1/2 stars

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Charles Willeford's first novel, published in 1953. High Priest of California is the detailed stratagem of a used car salesman called Russell Haxby who meets an attractive woman at a dance hall and then plots to bed her down. That despite the fact that she is married to an older man who is suffering from a mild case of dementia. There is nothing in Haxby with whom anyone but a sociopath would care to identify. He carefully plots his every move, until one wants to wash one's hands after reading his story.

Willeford is an excellent writer, but he is not known for creating characters with whom readers would care to identify.

[Stephen J. Golds · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narrator of this novella was one thirsty mofo.

It’s a noir story with the meticulous planning of the perfect crime. Not a murder. Not a bank heist. Not a grift. The narrator just wants to lay a married woman with a mentally disabled husband.

The dialogue is sharp, crisp and real and it’s a very good novella for what it is. A great twist on the noir story