Geraldine Bradshaw

Dick Davenport #1

by Calder Willingham

Here for your delectation is the SPECTACULAR & RARE------------------GERALDINE BRADSHAW by Calder Willingham Calder Baynard Willingham, Jr. (December 23, 1922 - February 19, 1995) was an American novelist and screenwriter. Before the age of thirty, The New Yorker was already describing Willingham as having “fathered modern black comedy,” his signature a dry, straight-faced humor, made funnier by its concealed comic intent. Willingham's second book begins a semi-autobiographical trilogy of novels about an aspiring writer, Dick Davenport. Geraldine Bradshaw (1950) was set in a Chicago hotel during the War where Dick works as a bell-boy (as Willingham had), lusting after a new elevator girl. Its sexual explicitness divided critics who felt its subject beneath his gifts but it sold well and has maintained a cultish following among writers; for example, William Styron reported visiting William Faulkner and noticing it prominently placed on his desk, and it appears on various published lists of “lost classics.” The 1954 version is definitive. Willingham explains how the pressure of End As A Man’s success led him to filling out the follow-up book with obscure references to the next two in the trilogy. “Success is always dangerous, and early success is deadly. “What I went through writing my second book shouldn't happen to a dog." NOT TO BE MISSED!!! A FABULOUS COLLECTIBLE!!! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! This is the softcover stated DELL FIRST EDITION from JULY 1954. Both the cover (no dj) and the book are in excellent condition. There are no rips, tears, markings, etc.---and the pages and binding are tight (see photo). ** All books listed as FIRST EDITIONS are stated by the publisher in words or number lines--or--only stated editions that include only the publisher and publication date. Check my feedback to see that I sell exactly as I describe. So bid now for this magnificent, impossible-to-find LITERARY COLLECTIBLE.

534 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Calder Willingham, (born Dec. 22, 1922, Atlanta, Ga.—died Feb. 19, 1995, Laconia, N.H.) U.S. novelist and screenwriter who, was lionized at the age of 24 after the publication of the explicit End as a Man (1947), a graphic and lurid account of life at a southern military school resembling South Carolina’s Citadel, where Willingham was enrolled for one year. The novel, which achieved commercial success after the publisher was unsuccessfully prosecuted for obscenity, was made into a film called The Strange One (1957). Willingham was grouped with such other young writers as Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote, all of whom employed the same gritty realism. His success was not repeated in his other novels, however, and he explored that theme in his last book, The Big Nickel (1975). In later years Willingham gained success as a screenwriter with such credits as Paths of Glory (1957), The Vikings (1958), One-Eyed Jacks (1961), The Graduate (1967), Little Big Man (1970), and Rambling Rose (1991), an adaptation of his same-titled 1972 novel. Shortly before his death he finished an original screenplay for Steven Spielberg.

Reviews

[Avel Rudenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised how apropos and up-to-date this book felt as I was reading it, even though it was written nearly seventy years ago. Appreciate the originality and good ole boy qualities extracted therefrom. Books like this are a rare find nowadays because it was written in another time entirely. I like how dirty this book is, in the best sense of the term. Luckily, I happened to find the original 1950's publication that was complete and unabridged. Felt good turning pages that were safely preserved, all of these handful of decades. It was as if I was taken back in a time portal and the book was good at sucking me in, into its world. The more than five-hundred page read, felt more like several escapades to your favorite movie theater. The book itself took place within and around a classic Chicago hotel. In short, this book is about a young man's chase after a young gal, whom he met while at work, at the hotel. Not just any woman though, an evasive one that kept evading him all throughout the novel, until the very end. This book can still be found if you look around for it and are a book lover of all types, or just reading old little-known classics. A book that kept my interest the whole way, highly recommended if you're a widely open-minded reader.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Troll the forgotten middlebrow of any period more than 50 years hitherto, and you’re liable to face something more difficult, alien, and unfamiliar than any “avant-garde” of the same era, for one has been discarded while the other digested.

So it is with GERALDINE BRADSHAW, one of those plotless character studies that wend their way around a person, a snippet of time, and their vices or virtues, depending on whether the aim is to titillate or elevate. Regardless of intention, however, both aim to “teach lessons”, as that is the sine qua non of the bourgeois novel, regardless of whether the draw is prurience or piety.

Now, of course, Willingham’s no ordinary middlebrow scrivener; he’s a lot hornier than most (as basically the rest of his oeuvre demonstrates, especially EAT A PEACH and PROVIDENCE ISLAND). And thus, 90 pages in, we have solely the story of a bellhop’s doggedly persistent seduction of a coworker, depicted by Willingham with such uncommented-upon coercion as to give the impression of blandly describing a crime being committed. The remaining plays out the rest of the story, exploring the gendered psychodynamics of sexual conquest, albeit within the rotten set.

Whether this is what Willingham thinks he’s doing is harder to say. My uninformed impression is that he tossed these things off in short bursts of scribbling, mistaking sex itself as a justifying theme (as it often enough was in the 50s) and chippy banter as an aesthetic Realism (interminable dialogue often being the standin for “style”). All that said, the thing does, nonetheless, move.

[Tom Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly Willingham had superior writing chops. His command of the written word is almost Dickens-like. The plot was pleasing in that there was logical middle and concluding events. The characters were frustating in their maturity level. Actually they were somewhat shallow prople.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

He's wordy as hell but there's a real force and dark humor behind the verbiage. It's a crime he's completely out of print.

[Chris Gager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another Calder Willingham read. I'm not sure I finished it. I might have been as frustrated as the bellhop "hero" at his inability to get into Geraldine's pants. It looks like CW is not much read these days. Was one of the screenwriters for "The Graduate" along with Buck Henry. Date read is a guess.