Mickey Spillane at 81
a report by Graham BarnfieldMickey Spillane at 81: A Synopsis of The Guardian Interview with Mickey Spillane, July 29 1999, National Film Theatre, London (some quotations are paraphrases)
'Spillane gives me the feeling of hearing a military band in a public park.' - Ayn Rand'I used to write fast - now my rear end gets tired. I'm not full of vinegar anymore.' - Mickey Spillane
A rare London appearance by Mickey Spillane - the first in 35 years - shed little light on his role back in the 1950s. As Ayn Rand's praises would suggest, his novels fitted in well with the right wing politics of that decade. His creation Mike Hammer murdered dozens of 'problem types', with Reds prominent among the casualties. His later character Tiger Mann was the international superspy who conducted a similar campaign in the 1960s, albeit in a more official Cold War capacity. His books were international bestsellers that were almost universally hated by literary critics and other authors. Cynics might say that attacking these novels as illiterate was a coded way of bashing their mass readership (a common theme in the 1950s mass culture debate); Spillane put it down to jealousy. (He also used this as an opportunity to forgive John D. MacDonald and berate Hemingway over a negative review in _Bluebook_ magazine.)
Numerous movie and TV adaptations of Spillane's work have been made; some of these found their way into the 'canon' of Cold War _noir_, notably Robert Aldrich's 1955 adaptation of _Kiss Me Deadly_ (which was screened later and Spillane claimed to hate.)
Specific points re. the 1950s:
It looks as if Mike Hammer and Tiger Mann were wasting their time after all!
- Spillane says owed much of his success to Roscoe Fawcett of Gold Medal books. The pair of them were dismayed to see that the fledgling paperbacks market was mainly taken up with classics reprints, and started writing directly for paperback (softcover) publication.
- When asked about his influences, Spillane replied 'dollars'. 'Authors write, writers get paid' was his aphorism for the evening.
- When asked about the Cold War, he replied 'Communism went out with the wall.' To paraphrase, his approach was 'back then we thought it was a real threat, but ten years ago it collapsed instantly. It wasn't the real enemy, there's no real enemy left except terrorists and Arabs. There's just no stability anymore!'
Graham Barnfield
Editor, Culture Matters CMCRC strand
www.shu.ac.uk/cs/cent_com
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