Writing & Other Blood Sports
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Narrated by:
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Fred Berman
About this listen
Charles Willeford was a man of letters in all senses of the word. Poet, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and raconteur, his early paperback novels with their existential/immobilized heroes were the creations (to paraphrase Chandler) of a man not himself immobilized - a man who, instead, with his trademark black-humored prose, doggedly examined the mind-thrumming banalities of our materially sated but intellectually befuddled postwar world, crafting a body of work that is only now, 50-some years after his first appearance in print, beginning to be widely appreciated as a series of guidebooks on how to live in an absurd universe.
Writing & Other Blood Sports contains autobiographical essays, profiles of and opinions about fellow writers (“The Big White Smile” [1964] is the first critical article written on John D. MacDonald; in “Chester Himes and His Novels of Absurdity” he pays tribute to an immobilized and self-exiled writer’s dissections of humanity’s foibles; while “Jim Tully: Holistic Barbarian” makes the case for taking another look at the founder of the hard-boiled school - now forgotten because he didn’t write genre fiction), and commentaries on Willeford himself by both critics and friends. The collection culminates with the book-length study New Forms of Ugly: The Immobilized Hero in Modern Fiction, wherein Willeford follows the development of this “new hero” from Dostoyevsky’s Mole Man to Saul Bellow’s Moses Herzog.
Charles Willeford observed people and events without sentimentality but was always empathetic. He thought deeply about what we’re all doing (and not doing) here, and his insights and opinions are worth all our whiles to ponder.
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This funny, rich, raunchy autobiography re-creates the adventures of a very young soldier in the US Army at the height of the Depression. Charles Willeford was 16 in 1935 when he signed up and was sent to the Philippines. And the Philippines of those days was like a place out of another century. Willeford’s job was to fuel aircraft whose pilots treated him and his buddies almost like slaves. At night, however, he was a lord, fully exploring a great, timeless, and sensual city with a multitude of women available - even on a private’s pay.
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A window into a writers past
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A former professional boxer, actor, horse trainer and radio announcer, Charles Willeford is best known for his Miami-based crime novels featuring hard-boiled detective Hoke Moseley, including Miami Blues and Sideswipe. Of Cockfighter, Harry Crews said, “Charles Willeford renders the sport with such knowledge and attention to detail that...had the almost inexpressible impression of being on my knees again beside the great fighting pits of the southern circuit.
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Great Author, Great Story
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Portrait of an Artist as a Immobilized Hero
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Pick-Up
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- Narrated by: Benjamin Charles
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The unblinking story of two lost and self-destructive drifters - a failed painter working as a counterman in a cheap diner and a woman in flight from domestic violence - trying to find a place for themselves in the back streets of San Francisco, Pick-Up is hardboiled writing at its nihilistic best.
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Something About a Soldier
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This funny, rich, raunchy autobiography re-creates the adventures of a very young soldier in the US Army at the height of the Depression. Charles Willeford was 16 in 1935 when he signed up and was sent to the Philippines. And the Philippines of those days was like a place out of another century. Willeford’s job was to fuel aircraft whose pilots treated him and his buddies almost like slaves. At night, however, he was a lord, fully exploring a great, timeless, and sensual city with a multitude of women available - even on a private’s pay.
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-
A window into a writers past
- By Maracapozzi on 04-29-23
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Kiss Your Ass Goodbye
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- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this classic Miami crime story and thriller, from the writer acclaimed for his Hoke Moseley novels, a man's life is threatened when he discovers his new lover is married.
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The Shark-Infested Custard
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- Narrated by: Mike Carnes, Dan Bitner, Josh Goodman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Larry Dolman is a rather literal-minded ex-cop who now works private security. Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife, but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. When a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings - and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens.
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Cockfighter
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- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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A former professional boxer, actor, horse trainer and radio announcer, Charles Willeford is best known for his Miami-based crime novels featuring hard-boiled detective Hoke Moseley, including Miami Blues and Sideswipe. Of Cockfighter, Harry Crews said, “Charles Willeford renders the sport with such knowledge and attention to detail that...had the almost inexpressible impression of being on my knees again beside the great fighting pits of the southern circuit.
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Great Author, Great Story
- By Paraskevi on 01-06-21
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The Burnt Orange Heresy
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- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
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What listeners say about Writing & Other Blood Sports
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Rich S.
- 07-05-21
Loved The Immobilized Hero
Charles Willeford writes: "The pattern of the immobilized hero was established in NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND and it has remained that way with variations ever since. For on and on the immobilized man writes; writing whether he has anything interesting or valid to say or not; writing because he’s compelled to write because he’s an artist. Paradoxes and ambiguities these are the artifacts with which the immobilized man worries his pages and befuddles the general reader. The general theme that the immobilized man shares in common is clear enough; the frenetic and impossible attempt to escape from self, from personality, into a freedom that simply does not exist. As Kafka puts it the immobilized man is looking for a way out and almost anything imaginable is suggested as a way to escape the locked-in inescapable self ..."
"... the immobilized hero lives alone, usually in a single room in a private home or a depersonalized hotel room. The immobilized man is usually a bachelor or a man who had been unable to adjust with any degree of success to a conjugal arrangement. So he lives alone by choice. The American immobilized man because of our affluence usually has better living conditions than his European counterpart although he shares the same desire for austerity. The immobilized man cannot, for any one of a dozen reasons, abide living with his immediate family or distant relatives ... the immobilized hero has a sense of self-satisfaction bordering on smugness in his isolation from relatives and friends. Although he is in a static condition, he is free to the extent that he’s the only person who knows the true nature of reality. Whether he is a successful artist or a failure as an artist when this is his vocation, avocation, or desired role, the fact that he fancies himself as an artist of some kind, sets him above and apart from his fellow men ..." from New Forms of Ugly: The Immobilized Hero in Modern Fiction (1964) by Charles Willeford
Listening to this in the Audible version of Willeford’s WRITING & OTHER BLOOD SPORTS, I loved the concept of the Immobilized Man in literature. This Audible version (a print or Kindle version seems to be unavailable) is a master class in writing.
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