CH02 - Chip Harrison Scores Again
Page 14
What a strange feeling. Here was this kid talking, and he was me, except he wasn’t, because when I talk to myself it’s something that happens inside of my head, and this kid was talking on a page. Well, quite a few pages, actually.
And he sounded so young. It was just impossible to believe that this punk was me. And just a year ago.
Poor Hallie. It must have been really traumatic to read all that, especially when she had no idea it was coming. I guess on all those postcards I never mentioned anything about writing a book, or that somebody was going to publish it.
I guess the book settled me the way liquor might have. I read it all the way through and then I got undressed again and went right to sleep.
I left Madison early the next morning. I drove east and almost stopped in Chicago but changed my mind at the last moment and took the Belt around the city. I burned a lot of oil but kept stopping for more so that I didn’t do any damage to the car. It still runs perfectly, by the way.
I drove all the way to Cleveland. I guess I was ready for a big city again. I put the car in a parking garage and took a hotel room and paid a week in advance. I was in no hurry to go anywhere.
It was easy to find things to do. I would go to a movie and when it ended I would go to another one. I bought paperbacks and read them. Sometimes they seemed to be sending me special messages. I would find great personal meaning in very ordinary things. But I recognized this as just a temporary mild madness and let it pass.
That’s the thing. You don’t outgrow that kind of garbage, but you learn to see it coming. Maybe growing up is largely a matter of being surprised by fewer things.
Everywhere I went I would see copies of my book. I wanted to tell people I wrote it, but who was I going to tell? I sent you a copy (which I really hope you got) and I sent a copy to the Headmaster of Upper Valley, the asshole who threw me out. I told what a fink he was in the book and I wanted him to read about it.
I couldn’t think of anyone else.
Then one day I was looking at ads for jobs, and I could find some things that I probably could do, but I didn’t want to do any of them. And I said, Wait a minute, I’m a published author.
I think that’s the first time it occurred to me to write another book. I spent a day or two trying to work out a novel but every idea I came up with was corny, and then I thought maybe I could do the same thing I did in No Score and just continue that story. I didn’t know if the material would be as good, though. It seemed to me when I read it that No Score was pretty funny, and my memories of the past year weren’t.
I guess that brings it all up to date. I bought a typewriter in a pawn shop and got some paper and started writing. At least this time I knew about keeping a carbon.
The book got written faster than I thought it would.
Well, that’s about it. Now I’ll drive to New York and let Mr. Fultz look at this. I could sell the car and fly there, I suppose, but I don’t like the idea of selling the car. Because you gave it to me.
Geraldine, I read through all of this and it feels very funny. All those changes. There are things I wonder about and can’t know, like what happened with Lucille, whether she was really pregnant, whether she had an abortion or had the baby, whether she put it up for adoption or decided to keep it. I have this persistent fantasy in which she keeps the baby as a memento of her dead lover. That would probably be the worst thing for everybody, but evidently my ego gets a boost out of it.
One thing that’s bad is that I still can’t get away from the idea that sooner or later Hallie and I are going to wind up together. I suppose I’m fooling myself but I can’t get it out of my head.
I don’t know what comes next, but you never do, do you? Just one damned thing after another. Thanks for suffering through this. It’s a pretty funny letter, but then the whole thing adds up to a pretty funny book.
I was just looking at No Score to see how I ended it, and it went like this:
I hate it when the author steps in at the end of the book and tells you what it was all about. Either you find it out for yourself or it’s not worth knowing about. So I’ll just say goodbye and thanks for reading this, and I’m sorry it wasn’t better than it was.
That makes a good ending for the book. And for the letter, too.
Love,
Chip
A New Afterword
By The Author
This is the second of four books about Chip Harrison. I thought it might prove difficult to write a sequel to No Score, but in several respects it’s probably a better book. Some of the characters, especially Geraldine, the South Carolina madam, seem to me more interesting and better realized than those in the first book, and I kind of like the story’s arc. And, if it’s still boyish, it’s also bittersweet. I like bittersweet.
Chip Harrison Scores Again was first published by Gold Medal Books in 1971 and reprinted in a two-in-one volume by The Countryman Press in 1984. The double volume, Introducing Chip Harrison, bears an afterword by one Hilton Crofield, and here’s what that estimable fellow had to say:
Some Afterthoughts
by Hilton Crofield
I don’t know why they asked me to write this. Somebody’s original brilliant idea was for me to write an introduction to the new edition of No Score and Chip Harrison Scores Again, and I said OK. Don’t ask me why. Then somebody else got the bright idea of calling the double volume Introducing Chip Harrison, which meant that I would be saddled with the job of introducing Introducing Chip Harrison, and I said that, if you really want to know, I’d rather go into the bathroom and squeeze a pimple. So they said OK, we’ll make it an afterword, and I said OK again. Don’t ask me why. It’s not as if I was getting paid for this.
Chip Harrison needs no introduction, and I don’t suppose he needs an afterword either, so you can stop reading right now . . . If you’re still with me, I just want to tell you that these are my kind of books. Chip Harrison is a sort of a lecher on the wry side. More than that, when you finish the book you want to call him up and talk about it.
Listen, I’ve got a tip for you. Don’t do it. Years ago I wrote a book and dais how sometimes I wanted to call the author in the middle of the night, and this guy named Ottinger had his name down as author and so many weird kids called him up in the middle of the night that the poor guy lost it. He went up to Maine or Vermont and quit writing and only leaves his house once a year. He always sees his shadow, and it’s always six more weeks of winter.
I wouldn’t want that to happen to Chip Harrison. I’ve already read the rest of the books, and I know that Chip went to work for Leo Haig and takes care of tropical fish when he’s not helping Haig solve crimes. If you haven’t read those books, go out and get them right now instead of wasting your time reading this crap I have to write.
Anyway, I like old Chip. I think Phoebe would like him, too. And I hope you liked him, but if you didn’t, well, tough. What do you expect me to do about it, anyway?
Oh, yeah. The business about the name. Lawrence Block is now listed as the author of the Chip Harrison books. They had Chip’s name as author originally, but now they’re supposed to be by this Lawrence Block. Same as my book is supposed to be by old Ottinger.
Well, I don’t have to believe that if I don’t want to. And neither do you. (Hilton Crofield, “Some Afterthoughts,” afterword to Introducing Chip Harrison, The Countryman Press, 1984)
In 1996, Signet reissued all four of the Chip Harrison titles as paperbacks and had the devil of a time packaging them. They wanted to call them mysteries, and the third and fourth books, Make Out with Murder and The Topless Tulip Caper, were certainly private eye puzzle mysteries, although not without the dash of levity and erotica that makes Chip Chip. But No Score and Scores Again aren’t crime novels by any stretch of the imagination. “It is a mystery,” the back cover of No Score shouts not once but three times. But it’s not a mystery, no matter how many times somebody says it is.
Never mind. Chip Harrison Scores Again was a lot of fu
n to write. I can only hope it’s fun to read, too.
—Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village
Lawrence Block (lawbloc@gmail.com) welcomes your email responses; he reads them all, and replies when he can.
A Biography of
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Block attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Leaving school before graduation, he moved to New York City, a locale that features prominently in most of his works. His earliest published writing appeared in the 1950s, frequently under pseudonyms, and many of these novels are now considered classics of the pulp fiction genre. During his early writing years, Block also worked in the mailroom of a publishing house and reviewed the submission slush pile for a literary agency. He has cited the latter experience as a valuable lesson for a beginning writer.
Block’s first short story, “You Can’t Lose,” was published in 1957 in Manhunt, the first of dozens of short stories and articles that he would publish over the years in publications including American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and the New York Times. His short fiction has been featured and reprinted in over eleven collections including Enough Rope (2002), which is comprised of eighty-four of his short stories.
In 1966, Block introduced the insomniac protagonist Evan Tanner in the novel The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep. Block’s diverse heroes also include the urbane and witty bookseller—and thief-on-the-side—Bernie Rhodenbarr; the gritty recovering alcoholic and private investigator Matthew Scudder; and Chip Harrison, the comical assistant to a private investigator with a Nero Wolfe fixation who appears in No Score, Chip Harrison Scores Again, Make Out with Murder, and The Topless Tulip Caper. Block has also written several short stories and novels featuring Keller, a professional hit man. Block’s work is praised for his richly imagined and varied characters and frequent use of humor.
A father of three daughters, Block lives in New York City with his second wife, Lynne. When he isn’t touring or attending mystery conventions, he and Lynne are frequent travelers, as members of the Travelers’ Century Club for nearly a decade now, and have visited about 150 countries.
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