William P. McGivern (1922–1982)

review of
William P. McGivern's A Choice of Assassins
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 30-31, 2020

I'm sure McGivern is an author that I ran across positive mention of in someone else's novel & that's why I got this but I'm not sure what novel it was. It's the sort of thing I might not've picked up otherwise. The look of the cover is a bit too mainstream for me & the back cover has a big ad for James A. Michener's Caravans. I have a bad attitude about Michener. He must've been too popular. For all I know he was great. (Actually, I think I read one of his novels but I don't remember wch one.)

McGivern? I vaguely recall thinking that this was as good as Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. I don't remember whether I read that, I'm pretty sure I saw the movie. I was reminded a bit of Hemingway although Hemingway's prose is more sparse. The main character is an alcoholic. He's in Franco's Spain. He tries to con a little girl into getting booze for him.

""I don't think you know my mother at all," Jenny said, and got deliberately to her feet. "I think you just want me to get a bottle of wine for you. Steal it for you, that's what it amounts to. And I don't think you're dirty because you like to be. You're dirty because you can't help it. You haven't told me the truth at all."

"Malcolm tried with extreme care to gauge his need for a drink. He decided after laborious calculations that he was good for another hour at least, and that he might as well spend that time sitting quietly in the sun. He thought of the bars in the village. The Quita Pena, the Seville, the Central. Somewhere he'd find a drink. Meanwhile he was all right. He wouldn't move. He was fine. He wouldn't even crawl into the shade. This was fine. There were no memories yet, no pain at all." - p 6

"Malcolm thought about the Bar Seville. He owed them money. Antonio had sent him away the last three or four times he had gone there. But when Antonio went home for supper, his b[r]other-in-law, Miguel, would be in charge. Miguel was stupid and sentimental, and he might give another bottle of wine. The Cantina? They had his cameras and most of his luggage, but even that didn't cover what he owed them. There was Domingo's place in the hills, but he knew he could never walk that far. And he was afraid of Domingo." - pp 10-11

Basically, there's one shitty scene after another.

"Jorge opened the door, placed a foot in the small of Malcolm's back and kicked him through the doorway into the street.

"Malcolm felt a rush of air on his face, stones stinging his hands and knees, and finally a tricle of slime running down the gutter against his face. He lay in the sunlight of a new day with flies gathering around his dark head, while the furies within him sheathed their claws, folded their wings, and waited for him to wake." - p 21

Malcolm's backstory begins to be explained.

"["]Tell me, Don Fernando, do you know anything about Tony Malcolm?"

""Nothing at all."

""He and his wife were well-known photographers and writers. They worked for important magazines, Life, Paris-Match, Réalités, Holiday, and so forth. Malcolm took the pictures, and his wife did the text. They were talented people, and their approach was always odd and unusual.["]" - p 23

Malcolm's desperation gets so extreme that he goes to the feared Domingo's.

"DOMINGO's was crowded that night, with fishermen pressed close together along the bar and waiters working quickly to serve the groups seated at tables. The first thing a stranger might've noticed was the silence; the waiters moved about as softly as cats, and the bartender, an old man named Pepe, tended to his customers with an almost priestlike gravity. There was no clatter of bottles or glasses, no ring of coins on the bar, and the fishermen, like devout acolytes, reflected the bartender's mood in their solemn expressions and hushed voices." - p 25

"Domingo was a Frenchman who had come to Spain near the end of the war with Germany. That much was definitely known about him, but the details of his background were obscure; some said he had deserted from the French army, others that he had collaborated with the German Occupation and had fled to escape reprisals from the Maquis." - p 26

This novel was published in 1963. Did English-speaking readers, even then, remember the Maquis? Or ever know who they were in the 1st place? The Wikipedia entry on just "Maquis" describes them as purely a WWII French phenomenon. My understanding of them is that they continued to be active in Northern Spain against the Francoist regime up until 1965. As such, they would've still been active when this book was written.

At Domingo's, Malcolm's desperation goes its furthest yet.

""I think we should play our cards," Clarke said.

""No, wait," Domingo said, looking intensely at Malcolm. "You're not crazy? But you'll kill yourself for a few pesetas?"

"Malcolm closed his eyes and nodded his head slowly. He felt nothing but relief, a blessed sense of impending peace, at this opportunity to put down the pointless, weary burden of his life.

""All right, I'll make you an offer," Domingo said. He paused to take a cigar from his pocket, light it, and flip the match aside carelessly. Then he said, "It's worth a glass of wine to me. One glass of wine."

""Make it brandy."

""All right then, brandy."

""You've got a deal," Malcolm said." - p 33

Then again, a deal w/ the devil might leave an unexpected dog wagging its forked tail.

The prostitute is trying to buy her way out fo this shit-hole by being an informer. It's not going so well.

""There was a man who came here a week or so ago, a very young man. He said Spain was dirty. He said all the people were thieves."

""Good," Don Fernando said, and began writing quickly in his notebook.

""He called Franco many bad names."

""Excellent," Don Fernando said. "An American?"" - p 37

"Now there were dangerous currents stirring in the country. Priests talking against the government, miners striking, students marching in various protests, bombs breaking the peace of large cities." - p 38

One of the things I find most strange about this last-quoted paragraph is "Priests talking against the government" given that the government was created to enable the priests to stay in power.

Domingo had set Malcolm up to not succeed in killing himself, instead he planned to use Malcolm as a hit man. This involved putting him up in a nice place to live & getting him cleaned & shaved & having his flunkies keep him under guard. But Malcolm's changed.

""I thought I'd take some pictures," he said.

""I don't like any of this," Zarren said. He seemed embarrassed by Malcolm's manner. "But I do what Domingo tells me to do. You cannot go out."

"Malcolm looked at him with a thoughtful smile. "You have a gun?"

""Don't be a fool."

""I'm curious about what you're going to do. I suppose you'll knock me down. The women in the kitchen will scream for the police. What will you tell them? That you didn't want me to to take pictures?"

"Zarren looked uncomfortable; there were drops of perspiration on his forehead. "Be sensible. I told you I didn't like this business."

""Why do you do something you don't like?"

""There are things I need. To get them I do other things. It's that simple."

""I don't find that simple at all," Malcolm said. He sighed and took the lapels of Zarren's coat in his hands. "You're not to leave," he said staring into his eyes. "Do you understand? You're my prisoner."" - p 49

Yes, Malcolm has transformed into a clever take-charge kindof a guy.. but there's the occassional side-effect.

"Suddenly Malcolm blinked his eyes, and his heart began to pound like a hammer against his ribs. In the soft moonlight, a curious transformation seemed to be taking place among the men and women in the garden.

"They were slowly turning into skeletons.

"Malcolm knew this must be an illusion, some disorderly projection of his mind or his optical nerves. He blinked his eyes rapidly, and pressed his fingers against his temples, but the strange illusion persisted stubbornly, and Malcolm felt his flesh crawling as he stared in helpless fascination at the grinning skulls, the ugly, saucer-shaped pelvic depressions, the spindly, ash-white assortment of rib cages and thigh bones which were gyrating before him in the silvery moonlight." - pp 69-70

I told him not to eat so much sugar at the party. Malcolm meets a writer of detective fiction who unwittingly helps build the outline of a plot of his.

"Neville sighed and sipped the punch. Then he looked questioningly at Malcolm. "You wished to speak to me?"

""Yes. You mentioned that you write detective stories."

"Neville glanced warily at him over his glass of punch. In the depths of his cold blue eyes flickered a cautious interest. "You like detective stories, is that it?"

""Yes, very much," Malcolm said untruthfully. "Do you write any other kind of fiction?"

"Neville's smile became icy. "No I write only detective stories, young man. I do not call them novels of ratiocination, or novels of violence, or novels of any other sort. Neither do I call them 'entertainments,' as one of our eminent authors prefers to when he deserts God for the nonce to do a bit of potboiling. He wants the Prize, of course, so he's on a precarious tightrope. Will the Nobel Committee overlook one last thriller, for instance, if he follows it up straightaway with an abstruse and pretentious essay on the Albigensian Heresy?"" - p 73

Now that's funny. Do you think McGivern was just itching to put words like that in the mouth of one of his characters?!

Malcolm meets some Germans who're fascinated by his reputation as the-guy-who-would-kill-himself-for-a-drink.

"They were associate professors at the University of Frankfurt, in the Department of Psychological studies" - p 79

They respectfully convince him to allow himself to undergo psychological tests.

"With the lights out and the shades drawn, Malcolm studied pictures of cloud formations on the motion picture screen. None of them seemed menacing to him, and this reaction—or lack of reaction—caused Wllie to stare at him anxiously." - p 86

Well, things jump ahead, as things will do, & the next thing you know I'm 66 pages further along & all sorts of interesting things have happened. Is this an Existentialist novel? It seems almost as much of one as does Camus's The Stranger but I'm not sure that Camus considered that Existentialist.

"They couldn't kill him, he realized with wonder; for it was suddenly apparent to him that these men craved fear as other men craved drugs or women or power. It had been Domingo's secret hold on them. And now they were longing for him to fill the vacuum created by that death." - p 152

Have I given away too much of the plot? Probably not. I hope I've given you a feel for what a psychodrama this was. McGivern's yet-another writer I'd never previously heard of who turned out to be quite good — may he not be neglected.… (more)

I initially found its dated tone a bit tedious, and wondered what kind of story it would end up being, with some concern that I was wasting my time on something trite. Its themes gradually grew in complexity, however. I began to wonder if some anachronistic cultural paranoia or simplistic "classist" critique might eventually emerge as well. What I found in the end, however, was an interesting depth to the characterizations involved.

A too rigidly jaded view of the novel might yield some confusion over what side the author was taking, when in truth the end result was that he seemed to be taking no particular side at all, at least as delineated by the characters themselves. He simply clarified facts as they emerged where the characters could see them, and let the characters sort themselves according to their own biases. Mistaking the black-and-white sides imposed on events by the all too human flaws of the tale's characters for the author's representation of reality is, I believe, a mistake that can easily ruin the experience of reading Savage Streets. Recognizing that events are not intended to be seen by the reader in "us vs. them" terms, and that those terms are merely imposed on the narrative by the filter of the perspectives of characters in the book, is key to enjoying it -- and I did enjoy it, quite a bit, by the time I was done.

If there is any real flaw to it, that is the fact that some of the finish was a bit too clean the way characters obviously at odds with each other parted ways. Even so, there was clear growth amongst characters in a believable and interesting way right up to the last few pages, and I am not entirely sure how it could have been improved. I found it an excellent book, well worth the read. I may be biased, though, given that hidden within the course of events portrayed in this novel were several demonstrations of Blackstone's ratio, what I consider an inviolable precept of justice, though it is never mentioned in the narrative: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
… (more)