Charles Willeford

Charles Ray III. Willeford (born January 2, 1919 in Little Rock , Arkansas , † March 27, 1988 in Miami , Florida ) was an American literary critic and crime writer.

Life

At the age of eight he became an orphan. After the death of his parents, he grew up with his grandmother in Los Angeles . At the age of 13 he moved from one homeless camp to the next like thousands of other “road kids” in the southwest of the USA. At 16 he joined the US Army (with the wrong age) . During World War II he was a tank commander in the 10th US Armored Division and was awarded the Silver Star , Bronze Star and Purple Heart . After the war he began to write, mostly light fare. After leaving the army in 1956, he tried his hand at being a professional boxer, actor, horse trainer and radio announcer, but after studying painting in France, he turned back to literature.

From 1961 to 1964 he studied English literature and was then a lecturer in Miami , Florida . He also worked as a literary critic for the Miami Herald and wrote plays and novels himself. He was best known for his detective novels , including the series that began in 1984 about the heavy, bald Miami detective Hoke Moseley in complicated family circumstances.

Charles Willeford died of a heart attack in 1988 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, DC .

“ I'm not neo-noir. I feel closer to modern crime fiction, even closer to Charles Willeford ”( Quentin Tarantino )

Works

The Hoke-Moseley series

• 1984 Miami Blues
  • Miami Blues, German by Rainer Schmidt; Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Ullstein 1987. ISBN 3-548-10493-2 , edited translation: Alexander Verlag , Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-89581-077-0
• 1985 New Hope for the Dead
  • The dead can hope too, by Rainer Schmidt; Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Ullstein 1987. ISBN 3-548-10504-1
  • also as: New Hope for the Dead, edited translation; Berlin: Alexander Verlag 2002. ISBN 978-3-89581-081-7
• 1987 Sideswipe
  • Swipe, German by Rainer Schmidt; Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Ullstein 1988. ISBN 3-548-10566-1 . edited translation; Berlin: Alexander Verlag 2003. ISBN 3-89581-081-9
• 1988 The Way We Die Now . edited translation; Berlin: Alexander Verlag 2002. ISBN 978-3-89581-090-9
  • Until death connects us, German by Rainer Schmidt; Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Ullstein 1990. ISBN 3-548-10634-X
  • also as: How We Die Today, edited translation; Berlin: Alexander Verlag 2003. ISBN 978-3-89581-100-5

Other novels

• 1953 High Priest of California , also as: Full Moon
• 1955 pick-up
  • Curfew, German by Rainer Schmidt; Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Ullstein 1990. ISBN 3-548-10649-8
• 1956 Wild Wives
• 1958 Honey Gal , also as: The Black Mass of Brother Springer (1989)
  • The black mass, German by Ango Laina and Angelika Müller; Berlin: Maas 2005. ISBN 3-937755-01-2
• 1958 Lust Is a Woman , also as: Made In Miami (2008)
• 1960 The Woman Chaser
• 1961 The Whip Hand , also as: Deliver Me from Dallas! (2001)
• 1961 Understudy for Love
• 1962 No Experience Necessary
• 1962 cockfighter
  • Hahnenkampf, German by Rainer Schmidt, Frankfurt / M., Berlin: Ullstein 1990. ISBN 3-548-22271-4
  • also as: Hahnenkämmer, same translation revised by Jochen Stremmel; Berlin: Alexander 2017. ISBN 978-3-89581-440-2
• 1971 The Burnt Orange Heresy
  • The art of killing, German by Rainer Schmidt, Frankfurt / M., Berlin: Ullstein 1991. ISBN 3-548-10706-0
  • also as: heresy in orange, same translation; Berlin: Maas 2005. ISBN 3-937755-00-4
• 1971 The Hombre from Sonora (published under the pseudonym "Will Charles"), also as: The Difference (1999)
• 1987 Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye (part of The Shark-Infested Custard )
  • Miami Love, German by Jürgen Bürger, with a foreword by Janwillem van de Wetering ; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1993. ISBN 3-499-43107-6
• 1993 The Shark-Infested Custard
  • Playboys in Miami, German by Rainer Schmidt; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1993. ISBN 3-499-43153-X

Poetry

• 1948 Proletarian Laughter
• 1967 Poontang and Other Poems

stories

• 1963 The Machine in Ward Eleven
• 2003 The Second Half of the Double Feature (contains short stories, autobiographical skits and all poems)

Non-fiction books, essays and autobiographies

• 1977 A Guide for the Undehemorrhoided (Ws Operation)
• 1980 Off the Wall (the Son of Sam serial murder, David Berkowitz )
• 1986 Something About a Soldier (autobiography from 16 to 20)
• 1987 New Forms of Ugly: The Immobilized Hero in Modern Fiction (his master's thesis from 1964, on Dostoevsky , Kafka , Beckett , Chester Himes and Saul Bellow )
• 1988 Everybody's Metamorphosis (short stories and essays).
• 1988 I Was Looking for a Street (autobiography, childhood and adolescence)
  • A life on the street, German by Jürgen Bürger; Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1995. ISBN 3-499-43169-6
• 1989 Cockfighter Journal: The Story of a Shooting (autobiography, R. Corman's film adaptation of Cockfighter)
• 2000 Writing and Other Blood Sports (essays)

Film adaptations

• 1974 cockfighter
• 1990 Miami Blues
• 1999 The Woman Chaser

Web links

• Literature by and about Charles Willeford in the catalog of the German National Library
• "No Hope for the Living" - Willeford portrait by Martin Compart

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ambros Waibel: US author Charles Willeford: Without him no Pulp Fiction . In: The daily newspaper: taz . January 2, 2019, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed March 15, 2019]).