Cults of the Literati
“He stood there alone under the white
floodlight, spinning his rope around him, stepping in and out of it… Two-Gun
Earl, the Terror of Cochise County. He
belonged on one of those dude ranches that are so all fired horsy that the
telephone girl wears riding boots to work.”-- Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, 1953
Book lovers can thank (or curse) the Thor
Power Tool Company for the increased (or decreased) availability of those
discounted books stacked sky-high on tables near the magazine section in their
local Wal-Mart or supermarket…
Thor Power Tools began its corporate life in
1893 as the Independent Pneumatic Tool Company of Aurora, Illinois. Company founders included Chicago mayor John
Hopkins. The business produced
jackhammers and bicycles. By the 1970s,
the firm had long since changed its name but it continued to manufacture tools
that were assembled from component parts also produced by Thor…
 |
| Advertisement for the Thor Power Tool Company whose accounting practices triggered a lawsuit that affected the sale of a publisher's excess inventory |
When Thor’s inventory of component parts
exceeded its actual production needs, the company “wrote down” the excess,
treating it as an accounting loss. Its
management felt that since this was an accepted business practice, Thor’s tax
liabilities ought to be calculated in similar fashion…
IRS auditors disagreed. Tax law provided goods can be written down
only if one of two conditions is met: these items are either defective in some
way or the manufacturer demonstrates the goods have a fair market value less
than the cost of producing them. The
courts agreed with the IRS: there was
nothing unconstitutional about the statute per se and Thor failed to meet the
burden of proof…
Essentially a landmark 1979 Supreme Court
decision (Thor Power Tool Company v
Commissioner of Internal Revenue) held that manufacturers may not write
down their inventories for taxation purposes simply because they are not
selling what they have produced…
How this affects bibliophiles comes down to
how it affects remaindering, a practice in the book trade...
Publishers routinely print far more copies of
books and magazines than are sold. This
results in an inventory of dubious value in the marketplace. Rather than take a complete loss, many
publishers opt to sell their excess stock to a mass marketer at a greatly
reduced rate-- a hardback originally commanding $20 in a bookstore may be resold
to a general merchandise retail chain for $1 a copy. The retailer slaps a $5 tag on the book,
stacks it on a table, and will generally sell enough copies to make a small
profit on his initial investment…
 |
| Gina McKinnon's guide to "cult books" titles as diverse as Stranger in a Strange Land, The Long Goodbye and Hollywood Babylon |
The decision in Thor Power Tool has encouraged publishers to remainder books much earlier
than they would have done prior to 1979.
It has also, sadly, encouraged others to simply take the loss and
destroy excess stock…
I recently came across one of those tables
stacked with books when I stopped into the local shop of a mass marketer who
sells everything from milk to power tools to T-shirts to large print crossword
puzzle magazines. One of the titles
caught both my eye and $4.97 worth of a spare $5 bill in my wallet…
A bibliophile named Gina McKinnon had put
together a work she called 500 Essential
Cult Books: The Ultimate Guide (Sterling, New York, 2010) in association
with a chap named Steve Holland. Ms
McKinnon wanted to explore those books which inspire a devoted following among
readers, the sort of novel or nonfiction treatise that “has to be” in someone’s
home library…
Cult books may become bestsellers, Gina
McKinnon believes, but they are often titles with only modest sales over a
period of many years. The essence of a
cult book is that it becomes a central part of the intellectual and emotional
life of its devotee in much the same way that a musician or rock band gains
die-hard fans because they “get it” as far as their listeners are concerned…
McKinnon’s selection is a grab bag of the
human experience. We find biographies of
jazz musician Charles Mingus, musings on archetypal images from the
psychologist Carl Jung, unabashed and unashamed erotic tales, warnings about
the reach of the totalitarian state and novels favored by rebellious adolescents
in search of a Cause…
 |
| Sylvia Kristel and Nicholas Clay star in a 1981 screen adaptation of D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The controversial 1928 publication tells the story of Constance Chatterley, trapped in a loveless marriage to an impotent cripple, and her sexual awakening through an affair with a groundskeeper. It was the first novel by a mainstream author to use the "F" word. |
Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land is one of these 500 titles. First published in 1961, it takes its title
from a Biblical passage about the naming of the prophet Moses’ son (Exodus
2:22) and was inspired by a suggestion from Heinlein’s wife that he rework
Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book
wherein we have a human child raised by invisible Martians on Mars rather than
by wild animals in India…
Heinlein’s novel enjoyed about as much
commercial success as can be expected in the science-fiction genre and became
of that field’s all-time bestsellers.
Valentine Michael Smith, the story’s protagonist, is the orphaned son of
a member of the first human expedition to Mars and that expedition’s sole
survivor. He is raised by Martians who
both grok (an empathetic state where an observer becomes part of what is
observed) and possess psychokinetic abilities…
 |
| First Edition cover for Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) |
After twenty Earth years pass, a second expedition
to Mars finds Smith and brings him to the planet of his biological
ancestors. But Smith has no idea of
human experience. His knowledge of
Martian technology that allows for interstellar travel at a very low cost spawn
international intrigue while his apparently supernatural powers bring followers
who turn him into a messiah who must ultimately die a savage and gruesome
death…
Stranger is a book of ideas,
a challenge to puritanical folkways, that likely would have had little success
in the late 1940s when Heinlein began writing it. The turbulent 1960s proved tailor-made for
the novel. Its impact on our popular
culture can’t be quantifiably measured except perhaps in the realm of
furniture: water beds, which appeared on
the market in the real world in 1968, were first described in Heinlein’s novel…
 |
| Robert Heinlein, L Sprague de Camp, and Isaac Asimov (from left to right in photo), three of the science fiction genre's "giants" worked together at the Philadelphia Navy Yard during World War II. Conspiracy buffs will recall the facility as the site of an alleged time travel experiment gone horribly awry. |
But Stranger
in a Strange Land practically demands that we adopt a new world
view and it provided concepts which found their way into popular television
series like Star Trek. Its questioning of "The Establishment" turned the novel into a
manifesto of sorts for the hippie movement thanks to its themes of suspicion of
government, big business, and organized religion at the same time it advocates sexual and
personal freedom…
Its influence on the counter-culture
encouraged the growth of the neo-pagan movement to some extent. One group known as The Church of All Worlds,
or CAW, took its name from the faith promulgated by Valentine Michael Smith…
 |
| Cover of handbook used by a neo-pagan group inspired by the ideas in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land |
[CAW has a following that may be in the
neighborhood of 20,000 people with about 5% of that number living in the San
Francisco area where Oberon G’Zell founded the group after reading Stranger in a Strange Land. Although Robert Heinlein was never a formal
member of CAW, he encouraged its leaders with letters of support and even purchased
a subscription to The Green Egg, the
church’s magazine.
 |
| Oberon G'Zell and Morning Glory, founders of CAW |
Interviewed for People of the Earth: The New Pagans Speak Out (Ellen Evert Hopman
and Lawrence Bond, Destiny Books, Rochester Vermont, 1995), G’Zell commented
CAW began as a “water brotherhood” which was extremely selective about who
could be admitted to celebrate rites inspired by Stranger. After five years
and acquisition of roughly a hundred members, G’Zell and his wife Morning Glory
decided to incorporate as a church since that seemed the best way to spread the
message.]
While Stranger
in a Strange Land is among the books in Gina McKinnon’s guide to cult
classics that I’ve personally read, I must confess that it has not proved a
central part of my way of thinking or outlook on life. It’s a novel worth reading and its ideas
should be considered seriously. But
Heinlein’s writing style just doesn’t grab my soul…
More to my liking is Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye which features the
world-weary private eye Philip Marlowe on yet another quest to find the answer
to why people do the evil things they do…
Critics, being the contrary lot they are, are
of mixed opinions when it comes to The
Long Goodbye. Some consider it
Chandler at his finest, others dismiss it as inferior when it’s compared to his
The Big Sleep. The author seems to have agreed with the
first batch, writing to a friend that it was his best work…
 |
| First Edition cover for Raymond Chandler's The Long Good-Bye (1953) |
Philip Marlowe’s travails in this story begin
one night when he meets a drunk named Terry Lennox seated behind the wheel of
Rolls Royce Silver Wraith at The Dancers, a club on the outskirts of Los
Angeles. Lennox’ companion is a girl
whose hair was a lovely shade of dark red.
She wore a distant smile on her lips and “over her shoulders she had a
blue mink that almost made the Rolls Royce look just like another automobile”…
Now, as any automobile aficionado can attest,
ain’t nothin’ can make a Rolls look like just another car. Not even a gorgeous doll with a distant
smile and a blue mink…
Terry Lennox and Marlowe chat briefly at The
Dancers and Marlowe thinks nothing more about him until Lennox comes to the
detective’s office several months later.
He needs to get to Tijuana…
 |
| Screen tough-guy Robert Mitchum portrayed Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's world-weary private eye, in two film adaptations of Chandler's novels. Chandler became a full time mystery novelist after he lost his job as an oil industry executive due to his alcoholism, flings with female employees, and chronic absenteeism from work. |
Good detectives know to agree to such
requests ONLY if the man to whom they are giving a ride promises to say nothing
about WHY he needs a ride. Marlowe asks
no questions and Lennox volunteers no information…
When he returns from the border town, Marlowe
learns what he didn’t want to know: Mrs Terry Lennox is dead, the victim of
murder. The cops won’t be able to get a
whole lot of answers from Mr Terry Lennox.
It appears he’s committed suicide down Mexico way shortly after Marlowe
dropped him off at the airport. Guilt
can cause a person to do that sort of thing…
Philip Marlowe won’t be mistaken for Albert
Einstein anytime soon, pal, but he’s smart enough to know that sometimes a man
doesn’t begin to cause trouble until he’s dead…
 |
| Kenneth Anger, underground film maker and Aleister Crowley devotee, published Hollywood Babylon in 1965. The peek through the keyhole look at Tinseltown scandals was promptly banned and not republished until 1975. |
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CREDITS
Note:
Information for this essay is taken primarily from readily available sources
such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and almanacs. When other sources are employed they are
credited either in the text or as follows:
None. All photographs are taken from Wikipedia or Google Images without source
or authorship credits available, except as noted: None.
