Tag Archives: Cutter and Bone

Post traumatic noir – a note on the passing of Robert Stone

cover600spanThe death of US writer Robert Stone on the weekend has drawn me out of the break I planned on posting on this site over January.

Stone was the author of two tremendous works of neo-noir fiction, both of which I read when I was first getting into the genre.

The first, Stone’s debut novel, A Hall of Mirrors, was published in 1967 and partly set in New Orleans, where Stone lived briefly. It dealt with a dissolute, opportunistic right wing radio broadcaster and the desperate, doomed characters he associates with. It was turned into an excellent film called WUSA by Stuart Rosenberg in 1970 and starring Paul Newman, then in the throws of his battling his own alcoholism (I reviewed it on this site a couple of years ago here.

The second, the better known and probably more influential of Stone’s books, Dog Soldiers, was published in 1974. The 1978 film  adaption, Who’ll Stop The Rain (reviewed on this site here), is also very good.

Dog Soldiers concerns a liberal war correspondent in Vietnam, Converse, who disillusioned with what he has seen, decides to traffic heroin back to the US. He enlists Hicks, his friend in the merchant marines, to take the drugs back to Converse’s wife, Marge, in Los Angeles.… Read more

Pulp Friday: Newton Thornburg’s heist novel, Knockover

Knockover

“The scheme was so perfect, the take was so big, you couldn’t ask for anything more-but one of them did.

I’ve got a little gem of a Pulp Friday today, the very rare Australian release of Newton Thornburg’s little known heist novel, Knockover.

Although he was a great success in the seventies, the peak period of his literary output, Thornburg kept a low profile in successive decades. So much so that when he died in 2011, it took a month before the first proper literary obituary appeared.

He is best known for the 1976 novel, Cutter and Bone. While I love the book and the 1981 movie version, Cutter’s Way (and which I reviewed on this site here), I have a preference for, To Die In California, a 1973 novel about a father’s investigation into the murder of his son in post-Summer of Love Los Angeles.

Knockover, Thornburg’s second book was originally published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1968. Thornburg said he wrote Knockover explicitly with the hope of a movie sale in mind. Apparently the rights were optioned but nothing ever came of it. The story revolves around a former advertising executive, Cross, who puts together a team of criminals to pull off an armoured car robbery.… Read more

Post-traumatic noir part 2: Who’ll Stop The Rain

A while ago on this blog I wrote about the 1981 Ivan Passer movie, Cutter’s Way.

Based ased on the 1976 cult novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg, it’s one of the best crime films to deal with the impact of America’s war in Vietnam.

But it gets a run for it’s money by a little known film I’ve recently discovered, Who’ll Stop the Rain (AKA Dog Soldiers) made several years earlier in 1978.

Who’ll Stop the Rain a paranoid, hard-boiled road trip through America’s counter-cultural underbelly and a devastating indictment of the impact of the conflict.

The film opens with war correspondent John Converse (Michael Moriarty) trapped in the middle of friendly fire. His voice over as he surveys the resulting carnage tells us:

“Military command has decided that elephants are enemy agents because the Vietcong use them to carry supplies. So now we’re stampeding the elephants and gunning them down from the air…In a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, people are just naturally going to want to get high.”

A former liberal disgusted by the war, Converse decides to buy two kilos of uncut heroin in Saigon and smuggle it back to California, where he plans to sell it at an enormous profit.… Read more