Saturday, March 27, 2021

High Priest of Crime Fiction

"Willeford's novels portray the weird and evil as no more of a spike on the EKG of everyday life than eating breakfast or reading a magazine. With very few exceptions, the violence in his fiction has little psychological impact on those who commit it. It doesn’t break them, because there is nothing in them to break. Taken as a whole, his bibliography reads like his attempt to dramatize a quote from Blaise Pascal, which Willeford used as an epigraph twice, in New Hope for the Dead and Grimhaven: 'Man's unhappiness stems from his inability to sit quietly in his room.'"

At The Bulwark, Bill Ryan discusses the career of writer Charles Willeford.

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