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The latest 'Time Capsule' -- our flashback department, so to speak -- feature up on Tough Business is a relatively obscure interview with Donald Westlake himself from Behind the Mystery: Top Mystery Writers (2005). One of the most in-depth interviews Westlake had ever given in his lengthy career, it's a real must-read for any Westlake/Stark fans out there and you can find it in full right here! (x)
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The Hot Rock (1972) dir. Peter Yates
"The Avalon State Bank Tower, in addition to stretching seventy-six stories into the sky, also extended four stories down into the ground, nestling itself into a sliced-out pocket in the bedrock of Manhattan Island. The bottom two floors were all machinery and metal ladders, like the bowels of a great ocean-going passenger liner—which in many ways is what a skyscraper is, massive and self-contained and compartmented, except that the skyscraper is always moored in the same place, and of course it's standing on end, and come to think of it skyscrapers don't float, and maybe they aren't anything like each other at all. Forget the whole thing."
Good Behavior, Donald E. Westlake
You few will just have to put up with this period of Westlake evangelism. I'm in such a mood about these books. But now you get audio AND text! This was originally published in 1983, so answering machines were not common in the home.
“Hello,” said the telephone cheerfully into Dortmunder's ear, “this is Andy Kelp.”
“This is Dort—” Dortmunder started to say, but the telephone was still talking in his ear. It was saying:
“I'm not home right now, but—”
“Andy? Hello?”
“—you can leave a message on this recording machine—”
“It's John, Andy. John Dortmunder.”
“—and I'll call you back just as soon as I can.”
“Andy! Hey! Can you hear me?”
“Leave your message right after you hear the beep. And do have a nice day.”
Dortmunder held both hands cupped around the mouthpiece of the phone and roared down its throat: “HELLO!”
“eeeepp”
Dortmunder recoiled from the phone as though it were just about to explode, which he half expected it would. Holding the receiver at arm's length, he watched it mistrustfully for a few seconds, then slowly brought it closer and bent his ear to the earpiece. Silence. A long, hollow, sort of unreeling kind of silence. Dortmunder listened, and then there was a faint click, and then the silence changed, becoming furry, empty, and pointless. Knowing he was all alone, Dortmunder nevertheless asked, “Hello?” The furry silence went on. Dortmunder hung up the phone, went out to the kitchen, had a glass of milk, and thought it over.
However, inflation and unemployment have affected the shopping centers at least as much as the rest of the economy, so that here and there among the brave enticements stood a storefront dark, silent, its windows black, its forehead nameless, its prospects bleak. The survivors seemed to beam the more brightly in their efforts to distract attention from their fallen comrades, but Dortmunder could see them. Dortmunder and a failed enterprise could always recognize one another.
Donald E. Westlake, Nobody’s Perfect
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Donald E. Westlake on corporate power, written in 1985:
Westlake was an amazing writer, and I just felt these bits on corporate power and influence would be good to share. I’ve removed some bits of chatter in between the larger statements. Keep in mind this is from an extremely funny comic crime novel (Good Behavior). “The multinational is in the position of the bank robber in the old West; all he has to do is ride straight and hard to be safe, because the posse can't cross the border. We have taken over the roles that nations recently held; we wage war, collect taxes through debt service, protect our areas of property and the worker/citizens within those areas, and we distribute power as we see fit.”
“Think of it this way. I am the baron. Templar international and Margrave Corporation and Avalon State Bank and so on are the castles I have built in different parts of my territory, for defense and expansion. The subsidiary companies we've bought or merged with owe their allegiance not to America but to Margrave. We reward loyalty and punish disloyalty. When necessary, we can protect our most important people from the laws of the state, just as the earlier barons could protect their most important vassal knights from the laws of the Catholic Church. The work force is tied to us by profit-sharing and pension plans. I don't expect national governments to disappear, any more than the British or Dutch royal families have disappeared, but they will become increasingly irrelevant pageants. More and more, actors will play the parts of politicians and statesmen, while the real work goes on elsewhere.”
