Book Review: A Chosen Few

Celebrating Black History Month 2021

Book Review: 'A Chosen Few' by Hari Rhodes

5 / 5 Stars

Neither Blood nor Blue noticed the short, stocky corporal standing by the table next to theirs…..Nor did the two sergeants see the girl come up on the other side of the table and speak to the corporal. They were brought to the sergeants’ attention by the girl yelling “MOTHAFUCKA !!!!”

She whipped a straight razor from her breast and swung viciously at the little corporal. The corporal caught her wrist when it was about six inches from his face, pulled her around to his side of the table, shook the razor out of her hand, then, with a twist of his own wrist, sent her flying back over that table, over two others, sliding across the dance floor, head first into the juke box. She was surprised, shocked, and a little stunned. As she started to rise, an unseen hand brought a beer bottle down on her head with a murderous force. She slumped back against the box, shook her head, and tried to get up again. This time an unidentified shoe, with a foot in it, came up off the floor and caught her just above the mouth, to the right of the nose. This time, she slumped and stayed.                   

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we celebrate Black History Month by reading a book - fiction or nonfiction - about the black experience. For February 2021, the featured title is 'A Chosen Few' by Hari Rhodes.

Hari Rhodes (1932 – 1992) was born in Cincinnati and grew up in extreme poverty. At age 15 he joined the Marines and served in the Korean War. Rhodes began acting in the 1960s and appeared in television shows, most notably Daktari. In the 1970s he transitioned to feature film roles, the best known of these as ‘MacDonald’ in the 1974 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. He continued to appear in television roles during the 1980s. He died of a heart attack in 1992.

‘A Chosen Few’ (248 pp.) was published by Bantam Books in January 1965. Long out of print, existing copies of the novel have exorbitant asking prices; I was fortunate to find a copy for a dollar at a used book sale at a library in upstate New York. I again lucked out, and found the second Bantam Books printing (September, 1969), in a used bookstore for just four dollars.

Original cover illustration by James Bama for the first edition of A Chosen Few. The model is Ray Lagrone, art director for Avon Books. From James Bama: American Realist, Flesk Publications, October 2006

‘Chosen’, which is based on Rhodes’s experiences in the Marine Corps, is set in the Camp Lejeune / Jacksonville area of North Carolina in the late 1940s / early 1950s. As the novel opens, the protagonist, Staff Sergeant Robert ‘Blood’ Burrell, a veteran of the Pacific Theatre in World War Two, is reporting to duty at Montford Point, the all-black training camp first opened in 1942. Although he has little love for the South and its small-town society, Burrell has taken a position as a drill instructor at Montford Point in order to advance his career.

As ‘Chosen’ unfolds Burrell, along with his best friend, Staff Sergeant Russell ‘Blue’ Higgins, strives to make Marines from his platoon of inexperienced recruits. He also finds himself negotiating conflicts with a number of individuals, including a rivalry with Ray Fisher, his jealous assistant drill instructor; Ramsey Reeves, the racist Sheriff of Jacksonville; and Lieutenant Simms, the camp’s resident reprobate. 

But the riskiest interaction for Blue is a burgeoning romance with Sue Pearson, the blue-eyed, blonde daughter of the camp’s commanding officer. In the rural North Carolina of the postwar era, a liaison with a white woman can have disastrous consequences not just for Blood, but for all of the black Marines at Montford Point………

‘A Chosen Few’ is an impressive example of American realism and, for a book written in 1965, offers a surprisingly ‘modern’ examination of race, black life, and military life, during the segregated era of the South. Author Rhodes uses a spare, declarative prose style that imparts enough momentum to the narrative to consistently hold the reader’s interest. And while the novel’s final chapters take their time in terms of setting up a plot resolution, when the denouement of ‘A Chosen Few’ arrives, it does so in a stunning manner.

Summing up, ‘A Chosen Few’ is a novel of black life and the American South that has lapsed into undeserved obscurity. If W.W. Norton ever restarts its 'Old School Books' imprint, or if any white-owned publishing houses currently are looking to demonstrate their Wokeness by paying homage to black authors, then not only should ‘A Chosen Few’ be among the works first in line for publication, but Rhodes’s two unpublished novels, ‘Harambee’ and ‘Land of Odds’, also deserve consideration.

Behind the Scenes of Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes: Behind the Scenes

Over at Flashbak, an interesting photoessay on some vintage behind-the-scenes photographs taken in 1967 by Dennis Stock during the filming of the movie Planet of the Apes.

Book Review: The League of Grey-Eyed Women

Book Review: 'The League of Grey-Eyed Women' by Julius Fast

3 / 5 Stars

Julius Fast (April 17, 1919 – December 16, 2008) was the younger brother of well-known writer Howard Fast. During the 40s and 50s he primarily wrote mystery and drama novels, but with the advent of the Sexual Revolution in the late 60s, and the immense popularity of 'The Joy of Sex', he made a shrewd move to capitalize on prurience, and issued a stream of self-help titles on sexuality. These include 'What You Should Know About Human Sexual Response' (1966), 'The New Sexual Fulfillment' (1972), 'Bisexual Living' (1975), 'The Pleasure Book' (1975), 'The Body Language of Sex Power and Aggression' (1977), and 'Sexual Chemistry: What It Is, How to Use It' (1983).

'The League of Grey-Eyed Women' first appeared in the August 1969 issue of Venture Science Fiction Magazine. This Pyramid Books paperback (224 pp.) was published in November 1971; the cover illustration likely was done by Robert Pepper.

'League' is set in New York City in the late 60s. As the novel opens, our protagonist, an advertising executive named Jack Freeman, has learned he is terminally ill with gastric cancer. As a specialist in medical advertising, Freeman decides to research cutting-edge cancer treatments and finds a paper by a scientist named Steiner, whose Montreal laboratory has reported curing cancer in rodents via the administration of DNA.

Freeman invents a pretext to travel to Steiner's lab, only to be told by Steiner that the treatment is too experimental and untried to risk being administered to a human. It seems to the hapless Freeman that all is lost, and the end of his life is near at hand. But then Steiner's laboratory assistant Stephanie Douthright, a cool and composed woman with unusual, grey-colored eyes, agrees to clandestinely give the DNA treatment to Freeman. 

Freeman soon discovers that he may, in fact, be cured of his cancer. But the cure comes with a cost......and the realization that Stephanie Douthright might not have been acting solely with benevolence. For she, and the other grey-eyed women with whom Jack Freeman comes into contact, have an agenda of their own, and it involves him........

'The League of Grey-Eyed Women' is a solid three-star thriller with a sci-fi flavoring. Although author Fasts's prose style can at times be a bit florid (Again and again he forced the soundless screams from his throat, and then he was fighting his way out of sleep, moaning and whimpering as he came awake), in the main, his prose is straightforward and the narrative moves at a satisfactory pace. 

[ There is a bit of an in-joke within the pages of 'League', in that Clifford, Jack Freeman's best friend, is a fictional stand-in for Julius Fast himself. ]

I imagine modern-day readers will find the scientific premise underlying the novel to be a bit contrived, as it was even by the standards of the late 60s, but those willing to overlook that contrivance may find 'League' to be a presentable representation of its time and place (everyone smokes like a chimney, and drinks prolifically). In that regard, those dedicated to collecting late 60s sci-fi will be interested in picking up 'The League of Grey-Eyed Women'. 

The Adventures of Jodelle

'The Adventures of Jodelle' by Guy Peellaert and Pierre Bartier

Fantagraphics, 2013

'The Adventures of Jodelle' (160 pp.) was published in January 2013 by Fantagraphics Books. Like all the books from Fantagraphics, it's very well-made, measuring 13 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches in size, printed on higher-quality paper with very good color separations. A special feature of the book is the inclusion in one chapter of a sheet of tracing paper, designed to overlay a draft artwork page and thus reproduce the sequential process by which Peellaert drew and colored his 'Jodelle' comic. 

Few publishers other than Fantagraphics would be willing to commission the printing and binding of a book designed to accommodate such detail.

Prior to reading this book, I was somewhat familiar with Belgian artist Peellaert (April 6 1934 – November 17 2008) from his 1973 trade paperback of portraits of famous rock-and-roll performers, Rock Dreams. 

'Jodelle' reprints his graphic novel, first published as Les Aventures de Jodelle in France in 1966, along with an 80-page section containing  essays that cover Peellaert's early career, his commercial art, and his role in defining French pop culture during the 60s and 70s. 

These essays are pretty awful, as they are written by academics and overloaded with jargon and fatuous phrasing.

'Jodelle' garnered attention for its use of a Pop Art style reliant on bright, flat colors. As mentioned above, the book goes into detail on the painstaking process by which Peellaert drew and hand-colored each page.

The plot of 'Jodelle' is not particularly involved: the nubile heroine cavorts in a near-future, 'decadent' world populated by characters resembling some of the major pop culture and political figures of 1960s France. Needless to say, these satirical references likely are going to draw blanks from non-French readers, although the supplemental essays provide some degree of insight into these topics (for example, Peellaert's erotic obsession with France's 'Ye-Ye Girls', including Sylvie Vartan and Francoise Hardy).

I finished 'The Adventures of Jodelle' thinking that the book is an over-elaborate treatment of a comic strip that, like many pop culture phenomena, had a very short shelf life. I doubt that many contemporary readers will find 'Jodelle' that impressive or impactful; they likely will be amused to know that its fame in 1966 came mostly from its titillating aspects, which seem quaint and innocent by the standards of the early 21st century.

Used copies of 'The Adventures of Jodelle' have rather steep asking prices, as does the 80-page, comic-only version published by Fantagraphics in 2013. Accordingly, I believe that 'The Adventures of Jodelle' likely will be of interest only to a narrow segment of the reading public in Anglophone countries: those who enjoy French popular culture, the history and lore of comics, the Pop Art movement in Western Europe during the 1960s, and commercial art and television production at that time. 

Vigilante Force, 1976

Victoria Principal
Vigilante Force, 1976

Book Review: The Penal Colony

Book Review: 'The Penal Colony' by Richard Herley

5 / 5 Stars

Richard Herley (b. 1950) published his first novel, 'The Stone Arrow', in 1978 in the U.K. He followed it up with two more novels in what came to be known as 'The Pagans' trilogy. 'The Penal Colony' first was published in the U.K. in 1987; this Ballantine Books mass-market paperback version was published in the U.S. in June 1989. 

'The Penal Colony' was made into a 1994 feature film, titled No Escape, starring Ray Liotta.

Herley continues to published novels, mainly as ebooks, in the drama, suspense, and crime genres.

'The Penal Colony' is set in 1997, when the U.K. government - no doubt inspired by the film Escape from New York - has decided to convert some of its offshore islands into maximum security prisons. The rules on these islands are simple: 'once you go in, you don't come out'. A variety of high-tech surveillance and monitoring measures ensure that one ever escapes, save as a corpse bobbing in the cold Atlantic.

As 'Colony' opens the protagonist, Anthony John Routledge, is delivered to the island of Sert. Charged with the rape and murder of a young woman, Routledge - like the other inmates sent to Sert - is a 'Category Z' prisoner, condemned to live the rest of his life on the windswept island. 

The 500 inmates on Sert have set up two competing, and antagonistic, societies. One society, lodged on the southern tip of the island, is simply known as The Village, and is run by an overlord known as The Father. The other society, lodged on the northern end of the island in Old Town, is run by the most powerful and ruthless of the Category Z prisoners.

Sick and disoriented from the drugs used to pacify him for transport from the mainland to Sert, Routledge, upon awakening in a hut in The Village, is given a cruel choice: if he can survive for 6 days on his own outside the confines of The Village, he can petition to be admitted to its society. Otherwise, he will have no choice but to take his chances at the hands of the felons lodged in Old Town.

Completely unprepared for the reality of life in the Penal Colony, the hapless Routledge must struggle to survive in the wilderness of Sert.......where both the Wild Men - who eke out an existence in the inhospitable terrain - and the violent residents of Old Town are perfectly happy to use any 'New Meat' for their own depraved purposes.......

I first read 'The Penal Colony' when it was released in paperback in 1989 and thought it a very good novel, and in the ensuing 31 years my opinion hasn't changed: it's a genuine 5 Star awardee. 

Richard Herley's prose style is declarative and unadorned, and his plotting straightforward, propelled by sharp episodes of violent action. The brutality of life lived under the rule of criminals who think nothing of casually disposing of one another lends a note of intensity to the struggles of Routledge and, by extension, the society making up The Village, the sole outpost of sanity on Sert.

The novel's ending avoids contrivance; there are no conveniently-timed Pardons to be issued by the UK government, and no clandestine escapes by helicopter. Indeed, salvation from Sert, if it can be gained at all, requires a uniquely cerebral type of desperation.

While both hardcover and softcover versions of 'The Penal Colony' now are hard to come by, if you see a copy available for a reasonable price, it's well worth picking up. 

Richard Hescox: Science Fiction and Fantasy art

Richard Hescox
Science Fiction and Fantasy art

from The Deceiving Eye: The Art of Richard Hescox

Paper Tiger, 2004

I had posted some of the art from this book back in May, 2016, but I thought it seemly to post some additional content, if only to start the New Year off on a colorful note.......

Song of the Siren, 1992

Shai's Destiny, 1984

The Emigrants, 1987

Fire Lord, 1988

Lost on Venus, 1990

Life Force, 1988

Mission: Tori, 1989

Mounting Up, 1997

Book review: Amazon Planet

Book Review: 'Amazon Planet' by Mack Reynolds

3 / 5 Stars

'Amazon Planet' (190 pp.) was published by Ace Books in 1975. The cover artist is not identified, but may be Robert Pepper.

This book falls within Reynolds' 'United Planets' series of novels, most of which feature the machinations of an intergalactic troubleshooting agency called 'Section G'.

As 'Amazon Planet' opens, our protagonist, a rather bland and diffident bureaucrat named Guy Thomas, is on assignment to the planet of Amazonia. His mission: negotiate with the Amazonian leadership for trade in valuable minerals and metals with select member states of the United Planets.

Circling the planet in the S.S. Schirra, the cargo ship that provided him transport, Thomas is regaled by the crew with stories of Amazonia's female-dominated society, one where men are little more than chattel and kept in a kind of 'male' purdah. When a team of Amazonians arrive aboard the Schirra to arrange for his transfer to the planet, they more than fulfill the stereotyped image of Amazonian warrior-women, and Thomas is warned to follow their every instruction lest he be kidnapped........and forced to endure a Fate Worse than Death.

Once on the ground, Thomas reveals he is not quite what he seems, and in fact possesses an ulterior motive: he is to clandestinely meet with a dissident group known as the Sons of Liberty. The Sons are made up of men who desire freedom and emancipation from the strictures of female rule, and they hope that the United Planets will support their cause.

Although Thomas finds the leaders of the Sons of Liberty to be underwhelming personalities, he agrees to plead their case to the United Planets. But it turns out the Amazonian leadership have their suspicions about Guy Thomas, and his real purpose for traveling to their planet, and they are quite comfortable with using any and all methods of interrogation to learn the truth behind his actions..........

Dallas McCord Reynolds, who used the pen name Mack Reynolds (1917 - 1983), was an author who wrote sci-fi to earn a living. During the nearly four decades (1950s - 1980s) he was active as a writer he published over 200 novels and short stories, some of these posthumously. Inevitably, some of this content was less than polished, and I have to assign 'Amazon Planet' to that category.

The narrative moves at a good pace, but in its later chapters takes on the character of a crime novel, as revelations about the true nature of society of Amazonia are paired with rather contrived action sequences that display an unimaginative attitude towards plot resolution. There are regular passages of a pedantic nature which illuminate Reynolds' stance on political theory and economics (such as, for example, the concept of basing an industrial society on the hour of labor, rather than currency, as a medium of exchange). I can't say I found these passages to be particularly engaging.

Summing up, 'Amazon Planet' is a workmanlike sci-fi adventure that stays comfortably within the boundaries of the genre as it stood in the mid-70s. I finished the book with no burning desire to pursue other Section G novels by Reynolds, although dedicated fans of his works may have a differing opinion.

Karen Carpenter: Makin' Love in the Afternoon

Karen Carpenter
'Makin' Love in the Afternoon'

from Karen Carpenter (1980)

You can't go wrong with the bouncy pop sound of this track from Karen Carpenter's one and only solo album, which was recorded during 1979 and 1980, and featured contributions from a lineup of accomplished musicians. It's the very embodiment of how well-produced, frothy, and feel-good a pop song from that era could be. 

The story goes that A & M record executives Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss considered the album unmarketable, and refused to release it. Not until 1996 (Carpenter died in 1983) was 'Karen Carpenter' released.

'Makin' Love in the Afternoon' features backing vocals by Chicago's Peter Cetera, and a fine saxophone solo.

In my opinion, the song - and indeed, all of the songs on the album - compare very well to the material being released by today's female vocalists.

Wind by Kilian and Caza

Wind

by Philippe Kilian (story) and Caza (art)

from Heavy Metal magazine, January 1998

Even during the Kevin Eastman years and their emphasis on softcore porn, Heavy Metal occasionally would publish some worthy material, such as this existential treatment from writer Philippe Kilian and Caza.