Crumley, James 1939-

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CRUMLEY, James 1939-

PERSONAL: Born October 12, 1939, in Three Rivers, TX; son of Arthur Roland (an oil field supervisor) and Ruby (Criswell) Crumley; married Judith Ann Ramey (an editor), June 28, 1975; married second wife, Bronwyn Pughe, 1979 (divorced); children: Mary, Elizabeth, David, Conor, Kyle. Education: Attended Georgia Institute of Technology, 1957-58; Texas Arts and Industries University, B.A., 1964; University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1966.

ADDRESSES: Home—P.O. Box 9278, Missoula, MT 59807. Agent—Owen Laster, William Morris Agency, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Author and educator. University of Montana, Missoula, instructor in English, 1966-69; University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, assistant professor of English, 1969-70; Colorado State University, Fort Collins, assistant professor of English, 1971-74; freelance writer, 1974-76; University of Texas, El Paso, assistant professor of English, 1981-84. Reed College, Portland, OR, visiting associate professor of creative writing, 1976-77; Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, visiting writer, 1979-80. Military service: U.S. Army, 1958-61.

MEMBER: Screenwriters Guild (West), Texas Institute of Letters, Associated Writing Programs.

WRITINGS:

CRIME NOVELS

The Wrong Case: A Novel ("Milodragovitch" series), Random House (New York, NY), 1975.

The Last Good Kiss: A Novel ("Sughrue" series), Random House (New York, NY), 1978.

Dancing Bear ("Milodragovitch" series), Random House (New York, NY), 1983.

The Mexican Tree Duck ("Sughrue" series), Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Bordersnakes ("Sughrue" and "Milodragovitch" series), Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Illustrator) Sympathy for the Devil, Bantam Doubleday Dell (New York, NY), 1999.

The Final Country ("Milodragovitch" series), Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 2001.

OTHER

One to Count Cadence (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 1969.

The Muddy Fork and Other Things: Short Fiction and Nonfiction (short stories; crime), Clark City (Livingston, MT), 1991.

Contributor to literary magazines, including Aspen Leaves, California Quarterly, and Ploughshares. Contributor to The Putt at the End of the World, (audio cassette), Time Warner Audio Books, 2000.

ADAPTATIONS: Film rights to One to Count Cadence have been sold.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A forthcoming novel in the "Sughrue" series, titled The Right Madness.

SIDELIGHTS: Though he has come to be known as a detective novelist in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, James Crumley first attracted popular and critical attention with his mainstream novel OnetoCount Cadence. David Dempsey wrote in the New York Times Book Review that the book "snaps at the margins of war during the early days of our involvement in Vietnam, [and] is a compelling study of the gratuitous violence in men....Itisa story of bars, brawls, and brothels—and I don't know of any writer who has done it better." For Thomas Lask in the New York Times, One to Count Cadence is "solid as an Egyptian diorite statue, . . . carefully molded, without a slack line, a fuzzy character or a blurred incident." And, in response to Crumley's "lush and extravagant" prose about soldierly pursuits, John Reed remarked in the Saturday Review: "Only in [James Jones's] From Here to Eternity is it done better."

Yet "with all its power, the novel is flawed by an excess of its virtues," noted Dempsey. "After the nth brawl, violence turns us off; drunken[n]ess palls; sex becomes a bore. There is a monotony, not of inaction, but of too much." Sara Blackburn similarly admitted in Book World that while Crumley is a talented writer, One to Count Cadence "is a 'man's book' in exactly the ways that make 'women's books' so easy to dismiss." Blackburn maintained that it is "hard to be sympathetic . . . about disillusioned heroes shooting down Vietnamese while they valiantly search about for something to believe in." Dempsey nevertheless concluded that "the strength of Mr. Crumley's story lies in his ability to overwhelm [the novel's] faults with a stunning narrative talent. Make no mistake about it, he can write."

As is characteristic of contemporary private-eye novels, Crumley's later works are pulsing with action, intrigue, and suspense. According to Robert E. Burkholder in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1984, they "[stand] the genre on its head by creating an antiheroic protagonist plagued by the weakness and vice of the corrupt world in which he lives and works and endowing him, nevertheless, with the sort of noble instincts that motivate him to sift through the scum in order to identify right from wrong. Crumley's detectives are curiously amoral moralists." Crumley has created two protagonists, Milodragovitch (Milo) and Sughrue, who not only individually lead different books but also work together in Bordersnakes. In the Washington Post Book World, Elmore Leonard noted that protagonist "[Milo's] forte [in Dancing Bear] is self-destruction. He hits enough lines of cocaine before the last page to tear his nose off. Drinks enough alcohol to explode a healthy liver." Indeed, at one point in The Wrong Case, Milo admits: "I have neither character nor morals, no religion, no purpose in life, . . . so is it any wonder I drink?" Sughrue was described by Francis M. Nevins in the St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers as "[having] a background as a Vietnam war criminal and army spy on domestic dissenters and is drinking himself to death by inches."

However amoral, Crumley's detectives "are always redeemed," Burkholder contended, "perhaps because Crumley does a fine job of making the reader realize that his heroes are dispensers of frontier justice born into an age that considers itself too civilized for them." Thus, even though detective Milo in The Wrong Case and Dancing Bear is, according to a New Yorker critic, "hardly an appropriate role model for impressionable American youth," Leonard was convinced the reader is "rooting for [Milo] all the way." Moreover, Burkholder concluded that Crumley is "a writer of exceptional talent who may yet succeed in drawing serious critical attention to high-quality detective fiction that transcends its genre." Nevins stated of Milo and Sughrue, their rough characteristics notwithstanding, "these men are the purest Jesus figures in the history of detective fiction, and the most reverent towards the earth and its creatures."

Echoing other reviewers, P. S. Prescott wrote in Newsweek that The Wrong Case is "a deliberate extension of the by-now-venerable Hammett-Chandler-Macdonald tradition and an exceptionally good example of the genre." Publishers Weekly's Barbara Bannon asserted that one of the book's major strengths is its "startlingly real characters." But a reviewer in Library Journal faulted the story for "unnecessary elaborate denouement." The novel was summarized in Booklist as "a compelling story written with compassion."

Crumley's third novel, The Last Good Kiss, is "marvelously constructed and jolting with surprises," according to Bannon in Publishers Weekly. A Harper's reviewer favorably remarked: "It's as though nobody told [Crumley] the private-eye fable is as fossilized as the sonnet. As long as he writes like this, nobody should." A critic for Booklist commented that the novel is "larded with melancholy social criticism." Jim Mele stated in the American Book Review, "Crumley's style is right on the hard boiled money....His dialogue is also paced just right and he has no trouble bringing that slangy, chopped trademark of the hard boiled tec up to date. In fact, The Last Good Kiss is a beautifully written private eye novel that does a creditable job of updating that peculiar form of 'romantic realism' without playing for camp laughs or patronizing."

Speaking of Dancing Bear, a Library Journal critic stated that Crumley "tell[s] a mean story . . . real macho." Booklist called the novel "a rock-gut private eye story." The novel's detective, Milo, was described in Newsweek as "a most entertaining fellow to watch." Boston Review's Tom Hart remarked, "Dancing Bear, though a notch below Crumley's best, still gives ample evidence of his mastery of the form....The private-eye novel fundamentally succeeds or fails on the strength of character rather than plot, which is a good thing here, because the plot . . . is too convoluted finally for its own good.... What is admirable . . . is that [Crumley's] mastery of the hard-boiled private-eye idiom has never kept [him] from trying to exceed its limitations."

Hart's criticisms of Crumley's plot do not stand alone. Tom DeHaven argued in an Entertainment Weekly review of The Mexican Duck Tree, "When the black humor, violence, and trivia is this persuasive, and the setting is evoked as crisply as the landscape of an Ansel Adams photograph, you scarcely notice . . . that the plot has more holes in it than a road sign used for target practice . . . logic is a casualty here." Moreover, William Henry in People stated: "The story [of The Mexican Duck Tree] doesn't always make sense . . . but it seethes." A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that Bordersnakes' plot "reads at times like an over budget western directed by an LSD-addled Raymond Chandler, [however] the farflung cast . . . is drawn with panache."

Nevins summarized: "Crumley has minimal interest in plot and even less in explanations, but he's so uncannily skillful with character and language and relationship and incident that he can afford to throw structure overboard. What makes his books . . . is the accumulation of small crazy encounters, full of confusion and muddle, disorder and despair....Hecan punctuate the detective's quest with short bursts of the staples of PI fiction, sex and gore, and make each one fresh and vivid and unforgettable. He can move us to accept the dregs of the race as our brothers and sisters, to feel the rape of the earth; in short . . . he can write scenes that seem never to have been written before."

Crumley continued the "Milodragovitch" series with his 2001 effort, The Final Country, which a contributor for Publishers Weekly called "a brilliant achievement." The book picks up where Crumley left off at the end of Bordersnakes, with Milo still in Texas, where he intends to start a life without investigative work. Having just celebrated his sixtieth birthday, Milo decides to open a bar and settle down with a lover named Betty. It doesn't take long, however, for Milo to start doing some minor investigative work, especially when his affair with Betty sours. As the plot develops, Milo finds himself in a full-blown investigation of a murder case, which he witnesses while working another case. As with other stories in the series, Milo completely throws himself into the investigation. "The rumors of my near demise haven't been exaggerated," Milo says in The Final Country, "but unfortunately for my enemies, I'm not dead yet." And, as the case takes Milo from Texas to Las Vegas and finally to his native Montana, he characteristically fuels himself with large quantities of alcohol and cocaine.

Many critics who reviewed the work described it with terminology that might be found in a typical Crumley story. For example, Bill Ott of Booklist called the book "another dope-and-booze-fueled adventure." The story provided "a rush on every page," according to Rick Quackenbush of the Houston Chronicle. "Grit and excess are the stuff of The Final Country," Quackenbush concluded. Similarly, the contributor for Publishers Weekly described the work as an "energetic, poetic, violent and extremely funny ride." Not all critics were impressed with the work, however. "This is certainly not one of Crumley's better efforts," wrote Craig L. Shufelt of Library Journal, who noted its "unlikable hero and convoluted plot."

James Crumley once told CA: "I always introduce my work by explaining that I am a bastard child of Raymond Chandler—without his books, my books would be completely different. We cover some of the same ground, his dark streets in L.A., my twisted highways in the mountain west. But because of the events surrounding the Vietnam War, my detectives are not as comfortable with traditional morality as Philip Marlowe seems to be. I saw my friends in the 1960s and 1970s get criminal records for political protests and for smoking a herb that until the early 1920s was the recommended relief for asthma patients. As a result, my detectives are more comfortable around criminals than in the company of solid, middle-class citizens, so of course, my vision of justice is less clear-cut, perhaps more complex, more confused, closer perhaps to Robert Stone and Harry Crews, than to detective fiction."