A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Power of Positive Loving - William Johnston

When I was a kid, I read all the tie-in novels by William Johnston based on the TV series GET SMART. I think I liked them even more than the TV show. I also recall reading and enjoying the novelization of the movie LT. ROBIN CRUSOE, USN, which Johnston wrote under the pseudonym Bill Ford. Johnston’s books were all over the spinner racks back in those days, since he wrote dozens of excellent movie novelizations and TV tie-ins. 

However, a friend mentioned to me that Johnston’s early, non-tie-in novels are very good, too, so I decided to try a few of them. First up is THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING, published by Monarch Books in 1964. I don’t mind admitting that one reason I bought this book is because of the cover. That’s one of the cutest redheads I’ve seen on a paperback cover, and the wink really sells the book.

As for the novel itself, well, that’s pretty good, too. The protagonist is Harry Ash, a down-on-his-luck public relations guy who comes up with a scheme to promote a sleepy little coastal town in California as a hotbed of sin and sensationalism. He plans to do this by teaming up with sexpot movie starlet Babe O’Flynn (that’s a great name), who has a habit of losing her clothes and winding up in the slick magazines like LIFE and LOOK. Harry comes up with a wild story for the gossip columnists about Babe going to this little town to recover from a broken heart after a top-secret love affair with the Secretary of State. He’s going to have a photographer get pictures of her on the beach in a bikini – or less – and figures that tourists, scandal-seekers, and sensation-mongers will converge on the motel and bar that he buys in partnership with a hamburger magnate. Naturally, things don’t work out quite like Harry plans.

Monarch Books lasted only a few years, but the company published quite a few books including some Westerns and mysteries. However, it’s best known for the abundance of slightly less graphic sleaze novels it put out. Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, and Robert Silverberg all wrote pseudonymous books for Monarch, including a number of so-called non-fiction studies of various sexual subjects that were really fiction, under imposing sounding names like L.T. Woodward, M.D., and Dr. Benjamin Morse.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING is risqué enough to fall into the sleaze category, but just barely. Unlike most books in that genre from that era, this one is a comedy, a racy, romantic, screwball farce that takes satiric shots at morality, the advertising business, politics, show business, the military, the media, and just about anything else you can think of. The title itself is a pun on the self-help bestseller THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING by Norman Vincent Peale. If it had been made into a movie in 1964, it probably would have starred Jack Lemmon as Harry and Ann-Margret as Babe. As usual with such a scattershot yarn, not all the jokes work all the time, but enough of them do that this is a pretty funny book. It reminds me a little of the work of Max Shulman, for those of you old enough to remember his books. (Probably the same ones who remember Jack Lemmon and Ann-Margret.)

Johnston was nothing if not a versatile writer, though. I have several more of his non-tie-in novels on hand, and it looks like every one of them is considerably different from the others. I’ll be getting to them in due time and reporting on them here. For now, if you want a nice entertaining slice of mid-Sixties comedy, THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING is well worth reading.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on August 27, 2010. Despite the good intentions expressed in the final paragraph, I haven't read any more of William Johnston's novels, tie-in or otherwise, since then. But I still might. I know where they are on my shelves--I think. And I stand by my comment about the redhead on the cover. She's really cute. The cover art is by Tom Miller.)

Forgotten Books: Mad Strikes Back

I think that like science fiction, the Golden Age of MAD Magazine must be twelve. That's about how old I was when I discovered it. A friend of mine had one of the Signet paperbacks reprinting material from the first few issues of the magazine about ten years earlier. I'm not sure, but I think it was THE BROTHERS MAD, the fifth in the paperback reprint series.

Whichever volume it was, I loved it. I thought the humor was hilarious, and some of the art was just risqué enough that I knew it would scandalize my mother, which was always a plus. (My mother was easily scandalized. She liked Zane Grey's novels, but she couldn't read some of them because they were just too racy. Her favorite authors were Grace Livingston Hill and Emilie Loring, and that should be enough to explain her reading tastes to those of you old enough to remember those writers.)

Anyway, I'm getting a little far afield from this week's book, which I came across a while back and just got around to reading. It's MAD STRIKES BACK, the second volume in the paperback reprint series, and includes material from 1953 and 1954. The first edition was published in May 1955. The copy I read is a 14^th printing from October 1963. Those books were popular back then. I saw them all the time on the spinner racks. Somehow, though, I never read this one.

There's an introduction by comedians Bob and Ray, then a number of comic strip parodies: "Prince Violent", "Teddy and the Pirates", "Manduck the Magician", and "Gopo Gossum" (the originals should be pretty obvious to most of you), plus a couple of take-offs on early television, "Captain TVideo" and "Poopeye", and a classic movie about a giant ape, "Ping Pong". Also assorted humor features.

I don't know who wrote all this stuff—Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman come to mind as probable suspects—but the art is by comics icons Wally Wood, Bill Elder, and Jack Davis. Wonderful art all around, with the highlights for me being Wood's "Prince Violent" and "Teddy and the Pirates".

As for the stories themselves...well, some of them are still good for a chuckle, but I was surprised by how much of the humor sort of fell flat for me. After I discovered the paperbacks about 1964, I started buying the current issues of the magazine and was a big fan for the next eight or ten years, but then satire and parody began to pale for me as a form of humor. I can still appreciate the cleverness of a lot of the material in this book, but it doesn't really make me laugh anymore.

Despite that, I still consider MAD STRIKES BACK to be well worth reading for the art and for the nostalgia value, and I'm glad I found it. So I leave you with that timeless philosophical question: "How's your mom, Ed?"

Some Texas Education Humor

For those of you who don't know, STAAR stands for State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness.

Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far) -- Dave Barry

I’ve been a Dave Barry fan for a long time and have read most of his books. This new one takes a humorous look at the first few years of this millennium, and I found it hilarious, with several laugh-out-loud bits on just about every page. However, the best part of the book is the opening section where he briefly covers the history of the millennium before this one, from the year 1000 to 2000. Sure, it’s funny as it can be, but there’s some actual history in there, too, and it’s pretty accurate if you can separate it out from the inspired silliness. And as always, there’s the occasional serious moment where Barry is using humor to get the reader to think about some fairly weighty issues. It’s not all booger jokes. In fact, I don’t recall a single booger joke in this book, which leads me to wonder if Dave is slipping a little. I don’t really think so, though. If you like his work, you should thoroughly enjoy DAVE BARRY’S HISTORY OF THE MILLENNIUM (SO FAR).