CHAPTER 126. ESTABLISHED WRITER. 1970
My story, “Writings of Elwin Adams” was published in the January 1970 issue of “Magazine of Horror”. My first had appeared a year earlier in the January 1969 issue. Of the stories I wrote in the horror genre, “Writings of Elwin Adams” was probably the most well received.
of 13 stories edited by E. C. Bertin in 1975. It was published in France and I never received a cent for the reprint. The title of the book was “Histoires D’Objets Malefiques” (“Stories of Objects of Evil”). It would not be the only foreign anthology to republish stories I wrote and not pay me for the use.
A year ago I was able to obtain a copy of this book.
On the last night of my planned visit, I was awakened abruptly by a crash from the downstairs library. I hurried to the room and discovered Taggert lying face down on the floor, clutching something in his hand. Across the room was an upset chair and some books were scattered about. Taggert was gasping for breath as I bent near him. I attempted to help him up, but he shook his head. Instead he handed me an object he was clutching. It seemed nothing more than a common gold locket, if a bit larger than would be commonly found in such a piece. It dangled from a gold chain.
Paul Taggert could hardly speak and there was an expression of utmost terror on his face. He kept staring toward the overturned chair as if expecting to see somebody right it and sit down. He spoke in a drifting, faraway voice.
“Take it…the locket,” he said. “Destroy it…at once. At once.”
(Excerpt from “Writings of Elwin Adams” (1969).
Magazine of Horror
Volume 1, Number 25, January 1970
Health-Knowledge, Inc.
Robert A. W. Lowndes, Editor
New York, NY
Les oeuvres d'Elwin Adams (1969, The writings of Elwin Adams)
13 histoires d'objets maléfiques, [13 Malefic Stories of Objects}
Editions André Gérard, Anthologies,
1975
“Magazine of Horror” was an international publication. You could find it on most newsstands back then, usually near the bottom row. It was one of the small, 7 inches by 5 inches, pulp fiction magazines such as Amazing Stories, Thrilling Detective, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Analog.
I had my fans. Here is a letter to the editor from Canada:
If C. J. had thought some more about it, he or she may have realized “Yar Grenue” was simply a twisting of my name, “Yar” from Larry and a jumbled Eugene; however, Elwin Adams was loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft and the story was set in a landscape that Lovecraft would have recognized.
This was a good start for my year as far as my writing career was concerned, but the rest of my life wasn’t working so well. I was unemployed again having resigned from North American Publishing Company. This also meant I wouldn’t be writing anymore anonymous reviews for “Media & Methods”. It also meant I wasn’t receiving a regular paycheck either, but I did get included in the Speculative Writers' Database:
Author: Larry Eugene Meredith Author Record # 20576
- Birthplace: Pennsylvania, USA
- Birthdate: 1941
- Language: English
Showing all translations. Never display translations Registered users can choose which translations are shown.
|
Other views: |
Short Fiction
- The Last Letter from Norman Underwood (1968)
- The Writings of Elwin Adams (1969)
- Conjured (1971)
Around the fourteenth of January an editor from “Philadelphia
After Dark” called and asked me if I could write a feature story for them. Of course I could! That first feature turned into a series of essays on Children’s Theater in Philadelphia.
That first feature took me to the Children’s Repertory Theatre of Philadelphia located on Rittenhouse Square. “Philadelphia After Dark” even provided me with a photographer on this outing, who snapped several shots that illustrated my article, which I called “No Strings Attached”..The show being performed when I did my interviews for the article was “Puss in Boots,” and starred Theresa Marsh.
Children’s Repertory was a very serious training ground for future actors. The plays were performed by children for children under the
direction of its founder, Dr. H. Walter Wenkaert, who spoke with something of a German accent.
The Children’s Repertory Theater, founded by Dr. Hans Walter Wenkaert (1909–80) and active during the 1960s and 1970s, demonstrated collaboration between adults and children. Featuring a company of child actors who performed for a child audience, the company originally was located at 1617 Locust Street home of the Philadelphia Musical Academy. Wenkaert, who immigrated to the United States from Germany before World War II, brought to his work the European tradition of regarding children’s theater as a venue for encouraging agency, identity, and creativity. The company produced shows based on fairy tales and children’s literature such as Puss in Boots and Peter Pan. (From the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia: Article by Vibrant Bowman Cvetkovic, Rutgers University,2020.)
My piece “No Strings Attached” was popular enough I was soon sent out to The Pocket Playhouse, which was located in what was then among the hippie stores and cafes on the West blocks of Lombard and Samson just before the river. I did a piece called “P. J.’s Day:The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” I had met a boy waiting to get in to see the play and his name was P.J. I spoke with him for a while getting his views on the Playhouse. I wrote my piece sort of from his eyes.
today. This building is on the corner of 23rd and Samson, which seems about right. This whole area has been gentrified since I haunted these streets and most of what was there in the 1960s-70s has been replaced by new apartments.
Director Mark Conti (right) discusses work in progress wiht (sic) actors Miss Horran, Lenox and Stephen Singer duing rehersal of short plays by Israel Horovitz and Terence McNally which will be premiered at the Pocket Playhouse, Jan. 15.
I was very enthralled by both companies, but my next subject did not impress me positively at all.
The was at an invitation-only premier and reception of a new children’s theater and the person I interviewed was an elite snob. Adults performed the play, but it came across as really over the children’s heads. Children attending the other two theaters had been laughing and applauding and into the plays, but here the kids appeared restless and bored. I did not give it a very good review.
The photo on the left with the number 31showing is the site of The Mask and Wig Clubhouse where I believe Quince Pie was operating. Actually the address is 311 S. Quince Street.
I was thrilled to be publishing, but I wasn’t making enough money from my pieces to support Lois and me. I was paid $64 for “Writings of Elwin Adams”, and that was the most I got for anything. That really was not a bad fee for a story at the time. In 2020 dollars it was equivalent to $461, but even back in 1970 $64 didn’t go far enough. So I was spending a lot of my time looking for a steady job.
I had revisited Accounts Receivable at ARCo, but I hardly knew anybody working there now. Accounts Receivable was falling apart. There was talk of breaking it up into smaller sections. My old favorite manager, Donald Jones was retiring. (I am certain he has since died, it has been 50 years.) There had been a big meeting where the higher ups came and bawled out everybody in the department for the low quality of their work. They even fired two people. Tom Black didn’t last, he was the fellow that replaced me. He simply went to pieces and was out on a health leave. I realized I had made the right decision on leaving when I did.
I did get some stories from my time there, such as “Papier Mache”, “Christmas Last” and the “Most Admired Man in McGlinchey’s Bar”. These were based on real people I had known at ARCo.
They had another fight. These were becoming more frequent and harder to let pass. It was always about the same thing; Don was the focus. The fights didn’t have to begin with him, but was where they ended. Tonight Billy returned home late from a movie seen alone. She wasn’t even very late. The film lasted longer than usual, but no excuse was acceptable anymore. Her mother had been waiting, tapping her foot, tap-tap-tap, steadily against the floor. She entered and her mother greeted her with what had become routine.
“You’ve been seeing Don again, haven’t you?”
She hadn’t. She hadn’t seen Don for over three months. He was in the Army Reserves and called to active duty. She had not heard from him since he left. But her mother didn’t know Don was in the service because she never dared mention his name at home.
Her mother waited for an answer, tapping her foot, her face a frosty sheet. She bit off sharply every word of the question, as if they were on a continuous belt her teeth controlled.
“You’re late. You’ve been seeing Don again, haven’t you?”
She shook her head vigorously, her bright dark eyes wide and sparking.
“We’ve asked you to stay away from him.”
— Excerpt from “Papier Mache”.
None of us had anything to do with the split. Mom just left one day. She took us with her, but we didn’t go far. We moved into her mother’s home. She says dad can come live with us again when he grows-up. This is one of the things I don’t understand. Dad is grown. He’s thirty-eight. Mom never explained what she meant. She seldom talks of dad anymore, but sometimes she cries. She never cries in our presence. But my brothers and I share the bedroom next to her and on certain nights I hear her through the wall. It sounds like stuttering, or hiccoughs, but I know it’s crying. Robert, one of my brothers, has heard it too. Only once, I think. I told him mom talks in her sleep. He laughed and asked if he could listen to what she said. I told him that was wrong and he went to sleep. I doubt he knew she was crying.
Dad sees us every weekend. Mom gets very nervous when he does. She behaves as if he was a stranger. We have to dress-up and watch our manners. When mom and dad speak to each other it is polite and formal. Once, though, I overheard him ask her to come home, but she told him not until he could control himself. They separated a year ago.
Dad visited the week before Christmas and gave each of us books. He’s a great reader, but he reads hard to understand books, some with funny titles and others written in Latin. I never heard of most of the authors. Dad had a tiny room at home he calls his study. Mother says it is his sulking-closet. Inside he has shelves of these books. I believe they have to do with religion. Dad is very religious. When he was young he trained to be a priest, but for some reason he gave it up and then he married mother.
Once I asked why he had stopped trying to be a priest. He said because he lacked the “true calling”.
-Excerpt from “Christmas Last”.
MOST ADMIRD MAN IN MCCLINCHY'S BAR
“There’s nothing in my life I haven’t controlled. I have made everything conform to my will, “ was Keith’s motto.
It was true.
We sat to drink and talk in a far corner of McGlinchey’s Bar, a regular after work hangout.
Keith was not tall. He was average looking, although women called him cute. He had a clean and rugged face, like something you would find carved beneath a waterfall. His hair was blond and receding. Yet every man would watch him walk away and one would say, “Man, that Keith!” Every man wants to control his own life, but how few do?
There was a lot of envying of Keith.
None of us certainly. We had gone through the motions of education taking our cues from our elders. We worked in the institutional gray of corporate offices where our skin turned paper-white. We were married to hometown sweethearts of whom our parents approved. Women who never fretted over fashion and whose hemlines hadn’t risen higher than their first prom dress. When we made love it was not with passion, but desperation, strictly done by the book and quick. “Men lead lives of quiet desperation,”1 said some wise man in some other bar in some other time.
-Excerpt from “Most Admired Man in McClinshey’s Bar”.
I included these three stories in my collection, Daily Rhapsody, 1971.
After having left North American Publishing, I was looking o something to supplement the income, because the freelance writing wasn't producing a ton of income. I ran across an dd to join Collier's selling their encyclopedias. Frankly, I really didn’t want to sell encyclopedias. I would have much rather been writing stories for “Collier’s Magazine”, but it had ceased publication in 1957. Since that was a long gone hope, I decided to apply.
I was accepted by Crowell-Collier into their Management Training Program, starting at $150 a week. It would jump to $190 a week after two months, but I turned it down because the hours were between 1:30 Pm and 9:00 PM and that would have prevented me from continuing in college.
Of course, I couldn’t attend college that semester anyway because I didn’t have any money.
I also pretty quickly discovered I wasn't cut out to be a salesman. To shy and too honest.
young man. I would push his wheelchair around a college campus and assist him in classes, feed him and help him with his lessons. Another guy would take care of his medical and physical needs. My recompense would be free room and board, a salary and all my college expenses paid. The difficulty was the college was the University of Vermont and Lois and I would have to move there, but that was not why I turned down the job. The guy I was to be a companion to was a nasty, miserable person; think the Bubble Boy in the Seinfeld TV show. I just didn’t want to be around him.
Wilkie Buick offered me a job as Assistant Controller at $155 a week, but I turned it down too.
Why?
Because everybody around me was saying look for a writing job, don’t waste your talent. I went looking for writing jobs instead.
On January 21, a hiring manager from Knight Newspapers called
me to come in and take some tests. I had taken some tests the previous week, so I guess I passed. If I did well on this second round I’d be writing marketing copy for the Inquirer and Daily News. So what, it was still writing something? Starting pay was $125 a week.
I wrote four ads for them, two for the Inquirer and two for the Philadelphia Daily News. There was one print ad and one radio ad for each publication. Those were all I ever did there.
(Print Ad for the Philadelphia Daily News)
WHERE WERE YOU LAST NIGHT?
The Daily News was in Philadelphia as Democratic gubernatorial candidates spoke. The Daily News was in Washington D.C. as the Senate voted on the health and education appropriation bill. The Daily News went to see the latest movie in town and the great computer fight.
WHERE WILL YOU BE TONIGHT?
They decided I wasn’t copywriter material.
By now I was living on soft pretzels for lunch.
No comments:
Post a Comment