Darryl Ponicsan

GOLDENGROVE (1971) is the story of Ernie Buddusky, younger brother of Billy "Badass" Buddusky, the cocky, brash hero of THE LAST DETAIL (1970), author Darryl Ponicsan's successful first novel (the film adaptation is now considered A classic). But Ernie is nothing like Billy. A mousy, meek, sad sack, Ernest Scott Buddusky (named for Hemingway and Fitzgerald, writers much admired by his father, a high school teacher in Andoshen, Pennsylvania) has followed in his dad's footsteps and become an show more English teacher. He's at his second teaching job when we meet him, at a modern new high school near Los Angeles. His wife, the "Amazon" or Big Betty, was his student at his first teaching job in Upstate NY, and is several years younger. They have a baby boy, and she is pregnant again. There is an unreliable used car. His salary is meager and barely covers the bills. Ernie hates his job, teaching spoiled children of the wealthy, and isn't entirely happy with his marriage either. There is a complementary cast of eccentric characters, most of them teachers or administrators. Ernie edges into a sad, unsatisfactory affair with the virginal, convent-raised math teacher. There are complications.

THE LAST DETAIL was based on Ponicsan's experiences in the Navy. GOLDENGROVE is obviously drawn from his several years of teaching in public schools, and he's got the types down pat. I found myself alternately chuckling and wincing, remembering my own teaching days. In fact I was still teaching when I first read this book, more than fifty years ago. In the interval, long out of print, it's lost none of its charm as a tragicomic tale of a sensitive, unhappy guy trapped in a job and a marriage, with no relief in sight. And the ending is still a shock, although, as our hapless hero himself comments, "That's about right."

One of Ponicsan's strengths as a writer is dialogue (indeed he spent nearly thirty years as a screenwriter in Hollywood) and it shines here, making GOLDENGROVE a perhaps less cerebral, snappy cousin of John Updike's THE CENTAUR (also about a put-upon high school teacher). GOLDENGROVE is a quick read, and a good one. I loved it all over again. Fifty years on, Ponicsan remains one of my favorite writers. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

Yeah, okay, I know - that title. But it IS an attention-getter, and it got mine, because this is definitely a guy book, and I'm a guy, and, like the author, Darryl Ponicsan, I'm old, and sometimes I feel bad about mine too. So, that outa the way, I'm just gonna call this one Darryl's DICK book, okay? 'Cause here's the thing, I've been reading Darryl Ponicsan since his first book, THE LAST DETAIL (1970), probably still his best-known work, which was adapted into a classic film. So that's show more what? Omigod, that's FIFTY YEARS I've been reading Ponicsan! And he's written a baker's dozen other novels since then, and I've read them all but one, THE RINGMASTER, and I hope to get around to that one before too long.

I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY DICK (and that's the last time I'll spell it out) is Ponicsan's first non-fiction book, and it's kinda the one I've been wanting to read for all of those fifty years. I think I mighta written to him once and said he oughta write a memoir. Or maybe that was some other writer. Anyway, this odd collection of essays and lists is actually kinda like a memoir, because we learn something about his childhood in a Pennsylvania coal town ("I lived in a congenial but risky neighborhood. The feel of caked blood in my hair was familiar to me."), his parents ("I never had more than a few serious conversations with either one of them, few and far between, and brief"), his college years ("My father's idea. I thought it would be a waste of money"). We hear but briefly of his hitch in the US Navy (so read THE LAST DETAIL and CINDERELLA LIBERTY), but do learn about his trip west afterwards in a junker TR-3 to seek his fortune. His turn as a high school teacher also gets short shrift (so read GOLDENGROVE), but we do hear about his year or so as a social worker in LA during the Watts riots, and his education as a blonde white guy in black neighborhoods. And then he tells of his sudden success as a writer with that first Navy novel, and his subsequent adventures in Hollywood (Ponicsan was script writer/doctor for over 25 years) where he meets Robert Redford ("I went all aflutter … I thought no man should be so handsome"). And meeting Hef at the Playboy mansion, where he talked with Bill Cosby ("long enough to discover that he was, sadly, an a**hole") and displayed his "pinball wizard" skills to Linda Lovelace. There is almost nothing about a failed first marriage and divorce (so read AN UNMARRIED MAN). We learn of his color-blindness (check out the author photo and the pink suit) and his kinky opinions on beards and muffs. Oh yeah, and murses. And, threaded throughout all of these essays, most of them hilarious, he also gives us tantalizing tidbits of a forty-year love affair with his Mexican-American wife, whom he calls E.W., for "Exotic Woman." He first met her on a Malibu beach. She was in a bikini. He was in love.

Yes, hilarious. I found myself chuckling, chortling and breaking into guffaws, belly laughs and tears of laughter as I made my way through this little book. (I tried to read slowly, 'cause I wanted it to last.) But, as he tells us in the intro, where he explains that his DICK book is meant to be a guy kinda answer to Nora Ephron's I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK book -

"As Nora's book at times veers into some serious territory, there is a risk that this one will too, but it will all come out okay in the end."

And Ponicsan does indeed veer into some darker stuff in the final chapter, about the inevitability of death, the aches, pains, failings and indignities of old age (the author passed 80 a year or two back). And the "twelve surgeries over fourteen years, the same place for the same reason" he has endured, along with the "dress rehearsal for death and the void of general anesthesia." But there's also that "okay in the end" part, where he tells us, in a postscript, that things have taken a "dramatic turn for the better," and I am so glad to know that.

Bottom line: this is definitely a guy book. I laughed and laughed, and sometimes winced in recognition too. But when I tried to read some of the funniest parts to my wife, she didn't laugh. Her reactions were more of the wrinkled nose, "ee-ew" variety. But Darryl's DICK book is - most of the time - just plain laugh-out-loud hilarious. I loved it. Thanks for sharing, DP. This should be part of every old guy's library. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

Argula's menopausal heroine stands out in a crowded field of gumshoes with her tough exterior hiding a soft heart. When the newly-divorced P.I. stumbles upon a case of a missing office girl, she has to use all her wiles to separate the smoke screens from the real clues. Her complicated relationship with a mitigation investigator, Vincent, adds more drama to a confusing case, especially when the case seems to be solved too easily. Shocking ending.

It’s been forty years since the initial publication of The Accomplice, so I was pleased to see this handsome new edition from Stairway Press, which adds a foreword from the author which provides not only a look at this book’s origins, but also a revealing glimpse into Ponicsan’s life in general, reflecting on his early successes in writing, most notably with the novelsThe Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty (both adapted for film). In all Ponicsan published eight books in a ten year show more period, but his screenplay for Cinderella Liberty earned him a solid place in that profession for over twenty-five years.

I read almost all of Ponicsan’s books back in the seventies, before he disappeared into that other field and for years I often wondered what happened to him. Now I know - all those years churning out screenplays, then, more recently four PI novels under the pen name of Anne Argula, as well as painting and sculpting.

The Accomplice is a book certainly deserving of another go-around. Thirty-ish Harold “Beef” Buddusky, is a very different kind of hero. Described as “a dumb drifter looking for a home,” he washes up in Colorado Springs. Originally from the Pennsylvania coal-mining region, he’s served a hitch in the military, left behind a wife and a small son (named Nelson - shades of Rabbit, Run), done some time in the slammer (“behind Old Crossbars”), and hitchhiked and drunk himself across America, picking up odd jobs here and there along the way. In the Springs, our ‘hero’ finds what seems like a home, spending his days with Ginny Wynn, a seemingly generous and warm-hearted woman, and her ‘sidekick,’ Mrs. Lister, an absent-minded octogenarian.

The plot thickens - and darkens - when Beef learns of Ginny’s obsessive attachment to her adult son, Gordie, a young policeman, who attempts to break this bond by secretly marrying and impregnating Maria, a beautiful young Hispanic woman. Ginny wants Maria dead, but Beef, who falls impossibly in love with the beautiful Maria on sight, wants no part of it. A couple of clumsy hired killers join the cast, and what started out comically takes a deeply dark and tragic turn. Terrified, Beef runs, but in the end, he is unable to stay away.

In this surprisingly complex tale of crime and punishment, Ponicsan draws from a deep and murky well of influences. Yes, count Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov in there. And, with the characters of Gordie and “Ginnie Mom,” and the intimations of an ‘unnatural’ mother-son relationship, you might also recall Earl Thompson’s gritty underground classic of Depression-era Kansas,A Garden of Sand.

A minor character, sheriff’s deputy Ronnie Fischer, will raise the antennae of dedicated Ponicsan fans. Described as an “ex-Navy signalman” whose military career was scuttled by “causing $2000 worth of damage in a Honolulu bar and sending two Marines to the hospital with serious jaw fractures,” Fischer's character is a not-so-subtle nod to Billy “Bad-Ass” Buddusky, hero of The Last Detail. (Can a writer be influenced by his own work? Apparently so.)

No longer “the slow-witted Salvation Army day worker become roofing man,” Beef Buddusky undergoes a gradual and irreversible transformation as he tries desperately to understand how everything went so tragically wrong, and seeks forgiveness by reinventing himself as a person who tries to help others. A radical reversal reminiscent of another character, Frank Alpine, in Malamud’s tragic tale of suffering and redemption,The Assistant.

I finished reading this book nearly a week ago, but I’m still thinking about it. It’s that kind of book, and highly deserving of a brand new audience. Very highly recommended. show less