The website of the greatest pulp fiction writer who ever lived
When Hack wrote this thriller about a shrill-but-gorgeous Jewess based on his friend Donna who was sexually obsessed with a Hack Werker-like writer of pulp fiction, Donna’s reaction was to scream something at him in Yiddish and hit him over the head with a frying pan.
Hack based this novel on his friend Eddie Frierson, who hails from Tennessee. For years, Frierson pretended to be illiterate to avoid having to read any of Hack’s books. The rouse was almost discovered when Hack learned that Frierson was actually a graduate of UCLA but when he found out that it was on a sports scholarship, Frierson’s inability to read seemed more plausible than ever.
There was a small theater across the street from the Shakey’s where Hack works as a janitor and he wrote this to try and impress an actress there who he had a crush on. Rather than having the desired effect, her boyfriend dropped in on the van Hack that lives in in the parking lot of the pizzeria and tied his face into a knot.
Hack can’t get anywhere near the water without violently puking his guts out and this romance on the high seas is based on the time he took his second wife in the paddle boats on Tiny Lake Balboa in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles and had to be air-lifted to a nearby hospital. The paramedics immediately discovered that he gets airsick too so all in all, it was a pretty messy day.
A beautiful heiress stages her own death to murder her lover, but that turns out to be a staged death too. When they are closed in on by the police, they fulfill a murder-suicide pact which turns out to be staged. The Tolucan Times called it “very confusing.”
Hack’s second wife claims that she wrote this novel about a manipulative sex-obsessed ne’er-do-well based on Hack and that he stole it and changed the gender of the main characters. The charge bears out when reading the final climatic scene between the hero and the “Devil Woman” in which he drives her out of the house by repeatedly mocking her tiny penis.
A double agent from Kansas tries to get a Hack Werker-like writer of pulp fiction to overthrow the US government. When pressed that Kansas was actually part of the United States, Hack inevitably retorts “That’s exactly what they want you to goddamn think!”
Hack claims that this novel is based on a real woman he knew who would murder any man after having sex with him once. His publisher John Kane has admitted that he knows the woman and that she’s been married for 30 years to the same man by whom she has three children and that Hack made up the lie to explain why he refused to have sex with her when, in reality, it was she who refused to have sex with him. It’s a pretty good book though, with a nice subplot about a lonely clown.
Hack’s second novel was also the second to be reissued by John Kane with a new cover by Jonny M. and was also a smash hit. Hack always loathed Rock ‘n Roll music and blamed it for society’s downfall. This is the story of Davida, a good girl who listens to her first Bill Haley and His Comets record and quickly descends into a world of reefer and anal sex.
Hack’s first novel went by unnoticed when it was first published in 1958 with forgettable cover art. But when publisher John Kane decided to reissue Hack’s early work with new covers by world-famous graphic artist Jonny M. in 2012, sales exploded and Hack suddenly found himself a major celebrity after years of toiling as an anonymous writer of pulp fiction with a tiny cult.
This first novel dealt with themes Hack would re-explore over the decades as a “good girl” named Amy tries a puff of reefer offered to her by a low-life at a party and she quickly descends into a life as a prostitute who specializes in anal sex, only interested in money for that next joint.