 A future literary star puts audiences on notice with a downbeat debut. 
Mario Puzo published The Dark Arena in 1955. He would be world famous fifteen years later thanks to his blockbuster novel The Godfather, but here readers find him exploring post-World War II Bremen, Germany, which is bombed out and partitioned between American and Russian troops. His main character Walter Mosca tries to find purpose in this blasted landscape, but his own nature and the chaos around him prevent him finding the humanity he lost in the war. Even the love of his girlfriend Hella can't seem to fill the hole inside him. The book is overwhelmingly tragic in mood from the very first pages, and it becomes obvious which character is going to bear the brunt of the inevitable sad ending, but those aren't criticisms. Puzo's talent in this, his debut novel produced at age twenty-five, shines in the darkness. Like a lot of first books it could be pared down, but on the other hand it's interesting when Puzo stretches his literary wings in lengthy descriptive passages obviously derived from personal observation. He was clearly a star in the making. That may sound like 20/20 hindsight, but it isn't. If The Dark Arena had been the only book Puzo ever published it would be an underground classic today and people would wonder why he never built on his promise. Luckily for world literature, he did.
 Where the wild things are. 
Above is the cover of New Texture’s 2012 book Weasels Ripped My Flesh!, which co-editor Robert Deis sent to us back in December. It took a while, but we finally finished reading it, and as expected, it’s a supremely satisfying compendium. All the tales were drawn from men’s adventure magazines of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, and authors include Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, Jayne Dolinger, Walter Kaylin, and Mike Kamens, who wrote the improbable but now classic crazed weasels story after which this collection is named. We were particularly gratified by Harlan Ellison’s presence in the form of his 1956 yarn “Death Climb,” in which an alpine guide is caught mid-ascent in a deadly dilemma—both halves of the wealthy but unhappily married couple he’s guiding up Mt. Keppler have secretly offered him money to push the other off the top. That story exemplifies what can be so fun about this type of fiction—the way it often begins with no set-up or preamble, in this case launching at high speed with the line, “It was either climb Mt. Keppler—or die.” Likewise the story ends sans denouement—the climax is quick and brutal. Ellison has always been renowned for banging out stories quickly. This one feels quicker than usual—the femme fatale’s hair color even changes from blonde to auburn. But the fun factor more than compensates for that little slip. In addition to fiction you get (ostensibly) true stories such as “I Went to a Lesbian Party” by Joanne Beardon, “Eat Her… Bones and All,” as told to Bruce Jay Friedman, an interview with Godfather author Mario Puzo, and many other treats.
Along with He-Men, Bag Men & Nymphos, which is also from New Texture, Weasels Ripped My Flesh! gives us two of the best men’s magazine fiction anthologies on the market. New Texture also has other enticing items in its catalog, such as Chris D.’s Gun and Sword, an encyclopedia of Japanese gangster and pinku films. You can find out more at the New Texture blog or at the website Menspulpmags.com.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1938—Chicora Meteor Lands
In the U.S., above Chicora, Pennsylvania, a meteor estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons explodes in the upper atmosphere and scatters fragments across the sky. Only four small pieces are ever discovered, but scientists estimate that the meteor, with an explosive power of about three kilotons of TNT, would have killed everyone for miles around if it had detonated in the city. 1973—Peter Dinsdale Commits First Arson
A fire at a house in Hull, England, kills a six year old boy and is believed to be an accident until it later is discovered to be a case of arson. It is the first of twenty-six deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by serial-arsonist Peter Dinsdale. Dinsdale is finally captured in 1981, pleads guilty to multiple manslaughter, and is detained indefinitely under Britain's Mental Health Act as a dangerous psychotic. 1944—G.I. Bill Goes into Effect
U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act into law. Commonly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, or simply G.I. Bill, the grants toward college and vocational education, generous unemployment benefits, and low interest home and business loans the Bill provided to nearly ten million military veterans was one of the largest factors involved in building the vast American middle class of the 1950s and 1960s.
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