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paul_cornelius's review against another edition
4.0
Going into a nearby town, Kit, Dave Calvin's accomplice in a bank heist, mentions that she has watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie. As James Hadley Chase published I Would Rather Stay Poor in 1962, that means the writing and publication of the novel would have taken place sometime before Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) but immediately after Pycho (1960). So Psycho would likely have been on the mind of Chase and any reader during the time of I Would Rather Stay Poor's appearance. And a psycho is what we have with the story's protagonist, Calvin. It's not so much that the novel is filled with murders and grisly descriptions of them. It's not. There is only one direct murder. The rest of the deaths come as a result of suicide and essentially happen "out of sight" of the reader. This is in contrast to Chase's early works which were lingering and graphic as killers would build up a body count. Here, Chase is doing something a little different.
What occurs in I Would Rather Stay Poor is sketching out the psychology of the two key characters, Calvin and his accomplice/fiance, Kit. The alcoholic Kit, who has been on the wagon, begins a quick process of disintegration that Chase documents throughout. But it is the psychotic Calvin who is most interesting. For what Chase does is tie his killer's psychotic and sociopathic tendencies to his experience of killing Japanese soldiers during World War II. Calvin kills lightly because the war taught him how to do so while severing him from the normal connections that being part of a community are all about. Thus this is a work that, albeit briefly, deals with the murderous after effects of combat fatigue--or, as it would soon become known after Vietnam, PTSD. Yes, Calvin is sort of an early version of a criminal Rambo.
Otherwise, only a few problems. I realize Chase is writing for an audience expecting Britishisms. But, really, when he creates mental or actual dialog, it is a jolt to see things such as Americans referring to "sideboards," when absolutely no one would use that term, instead using the proper word, "sideburns." Too, as someone who took up tennis at age eight, just a year after this novel was published, I cannot imagine an American tennis facility, country club or otherwise, that offers up a tea pavilion. You might get tea, but it would only be iced tea, not the British variety. I think the reliance on these Britishisms is the reason Chase failed in America. It's just too awkward for most American readers to come across these passages. Imagine, on the other hand, for example, if Miss Marple were suddenly to start talking like Mae West, "come up and see me, sometime, big boy." That's the effect Chase has on American readers.
What occurs in I Would Rather Stay Poor is sketching out the psychology of the two key characters, Calvin and his accomplice/fiance, Kit. The alcoholic Kit, who has been on the wagon, begins a quick process of disintegration that Chase documents throughout. But it is the psychotic Calvin who is most interesting. For what Chase does is tie his killer's psychotic and sociopathic tendencies to his experience of killing Japanese soldiers during World War II. Calvin kills lightly because the war taught him how to do so while severing him from the normal connections that being part of a community are all about. Thus this is a work that, albeit briefly, deals with the murderous after effects of combat fatigue--or, as it would soon become known after Vietnam, PTSD. Yes, Calvin is sort of an early version of a criminal Rambo.
Otherwise, only a few problems. I realize Chase is writing for an audience expecting Britishisms. But, really, when he creates mental or actual dialog, it is a jolt to see things such as Americans referring to "sideboards," when absolutely no one would use that term, instead using the proper word, "sideburns." Too, as someone who took up tennis at age eight, just a year after this novel was published, I cannot imagine an American tennis facility, country club or otherwise, that offers up a tea pavilion. You might get tea, but it would only be iced tea, not the British variety. I think the reliance on these Britishisms is the reason Chase failed in America. It's just too awkward for most American readers to come across these passages. Imagine, on the other hand, for example, if Miss Marple were suddenly to start talking like Mae West, "come up and see me, sometime, big boy." That's the effect Chase has on American readers.
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