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Willeford' 1954 novel "Pick-Up" is a shocking tour de force of desolation and nihilism. On its surface, it's the tragic ballad of Harry and Helen, two sad drunks with nothing to live for. Harry works as a fry cook in San Francisco, a long journey down from his former occupation as an artist and an art teacher at a private school. He works so he can drink. Helen's a lush who walks into the dive where Harry's working. He quits on the spot so they can go drink. "Who wants to sober up," she asks.


She came from money and an overbearing mother and a marriage that lasted one night. She has no interest in working, no plans, no dreams. But, she can't be left alone in the room cause she'll lose her mind. For Helen, alcohol is better than oxygen and better to go to a bar and accept a drink from any sailor or group of sailors. And, when Harry discovers who Helen is, he realizes he can't leave her alone and work a full day. Better to quit and be with her than risk losing her.


It's a tragic romance of two people who are just no good for each other and who wallow in depression together. Indeed, the only answer seems suicide because there's not enough left in the world to keep them going. And, one of the shocking things is how easily both if them accept the idea of suicide.
These two characters after all are rootless and disconnected. Though both are married to others on paper, they have no cares about what happened to their spouses or, for Harry, the child he left behind. A few years before Timothy Leary told the world to tune in and drop out, these two have dropped way down the rabbit hole. There's a strain running through pulp fiction of people who have dropped out of normal life and these two, Harry and Helen, are way out on that edge.


Willeford also uses this novel as a vehicle to poke fun at psychiatrists and attorneys. The doctors are all quacks who want your know if he had suffered sexual abuse as a child and are so deep in their Rorschach's that they can't talk to an actual person. The legal system doesn't know what to do with someone like Harry who just doesn't fit the mold.


What's interesting is the whole tale is told from Harry's point of view where he justifies what he does and the reader feels sympathetic towards him. An outsider telling the tale might explain things differently, explaining that Harry's a no-good bum who'd rather drink than hold a job, who left his family on a whim, who takes advantage of vulnerable lush Helen, and commits what are really horrible deeds.


Willeford thus tells this tragic tale of star-crossed lovers on all these levels, but on the very last page reveals something that flips the entire story and gives the reader yet one more level to absorb this story.


It's solidly noir in the sense you got these two drowning in the gutter. There's few who tell it so well and so passionately.�