Exploring the World of Ernest Tidyman's Shaft Literature

By Scott Adams

I was laid up last year for about a week following some elective surgery (kids, lift with your knees), and figured it would be a good time to catch up on some reading. Working as a librarian, I had access to the thoughts of the ages' greatest minds. History, biography, social sciences, philosophy, fine literature - these were all noble choices. Instead, I went on ebay and bought the complete series of Ernest Tidyman's Shaft novels.

Tidyman gained fame writing the screenplay for High Plains Drifter and The French Connection. Oddly enough, just a week before I settled into the Shaft books, I ran across another pulp author whose name I can't recall who also claimed he wrote The French Connection. Maybe the French Connection is one of those things that all pulp authors claim credit for, sort of like how every aging black entertainer "invented" rap.

Regardless, Ernest Tidyman won the Academy Award for The French Connection, and wrote both the screenplay and novel for Shaft and Shaft's Big Score. I couldn't determine if the novels were published first, or were "novelizations," like Allan Dean Foster used to supply Scholastic Book Services with. Tidyman churned out seven Shaft books of varying quality, generally keeping Shaft as a New York City private eye, but occasionally turning him into a black James Bond when the mood struck him.

While the Shaft books aren't going to make anyone forget Raymond Chandler or Ian Fleming, they're usually pretty solidly entertaining reads, if you can hack your way through Tidyman's odd prose style. Generally running around 150 pages, they manage to cram in about three sex scenes, a lot of action, and an exciting climax. Unlike other detective or mystery novels, just because someone is introduced and given a few pages of characterization is no guarantee that they function in the plot, or will ever be heard from again. The plots generally start slow, have a bunch of subplots which may or may not have anything to do with the main story, then have a whole bunch of action thrown together around page 100 or so.

Some reviews of Tidyman's novels note that this was the first time a black man was used as a serious detective, which sort of ignores Chester Himes' much better written Harlem detective series. However, the image of Shaft resonated enough in the black community to earn the white author a NAACP Image award.

At points, Tidyman comes off as your uncle or high school teacher trying to convince you he's still hip by throwing in references to sex and drugs, which works just about as well as it did with your uncle or teacher. Tidyman also feels the need to throw in lots of remarks about gay men. While many low-budget movies and pulp novels of the time used gay men as comic figures, Tidyman tends to go overboard, so much so that you start screaming, "Hey Shaft, why don't you stop bothering those gay dudes and go after the mob or something?" While the Shaft novels may be flawed, at least Tidyman didn't have anything to do with that Shaft in Africa movie or that TV show where Shaft wore leisure suits and was about as tough as Don Knotts.

So who is John Shaft? According to the back cover of 1971's Shaft, he is "A black Bogart who says the revolution is a new way to chase chicks. The Mafia is a meatball. And life is going to screw you if you don't screw it. John Shaft is a private eye. John Shaft is a Black man made of muscle and ice." That little bit of nonsense should let you know that the Shaft books are gonna be really, really hard to read. "The Mafia is a meatball?" Shaft takes about 88 pages to finally get going. Before that it is full of weird Ed Woodian syntax that takes two or three readings to understand, such as: "That was the advantage for people like this. Architects designed the world so killers could sit like fat toads waiting for the next meal to fly by. Zap! The sticky tongue shot out! Blip! The meal was over."

The book fills Shaft's background, revealing that he was a juvenile delinquent who was shipped to Viet Nam and wounded before becoming a private eye. The movie follows the book pretty closely, in that Shaft is hired to find the kidnapped girl of the Knocks Persons, the Harlem crime boss, whose Chester Himes-sounding name was changed to Bumpy in the movie. New York City is about to be torn apart by gang wars between the black and the white mobs, along with black revolutionaries stirring things up. John Shaft, with one foot in the Black community, and one in the white police community, is chosen to find out what is going on and diffuse the situation. The book features some more sex scenes, and has a great part where Shaft walks through every establishment in Little Italy saying, "I'm looking for the main office of the Mafia. Around here somewhere. Ah, you don't know either. Well, you tell them John Shaft is trying to find them, okay?"

The movie improves on the book in a few scenes, most notably the scene in which Shaft and Buford, the oddly named black revolutionary are chasing each other through an old woman's tenement apartment. The woman sits quietly in her modestly decorated apartment, complete with a lighted picture of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. Just as Buford attempts to stab Shaft, the woman says simply, "Young man, please. Don't do that." It is an effective scene, showing a regular woman tired of the violence around her home, facing down intruders with a quiet dignity. In the book, the apartment belongs to a junkie who doesn't notice what's going on. The climax of the movie is also more exciting, with Shaft and the revolutionaries making a commando-type raid to free the crime boss' daughter.

Overall, a good book, but a more exciting movie. Plus you can understand the movie, which can't always be said for Tidyman's prose.


SHAFT'S BIG SCORE


In the second Shaft book, one of Shaft's oldest friends, Cal Asby has a successful undertaking business. Unknown to Shaft or his wife, Cal's business has been a front for the numbers racket, which is about to be taken over by the mob. Knowing he doesn't have much time left, Cal hides the money in a coffin and calls Shaft.

However, he is blown up by the mob before he has a chance to reveal where the loot is stashed. Now the mob, Harlem crime boss Knock Persons, and Cal's old partner are looking for the money, while Shaft tries to protect Cal's wife Arna.

For some reason, they changed Arna from Cal's wife to his sister in the movie, which pretty much changes the whole tone. In the novel, Arna and Shaft were lovers, until Arna chose solid respectable Cal over dangerous Shaft. Her revelations about Cal's business, and Shaft's feelings for her are a substantial portion of the novel.

Before you start comparing Shaft's Big Score to Tolstoy or something, though, rest assured that Tidyman slips in a few of his odd descriptions, like this one: "Shaft felt like a ninety-year old woman who had tried to hitch a ride on the back of a bus in wet sneakers, lost her footing and fallen in the path of at least two cabs."

Both the book and the movie have explosive climaxes at a graveyard and on a wharf, although the book doesn't feature the helicopter scene, or the scene where Shaft poses as a window washer to break into the mob boss' apartment. This is probably the best written of the books, but it doesn't have the same manic energy some of the later entries would have. Again, a pretty good book, but a much better movie.

SHAFT AMONG THE JEWS


Obviously, this one never got made into a movie, but just close your eyes and imagine how odd that title would look up on a marquee as a double bill with...hell, just about anything.

Shaft's troubles begin when a group of Hassidic Jews hire him to look into some shady business in the diamond trade. An old Israeli scientist has perfected a method of making synthetic diamonds, and is missing somewhere in New York. A group of what Tidyman refers to as "Israeli secret agents" is hot on Herzel's trail, trying to obtain the synthetic diamonds to sell them for Israeli military supplies, or use them in a superweapon. Meanwhile, diamond merchant Morris Blackburn, who has been sending his gay assistant out to murder jewelers for loose diamonds, learns about the synthetic diamonds.

Blackburn realizes he can destroy the existing diamond trade with the new diamonds, so he joins in the hunt. This all leads to a big action sequence in Blackburn's building, with Shaft trying to break into a safe, while Mossad agents run around blowing stuff up.

Popular culture can be useful for picking up information about cultural or political currents of the time. Seeing as how Tidyman keeps referring to the "Israeli CIA" instead of calling them the Mossad, I don't think I would use Shaft Among the Jews as a basis for your Mid-Eastern studies thesis. At least the writing has improved, with a lot of the head-scratching prose cut out. Either Tidyman had gotten a new editor or had just kept off the stuff that was causing him to write all those long, confusing passages.

Moving fairly quickly, with some good action scenes, Shaft Among the Jews is one of the best in the series.


GOODBYE, MR. SHAFT


Goodbye Mr. Shaft is set in London, and is the first attempt to turn Shaft into more of a James Bond type character, with Shaft protecting the children of a Senator against kidnapping attempts.

Senator Creighton Stovall, "the brightest light on the political horizon," and a shoe-in for the first black vice president is worried that a racist group will try to kidnap his children to keep him out of the race. Shaft isn't too happy about babysitting, but does get to teach the kids and their Limey schoolchums the fine art of ass-kicking by teaching a class in judo and streetfighting, taking valuable time away from classes on cricket and how to lose an empire. There are various attempts on Shaft's life, including a razor attack and an attempt to lock him in a steam room. The climax on a rusted dry docked freighter is among the best of the series, and great, pulpy action. If all the action weren't enough, Tidyman manages to squeeze in even more sex in this one. Oddly enough, though, Tidyman doesn't employ the gay man as comic relief at all in Goodbye Mr. Shaft, even with the British boy's school setting.

Goodbye Mr. Shaft features some of the best characters in the Shaft series. Winston Marsh, the mastermind behind the kidnapping scheme, is a wealthy industrialist obsessed with crackpot theories on "Negro evolution." Based on the loveable Henry Ford, Marsh is about the closest the Shaft series would get to an evil mastermind. Dave Clayton, the senator's assistant, secretly helps Marsh. Clayton started his political career in the American civil rights movement, and had an idealized image of black people as noble pacifists. After the riots in Watts and Detroit and the slaughter in the African civil wars, Clayton's images were shattered and he secretly began to work for Marsh. Clayton's internal struggles are characterized well, and he ends up being the most well-shaded character in the Shaft series.

Of course, what would a Shaft book be without some weird description? My favorite is: "Linda wore a simple black dress that was cut low in the front and high off the ground. She looked like a mourner who was going to an orgy funeral in honor of a bedroom athlete who died in the saddle."

SHAFT HAS A BALL


If you can get past the cringe-inducing blurb on the back advertising Shaft going undercover at a "fag convention," you'll get a pretty good misanthropic detective story. Not the best of the series, and it seems as if Tidyman was getting a little tired of churning out the series at this point, but it does have its moments.

This time, unlikely named black revolutionary Ben Buford is back, and word on the street has him involved in a soon-to-be enacted heist. Buford's method of supporting his revolution through extorting small businesses has left some merchants a little upset, so they assemble a team to impersonate Buford's group and steal a half million dollars in mob money from the Hotel Armand. At the same time, the Congress of GAY (Gay American Youth) is meeting, which will cause a distraction, but also requires the team to dress in drag. In addition, Shaft is protecting a senator in the same hotel, while he tries to find what the big heist is going to be and who is involved.

Naturally, the gang double-crosses each other, and the mob sends some hitmen out to get their money back. This is probably the most mean-spirited of the whole Shaft series.

Strangely enough, there aren't many digs at gay people, other than portraying most of them as evil drag queens. Well, Cowboy, the sadistic gay hooker isn't probably a character the gay community would really embrace. However, there is enough hate to go around, as just about every supporting character is a secret pervert or creep. In one scene, Shaft questions a pimp in a bar. When the pimp and his muscle attempt to rough him up, Shaft kills them without any remorse or reflection. Sure, as a private detective, Shaft is used to killing, but in other books, he would beat the suspect, get the information, then release the chump after a witty remark. With the increased violence, there is only one sex scene, but it does have the lines, "Summer in New York. The young ladies and their designers had turned it into an erotic festival." And "Shaft was sure the 'please' tasted like hummingbird shit on Drake's tounge - he got it off so quickly."

SHAFT'S CARNIVAL OF KILLERS


From the back cover blurb: "Anyway, that's how Shaft gets caught up in some tropical treachery involving an assassination plot, some shady cops, beautiful women, killers lying in wait and a crew of nasties ready to turn Jamaica into a disaster area!" Shouldn't the "Anyway" be in reference to something? Isn't there a grammar rule that states you aren't supposed to start a sentence with a transitional device that doesn't refer back to anything? And I seem to recall that Jamaica in the seventies was already well on its way to becoming a disaster area, what with riots and political corruption.

Odd grammar aside, Carnival of Killers is probably the most entertaining of the Shaft series, as Tidyman again attempts to turn Shaft into a Bond-like character. Shaft has taken a much-needed vacation in Jamaica, where he naturally gets caught up in a plot to assassinate the Black Prime Minister. The action starts in the opening passage, as two government guys attempt to kidnap a bikini-clad woman. Shaft lazily observes the action (he is on vacation, after all), but doesn't step in until the ensuing chase knocks over his picnic lunch. The characters include a huge eyepatch-wearing, white-clad black Chief of Police, radical Rastifarian splinter groups, the British and American mob, the Jamacian secret police, bored New Jersey teachers looking for some island sex, and a blowgun shooting hunchbacked dwarf.

The whole mess climaxes at a costume party where shots are fired in the dark, and none of the plot threads come together at all. Nothing makes a damn bit of sense, but the plot moves along quickly enough, adding more and more stuff, so that in the end it doesn't really matter. Plus you get some more of Shaft's odd musings on life such as this one, "Shaft had his drink and looked at the old lady, trying to fathom her mission and her motives. Old ladies lie as easy as young ones. That's not cinnamon in Mom's apple pie, it's cyanide."

Carnival of Killers also has a strange passage where Shaft gives his thoughts on facial hair: "Shaft always thought that people who wore mustaches were assholes who were trying to hide something and were unsanitary as well." Did Tidyman not read any of his other books that describe Shaft as having a mustache? Did he not see the three movies based on his character featuring Richard Roundtree sporting a mustache?

Carnival of Killers concludes with Shaft bound for New York, when the woman from the beginning attempts to hijack his plane. After reading it two or three times, I think he falls asleep. Tidyman would publish one more Shaft novel, intriguingly titled The Last Shaft, but I haven't been able to find a copy yet. If you're looking to dive into the Shaft series, I'd recommend Shaft Among the Jews or Shaft's Carnival of Killers to start out with.

With Shaft and Shaft's Big Score you'd be much better off renting the movies. Just stay away from the pilot for the Shaft TV show they show sometimes on TBS.

Labels: Espionage