Hot, Horny and Depressingly Relevant

The 1984 edition of Miami Golden
Boy from British publisher
Granada Publishing.

Though my review of The Movie Maker went a whole year and a half without a single view, I am going to try once again to gin up interest in author Herbert Kastle, this time reviewing his 1969 novel MIAMI GOLDEN BOY.

While The Movie Maker was Kastle’s take on the Harold Robbins/Jacqueline Susann-style showbiz potboiler, Miami Golden Boy has more in common with the works of Arthur (Hotel; Airport) Hailey and Burt Hirschfeld, with multiple characters and their parallel narratives converging at a single location.

In the case of Miami Golden Boy, that single location is the Bal Metropole, a swanky Miami Beach hotel that out-Fontainebleaus the Fontainebleau (the Beach’s three main themes, Kastle writes, are “BIG—ORNATE—MORE.”) Not only is the hotel able to accommodate a thousand(!) guests around its pool, it also features two nightclubs, a bar or three, a variety of restaurants and snack shops, and, on the Arcade Level, a veritable shopping mall.

The Bal Metropole (or the BM, as I’ll refer to it only once) also leases office space to the ad agency Andrew Stein Associates, which is why ad exec Bruce Golden, the titular Golden Boy, is frequently roaming the hotel’s giant halls. Bruce is young and hot, with a smooth confidence that makes panties dissolve almost instantly (“That’s what this hotel’s needed. A work of art,” remarks a horny socialite upon spotting Bruce in the lobby.) But while Bruce isn’t above indulging in some recreational sex, he has ambitions beyond just scoring pussy. He’s on the hunt for rich pussy, and the Bal Metropole is the perfect hunting ground: Where a Golden Boy might wilt and die outside the magic circle in Palm Beach, he could flower and triumph in Miami. The money was arriving. The women with money were arriving. Somewhere among them would be his bride.

The woman he sets his sights on is Ellie DeWyant, a waifish beauty with an even more attractive bank account. What Bruce doesn’t realize when he first hits on her is she’s also the daughter of the Bal Metropole’s owner, and she’s not charmed by Bruce’s come-ons. She’s also a bit of basket case, given to bouts of depression and easily panicked, especially when someone at the hotel begins blackmailing her. Ellie’s vulnerability ultimately works to Bruce’s advantage, allowing him to become, if not her Golden Boy, then at least her perceived White Knight, but he may have gotten himself more than he bargained for. Ellie, in turn, has gotten less than she’s hoped. But, hey, the sex is fantastic!

Avon’s 1971 paperback gives the
impression that Miami Golden
Boy is a romance novel.

Besides Bruce and Ellie, we meet Marjory Fine, the aforementioned horny socialite, who, when her fat husband leaves for business, hosts parties primarily so she can spy on her guests’ sexual dalliances. She even has a two-way mirror installed in her private bathroom so she can watch her guests fuck in the adjoining bedroom (voyeurism sure was a lot of work before the Internet). Among the guests she sees in action are hunky lifeguard Jerry Leech and the wife of men’s shirts magnate Max Prager, Ruthie, who’s got plenty of cushion for pushin’. Marjory sees more than she wants to, however, when swishy decorator Marco brings Democratic up n’ comer Sen. Richard Christopher into that bedroom and things get weird.

Fortunately for the senator, what happens in Marjory’s suite stays in Marjory’s suite. Were people to find out, the scandal would not only ruin Dick Christopher’s presidential aspirations, but it would also positively destroy him in the eyes of his father-in-law, former President—and father-in-law of the book’s current President Jonathan Standers—Michael Wheeler (did you get all that?) The former President is also at the hotel, and though he’s recovering from a stroke his iron grip on his political dynasty is as strong as ever. When Christopher remarks to his father-in-law’s nurse, Eve, that he’d want her as his nurse if he ever needs one, Wheeler says, “You seem to need one right now. Nurse…or nursemaid.” 

Wheeler might also be touchy about anyone eyeing Eve, a shy, sheltered young woman, as he hopes to groom her to be his mistress when he fully recovers. And he recovers quickly, thanks to Eve’s therapeutic hand- and blowjobs. But as awed as Eve is by Wheeler’s money and power, it’s manwhore Jerry Leech who moistens the crotch of her cotton panties.

Other characters include May Krasmer, owner of a successful chain of Chicago jewelry stores, who is in Miami to get some strange since her manipulative, impotent husband has given up even trying to get her off; Dan Berner, Sen. Christopher’s speechwriter, who gets a diagnosis that forces him to choose between the sex he lives for and just living, period; John McKensil, manager of the Bal Metropole, who has a weakness for underage girls and just might not be able to control himself once he discovers his new secretary, Violetta, is much younger than the 18 years she claims to be; and Wally Jones, an entertainer in the Sammy Davis, Jr. vein, whose celebrity provides little protection against America’s racism, especially when he accidentally punches the girlfriend of rival entertainer—and avowed racist—Benny Barker.

Some of these characters aren’t who they present themselves as, however. Some are actually involved in Cuban ex-pat Ivan Cesar Lamas’ plot to kidnap Sen. Christopher. Too bad some of Lamas’ henchmen are only in it for the money, not revolution.

Trash, But Not Disposable

Avon gave Miami Golden Boy a sexy
makeover “in the Harold Robbins
tradition” for its 1976 edition.

 

Miami Golden Boy is the type of novel that gets dismissed by intellectuals as popular fiction, the type of people who say the word “popular” in the same tone of voice one says, “You’re wearing that?” To that end, I’d like to say: fuck them. However, I sometimes wonder if Kastle might not have had a similar opinion of pop lit as those sneering intellectuals. His books may be written to appeal to the unwashed masses (or “deodorized masses,” as Sen. Christopher terms them), but he’s critiquing them, too. In Herbert Kastle’s world, there are no saints. Millionaires, politicians and criminals are all one and the same, they just get what they want through different means.

Beneath all the sex and sleaze in Miami Golden Boy is a scathing social commentary that, depressingly, is as applicable in 2021 as it was in 1969, especially in matters regarding race. There’s even a scene in which Wally Jones is stopped by police for “walking while Black,” though unlike in recent real-life incidents, the cops don’t shoot Jones, content to just humiliate him instead.

Then there’s Sen. Christopher’s speech, which originally includes these passages about America addressing its history of slavery and its continued practice of systemic racism. (A heads up, I’m quoting these passages as written and, as the book was written in the late 1960s, they use a dated term for African Americans.)

“What we must do is expand our understanding in terms of history, and also in terms of the human heart, sadly deficient when dealing with our Negro compatriots. These people who were kidnapped from their homes, packed into the bowels of ships like no intelligent cattle shipper would pack his stock, sold like any domestic animal, and bred in the same way. Now, overnight as it were, we expect the recent descendants of these tormented people to accept all middle-class virtues at face value, even when they have no part in middle-class benefits. We expect them to leap into the mainstream of American life, and we speak of our poor-folks’ childhoods to show it can be done easily enough. But our grandparents were not Black and were not slaves, and we are not Black and are not saddled with the malaise of recent slavery.

“Answers, you say, not questions, are what we need. Answers, I’m afraid, are not easily come by. And when offered, not easily accepted. Germany has dug into its pocket to indemnify, massively, the remnants and descendants of those killed in the Nazi holocaust. Not all Germans were Nazis. Not all Germans are, strictly speaking, responsible for what happened to the Jews. Yet all are paying.

“Not all Americans are responsible for what happened to the Negro people. Yet all Americans must dig into their pockets and then into their minds and hearts.”

Considering that the concept of critical race theory currently has the right wing’s collective catheters in a knot, I could imagine the above speech causing Scanners-style explosions of the talking heads at Fox News and NewsMax if delivered by a politician today. (The Internet, always quick to miss the forest for the tweets, would just focus on the use of the word “Negro.”)  But then, no real politician would risk saying these words, and neither does the fictional Sen. Christopher, who cuts them from his speech because to utter them in front of a largely white crowd on live TV would destroy his chances at securing the presidential nomination.

So, yeah, Miami Golden Boy may have all the elements of trash fiction, including a scantily clad woman on its cover, but it’s too well written and has too many pointed observations to be disposable. 

 

Not to be Outdone: Burt Hirschfeld’s ‘Key West’

Burt Hirschfeld wrote his
own Florida-set sex, scandal
and (overthrowing) Castro
novel in 1979, but his heart
just wasn’t in it.

I have no idea if Burt Hirschfeld wrote Key West in response to Miami Golden Boy, or if he in fact ever read Herbert Kastle’s novel. Regardless, his 1979 novel has a lot in common with the novel Kastle published a decade earlier, including a plot to overthrow Fidel Castro as one of its main narrative drivers. 

Unlike Kastle’s novel, however, Hirschfeld’s politics in Key West are more conservative — the man planning an assassination of Castro is an ex-CIA agent who frequently laments the weakening of America’s moral fiber — and his plotting less disciplined. The only instance where the majority of characters cross paths is during a party thrown by that stuffy ex-CIA man. I could believe the described bacchanal, which includes people doing drugs and having gay trysts in the bathroom, taking place at a party thrown by a staunch Republican, but that that said Republican’s guest list includes middle class slobs as well as the town’s elite strained credulity.

As a whole the book reads like the novelization of a Prime Time soap that got canceled after its eighth episode. Narratives are either wrapped up quickly or just dropped, resulting in the book simply petering out without a satisfying conclusion. Key West isn’t a total waste of time — Hirschfeld’s writing is as engaging as always — but only Hirschfeld completists need bother seeking this one out.

Simultaneously Timeless and of Its Time

America is sharply divided, one side fighting to change the status quo while the other will stop at nothing to maintain it. Amidst this unrest rise Machiavellian politicians, self-serving pundits and fear-mongering preachers. The country is a powder keg, a single tragic event the match that could light its gasoline-soaked fuse.

No, I’m not about to launch into a right/left-wing screed about our current political climate. This is a review of Burt Hirschfeld’s 1973 novel, THE MASTERS AFFAIR, a political potboiler that’s simultaneously timeless and of its time.

I’m a fairly recent convert to the works of Burt Hirschfeld. I recall his novel Return to Fire Island being prominently displayed on the bestsellers rack at my local K-mart in the 1980s, when I was in high school. Back then I wanted brand name trash, so I by-passed Hirschfeld in favor of Harold Robbins. It wasn’t until I read some reviews of his books on the Glorious Trash blog that I actually sought out any of his work, starting with his 1970 novel Fire Island. I was immediately won over, surprised by just how gifted a writer he was, with a prose style more comparable to Irwin Shaw than Harold Robbins. Though his work does fall under the dismissive label of popular fiction, I could detect the ambitions of a “serious novelist” in Hirschfeld’s writing. But the ambition to be a bestselling novelist was clearly more important (hey, we all gotta pay bills), so he wrote whatever sold. Fire Island was not only a success, but a template, Hirschfeld following it up with a series of soap opera tales set in glamorous locales (Aspen, Acapulco, Key West). He also wrote non-fiction (A State is Born: The Story of Israel, Stagestruck: Your Career in Theatre), TV and movie novelizations (Bonnie & Clyde, The Ewings of Dallas), and, under the name Hugh Barron, trashy tales of Hollywood (The Goddess Game, The Love Thing).

And sometimes he wrote novels of political intrigue, like The Masters Affair.

The book begins with the assassination of W.W. Masters, the head of the secretive Internal Investigation Agency, sort of like the C.I.A. for domestic affairs. Hunting for the shooter, separately and with separate agendas, are by-the-book I.I.A. agent Peter Malone and liberal activist Dan Hellman. For Malone, catching Masters’ killer is personal: Masters was his mentor in the agency, and he was Masters’ devoted acolyte. For Hellman, who aspires to be the next Ralph Nader, identifying Masters’ killer and, just as importantly, discovering his motive, is a career opportunity. Also, just think of all the sweet pussy he’ll get when the spotlight’s turned on him.

Though the Malone character has a stick so far up his ass he risks puncturing a bowel, I found his storyline more engaging. His investigation leads him to a fundamentalist zealot, Rev. Willie Joe Tate, training a militia to fight atheist liberals and Godless communists, and later to an armory in Texas he suspects of supplying Tate his weapons. Hellman’s investigation, on the other hand, gets mired in too much pretentious philosophizing and side trips, as when Hellman appears on a talk show to battle wits with other political journalists. This chapter wastes too much time on pundits smelling their own farts (15 pages worth) when its primary purpose is introducing Joanna Cook, a Gloria Steinem-esque character and the novel’s only significant female character. 

Of course, Joanna and Hellman end up in bed, because Hellman is just that irresistible to women. Here it should be noted that while the paperback cover depicts Hellman as looking like Warren Beatty, Hirschfeld’s description of him brought to mind a thirtysomething James Woods. It’s should also be noted that while his contemporaries on the best seller lists of the day wrote unapologetically of throbbing cocks and quivering cunts, Hirschfeld’s sex scenes are either described in florid abstractions or happen off-page and referenced after the fact. Below is this book’s most explicit sex scene, an earlier encounter between Hellman and one of his college groupies. Be sure to have your lotion and tissues ready:

She lowered her face between his legs, reached for his slack member with her lips.

Hot.

Some out-of-left field accusations regarding Masters’ sexuality, courtesy of Joanna, ultimately leads Hellman to suss out the assassin’s identity, and it’s here that the book really shows its age. Though published the same year the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, The Masters Affair makes it clear it was written prior to this 1973 resolution. Broad generalizations are made about homosexuals, including a psychiatrist spewing some horseshit about gays being drawn to highly structured professions, such as the military and law enforcement, because they supply a “representation of a father figure,” and how conversion therapy can help gay men lead “reasonably adjusted” hetero lives. This is also where Hellman, the free-thinking liberal protagonist, is revealed to be a homophobe (another similarity to James Woods), coercing a closeted government employee to talk by threatening to out him. This makes perfect sense for a book set in the early ’70s, but it killed whatever goodwill I had toward the character of Hellman.

The ending of the book is a bit puzzling. Hirschfeld describes how the killer is about attempt another assassination, except for much of this final scene the killer is thinking about shooting Masters, making the chapter read like a flashback to the book’s opening. More than likely Hirschfeld was just conveying that the killer had gone batshit, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, but I just found it confusing.

While I wouldn’t count it among my favorite Burt Hirschfeld novels, The Masters Affair is a fairly entertaining read, its take on the U.S. political climate of its time sadly just as relatable today. Hirschfeld’s take on homosexuality, however, is very much stuck in 1973.