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Rating: 
Summary: Humorous, humane, and uplifting storytelling
Review: Charles Willeford apparently wrote these two memoirs relatively late in life, but he tells the stories as he experienced them at the time rather than through the filter of his mature personality. In his own modest, plainspoken style, you get to know the interior world of Mr. Willeford, first as a young orphan, and later as a young recruit in the Air Corps. Willeford had a rough life, but--and this might be a surprise to those who only know Willeford through his pulp fiction--he didn't allow his difficult childhood or military experience to make him coarse and cynical. For all the darkness of his novels, he appears to have been a sensitive, optimistic, and humane person, whose dark humor was a means of coping with life's disappointments. I hope that Willeford's books someday fall into the hands of a competent publisher. Disc-Us Books did an incredibly shoddy job preparing the book for publication. Not only are there many typos and dropped or repeated lines of text, but they even misspelled "memoir" on the spine of the book. Perhaps they've caught the error and fixed it, but my copy says "memior"!
Rating:
Summary: Two strange worlds, sharply rendered
Review: The Great Depression is a time and a place that is foreign to most living Americans. GD USA is a country where nearly everyone is living in dire poverty, and the country itself is on the brink of collapse. Willeford, one of the most underappreciated writers of the 20th century, captures this odd world perfectly as he chronicles his picaresque travels through an economically devastated America. The second memoir takes place in the U.S. Army off in the exotic Philippines during peacetime--years before the Japanese came, and 30 years after an insurrection that was put down in brutal fashion by American soldiers. Willeford leads you into an exotic world of malfunctioning aeroplanes and imperial slouching by indolent imperial soldier-airmen using pitch-perfect prose. Buy this one, and try out "The Woman Chaser" too.
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous writer
Review: Willeford is one of the best writers America has produced.
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