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The Penny-a-Worder
Cornell Woolrich is "our greatest writer of Suspense Fiction" - Francis Nevins, Woolrich biographer.
Pulp fiction writers produced millions of words under intense time pressure in order to fill the pages of dozens of mystery magazines which filled newsstands from the 1920's through the 1950's. Some would argue that Woolrich's "The Penny-a-Worder" is one of the best pieces of fiction on the subject. First published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1958, this short story is not only a fun read about a pulp writer's life but is a wonderful example of Cornell Woolrich's later work and, for all we know, may have been a first-hand experience sufferd by Woolrich himself.
It's the later part of the 1930's and a struggling author by the name of Dan Moody checks into a hotel with an assignment to turn out a novella - literally overnight - with a story whose subject will coincide with artwork that has already been produced for the imminent publication of a "dime-detective" type magazine. With the publisher's voice constantly in Moody's mind and various distractions around him, the writer attempts to create a story worthy of publication.
Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) is one of America's best crime and noir writers who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley. He's often compared to other celebrated crime writers of his day, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler. He attended New York's Columbia University but left school in 1926 without graduating when his first novel, "Cover Charge", was published. "Cover Charge" was one of six of his novels that he credits as inspired by the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Woolrich soon turned to pulp and detective fiction, often published under his pseudonyms. His best known story today is his 1942 "It Had to Be Murder" for the simple reason that it was adapted into the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie "Rear Window"starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. It was remade as a television film by Christopher Reeve in 1998.