This collection of pulp tales brilliantly shows just how different the meaning of a writer's work can differ between a fan and the writer. Editor John Stanley, host of the once popular San Francisco based late night horror movie television show Creature Features, put together many of Robert Bloch's 'famous' Lefty Feep stories. Each yarn involved a very contemporary (for the 1940's that is) con man named Lefty Feep who delighted in telling some long suffering schmuck in a coffee shop the wild tales about his failed get rich quick schemes. Written for the fantasy pulps of yore, each tale has a magical trapping of sorts (i.e. flying carpets, genie in a bottle, etc) that inevitably trip up our tireless, and quite clueless, fall guy of a hero. Not surprisingly Bloch barely remembered writing some of the stories (most were written at the request of the publisher and not out of any desire by Bloch to explore the character further) and this workmanlike attitude casts a humorous light on Stanley's obvious, and quite fanatical, love for the character in the interview segments with Bloch that bookend each story. The small press edition, from Stanley's own, and now defunct, Creatures at Large Press, was intended to be the first volume in a series, but none ever followed. Bloch, in his unauthorized autobiography, blamed the stories with his trademarked bemused self-deprecation. Highly recommended for both the silly stories and the probably unintended fan/writer insight.

Longtime fans of Robert Bloch had heard about his lost Lefty Feep stories for decades, but until this collection came out in 1987, they were unavailable. The Feep stories are comic tall tales written in the 1940s for the undemanding pulp market, featuring a very broad parody of a Damon Runyon-esque character who speaks in extreme (largely made-up) racetrack tout slang. They are related by Feep to a character named "Bob" who is the one actually recording the stories. Some of the stories in this volume are not original tales, but tweaked versions of classics like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" or folklore like "The Pied Piper," and the wordplay that runs through them is often more strained than amusing. Ditto the absurd character names, like "Hiyawatha Donglepootzer" and "Gorilla Gabface." The "Feepese" takes some getting used as well, not simply because of the slang (women are "ginches," for instance), but the fact that Feep speaks in a form of present tense at all times. The book is also insufferably edited by John Stanley, whose lengthy introduction is a masterpiece of "I-strain," and who adds less-than-illuminating teasers and tags to each individual story constructed around an interview with Bloch. For those who have always wanted to read Lefty Feep yarns, this book represents a case of "be careful what you wish for," much like the discovery of a legendary lost film that, upon finally being screened, proves to live down from its reputation. Robert Bloch's other, straighter stories are much better.

Between 1942 and 1946, Robert Bloch wrote 22 comical fantasy adventures of Lefty Feep, a cross between a Damon Runyan gambler and Baron Munchausan. The formula for each story was essentially the same. Lefty corners the reluctant narrator at a cheap restaurant and tells him of his latest adventures with the pied piper, a magic carpet, an invisible coat, or a golden touch machine. In each case, his plans to get rich go askew. All of these stories appeared in _Fantastic Adventures_. At one point, Bloch was writing them at the rate of one a month. He says that editor Ray Palmer steadily bought the stories but gave him no special praise; that would have encouraged him to ask for higher rates.

In _The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction_ (1995), John Clute states that all of these stories were collected in _Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep_ (1987). Would that it were so. But the collection consists of only nine stories-- the first eight Lefty Feep yarns, plus a new one written especially for the collection. Future collections were planned and advertised, but I can find no evidence that they were ever published.

The new story, "A Snitch in Time," has Lefty travel to our own time. It's a bit too world-weary and gloomy. It doesn't go with the breezy optimism of the earlier pieces. "Time Wounds All Heels," the first Lefty Feep story, is relatively rough. And "Jerk the Giant Killer" is flawed because Lefty is telling about the adventures of somebody else. Bloch rates it as his least favorite of his early stories in the series, and properly so.

On the other hand, "The Weird Doom of Floyd Scrilch," "The Little Man Who Wasn't There," "Son of a Witch," and "The Golden Opportunity of Lefty Feep" have a certain manic fun about them. They are loaded with slapstick action, ghastly puns, comical dialogue and other assaults upon the English language.

Make no mistake. I am glad that this collection was assembled. I would like to see more Lefty Feep stories in print. Perhaps the one in which Lefty gets henpecked (but not by a housewife), or the one where he has misadventures in an old folks home for gangsters, or the one where he encounters the dragon and the sleepy-time princess. And yet, you know, the stories-- even the better ones-- are not really top of the line. The jokes sometimes misfire. The dialogue is frequently corny. And you can usually predict their endings early into the story. And I am not either stuffy and humorless!