GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #469: HARRY? JOHNNY?

"How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise?"

 

Unsurprisingly, Angel Heart is one of my favorite movies ever. And then I learned that it was based on the book Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, and I got very excited. Because the book is always better than the movie, right? What kind of sick, fucked up shit was I about to read?

I wish I had this beautiful edition.

I think I was in high school at the time. Either that, or I was freshly a college student. One way or the other I went to my favorite used bookstore of all time, a place that is sadly no more (an old man owned the place, and when he died, no one in his family wanted to pursue his passion), and I found a paperback copy for maybe a dollar, possibly less.

This is the one I have, and it still looks pretty fucking cool.

It was the first time in my life that I discovered that sometimes the movie is better than the book. I still enjoyed it a great deal, but I liked the movie better. I shelved it and forgot about it until something was mentioned in horror news a few years back. I'll get to that in a moment.

Around that time I reorganized my paperback horror books so that the ones I'd read were on the bottom shelves (which were difficult for me to get to) and the ones I hadn't were up high and easy to reach. I almost filed Falling Angel at the bottom when I thought about it more. I'd been a kid when I read it. I wasn't even old enough to drink yet. What if it means something different to me now that I'm a middle-aged man? More to the point, what if the book really is better than the movie, and I just didn't notice it?

So I kept it up top with the idea in the back of my head to reread it sometime soon. Good thing I did because that news I just mentioned? It came to fruition.

I don't know if you all use Book Bub. It's too expensive for me to use as a writer, but it's pretty nice to use as a reader. I saw today that there was a discounted Kindle option for something called Angel's Inferno.

By William Hjortsberg.

Hell yeah!

So the news I mentioned. A few years back, when Hjortsberg died, it turned out that he'd been working on a sequel to Falling Angel. It didn't sound like he finished it, though. I figured it would be relegated to the could-have-been pile of books writers couldn't finish before they died. And yet, here we are. It actually was finished. This pleases me greatly, so naturally I bought the book. A physical copy, in case you were wondering.

Because goddammit, I'm finally going to reread Falling Angel so I can read the new one. I'm very curious and excited. Let's see what happens.