Customer Reviews

The Black Mass of Brother Springer

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This is one of Willeford's best books--equals Cockfighter or The Burnt Orange Heresy and it's a shame that it is very difficult to find. If you can gets a used copy, I highly recommend it. Hopefully, some wise publisher will bring it back into print. Jason Starr (author of Cold Caller and Nothing Personal)

Charles Willeford has been mistakenly placed in the mystery section of bookstores in the same way that Kilgore Trout was relegated to the seemy shelves of adult bookstores. How this came about is the true mystery. He is often cited alongside Jim Thompson, but the two have nothing in common. Charles Willeford is more of a cross between Bukowski and...and..John Kennedy O'Toole. A little bit of Graham Greene here, at Greenes best ("The ugly American" or was it "The quiet American" ?) There is a hard, unnerving edge, but humour and beautiful observations of strange lives lurk inside the cynicism in a way that Thompson never tries nor would if he could. Anyway, about this book : The protaganist is a white louse who somehow buys a ministry to a black church in the south from an aggressive ex-seargant in the army out to make a buck. He is no believer in god, more of a failed literature graduate student. But he starts writing sermons, good ones ( kinda like John Donne), which have references to Kafka. He is a success. But he is still a louse, and his louseness reasserts itself in conflict with his new found sense of moral responsibility. This sets the stage. I recommend this to anyone with a sense of humour.

This off beat novel takes place in the segregated South of the 1950's. In it, Charles Willeford tells the improbable tale of Sam Springer, aka Brother Deuteronomy. For $20 cash, Springer simultaneously purchases both a certificate of ministerial ordination and an appointment as pastor of a 100% African-American church in Jacksonville, Florida. Two problems. First of all, Springer is a white man who by his own admission knows very little about black people. Secondly, he is an atheist who knows and cares nothing about religion. Despite these two handicaps, Brother Springer takes to his new found position like a fish to water. Within a very short period of time, he organizes a citywide civil rights protest while also setting about the task of seducing the beautiful young wife of one of his congregants. That in a nutshell is the story of The Black Mass of Brother Springer.
Charles Willeford loves to take on sacred cows. And in this book, he takes on the most sacred of all cows, religion itself. He also skewers segregationists and racists in general by comically revealing their warped sense of reality with their own words. A fairly courageous thing to do in 1958, the year this book was originally published. A time when the civil rights movement had barely begun.
This novel has much in common with other works by Willeford. It is funny, sometimes in a lighthearted way, sometimes in a very dark way. It is extremely irreverent and at times it is quite disturbing, even shocking. It is not politically correct nor is it ever dull. Willeford often likes to punctuate his fiction with sudden unexpected acts of violence. There's some of that here but it's minimal when compared to many of his other novels.
James Sallis quotes the author in the book's introduction as to his secret for successful writing. Willeford said that only when he stopped caring what others thought of his work was he able to write in earnest. In other words, Willeford put down on paper only what he genuinely felt without regard to how the reader might perceive it. Only by this means, he believed, would the truth have a chance of coming out.
As mentioned before, there are disturbing aspects to this book. To me the most disturbing is that there isn't a single African-American character who is not hoodwinked by Springer despite his being a very foolish man and an obvious charlatan. I don't know why Willeford chose to write the book this way or whether he ever explained this choice in his 30 years of life after The Black Mass of Brother Springer was first published.
Nevertheless, this is an unforgetable work which entertains while educating and challenging the reader. Isn't that the very definition of great literature?

Another excellent crime novel from Charles Willeford, who created some of the most entertaining fictional sociopaths in the genre (see recommendations below for more such villains). This time, Willeford crafts the tale of an accountant named Springer who becomes bored with life, wife, and everything else. He wants to become a writer, but doesn't know what to write about. One morning, he sees an article in the newspaper about a monastery closing down. He visits it, intent on getting the story behind the closing for an article he plans to write, and talks with the abbott. The abbott is a practical man, something of a con-man himself, who only took the job for a steady paycheck and free place to live. Now, he's retiring. For a nominal fee, the abbott offers to make him a monk and assign him to lead a church in the ghetto of a town in Florida. The guy accepts, ostensibly so he can have an income and free time to work on his writing, but quickly decides to take his new role seriously when he realizes how much money and stuff he can swindle his black parishioners out of. The real trouble begins when the newly ordained Brother Springer gets the hots for one of his deacon's wives, creating an interracial love triangle (taboo in the time the book was written). Springer organizes a bus boycott (electing himself treasurer of the united local church groups' effort); he then plays the blacks off against the Klan, all so he can bilk them both out of getaway money to run off with his lover. There is a lot of social commentary here, a lot of humor, and a compelling crime story that's a real page turner. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is the ending felt kind of rushed and open-ended. Even so, this is easily one of my favorite books by this author, right up there with Miami Blues, Sideswipe: A Hoke Moseley Detective Thriller, and The Woman Chaser.