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You may not have heard of Charles Willeford. In fact, the first time I read The Machine in Ward Eleven, I hadn't heard of Charles Willeford, not in any real sense. At that time I was about thirteen-years-old, and on holiday in Italy. I have no memory whatsoever of buying The Machine…, but these, for me, were The Jumble Sale Years, when I judged books entirely on the strength of their covers. As I no longer have my original copy, I can't even guess what it was that might have appealed about it from a cardboard box of fifty other browning paperbacks. I would guess that The Machine in Ward Eleven passed as science fiction, and that I was disappointed when I found out that wasn't what it was. (I'm still not sure that I'm all that sure what it is.)
What I do remember, without difficulty, is sitting on the beach in Italy, pine trees behind me, under a sun umbrella, reading the six stories one by one, being puzzled, scared, oppressed, changed. Occasionally, I would glance up at a pair of naked breasts walking past, attached to a woman carrying an ice-cream or holding a towel. My interest was probably divided about 40/60 between the breasts and the book.
What I remember most clearly of the The Machine in Ward Eleven comes from the fourth story, 'Jake's Journal'. In fact, years later, when everything else had disappeared from my mind, including the name of the author, I could still remember this detail: canned corned beef and small white, dried beans.
The story, like most in the book, concerns an extremely isolated man. This one, Basic Airman Jacob C. Blake, is stuck halfway up a mountain somewhere in Tibet, minding an airstrip. He has no books, no music, no company, and all the military has left him to eat is canned corned beef and small, white dried beans. He tells himself stories and begins to go mad.
In a way I'm surprised I don't remember more of the title story. Set in a couple of mental hospitals, and told by an ex-Film Director (J.C.Blake), The Machine in Ward Eleven is full of the kind of details that can easily become obsessive. With its slow and horrifying build, its final confrontation, its twist, it probably went deeper in to me than conscious memory. I hadn't read many short stories by the age of thirteen, and these ones were setting up a lot of expectations I still have.
As a grown-up, I can now see that Willeford, as a writer, is an odd mix of the cautious and the daring; back when I was thirteen I just thought he was weird (which was my highest criterion).
The stories in The Machine in Ward Eleven are cunningly linked together. The movie-bullshit artist of the second story 'Selected Incidents' is an acquaintance of the mentally instituted J.C.Blake of the first, who is an older version of Basic Airman Blake of the fourth. There is also a strong unity of detail and milieu: several of the stories are set in California, and concern the good folks of Hollywood.
Willeford himself, of whom I myself knew nothing until a couple of weeks ago, was the author of Miami Blues, New Hope for the Dead, The Way We Die Now and The Woman Chaser, among others.
He is a very good American-male writer - terse, rapid, funny, wild in patches. I'm not sure I'd claim greatness for him, although Willeford does seem to have been aiming for it: 'The Machine in Ward Eleven' consciously rewrites Kafka's In the Penal Colony.
I owe my re-acquaintance with The Machine in Ward Eleven to the google search engine, which revealed to me that I wasn't alone in valuing this book, and to No Exit Press, who have republished it just this month.
http://www.noexit.co.uk/machineinwardeleven.htm
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