Bimbo Positive
They say you can find anything on the internet, but they say there's an exception to every rule, too, and I reckon my searches prove the latter instead of the former. I couldn't find anything on Edward Stephens I didn't already know except that he did write another book, called "The Submariner", that I'm going to have to get my hands on a copy of, even though the review I read said if you've read "Blow Negative" you've read "The Submariner". That's okay, because "Blow Negative" is one of those favorite books of mine from childhood, read three or four times between freshman year and high school graduation, not to mention a half-dozen more times since. And as sure as I am that I'll read it again in its original form, I'm equally sure I won't mind reading it under a different title with different character names.
With a title like that and a main character named Harry Joy, you'd might near expect it to be one of those "Bedside Reader/Nighttime Library/Spicy Entertainment for Adults" paperbacks they used to sell in the back rooms of certain convenience marts in certain parts of town, but in fact I bought my first copy (the edition with the white cover) right off the same paperback rack that held the Barbara Cartland romances and Louis L'Amour westerns and Perry Mason and Agatha Christie mysteries at Dougherty's Drug Store right there in the carriage trade commercial district of solidly Southern Baptist Lancaster, Texas. And, while the sex scenes are jolly good fun (won't deny that), it's not a dirty book at all but a novelized version of the birth of the nuclear navy, with one of the most memorable characters I've ever encountered in literature, Captain Sam Greice, standing in for Hyman G. Rickover.
And, it was more than an enjoyable read. It was one of those books that formed my character. Even more than I could (and did) with Willie Keith in "The Caine Mutiny", I could identify with Harry Joy, the California beach bum who was just cruising through life, going with the flow, working/hanging out with the hot-rodders at the gas station/garage next door to mom's candy store, who found that there was life beyond the podunk little Baja Vista of his childhood (what a great play on words that name is!), of events and people that were far more important than who won the latest drag race or which girls put out and which didn't, and of setting goals and working to achieve them because they were worth achieving to be a part of those grander events and the lives of people who make them happen. Unlike Harry, I never got involved in building an atomic submarine (aside from the Aurora, Revell, Lindberg and Renwal models, of course), but Stephens' book was one of the most influential of all I read in making me aware that there was life beyond the Dallas County line, and later, in those things I was lucky enough to be involved in beyond that line, reflection on the way Harry, Griece, Crogan, St. Clair and the others handled their problems to some extent or another guided me in handling mine.
There are still plenty of copies out there at Amazon and those other online sources, and no doubt a few on the shelves of local second-hand bookstores as well, so if you haven't read it, I urge you to treat yourself to the pleasure of doing so. Don't expect a Tom Clancy or Patrick Robinson "techno-thriller", because this is an honest-to-God novel of characters with personalities and conflicts and emotions, not a bunch of cliche caricatures moving through a Jane's or Squadron/Signal data book tricked out as fiction. And, if you're wondering what a Doris Day-type saving-it-for-her-second-marriage perennial virgin and a Havana stripper have to do with the development of the atomic submarine, you'll have the distinct pleasure of finding out. Hope and Charity aren't there in person, but Faith is, for what it's worth--which turns out to be not much, since Lydia, O Lydia, Lydia-the-Tattooed-Lady has more than enough of all three for anybody. That's another lesson Harry and I learned. Thanks, Ed.
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