The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
Encyclopedia
The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything (1962) is a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald
John Dann MacDonald was an American crime and suspense novelist and short story writer.MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in his adopted home of Florida...

, considered "a classic screwball mystery".

Plot synopsis

The protagonist, Kirby Winter, is a young man living in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, full of anxiety and feeling no confidence in his ability to face life, either professionally (he had in fact not chosen a clear profession) or sexually (all his encounters with women, since puberty, ended disastrously).

Kirby's life had been overshadowed by an uncle who had been a mathematics teacher and suddenly developed an uncanny talent for gambling, broke several casinos and made himself a millionaire. The uncle seemed disappointed with Kirby's inability to make something of himself. At his death it turns out he had left Kirby none of his wealth – nothing but an antique gold pocket watch
Pocket watch
A pocket watch is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist. They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wristwatches became popular after World War I during which a transitional design,...

 to which a toy telescope is attached, showing a pornographic picture.

An older woman, quite attractive, shows up and makes clear her interest in Kirby. He is attracted to her but feels too insecure to respond to her attempts at seduction – which turns out to be fortunate, as she is a hardened and ruthless criminal, who had been his uncle's arch-enemy. The uncle many times thwarted the plots of her and her male partner, got away with quite a bit of their ill-gained money and avoided with contemptuous ease all that they tried to do against him. Her interest in the nephew derives from the vain hope of learning the uncle's secret (of which Kirby still has no idea).

Kirby's luck turns when he sleeps in the bed of a friend of a friend who is away for the weekend. In the middle of the night, a naked young woman gets into the bed and makes love to him in the dark, mistaking him for the bed's usual occupant. Caught in the middle of sleep, all of Kirby's sexual hang-ups disappear and he performs quite well. Discovering her mistake, the woman – named Bonnie Lee Beaumont – is at first furious but within minutes the two of them fall deeply and enduringly in love with each other and consummate their new-found love for the rest of the night.

On the following day, spent on the seashore, Kirby plays with the watch and accidentally finds out his uncle's secret: the watch can stop time for everybody but the holder, leaving him in a peculiar red-lighted world with everybody around "frozen", and effectively placing everybody else in the world at his mercy. Kirby and his newly found girlfriend only use this awesome power for relatively innocuous (though rather male chauvinist) practical jokes such as completely undressing women who "tease men by wearing very small bikinis" and laughing to see them escape in panic.

The woman criminal, who meanwhile discovered the watch's secret, has far more sinister plans for its use, and succeeds in capturing Kirby, who comes near to being killed - but he manages to turn the tables on her with the help of the watch. He can quite easily use the watch's power to kill her, but decides that using it to kill anybody - even those who deserve it - would "take away the fun"; he settles instead for getting her raped by a whole platoon of soldiers.

In the aftermath, Kirby Winter and Bonnie Lee Beaumont live happily ever after – joining the world's jet set
Jet set
"Jet set" is a journalistic term that was used to describe an international social group of wealthy people, organizing and participating all around the world in social activities that are unreachable to ordinary people...

, living in riotous luxury, traveling from one resort to another, gambling at casinos and (naturally) always winning, and responding to constant attacks by dangerous gangsters by perpetrating ever-funnier practical jokes on the hapless gangsters.

Commentaries

A back-cover blurb that describes the novel as similar to a collaboration between Thorne Smith
Thorne Smith
James Thorne Smith Jr. , was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction.He is best known today for the three Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction that sold millions of copies in the early 1930s...

 and Mickey Spillane
Mickey Spillane
Frank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...

 appeared on the book's first 13 printings (through October 1979). Thorne Smith's humorous supernatural fantasy novels, such as Topper (1926), are classics of this genre, while Mickey Spillane's writings are typically hardboiled crime fiction.

It is possible that the given name of MacDonald's protagonist (Kirby Winter) was inspired by the surname of one of Smith's lead characters in Topper (George Kerby).

Publishing history

The first printing of this book was as a paperback original:
  • The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything. Greenwich, Conn.: Gold Medal Books | Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1962. 172 pp. Wrappers. s1259 (35¢). Title page: "an original gold medal book"; copyright page: "First Printing, December 1962."


This book has appeared in at least 24 printings in the United States through June 1991 and, with MacDonald's two other science fiction novels, Wine of the Dreamers (1951) and Ballroom of the Skies (1952), was collected as part of an omnibus
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 in Time and Tomorrow (1980).

A second comma was added to the title (after "Watch") with the 2nd printing, and dropped again with the 14th printing.

The only English-language printing that used "and" instead of an ampersand (&) was the Coronet Books printing published by Hodder Fawcett Ltd. in the United Kingdom (1968).

In addition, the book has appeared in at least one Canadian printing (1964) and four British printings (1964, ca. 1965, 1968, and 1974). The latter book was the first hardcover appearance of the novel.

The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything has been translated into at least six languages and published in Brazil, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, and Russia.

Adaptations

The novel was adapted directly as a TV movie starring Robert Hays
Robert Hays
Robert Hays is an American actor and is arguably most well known for his role in the movie Airplane!-Life and career:...

 and Pam Dawber
Pam Dawber
Pam Dawber is an American actress best known for her lead television sitcom roles as Mindy McConnell in Mork & Mindy and Samantha Russell in My Sister Sam .-Life and career:...

, The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything (1980). The title song was released as a 45-rpm record by Richie Havens
Richie Havens
Richard P. "Richie" Havens is an African American folk singer and guitarist. He is best known for his intense, rhythmic guitar style , soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.-Career:Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children...

 on the Elektra
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....

 label.

The TV movie was successful enough to inspire a sequel based on the original characters, The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Dynamite (1981).

Parodies, pastiches, and allusions

A similar plot line - a man stopping time - already appeared in 1955 in Roger Lee Vernon
Roger Lee Vernon
Roger Lee Vernon is an American science fiction writer.He got a master's degree from Northwestern University, traveled extensively throughout North American and Europe, and while writing his stories in the early 1950s worked as a Chicago high school teacher.-Works:* The Space Frontiers - short...

's story "The Stop Watch", included in the collection "The Space Frontiers". Vernon treated the theme far more seriously, with his protagonist using the device to commit crimes with impunity and win the Third World War all by himself, and finally suffering a terrible perdition.

MacDonald's plot device, the watch that stopped time, was incorporated into Lady Slings the Booze (1992) by Spider Robinson
Spider Robinson
Spider Robinson is an American-born Canadian Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author.- Biography :Born in the Bronx, New York City, Robinson attended Catholic high school, spending his junior year in a seminary, followed by two years in a Catholic college, and five years at the State...

, who included John D. MacDonald in his acknowledgments.

The title was parodied—apparently with the permission of Gold Medal Books—in The Girls, the Massage, & Everything (1973) by Bernhardt J. Hurwood.

Several additional parodies and pastiches of the original plot device are identified in the article on "A Kind of a Stopwatch
A Kind of a Stopwatch
"A Kind of a Stopwatch" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. Star Pulse ranks this as the best episode of the series.-Synopsis:...

."

Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

 often alludes to the title in his time-travel novel, 11-22-63.

External links

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