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About halfway through Charles Willeford's debut novel, High Priest of California (1953), the narrator, Russell Haxby, a successful though amoral used-car salesman, drops off his date Alyce. Unsuccessful in his immediate attempt to seduce her, Haxby has nonetheless begun formulating a long-term strategy toward achieving his goal. Before returning home, he walks into a tavern and orders a drink. Sitting at the bar, he surveys the other customers, noticing the man next to him is approximately his size. Then, without warning or provocation, Haxby says, "I put my drink down, raised my elbow level with my shoulder, and spun on my heel. My elbow caught him just below the eye. He raised a beer bottle over his head and my fist caught him flush on the jaw. He dropped to the floor and lay still. I threw a half-dollar on the bar and left. No one looked in my direction as I closed the door." Returning home, Haxby puts the "Romeo and Juliet Overture" on the turntable. "I poured a glass full of gin and played the overture several times while I finished the drink. After this emotional bath I felt wonderful. I went to bed and slept soundly all night. Like a child."

With this one indelible scene, Willeford presented his vision of the quintessential postwar American man. Beneath the pleasant exterior of a successful used-car salesman lies a soul equally capable of lashing out in meaningless, anonymous violence or appreciating the beauty of Tchaikovsky. While at this point in the novel the events do not come as a complete surprise---earlier Haxby had kneed a parking attendant in the groin for pointing out that he had parked in the wrong spot---the realization that the core of his soul Haxby is utterly without conscience prepares the reader for the ultimate revelation that Haxby will treat the people in his life with the same cavalier disdain he shows toward his customers at the car lot.