Sunday, September 17, 2017

Danse Macabre’s Horror Novels 36 Years Later



Yesterday I finished reading Ramsey Campbell’s debut novel, The Doll Who Ate His Mother. In doing so, I realized that I’ve now read all ten novels that Stephen King examined in-depth in the horror fiction chapter of his genre overview Danse Macabre, originally published in 1981. These ten novels were chosen because they represented everything King considered fine in horror fiction from 1950-1980 (the time period Danse Macabre covers.) The chapter is essential reading for anyone interested in this period of horror fiction; I’d argue that it is the definitive statement. But 1981 is some distance in the rearview mirror; do these novels still have anything to say today? I’m going to tackle this question by looking at each book and what it looks like now—how it does or doesn’t interact with the genre today now that we have nearly 40 additional years of horror fiction history to consider. Do these novels (ok, nine novels and one short story collection) still represent what is fine in the genre? How influential are they today?

A couple of disclaimers are necessary first. One, I’m not an essayist by nature and this will not be an academic exercise. Such treatises hold little interest to me—it’s all a matter of taste—and would not be in the spirit of King’s original work. Secondly, I want to try to examine these works less as to whether they work as stories (though I’ll touch on that some) but whether they still speak to the genre today. A story can be enjoyed regardless of context; once more, it’s a matter of taste. My reading of these books spans my teenage years through the present, a period of over 30 years. Some of them I read once, some I’ve read multiple times. It would be impossible to divorce my own experience and impressions from this exercise; we’d be back in academic territory. I want this to be like we are chatting over beers. It should be fun. That’s all.

Ok, so enough with the excuses. Let’s roll.

The Doll Who Ate His Mother
Might as well start with my most recent read. Before I can even talk about this book, it’s necessary to come clean: I think Ramsey Campbell is one of the finest writers the genre has ever produced…and yet I think he is still somehow underrated. He wears the mantle of horror writer proudly, and he’s certainly received much recognition and respect by folks who follow horror fiction closely over the years…and yet, perhaps because he’s always been so prolific, we take him for granted. He’s always there, always writing. Like Stephen King without the popular crossover success, the fame, or the money. No student of 20th century horror fiction can understand the genre without coming to terms with Campbell.

And he should be wider read—there has been a massive rebirth of the weird tale in this millennium, and you can’t avoid Lovecraft, whose influence and the debates about feel ubiquitous (and frankly, draining—I love Lovecraft but I wish more modern writers were *not* taking cues from him, even the good ones. The bad ones…I’m not even going to go there.) Campbell’s early shorts were drenched in Lovecraft mythos before he found his own voice; by the time he wrote Doll, his debut novel, he sounded like no one else. And through the ups and downs of his career, that has never changed.

The Doll Who Ate His Mother evokes a very specific time period: 1970s Liverpool, which in this book feels very drab and grimy, all slums and pollution and decay. In this way the book reads a bit dated today, but the story itself holds up remarkably well. King himself said reading Campbell is like being on a low-grade dose of LSD, and I can’t think of a more apt description. This almost-but-not-quite-surrealism often feels both queasy and disquieting, and is probably a large part of why Campbell has never crossed over to mainstream success. The book’s much touted climax is not as horrific as other things Campbell has since written, but it is one of his most tense passages, and the overall terse style of the novel is something I wish he would return to on occasion. A review of the plot here isn’t necessary (I’m not going to waste lots of words on something you can queue up online with a couple of keystrokes) but if you like Campbell, you’ll like this book. If you haven’t read Campbell, I’d start elsewhere. The 80s novels Midnight Sun and The Hungry Moon are his best, and I prefer the latter-day novels The Overnight and The Grin of the Dark to Doll. But Doll is a well-executed novel and is one of the more approachable of his works.

So was it a good choice? Does it still resonate? Well, Campbell’s influence may not loom as large as I believe it should, but he has still had a big impact on the genre. What I really don’t know is if people discovering the genre today read him. I suspect by and large they don’t; he’s too much of an acquired taste. He might also be too prolific; I’ve certainly not read all of his work and I consider myself a big fan. Despite the voluminous output, it can be hard to track his stuff down. It took me so long to read Doll because I never saw it anywhere, and I finally bought a used stained and torn copy online. I’m glad King included Campbell and exposed many to his work (including me); were one to write an overview of horror fiction today he would be in there, but we’d be talking about Midnight Sun or The Hungry Moon. I don’t think Doll turned out to be influential, even if Campbell did. But dammit, it’s a crime more don’t read him…

Ghost Story

From the most recently read to the oldest: I first read Ghost Story in junior high. It was the first non-King horror novel I read, rescued from a moldy cardboard box of paperbacks at a junk store along with a copy  of Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Total cost: 50 cents. Never has so much been gained from such a minute cash outlay. I was completely, utterly enthralled with Ghost Story from the first words of chapter 1 right up through the end. If any book is going to be hard for me to take an objective look at, it is this one. Good thing I didn’t promise objectivity!

Ghost Story follows five elderly gentlemen (joined later by a younger gentleman) charmingly named the Chowder Society as they confront ghosts both past and present. That does not even remotely begin to describe this beautiful book, which I think remains perhaps the finest ghost story written, at least in novel form, save for Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House—a quite different book. There are more than ghosts here, too—a peculiar form of werewolf makes an appearance, and there are other tropes pulled out, but this book clearly and resoundingly belongs to the ghosts. It is an exploration of just what a ghost is and what motivations they take on. Straub floats the idea that some or all of these ghosts are Manitou (shapeshifters), and this is the one place the book stumbles, as this idea takes away from the central conceit that perhaps ghosts simply take on our motivations and psyche. The ghost is us. The latter is an infinitely more powerful and intriguing concept than shapeshifters, and fortunately the book leaves the question open-ended.

So yes, Ghost Story is one of my favorite books ever, the combination of encountering it at such a formative age with its pure reading pleasure (Straub writes beautifully clear lines of prose that read literate without ever coming across as pretentious) making it a novel I have returned to often over the years, never with diminishing returns. I’ve probably read it 15-odd times. I love it dearly. But how does it read today?

Man, I don’t know. Anyone who enjoys a well-written novel with an involving cast of characters should still find plenty of enjoyment here. Students of the genre will discover a well-plotted novel that plays with many of the classic tropes. At the same time, there is no denying you simply can’t write a book like this anymore. For starters, it is near impossible in the age of smart phones and the internet to suspend disbelief enough to imagine yourself in a town where all communication gets cut off (the only modern book to convincingly do this that I’ve found is Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Hex, one of the great horror novels of this millennium.) That alone gives this book the feel of another era.

I think it’s also an open question whether a tale of a town cut off holds power in an era where so much horror fiction is concerned with worldwide societal collapse. As big as Ghost Story is, it’s a small story centered on less than a dozen characters in a relatively low-population town. Next to the rampant biblical destruction and slobbering zombies of 2017, it seems almost quaint. I’m also not sure how the conservatism of the older gentlemen who make up the heart and soul of the story reads today: this is a more complex, genteel conservatism than the toxicity and rage the term invokes today. The book could even be said to suggest that such conservatism is inherently a good thing, a loving thing, and that feels completely out of step with 2017. Not to make sweeping generalizations of genre fans; I just don’t know how easily one can work around those factors.

How about influence? Well, if you grew up in the 80s, Straub almost surely influenced you. If you grew up later, I’m guessing not. He left the genre for a while after burnout in the mid-80s, and did not return to it until the late 90s. From what I’ve read, his work since returning has not been particularly well-received. I’ve not read it myself. I love his entire early run: Julia, If You Could See Me Now, Ghost Story, and Shadowland. Everything post-Shadowland I’ve read or attempted to read, including his short work, I’ve just been unable to connect with (though I did admire, if not exactly enjoy, The Throat.) Like many modern authors, he has a fascination with unreliable narrators and meta commentary, and these things don’t particularly appeal to me. It’s neither here nor there, it’s simply a taste thing.

If the criteria is whether or not Ghost Story represents everything fine in the genre, then in my mind there is no question. It does and then some. If it’s whether it’s relevant or influential today, I think that’s a more open-ended question. Still, were I to make a required reading list for anyone interested in horror fiction—as a writer or simply as a fan—Ghost Story would be near the top. It remains a remarkable achievement.

The Body Snatchers

Originally published in 1955, Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (or, as it is more commonly known, Invasion of the Body Snatchers—technically this was the film title only, but my copy features this title and I rarely see it referred to otherwise) is the oldest of the books King chose, beating out The Shrinking Man by a year. The book has certainly been dwarfed by its numerous film adaptations, but it’s also rarely if ever been out of print—an impressive feat for a book now 62 years old. It’s an extremely short read that can be pretty much summed up by its title.

An alien lifeform that King amusingly calls “ragweed from outer space” is slowly taking over a perfect 1950s small town by replicating its citizens. A young man and his sweetheart realize what is going on and try to get others to believe them. There is paranoia, there is tension, there is (exceedingly tasteful) romance as we race along with our heroes. It’s a slip of a book, a small thing, that must have seemed dated in 1981 and seems positively ancient now.

But its themes aren’t. Most of King’s overview is given over to a discussion of those themes, which seemed to him eerily prescient then and seem to me even more so now. This book could be said to be the birth of the modern conspiracy theory, the spiritual godfather of the X-Files and JFK assassination obsessives. I don’t think it’s important at this late date whether Finney was intentional with these themes (he claims he was not, King seems less sure)—the book picked them up, and its simple yet effective story has offered a surprisingly flexible framework that the films have taken advantage of (the 1956 Red Scare and 1978 satire of the Me generation versions in particular.) In that sense, the book is still influential and will continue to be, even if it’s not widely read.

King asserts that Finney, along with Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch, brought a realism to the genre, pushing it out of the moldy haunted house and Lovecraft-dominated eras preceding. Let me offer a couple of quick thoughts about this idea. First, the idealistic portrait of 1950s small-town life in The Body Snatchers does not strike me as particularly realistic; at best it’s an extremely naïve portrayal wherein everyone is unfailingly nice. Nothing bad happens here, no sir! This arguably makes the novel more effective—we are appalled that the nasty ragweed from space could do such terrible things to these fine folks—but the setting has no more realism to it than a fairytale. I know many reactionaries of a conservative bent would like to tell you otherwise, but the world was never like this, folks. Mayberry was not a real town. I’ll buy that the simple, straightforward language, the complete opposite of Lovecraft’s (sometimes purple) prose read refreshingly modern at the time of publication. Today, though, it just reads kind of bland.

Second, while this breakthrough to a more realistic tone was crucial at the time and dominated the genre into the 80s, the pendulum has since swung fully opposite. Lovecraft today looms larger than any other writer in the genre. It’s virtually required for a horror writer to offer his or her own take on the mythos. Lovecraft-influenced writers such as Thomas Ligotti and Laird Barron have been at the forefront of the genre for at least the last two decades, maybe even longer. Add to that a 24-7 connected world where it’s impossible to determine what the term “reality” even means, and Finney’s novel seems even more quaint. As an aside, I would love to see more writers give the Lovecraft pastiches a rest and play around a bit with characters that were more recognizable as everyday people in extraordinary circumstances—more intimate tales, you could say. But that’s simply a matter of taste, and one look at what is published currently in the field shows that Finney’s book is a dusty relic that has little to say to a modern audience. It may be continually in print, but I suspect that has more to do with the endless movie adaptations than any inherent value within the novel itself.

That all said, it is a speedy read, and Finney knew how to put a story together. The Body Snatcher’s time in the sun may have passed, but those looking for a break from modern horror/weird fiction could do worse. 

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury. Where do you begin? He is a legend, and deservedly so. Something Wicked This Way Comes is certainly part of that legend. It remains my favorite novel of his, even above the more influential Fahrenheit 451. It’s not my absolute favorite work of his—that honor goes to the early short story collections Dark Carnival and The October Country, which share many of the same tales. But it captures a nostalgic vibe about adolescence that, while occasionally overwrought, avoids the syrup that drowns Dandelion Wine, a similar celebration of the nostalgia of youth.

Wicked tells the tale of Jim Nightshade and William Halloway and a carnival that comes to town with the fantastic—I mean seriously, this might be my favorite thing about the book—name Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show. This no ordinary carnival. Run by the malevolent Mr. Dark, who can realize attendees’ secret desires, the carnival enslaves those who fall under its spell so that Mr. Dark can live off their life forces—a vampire minus the fangs and bloodsucking. The carnival essentially functions as a dark (heh heh) metaphor for the temptations and promises of adulthood, and while that might sound clumsy in description, Bradbury pulls it off with aplomb in the book.

I first read Wicked when I was just a year older than the protagonists (14 to their 13) and it was the sweet spot, the literal perfect age to read the book. I was enthralled and overjoyed throughout my reading but oddly, unlike other books I loved at that age, I didn’t immediately re-read it. In fact, I didn’t read it again until I was in my late twenties. I think I was worried that the magic would be gone. Context matters when evaluating your reactions to a novel, and I knew that there would never be a better set of circumstances than I’d already experienced. I didn’t want to ruin the magic it held in my memory. Yet finally I couldn’t resist.

And it was fine.

I mean, I’m not sure what else to say. The book was still enjoyable, as many Bradbury tales are. Some of it read a little more purple to my adult eyes, but that was inevitable. Like The Body Snatchers it portrays a version of small town America that I doubt ever existed, but because Bradbury isn’t shooting for any kind of realism—and because he’s a far better prose stylist than Finney—it doesn’t bother me. Most importantly, it didn’t kill the magic that I’d carried with me all those years. I’ve since read it a couple more times, and while I’ve not gained any new insights to it as a work of art, it makes me feel 14 again in the most innocent way—and I mean that as a high compliment.

I really don’t know how Wicked would read coming to it for the first time as an adult in 2017. Maybe even as an adolescent. As dark as the carnival is, it’s a broad, innocent kind of darkness and almost certainly would seem quaint to a youth reading today. Yet I’ve met people throughout the years who are younger than I who loved the book, so who is to say? Most surprising to me is a couple of them are female, and I always thought of Wicked as a book of boy’s concerns that likely held little interest for the other half of humanity. So I’m likely selling it short here—there is clearly something that calls out to many ages, genders and walks of life. Bradbury’s gift will continue to give as long as there are eyes to read.

And as to influence—well, this is a no-brainer. Bradbury’s popularity has never waned, at least in my lifetime, and he is one of the cornerstones of all fantastic fiction, no matter what the genre. Wicked is still widely read, still influential, still has something to say. In relation to the horror genre, at least as I view it, I think Dark Carnival/The October Country, with their lineage from the Lovecraft pulps through EC Comics through TV shows like Boris Karloff’s Thriller and beyond make a more interesting discussion point, and I find the best of these tales to still send shivers down my spine. After a beer or two, I’ve been known to argue that “The Next in Line” is the third scariest short story in the genre (topped only by Algernon Blackwood’s masterful “The Willows” and King’s “Children of the Corn,” which can’t be killed no matter how many lousy movies it spawned.) But Wicked has something that no other book discussed here has: a big, open heart. It is less a horror novel than a book of loving kindness, and the world needs that today more than ever. If it doesn’t bring tears to your eyes then you, my friend, just might have ice in your soul.

Strange Wine

Ok, let’s use the halfway point to discuss the most difficult book in this list. Difficult because its inclusion is questionable, difficult because the author is most certainly questionable. Separating the artist from their work is near impossible in Ellison’s case (something King points out), and discussing Ellison is not something I am exactly looking forward to. His unpleasant reputation looms, in 2017, far larger than any of his works and is unavoidable even when assessing one of his books on its own merits.

So I’m going to sidestep the question of Ellison for the moment—don’t worry, we’ll get back to it—and first discuss the other question Strange Wine’s inclusion has always brought up for me: why is it the only collection of short fiction on the list?

I think it’s fair to say at the time of Danse Macabre’s writing, horror fiction was a largely novel-driven format. The market for short fiction was drying up with the pulps long gone and the men’s magazine market shifting largely to hardcore pictorials. Novels, especially mainstream/”airport reads”, on the other hand, were quite healthy. In the wake of The Exorcist, Carrie, et al., a horror book could break on through to a wider audience, especially if driven by a film adaptation. Short stories and anthologies rarely broke through. This would start to change with King’s success, though the genre would remain largely novel-driven through the 80s. I think the real sea change came with the publication of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, which coincided with the first death throes of the mainstream horror market. From the 90s on, much of the best work in the genre was done in the short story format. This remains true today.

But there were still collections that I think could have been on this list, at the expense of one or two of the novels. Robert Aickman’s Cold Hand in Mine comes to mind. Charles Beaumont’s The Hunger and Other Stories is another. Ramsey Campbell would have been better represented by either Demons by Daylight or The Height of the Scream than The Doll Who Ate His Mother, and there’s an argument to be made for Bradbury’s The October Country, though many of those stories predate the era covered by this list. There are others I could list. In the end, more than anything, the question is…if just one collection, why one by Ellison?

Well, in defense of the choice, Ellison was still very much an active writer at the time of publication. He didn’t fit into any box easily, and if you were glancing familiar with sci-fi, you knew his name. Within the fantasy community, he already had a difficult reputation, but it was nothing like the caricature he’s eventually become. He wrote to shock, and was often effective at doing so. The best of his tales, including several in Strange Wine, burn with an anger and a caustic wit that can be downright corrosive, leaping off the page and yelling in your face. As King points out, he is a moral writer—in the Old Testament sense—and his best stories are closer to fables than a traditional horror short story. Whatever my opinion of the man, I’ve been haunted by “Croatan,” Strange Wine’s opening tale, for years. It is a brilliant story. It still holds power when read today.

But it—or any of Ellison’s tales—also bring a sadness when read now, like seeing old footage of a once supreme athlete who we now to be feeble and shuffling unnoticed down the street with a cane, yelling at clouds. Danse Macabre was published as Ellison’s time as a working author was coming to a close, though there was no way of knowing it at the time. He published sporadically in the 80s, and by the 90s onward has been all but silent. In those same years, his unpleasant reputation, fueled by moronic public behavior and the ridiculous saga of the never-realized anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, grew into a larger-than-life myth, though largely contained to the sci-fi fandom world. The rest of the world has forgotten about him, if they were ever that aware of him in the first place. When you stake your artistic identity on pushing the envelope, you run the risk of becoming dated quickly as culture changes, particularly if you’re fueled by topical concerns. Perhaps this is why his well dried up, or perhaps there are any number of reasons, but it is certainly appears to be dry.

I don’t think anyone much reads Ellison anymore. Go into any bookstore with a sci-fi section, and you maybe see one novel by him, or more likely none. Certainly when he comes up in conversation it’s all about his public persona and Ellison as a person, never about his work. Strange Wine was a weird, if somewhat justifiable, choice in 1981. Though still in print, it’s largely forgotten today and I don’t think Ellison as a whole had much of an impact on writers that came after, at least as far as horror goes (I’m not as well-versed in sci-fi, so perhaps his influence is more stated there.) Anyone coming across Strange Wine or any Ellison collection today will still find some great stories but are likely carrying the burden of his public persona and pathetic behavior in with them. I’m not sure the stories still justify it, to be honest, but that’s a judgment call each reader will have to make for themselves. As far as horror literature goes, they needn’t worry they are missing a crucial part of its history.

The Haunting of Hill House

I think I deserve a treat after dealing with Strange Wine, so let’s discuss one of the greatest books ever written. Not one of the greatest horror novels, one of the greatest novels period. Though very much a haunted house story and completely deserving of its spot on this list, Hill House transcends any and all genre limitations through the sheer perfection of its prose and storytelling. Does that sound hyperbolic? It’s not, trust me—Shirley Jackson is one of the flat-out best writers I’ve ever read and appeals to even those who would not normally care to visit the genre. It is the greatest haunted house story ever written, and it’s more than that.

Hill House tells the story of four people gathered in a reputedly haunted house to explore what, if any, paranormal activity is occurring. The viewpoint is almost exclusively through the character of Eleanor, whom King labels “the finest character to come out of the new American gothic tradition.” I wouldn’t argue that a bit, at least at the time of Danse Macabre’s publication and maybe not even now. Eleanor is an interior character, narcissistic, and you don’t exactly sympathize with her. As the novel draws a web ever tighter around her, you sense that the web is as much of her own weaving as it is any force contained in the walls of the house. One of the many things that makes Hill House such a beautifully realized novel is that it leaves these questions open-ended; you can read it as a story of outside evil or inner deterioration and both reads make perfect sense. That is a near-impossible trick for any writer to pull off. If there really were a school where novel writing was taught, Hill House would be the sacred textbook, at least in my classroom.

I can find nothing to criticize in this book and even though I’ve read it a dozen times or more, I always get something out of it. The impact of the story has not lessened over the years, and is there anything more enjoyable than watching a master practice their craft? As a writer, Jackson either makes me want to give up (I will never write this well) or try harder (if I can write even 1/100th this well I will have created something special.) Hill House has been required reading for the genre since day one, and while its influence may have waxed and waned some over the years, I don’t think it has ever gone away.

Jackson is of course even more famous for her classic short story “The Lottery,” which has been taught extensively since the day it was published and remains one of the most famous stories of all time. Curiously, her other short work, while not bad by any means, lacks even a fraction of the power of “The Lottery” and is more for fans with a hardcore interest in her work than the casual reader. Her reputation rests on “The Lottery”, Hill House, and her final novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I might honestly love even more than Hill House. You could perhaps make an argument for The Sundial as well—an influence The Shining, among others—and it’s nice to see it back in print after years of being unavailable. It’s a small collection of work to support such a huge legacy, but there is not a wasted word to be found.

That said, I felt growing up in the 1980s that, “The Lottery” aside, Jackson was close to being forgotten. Much of her work was out of print, and a godawful 1999 film adaptation of Hill House did her no favors, even though the film retained virtually nothing of the novel. (The 1963 adaptation, however, is excellent and should be viewed by anyone with even a casual interest in horror cinema.) The tide started to turn early in the new millennium, and now she has an award named after her and last year saw the publication of an excellent, thorough biography. All of her work is again in print. As a fan, it is truly heartening to see. I wish we could have had her longer and I wonder what additional tales she might have had to tell, but what she left behind is immortal. It is the foundation from which we build.

So yes, Hill House still resonates. It is an oddly timeless book; very little of the trappings of the era in which is written come through and as such it still feels immediate. No overview of the genre is complete without it. If my discussion of it feels a bit thin for these claims, I apologize; there are only so many superlatives available. Nothing I say can do justice, so if for some reason you’ve not read it, correct this oversight immediately. You can thank me later.

Rosemary’s Baby

It seems appropriate to follow Hill House with Rosemary’s Baby, as they both share a strong commitment to character and plot that allow them to appeal to folks who otherwise might not care to visit the genre. King famously called Ira Levin the Swiss watchmaker of the suspense novel and Rosemary’s Baby is a perfectly realized book.

I’m going to guess that most are familiar with the story via the 1968 film starring Mia Farrow, and for once it can be said that there is no difference between the book and the film so far as plotting goes. It may in fact be the most faithful adaptation of a book ever committed to celluloid, and whereas due credit should be given to Roman Polanski, all he needed was there in the book to begin with, right down to the dialogue. That said, I do think the book is a richer experience. As faithful as the film is, it can’t quite capture the dimensions of Rosemary Woodhouse present in the book. No film can.

The story captures something of the “is God dead” zeitgeist of the late sixties and could be seen as a sly sendup of the whole thing. Levin is not a straight satirist, but as both this novel and The Stepford Wives show, he had a gift for sending up cultural moments without betraying the intensity or paranoia in his story. I’ve referred a few times to my distaste for the prevailing trend of meta-commentary current in both horror literature and film, and Levin is a large part why. A skilled writer can weave commentary into their tale without shouting “HEY MA LOOK AT ME, AIN’T I CLEVER? I’M IN ON THE JOKE, MA! IT’S IRONY! LOOKIT ME!” There is a thin line between horror and humor—and an even thinner line between trusting in your audience’s intelligence and mooning them.

All of which is to say that even if you’ve seen the film, Rosemary’s Baby remains a disturbing read. For those of us who grew up Catholic, it carries an extra charge in its sly inversion of the Catholic Mass and various other trappings of Catholicism. Some of it is admittedly dated now—the dream sequence with JFK could only have been written in the 1960s—but by and large this is still a story that will get under your skin.

Here’s something that I have been wondering for years: what on earth ever happened to Ira Levin? While never the most prolific author, he published only two novels after 1976: Sliver and Son of Rosemary. I’ve not read either. Sliver was turned into a lousy Sharon Stone movie but I’ve always meant to read the novel, whereas what little I’ve heard of Son of Rosemary is that it is completely awful. His playwriting also ceased in the early 80s, with nothing new appearing after 1982. I’ve always been curious as to why he essentially stopped writing, and I’ve never found anything that answers the question. Writer’s block? Lack of interest? I wonder, because given not only how good his work was but how easy it adapted to the screen, it seems there should have been plenty of avenues for new work. Maybe he simply had no motivation or further need to create. I’ve been unsuccessful in finding any interviews or such that talk about this; if anyone has anything or recalls hearing about it please send it my way.

Which leads to the curious case of how relevant Rosemary’s Baby still is. Certainly both Rosemary and The Stepford Wives are well-cemented in pop culture; I’d say the latter even more so, as everyone knows what a Stepford Wife is regardless of whether they’ve seen the movie or read the book. Rosemary’s Baby is routinely cited as one of the finest horror films ever made, keeping the story very much alive. I would think that some of the audience, upon discovering the movie, reads the book. It hasn’t gone out of print and is not hard to find. But I also don’t ever hear authors citing Levin as an influence, and I would guess that most of any current influence from Rosemary’s Baby is due to the film. Still, that’s Levin’s story, and it is still one damn fine read.

The Shrinking Man

Welcome to the only book on this list I don’t like. I thought it was terrible, actually. I’ve tried to understand why King was so taken with it in the first place, and in this case context is particularly important. I agree with King’s thesis that Richard Matheson was one of the first to bring a realistic, “modern” if you will, voice to horror fiction in the fifties. While the characterizations in The Shrinking Man are exaggerated, you can argue that they are recognizably 1950s humans with 1950s human motivations. Sold as sci-fi book, The Shrinking Man is most assuredly not. It springs from the same fear of science and its implications in a world where technology was changing so rapidly no one could catch their breath that many of the B movies of the era come from.

Before I get into my issues with this book, let’s look at Matheson. He wrote a few stories that could rightly be considered classics in the genre: I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, Hell House, Duel, the short story “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Notice anything similar about these? Correct. Each one has been adapted at least once, if not more, for the movies or television. And I think in every case we can safely say that the celluloid version is far more known than the written version. What is unusual about this situation: it’s not a crime. I think Matheson was a great screenplay author. I think he was a mediocre writer. All the stories above, and many of his others, have a great concept/setting/idea. And each one reads incredibly dull on the page. He’s slightly more successful in his short work than his novels—Duel, which is roughly novella length, is the best read of the bunch—but reading Matheson is like watching paint dry, without any good hallucinations from the fumes.

Still and all, this is a matter of taste and not why I have such a problem with The Shrinking Man. The problem with The Shrinking Man is simple: Scott Carey, our protagonist with whom we spend the entire book, is whiny, misogynistic, grade-A asshole. I don’t mean that he’s some cool anti-hero, I mean he’s just a piece of shit that I kept rooting for the spider to catch. I get that in the 1950s casual sexism and fixed gender roles were the rule, not the exception. And The Shrinking Man is essentially an examination the loss of masculinity in this era. (Dig the alternative application of the term “shrinking.”) But I’m sorry, it doesn’t excuse the absolute shitty way Carey treats his wife, the way he turns his back on his daughter, or the way he briefly rediscovers his sexual potency with a dwarf only to insult her and run away. I get it, he’s scared. He’s shrinking and the world has become alien. But it’s obvious this guy was no prince before his accident.

And this sour tone dominates the book. There is a good adventure story in here, as absurd as it may be. Books need not have a sympathetic lead. A story structured like The Shrinking Man needs at least some dimension (heh heh) to the character, though. It asks us to identify with him and root for him. I found it impossible to do either. And lord, does he complain! And whine. And whine. And whine. I kept thinking if he put half of the energy he spends bellyaching about his predicament into, you know, trying to solve the problem, he’d have been out of danger in the early pages. Admittedly, that would not have made for much of a book, but at least it would have limited the time I had to spend with this loser.

So yeah, I didn’t care for The Shrinking Man.

Of course, this is just my opinion, and perhaps others read the book differently. Regardless, is it still influential? Does it still resonate? I think it’s safe to say no on both accounts. Matheson himself was certainly influential through his film and television work, and I Am Legend seems like it is going to live on through endless adaptations just like the one of the vampires in the book, but The Shrinking Man is rarely, if at all, read today and the movie made from it is not considered a classic, even amongst the B-movies of the era. The misogyny and unpleasantness of Scott Carey make it a difficult read, even if you find those things to be less extreme than I did. It is beyond hopelessly dated. Richard Matheson is important to the development of the genre in the latter half of the twentieth century, but The Shrinking Man does not demonstrate why and is a poor representation of his work. Watch the original Twilight Zone adaptation of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” instead. You’ll be much happier.

The Fog

James Herbert’s The Fog (as must always be stated, no relation to the John Carpenter film) is a great pulp read. According to King, at the time of Danse Macabre’s publication Herbert was held in low esteem within the genre, due, so far as I can tell, to his penchant for explicit sex and even more explicit (and tasteless) violence. Well, the culture has changed, and the sex in Herbert’s early work now seems relatively tame, and the violence less extreme, if a bit cartoonish. It’s all bit a tasteless, sure, but that’s the fun of it! While I read a few Herbert works in my teen years, I didn’t read The Fog until a couple of years ago. While unavoidably dated, it was still a great pulp read.

The Fog’s plot is pure simplicity: a leakage of the stuff (thanks to the government; nationality aside, Mulder and Scully would be right at home here) envelopes an ever-growing area of England and causes people to do nasty things. A misanthrope gets his eyes pecked out by his pigeons, the only creatures he loves. A bus driver castrates a teacher with garden shears. A woman attempts to commit suicide by drowning in the sea, only to decide she wants to live, upon which she turns and sees hundreds of people marching lemming-like into the water and she proceeds to get her suicide whether she wants it or not. In the most disturbing scene to read today—for obvious reasons—a pilot flies a Boeing jet into an office building. (Talk about the worst kind of prescience.) All of this is done with a refreshing lack of surface humor—if someone wrote this today it would probably be choked with wisecracks and clever (not) asides. Which isn’t to say there isn’t humor inherent in these absurd, gross acts—simply that Herbert respects his audiences’ intelligence enough to let them apply it themselves. He’s simply concerned with putting together a (grossly) rollicking yarn, and in this the book succeeds admirably.

This kind of tale, with its roots in the classic pulp fiction era (but more closely related to noir/crime/tough guy pulp fiction than the Lovecraftian “shudder” pulps) is today primarily the province of short fiction, but it was very much part of the horror boom of the 1980s. It can be argued that it is a forerunner of the splatterpunk movement; I’m not sure I buy it because Herbert, graphicness aside, was still working in a very defined tradition. The roots of splatterpunk lie primarily outside horror fiction itself, owing more to graphic cinema than anything else. Herbert was a popular author in the UK, but didn’t really break through in the U.S. so far as I can tell (please correct me if I’m wrong on this.)
I can’t say that I’ve read Herbert extensively, and what I did read, outside of The Fog, was a long time ago. I have fond memories of checking out the copy my rural small-town library carried of The Dark and breathlessly reading and re-reading all the sexy passages; perhaps not the best way to learn about alternative sexuality, but growing up where I did you took what you could get. I’ve long meant to explore more of his bibliography, but it’s rare to see any of his books around and he sadly has become one of those “out of sight, out of mind” authors for me. I’m quite curious about his later work and to see how he grew as a novelist; I intend to correct this oversight in the near future.

Influence? Perhaps some, but I don’t think it’s extensive, odd for such a successful author. Resonance? It depends on your love of pure pulp tales, as far The Fog goes. If you love ‘em, you’ll love this book. If you don’t, it’s not going to convince you. I think this was an entirely defensible choice in the era, and I’m glad King included someone who made the uptight squirm. One of the joys of horror is the many different paths you can take; you can be literary and subtle, you can be gross and loud. I appreciate both approaches (when done well) as long as there is a good story attached. The Fog qualifies.

The House Next Door

And so we have arrived at the last book. No particular reason I saved this one until last. I didn’t want to pair it up, as King did, with The Haunting of Hill House because any book is going to be found wanting next to it; King arguably did Anne Rivers Siddons a disservice by doing so. The House Next Door was, for the time, a modern spin on the classic haunted house tale. Aspects of it inevitably read dated today, but Siddons writes a nice crisp line of prose that makes it easy to slide into the story. It goes down most pleasurably.

The story is told by a middle-aged upper-middle class Southern lady. For most of the book, she and her husband are observers as a new house is built next door and a succession of occupants move in and then out, in the most socially awkward and unpleasant circumstances. Towards the end of the book, the lady (Colquitt) and her husband get directly involved, risking their lives and perhaps more importantly to Siddons, their social standing by doing so.

The House Next Door is many things, but one of the more interesting is that it is a comedy of (grotesque) manners. The incidents that happen in the house and to the people that live there very much violate the social norms at the time—this is where the book draws much of its energy from. Many of those norms no longer exist or have changed so much that it is harder for a modern reader to identify with the character’s reactions; fortunately Siddons is for the most part very good with characterization and the novel still packs a punch.

Unique to this list, Siddons never wrote in the genre before or after this novel. She is a prolific author whose work is almost exclusively set in the South. I’ve not read any of her other work but I think her outside perspective to the genre makes The House Next Door a refreshing read. Many authors in the genre are steeped so heavily in its history (and often an active part of fandom) that they are too familiar with all the tropes. This can lead to a freezing of the tale, a fear to go down a road that is loaded with cliché. It’s completely understandable, but Siddons benefits by not being beholden to sacred cows or choked with tradition. This isn’t to say she isn’t aware of tradition, as least as far as the classic ghost story goes—her letter to King makes clear she is—but simply that she sees the ghost story as an interesting tool to use instead of a sacred object to worship.

You don’t see this kind of dipping of toes in the water by non-genre authors much anymore. I think this in part because the genre itself has grown quite wide; we could argue endlessly about what constitutes a “horror author” today. You do see a lot of genre writers cross-pollinating genres, but they are usually quite clearly doing so in a pulp tradition. Siddons is an archetypical bestseller author of her era. Today, with the decline of the novel as a cultural force and the upending of the publication industry, this type of book is archaic. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all—I love The House Next Door and Siddons is a very talented author. It’s just the world this book was created and published in is long gone, and reading it five years ago left me a little sad. It’s not a book that wants to change the world, be edgy, or spark endless debate about its merits. It just wants to entertain you. It entertained me.

It was not influential, and if it’s read today, it’s probably by fans of her other work and not in the genre. Which is too bad, because modern authors could learn a thing or two from it. As such, I would say it still resonates for those who find it, but it cannot honestly be said to be a work held in high regard in the field. Like whatever spirit lived in The House Next Door, it is largely invisible. And that’s a shame.

Well.

Here we are, some eight thousand words later. Much shorter than King’s original piece, of course, but still a lot of words. I thank you for going along on this ride with me. I hope it was fun, I hope your beer or three were as enjoyable as mine. I can see that there is still one last question lingering on your mind, though. What about the ensuing 36 years? What ten books should represent them?

I’m not that crazy. That would be an undertaking of epic proportions, and I’m not sure I’m qualified to do so. You’d have to cover the boom of the eighties, the subsequent bust of the nineties, and the rebirth of the weird tale in the new millennium. Not to mention all the stories that don’t fit those easy narratives. King was clearly justified in focusing on novels in 1981, but you could not do so today. There would be many questions to answer. Many growlers would have to be filled and refilled. We might get hot under the collar. We’d…

Ok, fine. I’ll just list ten. But look, I’ve not thought long and hard about the list below. If I did it tomorrow, it would change. I’m certainly not going to write another 8k+ words on the books below, either. Tell you what—come on over and let’s discuss over drinks and a fine meal. As it gets darker, with October just around the corner, I’ll light a fire and we can listen to leaves rustle outside…

1.       IT, Stephen King (1986). You have to have at least one King book. Starting from 1981 means his early, arguably most seminal work can’t be included. I would have selected IT regardless of the recent box office success of the latest film version. IT continues to be read and loved and shows no sign of going away. Also under consideration: Skeleton Crew (1985) and Misery (1987.)
2.       Grimscribe: His Life and Works, Thomas Ligotti (1991). My list would have much more short fiction in it, and Ligotti is maybe the most important writer in the genre from the 1990s on—certainly he kept the fire alive in the weird, rough period of the 90s. Also under consideration: My Work is Not Yet Done (2002).
3.       Books of Blood, Clive Barker (1984-85). All three volumes must be discussed. Not only was Barker an exciting new voice, the three books (easily obtainable today in one collection) were game changers that opened up brand new vistas in the genre and influenced virtually everyone.
4.       The Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer (2014). Like Barker, VanderMeer’s trilogy opened up brand new vistas for the weird tale. This is the freshest weird tale I’ve read in the new millennium. If you feel it’s cheating to include the whole trilogy, then we’ll limit it to the first book, Annihilation. But I think the whole thing needs to be there.
5.       World War Z, Max Brooks (2006). The best book to come out the zombie takeover of pop culture.
6.        Hannibal, Thomas Harris (1999). Tough call between this and Red Dragon, and while I personally prefer the latter it was published in 1981 and so is borderline for this list. A suspense writer par excellence whose subject matter veers right into the horrific.
7.       20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill (2005). The best short story collection of the millennium (unless it’s Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners, but Link is not really a horror author.)
8.       Hex, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2013.). Perhaps the best pure horror novel of the millennium. Fully represents the genre’s rich history while being thoroughly modern in its take. Successfully solves the isolation issue in the age of smart phones.
9.       The Croning, Laird Barron (2012). I feel Barron has to be in this discussion as he is perhaps the most successful practitioner of the modern weird tale. I prefer his short work, but The Croning seems to be shaping up as his most influential work, and it is a damn fine read.
10.   The Man on the Ceiling, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (2008). This would be my underrated gem I would hope to push to wider exposure. A lovely, tragic, heartbreaking and dark story of the bonds that hold a family together. I think I spent half the book in tears.

There are things missing here: Anne Rice, for example. But her best work is probably Interview with the Vampire and it was published in 1976. I may also be biased because I could never get into her work as an adult. It remains locked in my adolescence, silent and forgotten. I’d really like to see Poppy Z. Brite here (god, I miss her!) but I couldn’t decide which book and while her single best story is “Calcutta, Lord of Nerves," I don’t think her short work in general accurately represents her influence. I could make the case for Ramsey Campbell but he was on King’s list so he fell by the wayside. And it seems dangerous to wade into the ocean of mixed-author anthologies, but John Skipp and Craig Spector’s 1989 Book of the Dead is arguably the starting point of splatterpunk as well as the horror fiction side of the zombie phenomenon. It certainly exposed me to a great many new authors.

We could go on and on, but the hour has grown late and the candlewax has dripped over the edge of the mantle and splattered on the floor. If I could leave you with one final thought, it would be: the horror genre holds more in it than you realize. Please support the authors by purchasing their work in whatever format you prefer and as your budget will allow. Writing these days is largely a labor of love and not a career, and purchasing a work of art is a tangible way you can show support. Thank you.

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