Fangoria Nightmare Library Reviews, October 1986

More Fango reviews! Lots of favorite names here: Klein, Skipp & Spector, Bloch. Thanks to Crypticus for sending these along, I'm still going through them! Stay tuned.

A Diabolical Delight

Lovecraft's Legacy, ed. by Weinberg & Greenberg (1990): A Debt No Honest Man Can Pay

What creative artist doesn't enjoy the opportunity to speak to those who inspired them, express their gratitude, and perhaps even engage in some flattering imitation? That's the impetus behind Lovecraft's Legacy (Tor hardcover, Nov 1990/St Martin's trade paperback 1996, cover art by Duncan Eagleson), an anthology celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth. A baker's dozen of authors of various genre backgrounds contribute their literary thank-you notes (literally too in short afterwords appended to each story) to one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. I think one can state that pretty unequivocally these days, right? In the quarter-century since Legacy was pub'd, HPL's rep has grown to, well, cyclopean proportions, so... fuck it, yes one can. 

After an introduction by Robert Bloch, who as a teen corresponded with HPL (but you knew that), Mort Castle roars out of the gate with with the excellent "A Secret of the Heart," the narrator of which relates how he's made himself immortal thanks to the "Other Gods" revealed to him by his physician father over 100 years before. When the family's beloved adopted daughter succumbs to a gruesome painful death aged only 11, the father resorts to drinking and traveling far and wide, dabbling in black arts to ease his grief. Castle wrote one of my favorite horror stories, Still Dead's "Old Man and the Dead", and "Secret of the Heart" features the same kind of literary in-joke. What Castle does when he links a character to another fiction is especially apt and unexpected; the circle is complete, a circle I think Lovecraft would've been too humble to include himself in.

Mort Castle

What about mixing up the highest of Elizabethan high culture with works almost forgotten in the grotty pulps of pre-WWII era? The reliable Graham Masterton presents us with "Will," a terrific little mashup of the Bard of Avon and the Gentleman from Providence: it seemed as if Shakespeare had achieved his huge success as a playwright by striking a bargain with 'Y'g Southothe,' which was some kind of primeval life force 'from a time when God was not.'" You can bet this reward comes at a price. Masterton's uses real Shakespeare history, of course, and some bold imaginative origins for the Globe Theater and the fire that destroyed it to create one of Lovecraft's Legacy best stories.

A highly-respected author of literate and challenging science fiction, Gene Wolfe (pictured) contributes "Lord of the Land," which contains some startling imagery deployed in a Faulkner-esque piece about a scholar's interview of a country patriarch for stories about the mythic "soul-sucker." What connection does it have to pre-Greek gods and rites? Hungry jackals, moonlit cities, starry alien skies, and mouthfuls of worms lend their welcome Lovecraftian flavor. The science fiction of Brian Lumley's "Big 'C'" brings to mind the Quatermass stories of the '50s and '60s and conflates one big C—cancer—with another you can probably guess. Not too bad, as Lumley has a hale, chummy style, and gets the humor in his gross, somewhat silly apocalyptic scenario.

Chet Williamson's "From the Papers of Helmut Hecker" is an epistolary piece about a snobby literary writer whose work keeps getting compared to Lovecraft's, which enrages him; he's the heir to Kafka and Borges, winner of the Booker Prize and Faulkner Award! Poor guy gets what's coming to him. "The Blade and the Claw" from Hugh B. Cave is set in Haiti, so it's nice to get out of the usual environs, but I found the story lacking in Lovecraftiana, and its happy ending dampens the horror. 

"Meryphillia" was easily my favorite tale in Lovecraft's Legacy. She is "the least typical ghoul in the graveyard," pining for a poet who visits this charnel yard to sing odes to his unrequited love. It's a tale of love and glory, of midnight feasts and the stench of decay; Brian McNaughton (above) writes with a noxious, devilish wit, regaling the reader with a Clark Ashton Smith-style bit of grave and grue, recalling HPL's own "The Hound" or "The Tomb." It's sweet, funny, gross, completely satisfying. I must have more McNaughton! And I kinda hope there are more stories of Meryphillia and her "coffin-cracking jaws."

Gahan Wilson's "H.P.L." is the most affectionate story included, a charming trifle of the writer still alive at nearly 100 and how he got that way. A fellow pulp scribbler visits Lovecraft at his home in Providence, and today he's a successful author living in his upkept childhood home that boasts an enormous two-story library. Wish-fulfillment at its finest—what HPL fan would not want to peruse that man's book collection? You'll be able to tell where Wilson's going but it's a worthwhile trip just the same.

Crime writer Ed Gorman delivers a killer serial killer tale, "The Order of Things Unknown," written in  no-nonsense prose and tersely invoking a "vile god" and a burial ground for sacrificial victims. Quite good; I'm gonna have to look into Gorman's crime novels I think.

He stood as if naked in the moonlight and looked up and saw the moon and the stars and sensed for the first time that beyond them, somehow, there was another reality, one few ever glimpsed, one that filled early graves and asylums alike. 

When he put the girl in the trunk, he was careful to set her on the tarpaulin. She had begun to leak.

The anthology closes with F. Paul Wilson's "The Barrens." Wilson wisely utilized the mysterious wilderness of his native New Jersey's Pine Barrens, into which the narrator and an old college friend venture so the latter can explore the legends of the Jersey Devil, and perhaps more. Strongly in "Colour out of Space" mode with a welcome lack of garbled phonetics, Wilson's rather pedestrian prose isn't up to the task of imbuing those dark forests and empty landscapes with dread or weirdness. He reaches for it, it's a good story, but it didn't quite get there for me; no frisson of Lovecraftian (or Blackwoodian) menace. Obviously the editors thought highly of it, and I've seen it referenced elsewhere. Maybe it's just me...

Lovecraft's Legacy is an easy recommendation: only a small number of stories are below par; a solid many are quite good, and three or four are terrific and deserve to be included in future Lovecraft anthologies not consisting of original material. Mythos fans probably already have a copy but if not, go for it. I got the hardcover as an Xmas gift back in the godforsaken year of 1990 and had only ever read a couple stories in it. Never got rid of it and so this scary solstice season I'm glad I finally went back!

Birthday Score!

A birthday bonanza of '80s horror paperbacks! Hit Powell's Books in downtown Portland today after a lovely birthday brunch with my wife (who found Monster in their Nautical Fiction section, of course). Really looking forward to Girl in a Swing, but I spent the afternoon drinking mimosas and re-re-re-re-reading this first paperback edition of Danse Macabre.

Someone Had to Pay the Price

The Cover Art of Joe DeVito

Artist Joe DeVito painted many a paperback cover throughout the 1980s and '90s, including some wonderful pieces for iconic horror novels seen here. His work for the 1989 Tor reprint of Psycho II is easily one of my favorites of that era. Above, a timeless, subtle representation of a woman of Stepford. Bold and dramatic, his covers can be moody, sensual, or outrageous - and all three at once, check out Bloodletter below! DeVito has also worked in comics, gaming, and toys, and the covers I've posted here are but a sample of his paperback covers...

 

Strange Eons by Robert Bloch (1979): Cthulhu Calling to the Faraway Towns...

Good old Robert Bloch probably tossed off this Cthulhu Mythos novel in a couple days, hearkening back to the speedy first draft penny-a-word pulp days of his youth. Published by Pinnacle Books in 1979 with a bizarre monkey-headed (!) creature adorning its cover (by Dan Hada), Strange Eons relies solely on the reader's familiarity with Lovecraft's fiction, and so I recommend it for HPL/Bloch completists only. Much of the novel is Bloch simply rewriting various Lovecraft passages, and the parts that aren't are much like a third-rate Raymond Chandler murder mystery.

Bloch's premise is that what Lovecraft wrote was true, actually true, and he was warning people about those hidden horrors through fiction. Throughout history various personages have tried to bring about the return of the Old Ones but have failed. Till now, when the stars are right, and Cthulhu's tentacles and dead dreaming are reaching out from his R'lyehan depths in the South Pacific to the deserts of Australia, the frigid mountain ranges of Antarctica, the wild woods outside Arkham, the devil's reef off the coast of Innsmouth, the sunny streets of Los Angeles, a lonely graveyard in Maine...

Whispers Press hardcover w/ Richard Powers art, 1978

Mixed in with all that is a desultory hodge-podge of '70s cultural touchstones like political upheavals, assassinations, and charismatic cult leaders along with "In Search of..." BS like the Bermuda Triangle, UFO sightings, and pyramidology in the middle third of the story. Ugh. Bloch makes his anemic puns and wooden dialogue (my god there is even a "lie back and enjoy it" "joke"!) comes from every character's mouth. Sure, Strange Eons passed the time agreeably enough while I was on vacay in Mexico, lazing beneath a blazing sun, but I read it mostly on autopilot - how many times do I need to imagine cyclopean towers, silent sullen seas, endless vistas of time, dark men in hooded robes, mind-blasting cosmic fear, unimaginable horrors, green ichor and piping flutes, etc, etc?

I guess back in '79, before Lovecraft was the near-household name he is today, this kind of near-plagiarism worked much better, but today I find - outside of Lovecraft's own stories - that stuff does little to affect me any longer. I fear these knockoffs, however well-intended and affectionate and respectful, are gonna make me inured to the cosmic chill they're supposed to instill. Now that is a horror I really don't want to imagine!

I Think of Demons... For You

A book from Robert Bloch that doesn't bear the legend "By the author of Psycho"! Truly a rarity. Also: today I will finish an anthology of ghost stories and hope to have the review posted in the next day or two...

Robert Bloch Born Today, 1917

Psycho scribe Robert Bloch was born today in Chicago in 1917 and passed away in 1994, leaving a legacy of horror and crime fiction unparalleled. But you knew all that. So how about this simply awesome, and awesomely simple, 1989 paperback cover for Psycho II from Tor Books? I mean wow. I'd never seen it till I came across it on author Tom McNulty's blog. So glad I found it! A new favorite, and thanks to artist Joe DeVito. I've never read it, however, and have heard vastly mixed reviews of it - it's not related to the movie sequel at all (which I haven't even seen since, ahem, it first came out). Still, looks like a nice place to visit... but maybe just once.

Psycho by Robert Bloch: Warner Books 1982 edition

Amazing stepback art - artist unknown, alas - from the September 1982 paperback reprint of Bloch's Psycho. Madness never looked so glorious!

Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959): Motel Money Murder Madness

Then the horror wasn't in the house... it was in his head.

Modern horror entertainment would not be what it is today were it not for the seminal work Psycho, the sixth novel by the vastly prolific Robert Bloch. The book's main character, Norman Bates, has become an immortal symbol of the madness hiding behind the banal, the prosaic, the mundane. It is horror rooted in the everyday; it does not haunt a crumbling Gothic castle, nor does it reside outside space and time. It's here and it's now and it's coming through the bathroom door...

Famously inspired by the Ed Gein case, Bloch pieced together the vague details he'd heard about his fellow Wisconsinite and created Bates, a fellow with, shall we say, mother issues. In the novel, Bates is balding, overweight, a voracious reader and somewhat of a drunk - one of the few changes Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano made when they adapted Psycho for film. Another is - probably a major disappointment for readers hungry for violence; I know I was when I first read Psycho as a teenager - the infamous shower murder. Bloch dispatches the character in a single lurid, pulpy sentence; there is nothing that even hints of what Hitchcock would put on the screen.

And I must admit I found it difficult to keep from picturing Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam, etc., in my head. Suspense and mystery are mostly muted when reading Psycho because of that classic movie. That's why I appreciated seeing how Bloch concealed the fact that Mother Bates is dead; I think those who read it before the movie would never have suspected she's an exhumed corpse. Bloch takes us right inside Bates's head, understanding the origins of his homicidal rage and impotent fury. The conversations between mother and son are ultimately one-sided, her vicious beratements taking on a pathetic poignancy, knowing as we do that they're Norman's own thoughts:

"I'm the one who has the strength. I've always had it. Enough for both of us. That's why you'll never rid of me, even if you really wanted to. Of course, deep down, you don't want to. You need me, boy. That's the truth, isn't it?"

Young Bloch in undated photo, from www.wisconsinhistory.org

One of my favorite parts was when Lila Crane is sneaking through the Bates home, looking for clues to her sister's disappearance, and finds Norman's library:

Here Lila found herself pausing, puzzling, then peering in perplexity at the incongruous contents of Norman Bates's library. A New Model of the Universe, The Extension of Consciousness, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Dimension and Being. These were not the books of a small boy, and there were equally out of place in the home of a rural motel proprietor. She scanned the shelves rapidly. Abnormal psychology, occultism, theosophy. Translations of La Bas, Justine. And here, on the bottom shelf, a nondescript assortment of untitled volumes, poorly bound. Lila pulled one out at random and opened it. The illustration that leaped out at her was almost pathologically pornographic.

Warner Books reprint (with stepback), 1982

We get some of Bloch's famous word play in that first line, as well as the "forbidden books" trope so popular in weird pulp fiction. Bloch wrote an unassuming little thriller that shows touches of real-life horror in places, and one that's as singularly important to the horror genre - pre-King of course - as anything by Lovecraft or Matheson or Levin. That it's overshadowed by its unparalleled film adaptation is no inherent fault, and Psycho should still be read and savored today. See more paperback editions here.

Tor Horror Paperbacks of the 1980s

Tor Books really held nothing back when it came to designing their horror paperbacks during that beloved 1980s boom. They were probably the most prominent purveyor of the day, even putting out titles in hardcover editions with usually the same cover art as seen here. Bold title fonts, breathless blurbs, highly charged color schemes, images that were sometimes subtle, sometimes absurd, sometimes even actually creepy. Their roster of authors included giants like Robert Bloch and Richard Laymon, as well as up-and-comers like K.W. Jeter and Lisa Tuttle, and folks who never made much of an impact in the genre either (I shall refrain from mentioning them, you know how I don't like to hurl my opinions about). I present simply a few...

Fawcett Horror Paperbacks of the 1970s

Thanks to the incomparable bibliographic efforts of both The Paperback Fanatic and The Vault of Evil, I'm able to feature a mere morsel of the strangely tasteful yet effective paperback covers featured on horror/thriller novels published several decades ago by Fawcett, which includes Fawcett Crest and Fawcett Gold Medal imprints. So many skilled, eerie, beautifully specific paintings, evoking in us the ghostly chill of mere shadows and gloom... and making you realize how much most paperback horror covers today suck. Hauntings by Norah Lofts (1977) above, the creepy old crone, glaring owl, and robed figure make for a wonderfully gothic horror cover, even if it is all painted in gold.

American Gothic, Robert Bloch (1974). Ah, yes, By the author of Psycho, the ever-present quote. That dark figure following... looks a bit like Bloch's other fave psycho, that Saucy Jack!

Leviathan, John Gordon Davis (1977) Really really great cover in the style of Jaws.

The Dark Below, Michael Hinkemeyer (1975) Love the contrast between title and cream-colored cover art. Veeerrry menacing.

The Running of the Beasts, Bill Pronzini and Barry Malzberg (1976) I've heard good stuff about this thriller... gotta love the reflection of the woman in the knife. Well, I suppose you don't gotta, but I do.

The Night Creature, Brian Ball (1974) A perfectly reductive horror title, and such an evocative macabre piece of cover art, darkly unfocused except for that look of paralyzed fright.