Cool for Cats

Cover Artist William Teason Born on This Date, 1922

For years I have wondered about the identity of the artist who painted these gorgeous paperback covers for classic Shirley Jackson reprints in the mid-Seventies, from Popular Library. Some time ago a reader commented on a long-ago TMHF post on Jackson that they had lived next door to the artist William Teason (b. Kansas City, MO, 1922-2003) and had modeled for some of these covers. Awesome!

And so that was the clue I needed. I just emailed the family members who run Teason's official website, included the above photo, and simply asked if they could confirm this for me. I thought it was a long shot, but Teason's son replied within a few hours, said he recognized most as his father's work but was unsure about one and that he'd check and get back to me. Which he did. And told me yes—those are all by Teason. Mystery solved!

Quite often Teason signed much of his work, including skillfully working his signature into the wooden boards on the original 1963 paperback cover of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a personal top favorite (yes, someone "borrowed" this image for Bava's Shock poster). Most of his output was for mysteries and crime classics, titles by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, but in the Eighties he began producing terrific covers for Zebra. With his long, award-winning career, Teason is without a doubt one of the masters of vintage paperback cover art!

Favorite Horror Stories: "Charles" by Shirley Jackson (1948)

Before there was The Bad Seed or Damien, there was "Charles." 

The esteemed Shirley Jackson's other famous short story, "Charles" first appeared in the fancy ladies' magazine Mademoiselle in the summer of 1948. It was next included in her landmark short story collection the following year, titled The Lottery: The Adventures of James Harris, and most likely has never been out of print; it is taught in schools to this day—which is not any way I'd like people to be introduced to this story. Like most good things, "Charles" deserves its own special discovery.

 

Original hardcover, Farrar, Strauss & Co.

I can't recall when or how I first read "Charles," but I was a teenager, so that was some decades ago. I've always remembered that frisson of the ending, and the final sentence is a perfect one, upending everything that has come before, adding an unexpected darkness to what had seemed to be a sly, almost whimsical tale of the domestic (Jackson was also famous for her wryly observed stories of her home life, like in Raising Demons, seen below in a 1970s reprint).

Every day young little Laurie heads off to kindergarten on his own, "a swaggering character," and when he returns, regales his bemused mother and father about a classmate named Charles and his unpleasant antics: first Charles uses the Lord's name in vain, then hits the teacher, then bounces the playground seesaw off a girl's head, and more; he even becomes a kiss-ass while other kids get in trouble for things he goads them into doing. Laurie misbehaves more at home, in charming child-like ways, and the name Charles itself even becomes an in-joke whenever a family member makes a mess (akin to something "Britta-d" on "Community").

 

First paperback, 1950, with a more enticing cover and subtitle

Spoiler! Gonna talk about the ending. The parents aren't too upset hearing about Charles's misbehavior, but the upcoming PTA meeting has them both intrigued: perhaps now they can meet the mother of this tiny terrorizer! Mother goes alone while Father suggests inviting the woman home for tea with them after. But at the meeting she sees no woman that looks "haggard enough" to be the boy's parent. She sidles up to the teacher and begins to chat with her, and then finds out the truth: there is no Charles in the class. 

 

1960 Avon reprint

 

Spoiler cont. This revelation may be open to some interpretation, since Jackson, as is her wont, has laced the story with notes of ambiguity (the whole class staying after school for Charles's misdeeds is a clue). But I've always, since the first, taken it to mean that Laurie is the terrible tyke, and has created the persona of "Charles" to separate himself from his evil behavior and avoid being punished by his parents. What a perfect little devil!

 

1971 Bart paperback reprint

 

While "Charles" is not a "horror story" per se, that final line's ability to cast everything before it with a deeply unsettling truth would become a staple of the genre, and Jackson's expert deployment of this tactic should be a beacon to any horror writer worth their salt. "Charles" is simply a must-read.

 

 

Shirley Jackson Born on This Date, 1916

Today marks the centenary of the birth of Shirley Jackson. If you've never seen this 1969 short film adaptation of her classic 1948 short story "The Lottery," do yourself a favor and watch it! Wow I can still remember the chills it gave me when I watched it in my 9th grade English class. Read Jackson's obituary from the New York Times as well... her reputation was secure even in 1965.

Prodigal by Melanie Tem (1991): A Headful of Strangers

Dig on that cover for a second: the expressionistic image of a body in torment and a mind in anguish trapped inside a rudimentary house, the title Prodigal in a bold silvery-red font. This is horror cover art that accurately depicts the novel it adorns, as well as standing out from the usual clichés like ghosts and hauntings and evil leering children or psychos and demons. The person is not screaming from external fear but from some inner disturbance, relentless and unformed (Rage hot and cold, red and flashing silver and every color, bursting out of her ears and mouth and vagina. She was screaming). This kind of mental landscape is well-explored by first-time author Melanie Tem, and Prodigal is another excellent title from the Dell/Abyss horror line, one that (shared with Kathe Koja’s The Cipher) won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel.

In his critical blurb inside, Dan Simmons compares Tem to Shirley Jackson, and he is not far wrong. Tem's interest in the strange and volatile dynamics of family life and death, of young girls and women and mothers maneuvering treacherous grounds of growing up, is prime Jackson territory. She may not have Jackson's iciness or dry wit, but Tem can certainly create a believable 12-year-old as a main character, much as Jackson did in We Have Always Lived in the Castle; here, Lucy Brill, whose two elder siblings, brother Ethan and sister Rae, both troubled teens, have inexplicably disappeared. Gone missing. Separately. This loss will rend the Brill family asunder.

Tem reveals some of the true horrors of childhood: the incomprehension of the adult world, the white-hot hatred of parents, the first blush of sexuality and crushes, the bitterness between siblings, the overwhelming desires to both flee the home and to burrow into its safety. But Lucy is learning how adults can barely comprehend the enormity of the world's unpredictability themselves, nor can they keep their own children safe forever… or even at all.

If she thought about home, there were Mom and Dad and Ethan and Rae and danger and sadness and her little brothers and sisters and fear. If she thought about her friends, there were all kinds of things she didn't even understand, like boys and makeup and AIDS and college and French kissing and drugs. If she thought about herself, there was a headful of strangers.

The family learns from the social worker who’d attended to Ethan that Ethan has died, most likely from a drug overdose. Which is bad enough but Lucy, Lucy is visited by his… ghost? Her own guilt and fears? Eventually even her parents confess to sometimes seeing the shades of their two missing children (hence, I'm assuming, the title). Lucy is terrified that their disappearances mean more to her parents than her own life, or the lives of the younger Brill children. In her rebellion, Lucy turns to Jerry, the social worker who she can't seem to stop thinking and writing in her diary about. Then Rae's handwriting appears in Lucy's diary, messages from... where, exactly?

2005 hardcover

Now, it took me a while to really get into Prodigal; in the first few chapters it seemed unsteady, pacing a bit off, some of the family dialogue seems too rote; but bit by bit Tem's writing grew stronger and Lucy's personality more vivid. Several disturbing scenes of unexpected horror, of everyday mental anguish, have lingered in my memory since I first read Prodigal in 1991; I won't spoil them here. The subterranean climax feels odd but right, a nightmarish menagerie of dirty runaways (They looked like pictures Lucy had seen of fetuses in a womb) and a parent in jeopardy, as Lucy goes down, down, down to confront, to defeat, for once and all, that headful of strangers that haunts her childhood so.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959): The Paperback Covers

Always in print since its original publication over 50 years ago, horror fans should need no introduction to The Haunting of Hill House. You might, however, need an introduction to the various paperback editions of the novel. Above is the Penguin Books edition from 1984... not sure how I feel about all those neon colors, and the odd placement of the title over that guy's head; something might be threatening them, or maybe an intrusive photographer just butted in and they're waiting for him to move on. Who knows...

Editions from Popular Library in 1962 highlighted the fantastic Robert Wise movie adaptation, titled simply The Haunting. I love the image of the woman trapped in the maze; perfectly apt for poor Eleanor.

This cover with the critical blurbs taking up the top half seems to be the first paperback edition. The slightly cartoonish image of Hill House reminds me of something you'd see on an edition of Bradbury's The October Country or The Halloween Tree.

From Warner Books in 1982, both author and title are well-known enough that it can be Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. The simplicity of this cover is just oh-so-slightly malevolent. Nice.

And in 1999 came another movie version, some CGI travesty I've no desire to ever see. The movie tie-in from Penguin isn't too terrible, although Hill House looks more like a Gothic castle than a house. But I'm just glad people are still reading The Haunting of Hill House today.

Current trade paperback edition

Top 10 of '10: My Favorite Horror Reads of the Year

Since I don't read contemporary horror fiction, I have no idea what the "best horror of 2010" is. This probably comes as no surprise to you. The following "vintage" reads were the books I dug the most this year, the ones I insist that all horror fiction fans read as soon as they can, and that I think will give some sense of the depth and breadth of the genre we love so much. Some were rereads, some not, but I loved them all and treasure my well-worn copies. From quiet horror to splatterpunk horror, from Gothic horror to erotic horror, from literary horror to pulp horror, I think this list covers the genre pretty well. The list is alphabetical by author.

Wormwood, Poppy Z. Brite (1994) - Essential short stories that show the growth of a young writer and her new vision for modern horror.
All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By, John Farris (1977) - A vivid and original kind of Southern Gothic complete with Freudian neuroses.
Live Girls, Ray Garton (1987) - Sleazy good fun with scary/sexy vampire ladies.
The Search for Joseph Tully, William H. Hallahan (1974) - I've read nothing else like it: a psychological mystery with blasts of suggestive, chilling horror.
The Sundial, Shirley Jackson (1958) - An end-of-the-world fable with the ruthless character disintegration Jackson's known for.
Dark Gods, T.E.D. Klein (1985) - Four short novels of classic literary horror that echo Lovecraft, Machen, James, etc. but alive with very modern concerns.
Falling Angel, William Hjortsberg (1978) - Hard-boiled crime fiction and satanic horror collide in the New York City of the 1950s.
The Auctioneer, Joan Samson (1975) - Her only novel, one about doomed people who can't seem to help themselves for helping others.
Floating Dragon, Peter Straub (1982) - A towering, near-epic example of bestselling 1980s horror.
Finishing Touches, Thomas Tessier (1986) - The power of eros to drive and destroy our lives cannot be denied.

Other works I was happy to find I still liked many years after first reading them included stories by Clark Ashton Smith and Charles Beaumont, as well as Kathe Koja's The Cipher and the zombie anthology Still Dead. Overall it was a very rewarding year; I discovered a good handful of writers to read and books to search for. And just as I'd hoped, my recent trip to Los Angeles provided me with more than a dozen "new" paperback horror novels that I can't wait to get to in the new year. See you then!

Shirley Jackson: The Paperback Covers

"The Lottery" is easily one of the most famous, and notorious, short stories of the 20th century (I love making big pronouncements like that but in this case it can be said truly). When it was published in The New Yorker in 1948, it caused unforeseen outrage amongst that venerable publication's readership; canceled subscriptions and indignant letters poured in. Author Shirley Jackson was nonplussed and surprised by the reaction; some letter-writers actually wanted to know where they could go to watch such "lotteries." Even her parents, she said, did not like it! It's a deceptively chilling and primal tale, simple in its effect, perhaps bewildering in its meaning, ultimately unforgiving in its indictment of humanity. Long an essential text in American schools, I'm sure "The Lottery" has stunned and maddened countless kids who were forced to write essays on that most famous bane of frustrated high-schoolers, the dreaded symbolism. It isn't fair, it isn't right, indeed. I was thinking about the "The Lottery" because earlier this week I read Jackson's story "The Daemon Lover" (found in the utterly lovely two-volume set American Fantastic Tales from The Library of America, which I received for my recent birthday) which apparently is the subtitle of these collections. Editor Peter Straub was wise to choose this one over the ubiquitous "Lottery." Jackson's hapless bride-to-be (at age 34 no less!) slowly realizes her fiance is, on the morning of their wedding, nowhere to be found. Detail by detail Jackson ratchets up suspense as she combs the nearby city streets asking if anyone has seen a rather tall, fair man in a blue suit, possibly carrying flowers... "Daemon Lover" was published originally in Woman's Home Companion in 1949. The anxiety of a marriage that may never come - surely one for many of that periodical's audience - is unpleasantly literalized. I do wonder what the reaction to that story was! How about this poor disheveled young woman? Obviously the cover was part of that long-ago era when publishers tried sexing up the paperback art for authors like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Orwell to pique the interest of the American philistine and get him to shell out two bits. As for other Jackson works, I really dig the logo of Jackson's name and the imagery, thanks to artist William Teason, on these 1970s paperback reprints from Popular Library; my collection boasts a few Jackson titles, all of which I've loved, but you really need to check out the unmissable Shirley Jackson Book Cover Project for the rest. On a personal note, I'm heading off on vacation to Los Angeles on Monday for 7 or 8 days, so this will probably be my last post till I get back. However I've scoped out the used bookstores and plan on coming home with plenty of vintage horror paperbacks for the new year!

The Sundial by Shirley Jackson (1958): When Shall We Live?

Calling Shirley Jackson a horror writer is inaccurate, but her style of thrusting disparate groups of people into unpleasant and bizarre situations seems to warrant it. Her emphasis on the psychological effects of imposing family homes with grim histories, as in her classics The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, places her firmly in the Gothic tradition. The Sundial, Jackson's fourth novel, is an enigmatic work about the Hallorans. Ensconced in the family estate, they come to believe, based on the fevered imaginings of a spinster aunt, that the world is literally ending.

The novel begins as the family returns from the funeral of Lionel Halloran, the son of the home's owners. Immediately the accusation is quietly made that Lionel's mother, the stately and authoritative Orianna Halloran, pushed her own son down the great stairs. One day soon after, Aunt Fanny, the sister of Lionel's father, gets lost in the vast gardens surrounding the estate and there envisions her own father - Lionel's grandfather, the man who had the house built - telling her From the sky and from the ground and from the sea there is danger; tell them in the house. There will be black fire and red water and the earth turning and screaming... the father comes to his children and tells them there is danger.

Orianna takes this to heart but slowly usurps Aunt Fanny's authority of revelation and writes up rules for the new world. Only the 12 people who come to live at the house are to be part of the new world; the villagers down below? Not so much. As per Jackson, matters of identity and social role predominate. Characters invert their expected personalities: widow Maryjane Halloran never grieves for Lionel; the child Fancy Halloran becomes wise and almost mocking of her elders; Essex, hired to catalog the vast library, ends up burning it bit by bit; governess Miss Ogilvie, told to refrain from giving up the secret of apocalypse, ends up telling the young counterman in the village's five-and-dime (who tells his fundie mother, which leads to a blackly hilarious confrontation between two end-times groups).

The young daughter of Mrs. Willow, an old friend of Orianna's, attempts to leave and has a humiliating and disturbing experience with the driver of the car Orianna hires to drive her into town (easily my favorite sequence in the novel). The Hallorans deign to hold a party for the oft-disparaged villagers the night before the end of the world. What follows then is a brittle and brutal comedy of upper-class manners.

With Jackson's arid wit and merciless tone, The Sundial plays out almost like a morality play or fable, albeit one without an actual moral to be learned. WHAT IS THIS WORLD? states the engraving on the title object, as old Mr. Halloran was fond of strange epigrams of the Dale Carnegie sort; however the epigrams engraved throughout the house were done by a rather literary sort so instead of the banalities of Carnegie there is the confusing and ironic enigma of WHEN SHALL WE LIVE IF NOT NOW?

Readers may feel a bit like Aunt Fanny when she cannot find her way out of the topiary maze (just like the one Kubrick added to The Shining), feeling like the answer is around the next bend, but Jackson refuses to play that game. When the end comes there is neither bang nor whimper; there is only a cast of ugly and foolish characters who think the sun shines on them alone.

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King (1975): Because The Night Belongs to Us

To this day, Stephen King's second novel, 'Salem's Lot, is one of only two or three works of horror fiction that, upon first read, instilled in me a palpable sense of fear and trembling not simply for the characters but for myself as well. Over a quarter of a century later I can still feel the chilling vice that clamped around my scalp, recall how my stomach flared hot and sick and how the goose-flesh quickened along my arms, neck and shoulders, as if someone were behind me. I was up way too late on a school night, alone in my teenage room and I was afraid to look outside. But why would I want to look outside that late at night? In that I know I am not alone.

But I wonder, is that feeling even possible today? Is it because I was a not-so-experienced horror fiction reader at the time I read 'Salem's Lot? That I had yet to experience Lovecraft and Straub and Machen and Blackwood and Jackson and Leiber? Or was it that King so effortlessly wrote about simple fears of wrongness and malevolence in a common world that is perhaps inured to such things that I couldn't help but respond as if I myself were in danger? Honestly I don't even read horror (or watch horror films) to be scared anymore. Sometimes I wish I could recapture that feeling.

King has said this novel was his attempt at bringing Dracula - one of the few other books to physically frighten me, in the middle of 8th grade study hall - to the modern age, at imagining how this Old World villain would fit into a New World environment. Would the master vampire, in all his darkest wisdom, choose to arrive in New York City or Boston, or would he perhaps choose a quiet, near-forgotten rural town far from any outsider's concern? King felt the latter would provide the best cover and placed upon 'Salem's Lot the curse of the undead through cultivated Mr. Straker (I cannot see anyone else but James Mason in my head) who prepares the way (where have I heard that before?) for the dread Kurt Barlow, vampire king.

Their locus is the black and shuttered Marsten House, which overlooks (where have I heard that before?) the Lot; the distasteful and perhaps satanic owner of said house Mr. Barlow had illicit communications with decades before the novel begins. The town has its secrets, King informs us, but it keeps secrets even from itself:

They know that Hubie Marsten killed his wife, but they don't know what he made her do first, or how it was with them in that sun-sticky kitchen in the moments before he blew her head in, with the smell of honeysuckle hanging in the hot air like the gagging sweetness of an uncovered charnel pit. They don't know that she begged him to do it.

No sexy vamps or victims here

This was the first novel of King's in which he employed a rich panoply of everyday men and women, giving them believable backgrounds, interior lives, conflicting desires, and fears that finally make themselves manifest just past midnight. While no one would mistake King's depictions of such for those of an Updike, a Cheever, a Carver, his characters don't have the preciousness of those who populate more, ahem, lit'ry fiction. Ben Mears, the protagonist, is the first in a long line of King stand-ins, young writers obsessed with childhood fears who struggle to move past them. Mears grew up in the Lot, left it, and now after the accidental death of his wife and the nightmare of what happened to him inside the abandoned Marsten House have drawn him back again, he wonders aloud if it could be anything like Hill House in that famous book by Shirley Jackson. Oh it is, it is that and more. And worse.

First edition Signet paperback August 1976 - without King's name on cover
Art by James Plumeri

Although I've owned the hardcover of the book since high school, I found this '70s Signet paperback recently (at very top); I'd forgotten how simple it was. I like that you can barely see King's name on the cover (didn't even appear on the first Signet paperback printing), so obviously this edition was published before he was a name-brand author. The androgynous, angelic face looks like it's carved from stone, or maybe forged in iron; it reminds me of the Jacob Marley doorknocker from "A Christmas Carol." And blood so subtle, just a drop, just a drop to hint at the immortal terrors within, those terrors that millions know and have never forgotten, but they are terrors that sound strangely like a child laughing, laughing right outside your upstairs bedroom window, long after the sun has gone down on the final night of your life... or on the first night of your new one.

"And all around them, 

the bestiality of the night rises on tenebrous wings. 

The vampire's time has come."