Paperback Horror: French Editions

Mon Dieu! Imagine my delight upon discovering these French editions of classic horror novels. French covers seem more likely to feature art that corresponds to the novel they adorn. J'ai Lu ("I read") is a French publisher, while "Épouvante" means "terror," so you can guess what's going on here.

At top is Joe Lansdale's blistering The Nightrunners (1987), and its French title translates nicely as "Children of the Razor."

Although this cover might look generic - snakes n' skulls! - both title (translating as "Scales") and image are relevant to the story John Farris tells in 1977's All Heads Turn As the Hunt Goes By.

"Mindless" - a perfect translation of Bad Brains, Kathe Koja's second novel from Dell/Abyss, published in '92, about a failed artist whose vision and imagination are being assaulted by a silvery nightmare.

1980's Firestarter's title was simply changed to Charlie, the little girl's name, which I like a lot as it links up with Carrie, Cujo, and Christine.

The black-and-white photos here of blank-eyed men make me think of the various kinds of WWII survivors, which Clive Barker touches upon in his first novel The Damnation Game, from 1985.

I haven't read Ramsey Campbell's 1986 novel The Hungry Moon, but I love how this cover evokes his gloomy, opaque, quiet style of horror.

This is kinda-sorta what's going on in Brian Hodge's third novel Nightlife (another Dell/Abyss title, from 1991); while it does involve some creature transformation, I don't remember any boobs.

Sometimes the French covers aren't so accurate; Nightwalkers, from '79, is a somber, ambiguous "werewolf" novel, and the subtle prose of Thomas Tessier is rarely if ever used for this kind of graphic monster shock.

A severed head adorning this cover for Song of Kali, Dan Simmons's seminal 1985 work of exotic horror? Mais oui.

And androgynous punk vampires, no doubt about it - this has got to be Poppy Z. Brite's classic first novel from 1992, Lost Souls (the French title is a literal translation this time).

More, as they say, to come!

Post Mortem: New Tales of Ghostly Horror, ed. by Olson & Silva (1992): Come and Die with Me Forever

I don't believe in ghosts. And yet... ghostly doings in horror fiction tend to work their chills on me. What I find particularly effective are the emotions and psychological states the ghosts often represent: guilt, unrequited love, vengeance, regret, loneliness, grief, rage, even sexual longing. Becoming the external manifestation of characters' repression is an essential part of any ghost's (albeit fictional) existence. Same goes for haunted houses, which function as geographic representations of the mind and all its tortures. I'm a sucker for that stuff, even if my readings in the classic ghost stories of antiquary is rudimentary; it's those ideas I find satisfyingly creepy. 1989's Post Mortem: New Tales of Ghostly Horror (Dell/Abyss Jan 1992) contains solid examples of these ideas, from generally skillful writers with names both recognized and not.

While its paperback cover resembles nothing so much as classic '80s Slayer album art, Post Mortem doesn't rely on graphic or demonic excesses to frighten readers; there's hardly a broken bone or bloody wound or occult word in these entire 350 pages. None was an outright bomb but there are some ho-hum entries. Not all the stories even attempt horror; they can mostly be divided up between "hopeful" ghosts and "scary" ghosts. Although both Paul F. Olson and David B. Silva were editors of well-regarded '80s horror mags, Horrorstruck and The Horror Show respectively, I wasn't impressed with their metafictional introduction. Ditto Dean Koontz's afterward, which highlights exactly why I find him useless as any kind of horror authority. Koontz prefers, it seems, those "hopeful" ghost stories, the ones that confirm his belief that his spirit "will never die."

The opener "Each Night, Each Year," by Kathryn Ptacek, works well enough, and has some of the creepiest imagery in the book, but she overplays her hand at times by underwriting. When the haunted narrator states "It is my guilt that brings him here," it's already obvious, I think, that that's exactly what's going on, and stating it so baldly snaps the spell. I don't need to have my head grabbed and pointed right at the issue; a gentle handhold can be just as unnerving, no? The recently-late Gary Brandner brings a gruesome little ghost story in the simplistic "Mark of the Loser," solidly in the old-fashioned EC Comics style.

Next, "Timeskip," Charles de Lint's entry, is a modern urban fantasy with 20something protagonists; I know he's considered a pioneer in that subgenre, as his felicity with environs and character is obvious. Romantic ghosts promise meeting again. A similar encounter turns up in James Howard Kunstler's "Nine Gables," about a couple whose marriage is rekindled in the unlikeliest manner when they welcome guests into the titular inn they buy. From horror-writing couple the Tems, Steve Rasnic and Melanie, we get the terrific "Resettling." This is about the finest little haunted-house story I've read recently (after Michael Blumlein's "Keeping House"). It works every which way, a mature, insightful work that confronts family life's innumerable disappointments, with a true and bittersweet finale that oh-so-subtly upends ghost story protocol. The Tems really get - deliver - domestic horror.

Would an '80s horror antho be complete without Ramsey Campbell? Non. Utilizing a rare book of ghost-story author extraordinaire M.R. James, Campbell's "The Guide" is told in his usual slow-to-the-point-of-agony prose, but the payoff is claustrophobic and nightmarish, hinting at horrors scarcely imaginable: Imagine, if you will, a spider in human form with only four limbs, a spider both enraged and made ungainly by the loss, especially since the remaining limbs are by no means evenly distributed.

Visiting ghosts also appear to those whose pasts are unfinished. Sometimes these shades bring closure, as in Silva's "Brothers" or P.W. Sinclair's "Getting Back," but just as often bring a horrific justice. "The Ring of Truth" from Borderlands editor Thomas F. Monteleone is a longish tale of Vietnam survivors and insane murderous machismo. Hate burned like the heart of a star, and not even death can keep that feeling contained. The abused wife of Janet Fox's "The Servitor" escapes to an abandoned house in the country. Surprise: it's not so abandoned, and what's there demands a debt for its services. A finely-tuned depiction of a woman's desperate attempts to save herself, the story's final lines are chillingly pitiless.

Will it surprise regular readers of TMHF that my absolute favorite story in Post Mortem was Thomas Tessier's contribution "Blanca"? Here the ghosts are victims of historical/political tragedies. In Tessier's usual tone of detachment, dry wit, and maybe even resignation, his narrator begins:

When I told a few close friends that I was going to Blanca, their reaction was about what I had expected. "Why?" they asked. "There's nothing to see in Blanca. Nothing to do except disappear." Sly smiles. "Watch out you don't disappear." "Maybe that's why I chose it," I said with a smile of my own. "It might be nice to disappear for a while." 

Can there be any doubt the story will end the same way?

Another terrific story is the sensitive "Whisper of Soft Wings," by Melissa Mia Hall. It is very good but very sad: a little girl comes around to visit an elderly woman in a world that has less and less of a place for the old. With a rare sense of poignancy, Hall draws the two together in an intimate embrace. I will definitely be looking for more from Hall; but nothing new, I'm afraid, as she died several years ago.

Last, the somewhat interesting "Haunted World" - what if all the people who ever lived on earth came back to haunt us - is told in a cliched good ol' boy voice, which completely undermines the premise. The bland, obvious style of Robert McCammon proves to me once again why I have little interest in reading any of his novels, despite their seeming endless popularity with fans of '80s horror.

Final words: Post Mortem is a good but not truly essential horror fiction anthology. Fans of de Lint, Tessier, the Tems, Campbell, or Hall should find a copy, as their stories work in the classic ghost story mold but also are convincing and fresh in their modern settings and concerns. Me, I could've used a few darker tales, a few more nastier, eerie moments that lingered after I put the paperback back on my shelf. But it did reinforce my belief that nothing is so haunted as the human heart, and that the most unsettling ghost of all is the most recognizable, the one we live with every day, long before we die.

Borderlands, edited by Thomas F. Monteleone (1990): Wake Up in the Night with a Fear So Real

An admission: I almost didn't read this one back in the day. The cover art of a skeleton driver at the wheel almost turned me off Borderlands (Avon, Nov 1990), the first in the anthology series edited by Thomas F. Monteleone. At that time I was just so over skulls and skeletons on covers, thinking that whatever was inside was just as cliched and tiresome. But I finally succumbed to that wonderful blurb from Peter Straub, had already enjoyed Wagner, Klein, and Lansdale, and so found Borderlands to be a terror treasure trove, stuffed with inventive, colorful, eclectic stories I remember fondly - well, I remember fondly that I enjoyed them almost 25 years ago. I've been wanting to revisit and review Borderlands since I began this blog more than three years ago....would it hold up on this reread?

Some of the titles have jumped around in my head for ages, as did a few of the authors names, both because some became favorites and others because they seemed to become nothing. What Borderlands offers is stories that feature all kinds and styles of horror, from the non-supernatural to the otherworldly, from the quiet whisper to the shockingly violent, from dark fantasy to urban realism, psychological thriller to fairy tale, gritty suspense to gothic decadence. There's something here for the proverbial everyone. This means you.

The tone is set, wisely, with the first story, "The Calling." It's by the recently late David B. Silva, who edited one of the essential horror magazines of the 1980s, The Horror Show (many of the writers in this antho sold their first stories to Silva). Grim and despairing and all too real: a man caring for his mother as she slowly succumbs to cancer. This is horror of humiliation and embarrassment, failure and resentment. With a delicate yet graphic touch, Silva deftly explores what we choose to ignore. The ending is the essence of horror. And I just learned "The Calling" won the 1990 Bram Stoker Award for best short story; no surprise there.

"Scartaris, June 28th" is Harlan Ellison in Deathbird Stories (1975) mode: What happens to gods after their last believers die? Here Ellison's anger and impatience are tempered by a more forgiving, more understanding nature. A nameless man wanders the globe, giving a cessation of suffering to some, simply a hard time to others who deserve to be confronted about their outmoded beliefs. Ellison drops arcane comparative mythology knowledge on the reader and it'll help if you know who Arne Saknussemm is. Ellison's story is the most sophisticated and ambitious of works here and it contains some of his finest-ever writing.

(Speaking of Ellison, Borderlands was also my very first introduction to Poppy Z. Brite, whom Ellison lauded to the sky and back. "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" is a goth-punk update of Lovecraft's "The Hound," both factors endearing her to me at once. I wrote about this story here.)

1994 reprint from White Wolf, cover art by Dave McKean 

It was a pleasure to reread tales I'd half-remembered: "Muscae Volitantes" by Chet Williamson, but mostly unforgotten since I've been plagued by the titular condition for years. A husband's lover threatens to reveal the truth to the wife. Surely the husband can see his way out of this untenable position? And things get wonderfully, maniacally surreal in "Oh What a Swell Guy I Am," a story Monteleone happened upon out of the hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts he received. Jeffrey Osier, a regular contributor to small press mags like Deathrealm and The Horror Show, possesses a strong, passionate prose style; his bizarre images are conveyed fully formed, which resonated uncomfortably with me. In a good way. The title... is literal. Oh man, is it literal.

A quick stop in lycanthropy land, in which Les Daniels upends who's monster and who's man; like his other fiction, "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" uses standard horror tropes with wit and irony but is no less the horrific for it. Pure entertainment. John Shirley's "Delia and the Dinner Party" is part child's-eye view of the titular event and splatterpunk reveal, while Nina Kiriki Hoffman's creepy short-short "Stillborn" reminded me just a bit of the underseen 1990 film The Reflecting Skin, children obsessed with... well, no spoilers!
 

Ed Gorman's (above) "The Man in the Long Black Sedan" has a family man in the grip of madness - or utter calm rationality? - confront a most innocuous villain in a motel room. Gorman is more known for his crime fiction but wrote quite a few pulp-horror novels under the name Daniel Ransom. Likewise, "Suicide Note" by Lee Moler isn't necessarily horror but more dark erotic suspense, a man obsessed with carnality till the very end of life.

In a more general vein, two looming specters over horror fiction of this era appear in Borderlands: religious fundamentalists and sexual abuse/incest. Today these topics seem a little shelf-worn in fiction, tropes that inexperienced or lazy writers can trot out and use to push readers' buttons all too easily (it's not just in genre lit either you can be sure). But when these themes starting appearing in horror fiction it signaled efforts to make horror more serious, more real, more involved with the world at large than retreating into the vagaries of the imagination à la Lovecraft, say. These themes date Borderlands but negate it little.

Bizarre hands indeed

Fortunately their appearances here are for the most part handled with intelligence. And, yes, irreverence: Joe R. Lansdale's "By Bizarre Hands" trades in both businesses, riding the edge of irreverent black humor and down-home horror in his own inimitable style as a pedophiliac preacher/conman drives the dusty roads of Texas looking for simple-minded girls he can "save" with the Good Lord's help. Joe's story ends Borderlands on a very high note, no surprise there. And "The Good Book" from G. Wayne Miller works the Lord works in mysterious ways just right, I thought.

A handful of contributions leave the reader spooked but bewildered, such as "The Pounding Room" by Bentley Little (above). An author whose only work I've read have been this story, twice now. Neither read has gotten me interested in reading more of his stuff, but that's me. Obviously lots of readers like the inexplicability of this story, this style, revealing the unbelievable horrors that lurk behind, beyond, beneath the mundane. But to what end? Perhaps that's the point: the horror of incomprehension. He would become one of the big paperback horror writers of the turn of the century but oh well.

Nazis, chemical pollution, and the nightmare of a homeowner's lawn care make John DeChancie's "The Grass of Rememberance" an intriguing read; the connection of these disparate elements didn't quite come together for me. "Alexandra," from '80s anthology essential Charles L. Grant, was quite good but again, the ultimate intent seemed to dance away from me at the last moment. A subtle and powerful woman befriends an Oxrun Station physician. Cool, but you all know Charlie: it's what he leaves out that is probably the most important aspect of his fiction. Sometimes I wish he'd just left it in.

Works from my faves: several times Karl Edward Wagner (above) has written sensitively of the fallout of the Vietnam War; in "But You'll Never Follow Me" a veteran still beholden to his war-torn battlefield ethic must now deal with his aging, ailing parents. It's a sad, sad story, without a trace of the unreal, and the climax hits a lot harder today than it did in 1990. Read it, and see what I mean. Ouch.

In "Evelyn Grace," by Thomas Tessier, a young man feels up a female corpse in a funeral home. Then things get weird. This one ends with very nearly the most objectionable word in the English language... and it is oh so right. Another one outta the park for Tessier; he's batting 1.000 here at TMHF. The ever-welcome-but-rarely-seen T.E.D. Klein contributed one of his few short stories of the '90s, "Ladder." Fate is a gamesman, a wordsmith, trailing an Irishman as he travels the globe. Klein's sense of place and locale is impeccable, and his brand of Borgesian wordplay tickle the intellect but unsettle it too; surely we are not gamepieces for an idle god...

One of the more infamous short stories of its day - the impact of which I've never forgotten even if the specifics were vague - "Stephen" ruminates upon bodily disfigurement in several disturbing ways, none of which resort to the supernatural. Elizabeth Massie (above) knows that while it was once proper to look away from the physically unfortunate, we all want to stare. And stare she does, unblinking, sympathetic, but without pity. Anne Zaccaria volunteers at a nursing home for the disabled and learns to confront her own deformities - not of the body but of her mind, her past, her family - thanks to the title character. "Stephen" is perhaps the most emotionally wrenching tale in Borderlands, never faltering in places where a lesser writer may have stumbled into grotesque tastelessness - well, I suppose there's some grotesque tastelessness here, but that's life. Excellent stuff, and another Bram Stoker Award winner, for best long fiction.

When I solicited material for what I hope will be the first of many volumes, I made it clear I didn't want stories that employed any of the traditional symbols and images of the genre. I wanted writers to expand the envelope, to look beyond the usual metaphors, and bring me something new... They are all extremely well-written. Some stories will dazzle, while others will quietly subvert, but they will all reach down and grab for the soft parts.

So says Tom Monteleone (above) in his intro, and he really deserves kudos for his editing skill here - and I don't have room to go into everything included. There is an air of conviction in all the stories; every one means business, even the "lesser" stories. No juvenile hijinks mar the carefully crafted terrors, no lapses in the write stuff to break the spells cast. Even the tales that get under the skin in a surreal yet inexplicable manner are serious in intent and purpose but without that sense of literariness of, say, 1988's Prime Evil; it's not so high-minded as that anthology. Borderlands (and the subsequent volumes, of which I own only the second today) promises to take us far, and it does, oh it does. What you will see there you've not seen elsewhere, but it's a one-way trip. So be warned: you'll have to find your way back on your own.

Shock Rock, edited by Jeff Gelb (1992): The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle

Brimming with monstrous mash-ups of horror and rock'n'roll, Shock Rock (Pocket Books, Jan 1992) takes the old-timey preacher scare that rock is the Devil's music not as a warning but as fait accompli. In his introduction, Jeff Gelb (editor of the long-running Hot Blood erotic horror series) points out the long relationship between rock'n'roll and horror movies and comics - so why not horror fiction (Alice Cooper says the same thing in his forward)? "At last count, less than half a dozen horror novels have attempted to meld rock and horror thematically," Gelb notes. Well, I think there is a reason for the rarity: that intertwining works wonderfully well for album covers and song lyrics, but it generally produces less than stellar horror fiction. Such is the case, sad to say, with Shock Rock.

I passed on Shock Rock when it was published, and my instincts were right. Most of the 20 tales Gelb assembled are, to not put too fine a point on it, adolescent and amateurish (I know, I know, you could describe a lot of rock'n'roll the same way and so think I'm being a hypocritical snob when I criticize the stories thusly). While there is a splatterpunk energy, too many are dorky and earnest, an outsider's imagining of what it's like to be a rock star, a drug addict, or a teenage rebel. And no Poppy Z. Brite?! She's one of the few horror writers of that era to have written with any sensitivity or authenticity about how music informs characters' lives and thoughts.

Thomas Tessier's "Addicted to Love" stands out as the best story of the lot, as its pure clear notes soar high above the cluttered, tuneless din of the rest of Shock Rock. Workaday Neil Jensen is a thoughtful music fan who likes - lives for - challenging, edgy, exciting rock music. He meets a woman at a show by The Bombsite Boys (a fictional band, well-named), a woman who tells him she likes Public Image and The The, The Cure and The Adverts.

Neil felt a tremor of excitement. If she could appreciate groups like those, she had to have some musical intelligence. He bought her a drink, reminding himself not to get his hopes up to high. He had been disappointed before, every time.

Then he gets her home, and she wants to hear a particular song, a song that is not challenging, edgy, or exciting. She wants to hear it over and over again.... Tessier can write, and has written convincingly about the music scene before, in his first novel The Nightwalker. Placing Tessier's prose within the same pages as Rex Miller's or Paul Dale Anderson's or Michael Garrett's is unfair; it only highlights how clumsy are their attempts to meld rock and horror.

1994 Pocket Books sequel

Other stories worth reading: "Vargr Rule" by Nancy Collins, a nicely sleazy werewolf tale, which contains one of the antho's most surprising scenes; Richard Christian Matheson's taut and fatalistic "Groupies," about you-know-what; and definitely "Requiem" from Brian Hodge. He creates a pretty believable art/prog-rock band of the 1970s and '80s, Grendel, who all die in a plane crash, leaving behind countless grieving fans and a rumored concept album about the Knights of the Round Table. "You Know They've Got a Helluva Band" from Stephen King mines baby-boomer dead rocker territory in a fairly by-the-numbers manner. Jimi Hendrix features in "Voodoo Child" - well, duh - Graham Masterton's contribution. It has a nicely personal vibe, a sadness about the passing of time and wild youth. "Flaming Telepaths" ends the antho, former punk singer John Shirley's swipe at smug televangelists - one of 1980s horror fiction's go-to villains.

Cooper and Shirley, 2001

The fault of Shock Rock is that too many of the authors simply have no feel for the written word, or for capturing human speech patterns and motivations; they may as well be re-telling a moldy-oldy EC Comics story, only adding more sex and graphic violence but no depth. Slapdash and junky, most don't even show a particular feel for rock'n'roll other than its most obvious trappings of sexist excess, substance abuse, and amps that go to 11. To me, that's the most shocking thing of all.

Rapture by Thomas Tessier (1987): Now You're In the Man from Mars

I'm sure upon seeing this lurid paperback cover (Warner, October 1989) for his sixth novel, author Thomas Tessier felt no bliss at all. Rapture features nothing even close to that tacky terrible art, fit more for some Psycho rip than for the even-tempered criminal psychological study it actually is. Now, scroll down a take a peek at the original hardcover from Atheneum Press: that's a scene right from the book! Amazing, right? I picked up Rapture solely because it was a Tessier novel; I'm not a huge fan of slasher stuff, so I hoped the cover was only minimally accurate. I never even glanced at the back cover's little synopsis, and I'm glad I didn't because I had no idea what to expect as I began reading, and was more than a little pleasantly surprised - we usually have some idea what a book is about when we pick it up, no? Tessier's prose and conviction kept me riveted to the page; it's terrific, a literate, precise, and chilling thriller. You should stop reading here if you'd like to be surprised as I was.

1987 hardcover

While Rapture isn't as decadent or perverse as his excellent Finishing Touches, neither is the novel as ambiguous as The Nightwalker; Rapture is a cool and collected expose of the sociopathic mind. Tessier spends much time detailing Jeff Lisker's growing obsession with an old high school friend (platonic, however), Georgianne Slaton. Both are now in their early thirties and live successful lives on opposite coasts: he owns an up-and-coming software business in LA; she's raising a family in their hometown of Millville, Connecticut. When Jeff's father dies he goes home for the funeral and tracks down Georgianne... but in a rather creepy manner: he follows her from her home and pretends to "accidentally" bump into her as she runs errands in town. Soon he's having dinner with her, her husband Sean, whose sarcasm, condescension, and impatience simmer barely below the surface (or is that just Jeff's insecurity?), and Bonnie, their brilliant teenage daughter just out of high school. Bonnie, who looks not unlike Georgianne 20-odd years ago. He decides he will simply take Georgianne from Sean. That's it. No matter how.

Georgianne would fall into his arms, and Bonnie would come with her. Sean was on the way out; he just didn't know it yet. And why not? Why the fuck not? "Take her," he said aloud. "I'll just take her!" And as he said this over and over again, he fell in love with the words, what they meant and the sheer beautiful sound of them. He seemed to be completing a sentence he'd begun to form during some previous incarnation.

2006 Leisure Books reprint

Tessier's great trick is that he slowly guides us into Jeff's mind, its rationalizations and inventions, its almost charming delusions, its grandiose planning and seeming lack of guile, that we don't quite realize just how fucking crazy he is, and when we do... his motivation still makes perfectly logical sense. It's why the book is so readable; it's all so easily believable, since the characters and situations feel so real. There is wit too, black wit, as when Jeff muses, while sitting in a coffeeshop, what its name means: Au Bon Pain. Why, it means "Oh Good Pain!" Heh. In a lesser-skilled writer, a couple twists in Rapture would seem forced; Tessier can make them seem like destiny. 

He had treated the whole thing like a problem at work... you let it simmer in the depths of your brain, and sooner or later the answer will come to the surface. It was, he reckoned, an essentially creative process.... He belonged to the select handful of individuals who had the courage, imagination, and sheer will to create their own destinies.

 1989 UK paperback

One step follows another, problems arise and are dispatched, all leading deeper and deeper into a conflagration of desire and death. "Desire" is key as well, as Tessier is one of the field's great erotic writers, understanding and presenting sex not as exploitation, but as human nature. Jeff's sex life, as well as his fantasies, are on full view in Rapture, and in this, we truly see his self-absorption. That then-current reference to Fatal Attraction in the cover blurb isn't so ridiculous. Jeff will not be ignored by Georgianne, nor by Bonnie; he will not be thwarted from his path, not even if something inside him knows just how doomed his plan is:

He was floating in darkness, high above the earth, and a voice was broadcasting a message to his brain: Stay there, don't come back.

Prime Evil, edited by Douglas E. Winter (1988): No Safe Place to Die

"Horror is not a genre," writes editor Douglas E. Winter in his introduction to the classy anthology Prime Evil, "it is an emotion." Winter was really onto something there, I thought upon first reading it, and it's been something of a philosophical beacon for me in my choices of entertainment in the two decades since. Fans don't have to limit themselves to movies or books labeled "horror" to find things that are violent, creepy, disturbing, terrifying. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, right?

I'd always held this anthology in high esteem but rereading it now I realize that's only because it contains one of my favorite horror stories ever, "Orange is Anguish, Blue for Insanity" (and going by reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, lots of other readers felt the same). Otherwise, these original stories in Prime Evil are so concerned with classiness that many don't quite deliver on the horror. Mood and psychology, yes, diffuse surreality and obliquity, mais oui, some good writing and imagery, true, but only a few stories are actually gruesome or horrifying or memorable. Even the moodier pieces seemed inert. So I'd say these mild, nondescript "horror" covers are rather apt.

I tried nine ways to Sunday to reread Stephen King's "The Night-Flier" but only found it dated; a sleaze journalist you'd think would actually be au courant but in King's relentless need to brand-identify everything is tiring because you keep thinking, "Oh, right, this story was written in the late 1980s," rather than, "Damn, is this story creepy." I just thought it was junky and its only reason for existence was to feature a vampire pissing blood into a urinal. I didn't reread Clive Barker's "Coming to Grief" and don't recall any of it, but Winter describes it as one of his "quiet, sentimental stories." Dennis Etchison's half-screenplay/half-short story "The Blood Kiss" is fun, nothing special; could've fit right into Schow's Silver Scream anthology that same year. "Alice's Last Adventure" I wrote a bit about here; Thomas Ligotti's story is fine, good stuff.

David Morrell, creator of Rambo himself, in "Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity," delivers a terrific story of a poor art student, his friend, and an obsession: the paintings of Van Dorn, a 19th century painter driven mad by his perceptetion of the world and the colors he used to denote that madness. I love stories about crazy fictional artists of any kind, and the story also features the art students' academic research as well. Here's the narrator on one of Van Dorn's pieces:

All it took was a slight shift of perception, and there weren't any orchids or hayfields, only a terrifying gestalt of souls in hell. Van Dorn had indeed invented a new stage of impressionism. He'd impressed upon the splendor of God's creation the teeming images of his own disgust. His paintings didn't glorify. They abhorred.

David Morrell

Read Morrell's story! "Orange" won the Stoker Award for best long fiction (side note: I first read this story in high school, and was wryly delighted that my school's own colors were the very same). Jack Cady's contribution starts off very well - Cady was a professor of creative writing and it shows in his powerful detailing of the lives of three friends many years after they served together in Vietnam. It's tough and violent and poetic and impressive. The problem is that the gunfight climax lasts about, I dunno, 20 pages or something and I was completely uninterested as the tale went on and on and on; Cady broke the spell he'd woven so convincingly.

1989 Corgi UK edition

I found "The Great God Pan" (ugh, I hate stories named after better, more deservedly famous stories) by M. John Harrison far too detached and mild, thought Paul Hazel's (who are these writers?) "Having a Woman at Lunch" to be too old-fashioned, and was simply unimpressed with Charles L. Grant's "Spinning Tales with the Dead." Look, Charlie, we all know you love quiet horror but you can't just write the words "moonlight" and "cloud" and "whisper"; ya gotta do the work too.

A minor Ramsey Campbell story of a stalker who thinks writers are stealing his ideas, "Next Time You'll Know Me," is okay; nothing particularly Campbellian about it though. "Food" is sly, gross, and witty; I'd expect nothing less from the stellar Thomas Tessier. One of the solid stories with its tone of world-weary grief and loss, Whitley Strieber's "The Pool" is a dream-like tale of the death of a child who seems in touch with worlds beyond this one. Childhood trauma underlies Peter Straub's "The Juniper Tree"; specifically, some rather graphic sexual abuse and years later, its fallout. It's more mainstream lit than "horror."

And there you have it: although Winter's introduction was thoughtful and influential, Prime Evil is less a major horror anthology of the 1980s than mostly an attempt to get horror fiction read by people who wouldn't deign to read it in the first place. It's true that horror doesn't have to have "potboiler prose, lurid covers and corny titles," but why are we trying to impress people who already look down on the genre? I mean, fuck them, right? Right.

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!

The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier (1979): The Howling Beast on the Borderline

In a way, The Nightwalker is the best werewolf novel in which the werewolf never appears. Or does it? A slim read at 200 pages, Thomas Tessier's second novel is deceptively complex and thoughtful. It depicts a young Vietnam vet who succumbs to unbidden violent desires: but are these desires the result of supernatural lycanthropy, or simply (well, as simply as these things ever are) homicidal bloodthirst and rage, purely natural?

Bobby Ives is an American living in London in the late 1970s, plagued by migraines and memories of Vietnam. While in Hyde Park one day he has an intense hallucination of becoming a zombie (not the cannibal kind) on the island of Guadelupe in the West Indies. He tells this story to his English girlfriend Annie, and also about an incident in Vietnam in which he shot a young Vietnamese girl. He also relates how a soldier also named Bobby Ives is killed  in the war, but the army thinks it's our Bobby Ives that died. With these types of memories swirling in his subconscious, Tessier intimates, Bobby seems psychologically predisposed to some sort of mental breakdown. When Annie is killed suddenly, he wonders if he is responsible and, strangely, goes to see a clairvoyant. Yeah... she's got some bad news for him. Real bad.

Hilariously awesome, rather accurate, UK promo poster

Improbably he picks up a runaway punk girl in a park and takes her back to his flat. Improbably until she reveals she's having her period. I suppose you can guess what follows - or maybe you can't. When she takes Bobby down to a dingy punk club, Tessier gets good metaphoric mileage out of the scene. The whole time, however, Bobby's distress at his symptoms comes and goes; some moments he wishes to embrace his predatory new nature as a logical step in his life, while others, he is truly fearful and guilt-stricken at his terrifying capacity for evil. Perhaps he can even control it...

The black hole he was flying into was sick, morbid, cruel and murderous. It couldn't go on; it had to end, full stop, forever. Not just for this lifetime. He wanted to disintegrate into scattered atoms that would never again reform as a conscious entity. It's not my fault, Ives almost said aloud...

1989 Berkeley Books edition with Halloween werewolf glove

Tessier's approach is believably psychological, and he inserts ambiguous moments throughout and has an interesting discourse on lycanthropy in history from the clairvoyant. This ambiguity can be seen on the cover of the original 1981 paperback from Signet, top, but by the late '80s when The Nightwalker was republished after Tessier had gained more of a name for himself, all doubt is removed in order, I suppose, to trick the potential book-buyer. Same goes for the latest paperback cover, which makes it look like a paranormal romance. Sucks, because if someone is expecting An American Werewolf in London-style horror novel or, I don't know, an erotic wolfman, they're not gonna get it. Solidly written and containing vivid passages of grungy sex and violence, The Nightwalker is another worthwhile and original work from the underrated Tessier.

Current 2008 edition; still wrong, guys!

Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier (1986): One Last Caress

I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours. That clever little line from an old Bob Dylan song sounds innocuous and playful but in Thomas Tessier's Finishing Touches, it takes on a dreadful enormity. American Thomas Sutherland, just out of medical school, alone and visiting London for six months before deciding what the rest of his life will be, casually meets an older, odd little cosmetic surgeon drinking alone in a pub. Roger Nordhagen invites him out for nights of carousing in which Sutherland gets to see a London of elite establishments, the likes of which tourists never see.

One such place fulfills dark fantasies, a playpen for the pampered few. But these dark fantasies will pale and recede once Sutherland meets Nordhagen's assistant, Lina Ravachol. All alabaster features and raven-black hair, confidence and mystery, she soon has Sutherland willingly in her thrall. He is astonished that she desires him sexually, and their acrobatic, fantasy-driven trysts make him forget all about his past American life.

1986 Atheneum hardcover

And once Lina and Sutherland have forged an unimpeachable bond in a moment of orchestrated horror, Nordhagen can reveal himself as a minor Marquis de Sade. Espousing a philosophy of cruelty, its necessity and ineluctability, the good doctor now shows Sutherland his life's work, deep beneath his London offices, his medical talents have reached their fullest potential. And it is obvious he wishes the young American to continue his mad work after his death from drink. Sutherland dares to ask, why?

"Why, why, why." Nordhagen's face brightened with interest. "You might as well ask why the Mayan civilization collapsed, why Kennedy rode in an open limousine in Dallas, why we came down out of the trees. What is why? There is no why; there is only now, and this, this now."

Tessier has written a book both disturbingly grotesque and powerfully erotic. Finishing Touches (originally published in paperback by Pocket Books in 1987, with cover art by Peter Caras) fortunately back in print) is told in first person in a clear strong voice by a man who slowly comes to face the fact that he can plumb depths of moral insanity and remain psychologically intact (There was a malignancy in me I could not explain away) and even thrive.

This is a great horror novel, filled out with touches of London life, an exploration of men and women and the madnesses and fantasies they can succumb to and embrace, and even, perhaps facing extinction, use to forge meaning in the teeth of raw dumb nature. And even at the end Tom and Lina (whose namesake she seems to aspire to) desire to be a part of that nature, instead of trying to steer it ourselves, we would have to learn to let it go its own way. Death and terror will follow, like leaves falling out of trees.