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Peter Straub

Goodreads author profile

born

in Milwaukee Wisconsin, The United States

gender

male

website

http://www.peterstraub.net/

genre

Mystery & Thrillers, Horror, Literature & Fiction

member since

February 2007

About this author

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Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 2 March, 1943, the first of three sons of a salesman and a nurse. The salesman wanted him to become an athlete, the nurse thought he would do well as either a doctor or a Lutheran minister, but all he wanted to do was to learn to read.

When kindergarten turned out to be a stupefyingly banal disappointment devoted to cutting animal shapes out of heavy colored paper, he took matters into his own hands and taught himself to read by memorizing his comic books and reciting them over and over to other neighborhood children on the front steps until he could recognize the words. Therefore, when he finally got to first grade to find everyone else laboring over the imbecile adventures of Dick, Jane and...more Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 2 March, 1943, the first of three sons of a salesman and a nurse. The salesman wanted him to become an athlete, the nurse thought he would do well as either a doctor or a Lutheran minister, but all he wanted to do was to learn to read.

When kindergarten turned out to be a stupefyingly banal disappointment devoted to cutting animal shapes out of heavy colored paper, he took matters into his own hands and taught himself to read by memorizing his comic books and reciting them over and over to other neighborhood children on the front steps until he could recognize the words. Therefore, when he finally got to first grade to find everyone else laboring over the imbecile adventures of Dick, Jane and Spot (“See Spot run. See, see, see,”), he ransacked the library in search of pirates, soldiers, detectives, spies, criminals, and other colorful souls, Soon he had earned a reputation as an ace storyteller, in demand around campfires and in back yards on summer evenings.

This career as the John Buchan to the first grade was interrupted by a collision between himself and an automobile which resulted in a classic near-death experience, many broken bones, surgical operations, a year out of school, a lengthy tenure in a wheelchair, and certain emotional quirks. Once back on his feet, he quickly acquired a severe stutter which plagued him into his twenties and now and then still puts in a nostalgic appearance, usually to the amusement of telephone operators and shop clerks. Because he had learned prematurely that the world was dangerous, he was jumpy, restless, hugely garrulous in spite of his stutter, physically uncomfortable and, at least until he began writing horror three decades later, prone to nightmares. Books took him out of himself, so he read even more than earlier, a youthful habit immeasurably valuable to any writer. And his storytelling, for in spite of everything he was still a sociable child with a lot of friends, took a turn toward the dark and the garish, toward the ghoulish and the violent. He found his first “effect” when he discovered that he could make this kind of thing funny.

As if scripted, the rest of life followed. He went on scholarship to Milwaukee Country Day School and was the darling of his English teachers. He discovered Thomas Wolfe and Jack Kerouac, patron saints of wounded and self-conscious adolescence, and also, blessedly, jazz music, which spoke of utterance beyond any constraint: passion and liberation in the form of speech on the far side of the verbal border. The alto saxophone player Paul Desmond, speaking in the voice of a witty and inspired angel, epitomized ideal expressiveness, Our boy still had no idea why inspired speech spoke best when it spoke in code, the simultaneous terror and ecstasy of his ancient trauma, as well as its lifelong (so far, anyhow) legacy of anger, being so deeply embedded in the self as to be imperceptible, Did he behave badly, now and then? Did he wish to shock, annoy, disturb, and provoke? Are you kidding? Did he also wish to excel, to keep panic and uncertainty at arm's length by good old main force effort? Make a guess. So here we have a pure but unsteady case of denial happily able to maintain itself through merciless effort. Booted along by invisible fears and horrors, this fellow was rewarded by wonderful grades and a vague sense of a mysterious but transcendent wholeness available through expression. He went to the University of Wisconsin and, after opening his eyes to the various joys of Henry James, William Carlos Williams, and the Texas blues-rocker Steve Miller, a great & joyous character who lived across the street, passed through essentially unchanged to emerge in 1965 with an honors degree in English, then an MA at Columbia a year later. He thought actual writing was probably beyond him even though actual writing was probably what he was best at - down crammed he many and many a book, stirred by(less)

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Peter Straub's Books

Average rating: 4.00 · 165,185 ratings · 5,717 reviews · 120 distinct works · Similar authors

	Ghost Story 3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 avg rating — 24,496 ratings — published 1979 — 42 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Floating Dragon 3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 avg rating — 4,840 ratings — published 1983 — 26 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Shadowland 3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 4,253 ratings — published 1980 — 9 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Koko 3.52 of 5 stars 3.52 avg rating — 3,904 ratings — published 1988 — 34 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Hellfire Club 3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 avg rating — 2,878 ratings — published 1996 — 30 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lost Boy Lost Girl 3.41 of 5 stars 3.41 avg rating — 2,125 ratings — published 2003 — 32 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mr. X 3.54 of 5 stars 3.54 avg rating — 1,743 ratings — published 1999 — 27 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mystery 3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 avg rating — 1,656 ratings — published 1990 — 27 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Throat 3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 avg rating — 1,587 ratings — published 1993 — 27 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Dark Matter 2.91 of 5 stars 2.91 avg rating — 1,555 ratings — published 2012 — 15 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Series by Peter Straub

Blue Rose Trilogy (3 books)
by Peter Straub (Goodreads Author)
3.6877276548052675 of 5 stars 3.69 avg rating — 7,138 ratings

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Peter voted for 1 books on the list Collections of Short Stories Vote on this list »
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More of Peter's books…

Quotes by Peter Straub

“Sometimes it is right to fear the dark.”
― Peter Straub

tags: if-you-could-see-me-now

23 people liked it

“It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.”
― Peter Straub, The Throat

tags: ptsd, terror

19 people liked it

“Wolf! Right here and now!”
― Peter Straub, The Talisman

tags: wolves

16 people liked it

See all Peter Straub's quotes »

Polls

What should I read next? Considering something spooky for Halloween.

The Host: A Novel-Stephenie Meyer

1 vote, 50.0%

Bag of Bones-Stephen King

1 vote, 50.0%

Ghost Story-Peter Straub

0 votes, 0.0%

Fool's Errand-Robin Hobb

0 votes, 0.0%

The Walking Drum-Louis L'Amour

0 votes, 0.0%

Haunted Lily: The Nightmare Ball-Sidney Fox

0 votes, 0.0%

Jhereg-Stephen Brust

0 votes, 0.0%

Wolves of the Calla-Stephen King

0 votes, 0.0%

Song of Kali-Dan Simmons

0 votes, 0.0%

2 total votes

3 comments

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Quotes Peter Likes

“... He was particularly disgruntled to see what he had taken for a bundle of old rags on the tracks outside was a human body. He did not say "Not again" (what he said was "Shit on this"), but "Not again" was what he meant.”
― Peter Straub, Ghost Story

9 people liked it