Laird Barron's Blog, page 28

Listen to This: Time Is a Ring Is a Ring Is a Ring

Time is a ring, the universe is a meat grinder. We’re provender.

Devil with a Star

Oh, friends and neighbors, this is a personal milestone. Centipede Press will soon produce a limited edition of Jim Thompson’s Pop 1280. Illustrations by Patrick Loehr and Paul Wedlake. I wrote the introduction, “Silken Death Tunnel.” Thompson was a master and I’m proud to have gotten the call for this one.

Image courtesy Centipede Press

Athena, 12

Happy birthday, dog.

Read This: Library List

Digging through old files, I came across this bit I wrote for the Ingram Library at West Georgia University a few years ago:

Title Author

1. Dark Gods T.E.D. Klein _______________________________________________________

2.

Marathon Man William Goldman

___________________________________________________

3.

The Ronin William Dale Jennings

_______________________________________________________

4.

Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy

_______________________________________________________

5.

The Dark Descent: The Colour of Evil David G. Hartwell, ed.

_______________________________________________________

6.

The Missing Sarah Langan _______________________________________________________

7.

A Prayer For The Dying Stewart O’Nan _______________________________________________________

8.

Koko Peter Straub

_______________________________________________________

9.

USE ONCE, THEN DESTROY Conrad Williams

_______________________________________________________

10.

Selected Poems (1963-1983) Charles Simic

_______________________________________________________

Comments/reviews/recommendations for the collection:

DARK GODS: A seminal collection of four dark fantasy novellas epitomizing all that was excellent with 1980s horror. Klein, former editor of TWILIGHT ZONE MAGAZINE is a master of creeping dread, of quiet, cerebral horror, requiring nary a drop of blood to nail home his point. One of the smoothest wordsmiths in the business, his knack with observed detail is astounding. His talent is certainly on par with the likes of Straub and Updike. Of especial merit: “Petey,” and “Black Man with a Horn,” this latter an homage to H.P. Lovecraft.

MARATHON MAN: One of my favorite 1970s action novels, a cloak and dagger spectacular replete with assassins, crooked spies and one of the great villains in all of literature: Szell, the demon dentist….I devoured this book as teen and must credit Goldman’s masterpiece, his work in general, as a significant inspiration of mine.

THE RONIN: This short novel follows the path of a brutal, ruthless Ronin at work and play in Feudal Japan. The Ronin himself is an exemplar of the antihero, a man you’ll find yourself pulling for despite his vicious and amoral ethos as he bulldozes his way through the tale. Much more complex than its rude, crude and graphic subject matter would suggest, I’ve revisited this novel on numerous occasions, emerging with an understanding of some new, often wry, subtlety on each occasion. Truly, Jennings has wrought a bawdy classic.

BLOOD MERIDIAN: McCarthy’s blood-soaked epic ranks among the greatest American novels; it rumbles and thunders with the dark majesty of the Old Testament, a nightmare writ large on the wastelands of nineteenth century frontiers. The Kid, a feral teenage runaway from Tennessee, accompanies an expeditionary force of scalp hunters into 1850s Mexico. What follows is a journey into darkness, into hell. McCarthy’s prose is relentless, his vision apocalyptic. That BLOOD MERIDIAN is loosely based on real events makes it a gut-wrenching, indeed, a scarring experience.

PRIME EVIL: A landmark collection of dark fantasy and horror edited by David G. Hartwell. The second volume in a series documenting classic tales from the canon of the weird; authors include the likes of Bradbury, King, Hawthorne and Poe. This is a must read for aficionados of the macabre. Of particular merit: “The Summer People,” by Shirley Jackson; “The Autopsy,” by Michael Shea; and “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner.

THE MISSING: This is a supernatural thriller by relatively new author Sarah Langan. A boy sneaks away from a class field trip and stumbles across a bizarre clearing in the woods — a clearing where the earth has gone black with blood and animal bones are piled in sacrificial biers. The boy’s intrusion stirs a great evil that soon begins to consume the Maine town of Corpus Christi, transforming its unwitting citizenry into something atavistic, and, ultimately, quite inhuman. Langan wrenches the hoary tropes of sleepy towns and festering curses into the Twenty-first Century. Her depiction of small town life and the dark side of human nature would be no less compelling were it utterly stripped of its supernatural elements. This writer is on her way….

A PRAYER FOR THE DYING: Here is a very short novel concerning a plague devastating a small town during the immediate post Civil War days. The protagonist, Jacob, serves as the town’s sheriff, pastor and undertaker, the man everyone looks to for succor even as he is quietly unmanned by his own grief and doubt in the face of this apocalypse. O’Nan’s writing is as stark as a wintertime prairie, and as ominously beautiful. It reminds me of a softer, more human refrain of McCarthy’s epic BLOOD MERIDIAN.

KOKO: I utterly adore Peter Straub’s work, and KOKO stands near the summit of his many literary achievements. His portrayal of the serial killer known only as Koko is a virtuoso accomplishment, inspiring a combination of fascination and dread that is sublime. At once a ghost story and a thriller, Straub tears four veterans of the Viet Nam war away from a reunion in Washington D.C. and plunges the hapless men into a nightmarish tour of their past as they hunt down this killer, a phantom who knows them all too well.

USE ONCE, THEN DESTROY: Williams has been publishing since the mid 1990s, but only recently has he begun to garner his due acclaim thanks to this collection and a more recent novel called THE UNBLEMISHED. USE ONCE, THEN DESTROY showcases the breadth of Williams’ formidable talent. These stories fall within the spectrum of psychological and supernatural horror, although such lines are often blurred by the hallucinogenic quality of his prose. Much of his work details the grit and grime of urban landscapes, the bleakness of physical and emotional isolation and the scarification of the soul that occurs all around us, if not within us, every day. Dense, often ambiguous, worthy of rereading; one of the most accomplished collections I’ve encountered.

SELECTED POEMS (1963-1983), By Charles Simic: Simic’s career spans some forty years and while one couldn’t go wrong by picking up any of his poetry books, this particular collection represents a comprehensive introduction to the author’s many decades of outstanding work. Mechanically simple and often sparse, the surface belies the emotional depth and thematic complexity of his compositions. Simic crafts poetry that is by turns melancholic and acerbic and scathing in its trenchant indictment of human nature, yet is ultimately and unfailingly humane, and, in many respects, hopeful. Hearts break and bleed in the mini universes conjured by Simic, and one would need a heart of stone to remain unmoved by the verse inside this book. My highest recommendation.

There Is Always Something Worse

Michael Wehunt interviewed me a while back. Here it is. The piece originally appeared in issue #7 of Shock Totem. An excellent journal–go check them out.

image via Shock Totem

Occultation Makes a List of Great Queer Horror

Very surprised and very much honored. A highlight of my year:

OutWrite names The Ten Best Queer Horror Books Ever

Occultation made the list mainly on the strength of Mysterium Tremendum, but I’m also proud of “The Lagerstatte” and “Strappado.”

image courtesy OutWrite

All Hallows Eve

I recently chatted with Sean & Charles on the Miskatonic Musings podcast. We covered a lot of ground, ranging from freezing my Balzac up in Alaska, to “More Dark” and True Detective, to the Steele/Lockhart joint, The Children of Old Leech and plenty of other stuff besides.

Paul St. John Mackintosh recently wrapped a three part review of my collections with an article covering The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.

Stephen Graham Jones and Richard Thomas conducted an AMA at Reddit.

In light of yesterday’s post: Stephen Jones (the editor) recently held forth with typical candor. His references to Lovecraft’s detractors as “meddlers” and “pygmies” certainly catches the eye.

Happy Halloween, everybody.

New Blood

In his introduction to A Book of Horrors, editor Stephen Jones asks, “What the hell happened to the horror genre?”

Considering that we live in a small press horror renaissance, this gambit seems a sort of peevish rhetorical device more concerned with preserving a narrow slice of tradition, and Jones’ related curatorial credentials, than raising a legitimate question.

I recently sat on the Shirley Jackson Awards jury and subsequently edited, alongside Mike Kelly, the inaugural volume of Year’s Best Weird Fiction. I’ve read a staggering amount of contemporary dark fiction these past several years. Stephen Jones, Paula Guran, and Ellen Datlow continue to put forth year’s bests without substantial overlap. In the case of Year’s Best Weird Fiction, a second volume could have arisen from the 2013 crop. A crop that contained a lot of horror. So, yes, I take strong exception to Jones’ rhetoric. It raises the question of why he bothers with his own best of if the situation is so dire. If anything is wrong, it’s that the tide might be rising too high for some who find themselves stuck in the mud.

Horror is ascendant, if not on the New York Times Best Seller List, then in quality and abundance throughout the industry. It is written by established pros, as A Book of Horrors ably demonstrates, and it is written by a slew of emerging authors. Look no further than the changing ToC of Datlow and Guran year’s bests, or recent anthologies by Ross Lockhart and Michael Kelly.

I don’t have to point to veterans such as Gemma Files, Joe Pulver, Paul Tremblay, or Nathan Ballingrud to bolster my case that horror is in good hands. I need not resort to other big guns, such as John Langan, Kelly Link, or Michael Cisco, or stalwarts such as Brian Keene, Conrad Williams, and Norm Partridge. I can show you fear in a handful of authors who’ve appeared on the scene in the last ten years, and in some cases far more recently–these are writers who are already helping reshape the contours of modern horror.

S.P Miskowski

Kaaron Warren

Damien Angelica Walters

Livia Llewellyn

Nate Southard

Steve Duffy

Simon Bestwick

Mike Griffin

Scott Nicolay

Richard Gavin

Ian Rogers

Simon Strantzas

TE Grau

Stephen Graham Jones

Pearce Hansen

Mike Allen

Chesya Burke

Molly Tanzer

Lynda Rucker

Sofia Samatar

A.C. Wise

This isn’t comprehensive, it barely nicks the surface. These writers are attacking the genre from different angles. Some of them venerate tradition, others remold it, and a couple upend it and shred it completely. We live in a time of plenty, my friends.

What the hell happened to horror, Mr Jones? Apparently it’s moving on without you.

Six book recommendations:

Burnt Black Suns by Simon Strantzas

Ana Kai Tangata by Scott Nicolay

After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones

The Moon Will Look Strange by Lynda Rucker

Engines of Desire by Livia Llewellyn

Knock, Knock by S.P. Miskowski

Everything is Terrifying

Took a train into the city with John Langan and Jessica M. I signed a few papers at HQ, then my fabulous agent Janet Reid took us over to Max Brenner for lunch, and Lo! it was good. Gourmet macaroni and a couple glasses of Maker’s Mark are hard to beat.

Then it was off to the Strand for the 7pm Everything is Terrifying reading with John, Grady Hendrix, Ellen Datlow, and JT Petty. Thanks to Grady for organizing the event, the staff for hosting us, and to everyone who came out and bought books. John and I read essays; Ellen read a piece by Nicholas Royle; JT Petty read a story by his wife Sarah Langan (she was unable to attend) and gave a talk; and Grady Hendrix wrapped the show with a horrifyingly amusing series of anecdotes about temping in LA that would raise Thomas Ligotti’s eyebrows.

I owe a big thanks to Janet and her assistant Penny for making the business aspect of the trip so smooth. Much appreciated, ladies.

Image courtesy Livia Llewellyn

Appearance at the Strand

This is where I’ll be tonight @ 7pm along with Ellen Datlow, JT Petty, Sarah Langan, Grady Hendrix, and John Langan.