John Saul

John Saul, whose first thriller, Suffer the Children, was published in '76, doesn't get much blog press -- not favorable blog press, anyway. I Googled him recently and found a lot of venom directed at his work (37 thriller novels plus another 10 non-thrillers written prior to '76 under other names). That puzzles me because he can be a really commanding storyteller.

Mainstream success does shine a great deal more light on an author, so he/she ends up being more widely read and, therefore, more widely criticized or praised. I haven't liked all of his books, which is par for most courses, but I have found some quite haunting and atmospheric. I recall vividly, at 17, reading his Cry for the Strangers, and feeling terribly uneasy.  I didn't know how he achieved it, but he managed to instill fear in me.

The first book I read of Saul's was Punish the Sinners (I love these early titles!), a tale of a medieval curse visited on the pretty girls of a small desert town in Eastern Washington. Fast-paced, hysterical about the subject of Evil, slightly perverted -- I enjoyed it. Like many early Saul books, it opens with a description of a horror from the past, then re-locates to the present day where that same horror rears its ugly again.

Many have criticized Saul for writing the same book over and over. They assume that because the first five  titles -- Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners, Cry for the Strangers, Comes the Blind Fury, When the Wind Blows -- had the same ring to them, he's recycling.   It's really not true.   Obviously, these early titles were a marketing decision, and they must have done their job. Saul sold millions, and continues unabated to this day.  But the books are all significantly different.

Innocence perverted, curses exacted, children paying for their parents' sins, and undying evil are themes that  clearly rock Saul's boat. He enjoys the small town setting, favors the coast, and usually opts for an historical subtext. Is that a sin? Most writers focus on themes that interest them, that fire off their creative pistons. It's each authors' themes that make that author unique.

Does Saul's writing achieve greatness? For me, it achieves commanding readability. I'm not smart enough or well read enough to judge the greatness of anything. What's great to me is a pile of shit to the guy next door. Keep in mind that one of my favorite novels of all time is Pierce Nace's Eat Them Alive, a super-gory, super-ridiculous book about a castrated gimp and his army of vengeance-seeking prey mantises. To me, the book is beyond great, and that's the important part. When it comes to films and books, your own reaction is all that matters. The man or woman who ventures into the unknown with an opinion poll in hand is a pathetic creature indeed.

I started this blog to share the stuff I love.  I love it so much that I want to give others the opportunity to try it. That's my mission. Nothing more than that. I love to be pointed towards stuff I don't know about myself. I figure you might enjoy that, too.

Today, I felt the need to sing the praises of Mr. John Saul. He's been punching the typewriter keys for more than forty years. Telling stories still gets him out of bed in the morning. I respect that.


Give him a go!

I recommend Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners, Cry for the Strangers, Comes the Blind Fury (such a beautiful evocative title), The Right Hand of Evil, The Black Stone Chronicles, The Unloved, Black Creek Crossing, Nathaniel, When the Wind Blows, and The Homing.

 

Read my rave about Eat Them Alive here:

http://phantomofpulp.blogspot.com/2009/01/greatest-story-ever-told.html

Bentley Little - The Ignored?

I love this image from the paperback edition of Bentley Little's The Ignored (Signet; June, '97).

The book takes an extraordinary conceit and turns it into an extraordinary novel.

The carousel has nothing to do with the book. It evokes creepiness, as anything carnival-esque often does, and it renders a foreboding atmosphere.

There a lot of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes in that cover. A feeling that trouble is on the horizon.

How do you graphically represent a subculture of people who are, literally, invisible those around them? How do you portray The Ignored?

In this case, Signet decided not to.

Although the carousel and coloring is impressive, it's also generic. Because it's so unspecific, it gives the browser no idea of what's inside the book in terms of story.

Does such a tactic miss the opportunity to connect with readers who are unfamiliar with Little's work?

You tell me.

The back cover circles the concept by personalizing one man's dilemma -- nobody notices him. It does not propose the premise in a more general sense such as:

"What if nobody noticed you anymore? Would that make you angry? Or would that make happy? Think of the possibilities. If you really were ignored, you could get away with murder."

That's the premise in a nutshell, but the blurb doesn't go there.

Should it?

I'm curious because The Ignored has been ignored by many horror fans. Along with The Mailman (my favorite Little book) and The Store, it's in my top trio of the author's amazing works. But when I mention it to colleagues or on-line buddies, few have read it.

I sense that Little himself gets ignored by the horror community. Am I right or wrong? You guys are part of the horror community, so fess up. Is Bentley Little on your radar?

Little isn't active on on-line forums and blogs like authors such as Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, Bryan Smith, Edward Lee (to some extent) and Michael Laimo.

Leisure's stable of writers make their presence felt on-line. Writers like Little and John Saul do not.

Saul had an active forum at one time, but he scaled it right back. There are some websites devoted to Little, too, but they're infrequently updated. There is no dedicated web presence.

I consider myself a very dedicated fan, and I actively follow new and old authors. My sense is that Little is doing himself no favors by maintaining an MIA status on-line. Am I off the mark?

Today, I think an on-line presence for an author is essential. A presence in one place propagates to others.

Stephen King has an official site. If there's anybody who could justify not having an official web presence, it's King, but he has one, anyway, because it keeps the King brand in the stratosphere.

MacDonald's do the same thing. Do they NEED to advertise that they exist? Not necessarily, but they keep on advertising because they have competition. They advertise to keep the brand (and brand loyalty) at a healthy fever pitch.

I'd like to see a stronger Bentley Little web presence because I think his work is amazing.

Admittedly, I don't always like the way he rushes to resolve his stupendous premises, but I'm totally drawn to his perverse imagination, and his black as pitch humor.

He's up there with the finest writers of the fantastique in the world.

Little is with Signet, not a publisher associated in the public mind with horror. Saul is with Ballantine, a publisher of mass market fiction; they publish horror, but they're not known for it. And much of their horror has been shifted to the "Fiction" list.

Leisure Books, on the other hand, is strongly identified with horror (at least for fans), even though they have robust Romance, Western and Thriller imprints; their parent is Dorchester.

Bentley Little's work gets very decent distribution; I can always find his titles at Borders or Barnes and Noble. Sometimes he's in "Horror", often he's in "Fiction". Since "Fiction" is a larger category and more diverse, that may be a better thing for him.

Here's the crucial question: Is the web pointing readers to writers they don't know, or is the presence of an author's book (in sufficient quantities) on physical bookshelves enough to drive sales?

I say Yes to the first question, and No to the second.

There is an interesting assumption when one sees many copies of a single author's book. To me, at least, it indicates popularity. Demand. But it's not enough these days because on-line retailing is booming while in-store sales are receding like George Costanza's hairline.

Let's return to Stephen King once more. He's everywhere. His books are so plentiful they cause the shelves to sag. Few authors have the shelf sagging weight of Stevie. His competitors can only attempt to shift attention from the mighty K-L category of horror authors which now includes King and Keene, Koontz, Ketchum, Laymon, and Little. Despite his power to splinter the timber of bookshelves, King remains a potent web presence.

The rumpus on Little is he's a shut-in, a reclusive fellow who prefers not to spend his precious time on planet Earth on-line. He wants to focus entirely on writing. Nothing wrong with that.

But if the wordsmith who's been called a "master chef of the macabre" and "the horror poet laureate" by Mr. King wants to elevate his "brand" in the horror and general book buying community, a web home is essential. How the web home is managed is up to the author and/or publisher, but it's a necessary evil than can no longer be... ignored.

Am I off base?