Tue 12 Jan 2010
Science-Fictional Horror Tales, by Dan Stumpf.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[7] Comments
If you want a really scary story or two… or more… you have to go to the masters, the inspired hacks who made a living off cheap thrills. Fredric Brown’s short-short stories (some only a page or two) collected in Honeymoon in Hell and Nightmares and Geezenstacks (Bantam, 1958 and 1961, respectively) aren’t all that great taken individually — though some are quite nice indeed.
Brown can find pathos in a dinosaur and horror in three feet of water — but read as a whole, they have an effect like the Rubaiyat, sort of an extended meditation on fates already writ, that set me to thinking of things unhallowed.
So I picked up Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (Belmont, 1962) a collection of the best of Robert Bloch’s stories from Weird Tales. I hadn’t read these since grade school, when they kept me up all night, and I have to say they still pack a creepy punch.
In the wisdom of my advancing years, I was able to sit back and admire the way Bloch — a lean and hungry writer in those days –could shift voices, writing sometimes in victorian academic, sometimes in modern hard-boiled or omniscient 3rd person … whatever it took to hone the story at hand to a sharp, unsettling edge.
Besides the title tale, there are such classics here as “The House of the Hatchet,” “Beetles,” and “The Faceless God,” all guaranteed to keep you up at night.
January 12th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
I don’t know that I would call either Brown or Bloch a hack of any kind. Certainly they were pros and the sheer volume of work means the material isn’t all of the same high level, but hack has a very specific meaning for me and neither Brown nor Bloch fits that description.
Other than that I agree these two books still pack a wallop. Both Brown and Bloch knew how to sculpt a short story and get the most out of the punch at the end. Perhaps both men were a bit too facile and clever for their own good at times, but my definition of hack doesn’t fit either of them.
But a good deal of good reading here.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
I think you can tell that I use the term “hack” with a certain amount of respect and a lot of affection… but hacks they be.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:59 am
Dan
We are likely arguing definitions here. For me hack tends to refer to a largely talentless person who turns out material without artistry or style. However, you use the term “inspired hack” which to me has always been an oxymoron, though it is commonly used, so it is likely we are saying the same thing but stuck on a single word difference.
And honestly I don’t think anyone else would agree with you that Bloch or Brown were hacks in most senses of the word. They were certainly prolific writers, but the pulps turned out a good many writers better suited to the term hack. I don’t think any hack ever churned out a story as good as good as Brown’s novel THE LIGHTS IN THE SKY ARE STARS or Bloch’s “Yours Truly Jack The Ripper.”
But again I think we are talking definitions here. Hacks may get lucky or even “inspired” and turn out good work, but not as consistently or brilliantly as Brown and Bloch. That said I’m not elevating them to great literary artists, merely the already exalted level of talented storytellers.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:18 am
Well, there are certainly no-talent-hacks like Richard Wormser, Marvin Albert and Michael Avallone, and inspired hacks like Brown and Bloch, who both cheerfully admitted prostituting their pens for quick bucks. The difference is that even when writing for money, Bloch, Brown and a few others infused the act with a love of letters, like a hooker who really wants to give you your moey’s worth.
Not that I’d know about that.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Dan
I cheerfully submit that perhaps you should choose other examples of no-talent-hacks than Richard Wormser, Marvin Albert and Michael Avallone.
Hacks they may be, but no talent? I’ve always enjoyed everything I’ve read by the latter two, and by sheerest coincidence, I’m reading and enjoying Wormser’s THE HANGING HEIRESS right now — it was the book I picked at random to accompany me while taking my wife to her doctor’s appointment this morning.
— Steve
January 14th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
I really wanted to like them, but…
January 27th, 2010 at 1:20 am
[…] Stumpf and David Vineyard were briefly exchanging comments about “hack” writers earlier this month. It all depends on one’s definition, of course, and while you can say that a hack writer is one […]