Tue 9 Aug 2011
ROBERT BLOCH – Lori. Tor, hardcover, 1989; reprint paperback, 1990.
Speaking of brainless books, I’ve always enjoyed Robert Bloch’s mysteries, despite themselves. Bloch’s idea of detection is to have sundry characters run up to the protagonist and spill everything they know, leaving the detective/reader to decide how much of it is true and if the reasons they gave for spilling it are what they seem.
Bloch started plotting this way with Spiderweb in 1954 and was still at it thirty-five years later with Lori (1989). Not that Lori is a bad book, exactly. Bloch was always too good a pulpster to write something dull, and his pleasure in his craft is evident throughout, with colorful characters, a corkscrew story, and the light, gruesome prose he did so well.
What there is of a plot revolves around a young woman, newly-graduated from college and suddenly orphaned, who finds a twenty-year-old college yearbook (carefully hidden from her) with her picture in it.
Bloch takes this premise and runs amok with it, throwing in well-timed (but otherwise unexplained) murders, nightmares, spiritual possessions, and the usual parade of “helpful” friends who may not be all they seem. He cheats outrageously from time to time, but somehow that didn’t diminish my enjoyment, and when I closed Lori, it was with a smile of satisfaction.
August 10th, 2011 at 9:31 am
Bloch’s autobiography, Once Around The Bloch, is great fun, and filled with unusual incidents and observations. Including, but not limited to, a spirited and positive view of Joan Crawford.
August 10th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
I think I have that book, Barry, but a quick look at the place on the shelf where it should be turned up nothing. I meant to buy it, but perhaps I didn’t.
I don’t like all of Bloch’s work — I’m not a big fan of horror fiction — but Dan, you make LORI sound interesting. It was marketed as horror fiction, back in the days when horror was a hot item in bookstores, so that’s probably why I’ve passed it up every time I’ve seen it in used bookshops and library sales.
It must have sold very well. For a long time it showed up used in large quantities.
August 10th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Bloch wrote a novel called AMERICAN GOTHIC, which was a fictionalised version of the story of H H Holmes and his Murder Castle. It was also marketed as a horror novel, although it can equally be viewed as a crime thriller.
August 11th, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Bloch wrote a lot of books on the borderline between horror and crime fiction. Not great literature, by any means, but for my tastes, not a clinker in the lot.
August 11th, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Wow, gents…Robert Bloch was one of the key writers of the past century, not least in his role as one of the most influential writers of horror fiction (he and Fritz Leiber were the key first-generation heirs to HP Lovecraft, taking Lovecraft’s notion of existential horror and placing it in modern-day contexts in good or better prose, without the inept attempt to replicate the fustian of the late 1700s, and the overstatement of Poe–which Poe was, oddly enough, much better at than Lovecraft ever was)…and Bloch was particularly good at turning inward with his approaches to this matter. I’ll admit I have yet to read LORI, but AMERICAN GOTHIC and PSYCHO and any number of shorter works (Bloch was more comfortable in short forms, and did most of his most telling work in them) are as good anything published in their modes, and I would suggest that they are great literature. AMERICAN GOTHIC, in its first edition, was properly offered as an historical suspense novel. THE KIDNAPPER was a fine example of hardboiled suspense, as was perhaps his other best cf novel, THE STAR STALKER.
I rank him also with Shirley Jackson and Cornell Woolrich, John Collier and Muriel Spark. And way the hell better than folks who are often discussed more reverently…
August 11th, 2011 at 11:55 pm
You make a good case for him, Todd, and he wrote a lot of entertaining work, there’s no doubt about it. But in the ranks of Shirley Jackson and Cornell Woolrich, both of whom are definitely on top of my own list of favorites? I’m not ready to go that far. Right now, even though he started out as one of the best of the Lovecraftians, I think he’s remembered most as the author of PSYCHO and not much else — as much as I’d like to think otherwise.
I don’t know how it happened, but Robert Bloch and I corresponded for a year or so. This had to have been in the 1960s, when I was a SF fan more than a mystery guy. (Back before there was a mystery fandom.) I received a series of letters from him, you might say, but on post cards filled with cramped typing, about what I don’t recall. I wish I still had them.
August 12th, 2011 at 5:57 am
I have some notes Bloch scribbled on some of my pb copies of his books, and I treasure them!
August 12th, 2011 at 6:29 am
I think, Steve, as “not a big fan of horror fiction,” that you miss a whole lot of Bloch’s achievement…he’s remembered as the author of PSYCHO and not much else only by those who don’t know much about horror (or, certainly, his career…”Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” being one of the most plagiarized stories of the last century, and that not his signal work either), and his work improved markedly as he moved away from Lovecraft’s direct influence…he was the Hammett/Hemingway/Heinlein figure in horror fiction, the single most sustained example of a self-consciously “modern,” lean, colloquial approach. I think early familiarity has bred misdiagnosis here…and I’d hate to have him judged by his sf, at least, which aside from a very few (borderline, mostly) items such as “The Funnel of God” is a pretty slight body of work…hard for me to accept casual dismissal of, say, the likes of “Final Performance,” “Water’s Edge,” “Hell on Earth,” “The Weird Tailor,” “The Yougoslaves” and dozens of others, including such almost completely forgotten work as “The Dead Don’t Die”…I received one of his famous postcards, in kind response to a couple of zines I sent, though he was handwriting them by then (1990).
August 13th, 2011 at 9:59 am
I’ll do my best to track some of those stories down, Todd, I promise! I’m not a big collector of WEIRD TALES fiction, but I do admire it. The type of horror fiction I do not read is the more latter day variety, where blood, gore and disembowelment (in great detail) are the primary components — or so a surface examination has suggested to me. Perhaps I’m wrong.
In terms of Bloch’s science fiction & fantasy, as opposed to his horror fiction, he won’t be remembered for his Lefty Feep stories, except by those in the know, but a mention should be made of “That Hell-Bound Train” which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1959. Once read, never forgotten.
August 13th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Has Dan reviewed Fredric Brown’s NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK here? I think he should if he hasn’t. (My own favorite, for reasons that are obscure even to me, is THE WENCH IS DEAD).
August 13th, 2011 at 8:12 pm
No, he hasn’t, and I’m with you that he ought to. I’ll send your question on to him, so that he knows we’re asking.
August 15th, 2011 at 7:47 am
Well, you’re in luck, Steve…”Final Performance” is a noirish suspense story, “Water’s Edge” likewise. And a number of the stories in THE BEST OF ROBERT BLOCH, the Ballantine/Del Rey sf and fantasy collection, are of a caliber with “That Hell-Bound Train”…such as “The Movie People” or “All on a Golden Afternoon”…and such later stories as “A Case of the Stubborns” (and the very late “The Yougoslaves”) are eminently worthwhile (the Other Del Rey retrospective, SUCH STUFF AS SCREAMS ARE MADE OF, is the horror and suspense volume). Alas, even the SELECTED STORIES isn’t definitive (and was atrociously repackaged and proofread in the widely-circulated COMPLETE STORIES [very much sic] OF RB edition).