FFB: Robert Bloch: DR. HOLMES' MURDER CASTLE (1983)

Robert Bloch's career after 1960 was haunted by the dual shades of the real serial killer Ed Gein and the fictional one he created, Norman Bates (and Bates's two faces, the one resembling Calvin Thomas Beck whom Bloch wrote about, and Tony Perkins's in the film role), that little cluster joining an immortal Jack the Ripper in Bloch-career-haunting (since shortly after he published the ridiculously frequently plagiarized "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" in Weird Tales in 1943). But in what he wrote about, there are at least as many words expended on H. H. Holmes (aka Herman W. Mudgett...perhaps not coincidentally two of the names "Anthony Boucher" used along with Boucher as pseudonyms, as Bloch and William "Boucher" White were long-term colleagues and probably friends). American Gothic was for years probably Bloch's second-best-known novel, and I wondered how much the title American Psycho was an attempt by the best-selling pisher to pay a sort of tribute to Bloch; certainly Erik Larson's Holmes/Mudgett history, The Devil in the White City, has since become more popular than Bloch's two notable long works about the Chicago-based murderer...the other being the long essay "Dr. Holmes' Murder Castle", among the most obscurely-published of Bloch's works; it has appeared only twice, originally in a book from Reader's Digest's "condensed books" division that is not a "condensed" book, but an original anthology of true-crime and supposedly-true paranormal accounts, all written by writers better-known for fiction (with the arguably weak exception of Colin Wilson, who loved to muck around in these fields of mostly-nonfiction). It was later collected in the third volume of The Lost Bloch, an impressive collection also including Bloch's wife (then widow), "Elly" Bloch, and Gahan Wilson's reminiscences of the man, and an unedited form of the interview Douglas Winter conducted with Bloch for the interview collection Faces of Fear; this volume only saw 776 copies produced, apparently (and most of the copies for sale I see are de-accessioned library copies of the pricy less-limited edition of 750).

It's a fine, novella-length account, and while I like American Gothic better (and Devil in the White City has more room for more evidence and detail, including that dug up since Bloch wrote this, presumably at the turn of the 1980s though perhaps earlier), I'm glad to have "Murder Castle" at hand, and it's an ornament to both books it appears in.

from ISFDb:

Title: The Lost Bloch, Volume Three: Crimes and Punishments edited by David J. Schow (Subterranean Press, 2002)

7 • The Head on the Bloch • (2002) • essay by David J. Schow
17 • Weird Adventures of the Odd Little Band • (2002) • essay by Gahan Wilson
23 • The Shambles of Ed Gein • (1962) • essay by Robert Bloch
31 • Hell's Angel • (1951) • novella by Robert Bloch
91 • The Finger Necklace • (1945) • short story by Robert Bloch
115 • The Noose Hangs High • (1946) • short story by Robert Bloch
139 • It's Your Own Funeral • (1943) • short story by Robert Bloch
165 • Dr. Holmes' Murder Castle • (1983) • essay by Robert Bloch (aka Dr. Holmes's Murder Castle)
239 • Three Whole Hours and Then Some with Robert Bloch • (2002) • essay by Douglas E. Winter
279 • My Husband, Robert Bloch • (2002) • essay by Eleanor Bloch

Title: Tales of the Uncanny editor uncredited (Reader's Digest Association, 1983)

Dr. Holmes's Murder Castle • essay by Robert Bloch
Curious Encounter • essay by John G. Fuller
The Possession of Sister Jeanne • essay by Norah Lofts
The Remarkable Daniel Dunglas Home • essay by Julian Symons
The Captain's Return • essay by David Beaty
Strange Affair at Stratford • essay by Barbara Michaels
A Novelization of Events in the Life and Death of Grigori Efimovich Rasputin • essay by Colin Wilson

For this week's other books, please see Patti Abbott's blog

Robert Bloch, Ed Gorman, John Clute, Paula Guran and Michael Avallone on the work of Robert Bloch

Among the duties and honors Robert Bloch took on during the 1970s were the Presidency of the Mystery Writers of America (1970) and as the first recipient of the Life Achievement Award at the first of the continuing series of World Fantasy Conventions.


Bloch excerpted, speaking from the first panel above, as issued on flexidisk as part of a fanzine:



John Clute on Robert Bloch in the Seience Fiction Encyclopedia;
(1917-1994) US writer very much better known for his work in Fantasy and Horror – and also for his associational work, of which there is a sizeable corpus – than for his relatively small amount of sf; in the genres of the fantastic other than sf, he was a seminal modernizing figure, and he repeatedly applied one line of insight – the Blochian revelation that the sick protagonist in the foreground of a tale intricately manifests a larger world similarly (and more comprehensively) malign – with consistent ingenuity. He was a writer of the fantastic who saw that, in its essence, the fantastic was a kind of handwriting on the wall of the world, an opening to a sense of vastation.
It is quite likely that Bloch's use of the term Inner Space, in his 1948 World Science Fiction Convention (see Worldcon) speech, was the first formulation of the concept later articulated by J B Priestley and J G Ballard; but though the speech was printed in the Torcon Report, issued by the convention committee, his use of the term was only later recognized.

Ed Gorman on Robert Bloch:

A while back writer John Peyton Cooke made the case for The Scarf and not Psycho being Robert Bloch's true masterpiece. I'm not sure I agree but since they're both fine books what the hell.

Cooke's excellent review reminds me of another overlooked Bloch novel, the one that came right after Psycho and that nobody much seemed to care for, namely The Dead Beat. What I've always liked about it is the way Bloch took a sleazy no-good bastard and set him right down in the middle of a Midwestern family that could have doubled as sit-com people. But Bloch really makes you care about these folks and how they are so slow to catch on to the psychotic jazz musician they make the mistake of trying to help.

The title signals the era, the early sixties when the beats were so much in the news. He shows us a kind of faux beat existence with the musicians we meet early on. Bloch gets the one night stand life (in both meanings of that phrase) down just as well as he gets the middle-class days and nights of the family the musician will ultimately turn on.

Reviewers of the time didn't like the relatvely slow pace. They also complained (as I recall) that the novel didn't offer the shock or sass of Psycho (I say sass because the novel is very funny in places--something Hitchcock picked up on immediately). While The Dead Beat certainly isn't Bob Bloch's masterpiece, it's a novel that shows him in a more expansive mood, showing an interest not just in the story but in showing us life as it was lived back in the day.

"This is a thread that runs through all of my mystery/suspense fiction," Bloch has pointed out. "The terrible inability to understand the irrational behavior of certain human beings, what is it that impels that sometime senseless sadistic cruelty, and I tried to familiarize myself with it because I can recognize that, deep down within, there are certain of those aspects within myself which I probably manage to exorcise by way of the typewriter."

This was Robert Bloch talking to an interviewer about why his early career shifted from Lovecraftian horror to the more frightening horror of the human mind.

Bloch had long been fascinated with the fact that while some killers were transparent many others were hidden safely inside a studied disguise of normality.

Daniel Morley, for instance, the narrator of The Scarf, is a young man gliding through life. First a novelist and then a screenwriter, always attractive to women and smooth with the men he must deal with. 

One thing I admire about this novel is Morley's agonizing over what he does. He is not in control of his urges and he suffers for it. He's not the sleek stereotype of the mastermind serial killer of today. And his fetishistic attachment to the red scarf with which he strangles his victims haunts his nightmares.

I'm sure many readers will disagree with me that The Scarf is at least the equal of Psycho and maybe even a little bit better. Bloch had a good time playing humor off the Norman Bates character. You could even imagine Bloch smiling if not laughing out loud in places. For that reason I suspect that the Daniel Morley character was more difficult to make human. More pitfalls in making him believable. This is Jim Thompson country.

Much of Bloch's work has faded, the fate of most prolific writers. I was never a particular fan of his humor and it has not worn well. But he wrote two remarkable and timeless novels, Psycho and The Scarf, and a fine single volume collection of his very best stories could be set on the same shelf with the two books.

Hell, very late in his career he wrote a masterpiece, the long story "The Yougoslaves," one of the finest, darkest and most original stories I've ever read. The Scarf is well worth looking up.

***

Last night and this afternoon I read The Will To Kill by Robert Bloch. When you pair this one with his novel The Kidnapper you discover that in his own quiet way Bloch was writing horrorific noir fiction way back in the mid-Fifties, the same kind of fiction so much in vogue today. While I've seen both novels compared to Jim Thompson and Cornell Woolrich, Bloch told me once that he'd never read Thompson, though he readily acknowledged the Woolrich influence. But these two short books are unique in voice and storyline and are, in some respects, two sides of the same story--the man who fears he's a killer and the man who revels in being a killer. They're both claustrophobic as hell. You're completely inside the mind of the man narrating the stories. The Kidnapper should be easy to find. It was reprinted in the late eighties by Tor. Will is hard to come by but well worth the search.

Paula Guran, from "Behind the Bates Motel" :

With the current centennial [in 1999] of Alfred Hitchcock's birth being noted with various events and symposia, I can't help but observe that PSYCHO -- the most notorious and perhaps best known of all of Hitchcock's films -- was adapted from a novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. As Douglas E. Winter put it in his 1985 FACES OF FEAR, "Two masters of horror have been immortalized by the motion picture PSYCHO...One, of course, is its director, Alfred Hitchcock; the other is the man who wrote the novel on which it is based. And no one ever said it better than Hitchcock himself: 'PSYCHO all came from Robert Bloch's book.'"

Before his death in 1994 at age 77, Bloch often joked that his obituary would begin with PSYCHO, a novel that was just a tiny part of his flood of work. Of course, he was right. And, although Mr. Bloch might disagree, perhaps that's the way it should be. PSYCHO, both the film and the book, had a resounding effect on both literary and cinematic horror. Quoting Winter again, "From the Depression heyday of WEIRD TALES and the evocative Universal film adaptations of FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, the tale of terror had suffered until the mid-1950s, as if the real horrors of World War Two had snuffed out the human need for fictional confrontation with death. Not until the Eisenhower era did the monsters reemerge in force: first in the innocuous science-fictional context of the "big bug" films, then in the exuberant American International youth films like I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957), and finally in the serious context of films and books like PSYCHO." PSYCHO, however, was not Bloch's first or last exploration of psychopathology or the only way in which he influenced modern horror fiction.

Although genre fiction was generally disregarded by the literary cognoscenti, PSYCHO received positive reviews -- including mentions in THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW and THE TIMES HERALD. Bloch's agent, Harry Altshuler, received a "blind bid" -- the buyer's name wasn't mentioned -- of $7,500 for screen rights to the book. The bid eventually went to $9,500 which Bloch accepted. Bloch had never sold a book to Hollywood before. His contract with Simon and Schuster included no bonus for a film sale. The publisher took fifteen per cent according to contract, the agent took his 10% -- Bloch wound up with about $6,750 before taxes. Despite the enormous profits generated by PSYCHO, Robert Bloch never received further direct compensation.

Bloch is fondly remembered by members of the horror writing community for his kindness, gentleness, humor, and warmth -- a man who had nothing in common with the maniacal sociopaths he explored in his fiction. The interview David J. Schow includes at the end of the recently published THE LOST BLOCH: VOLUME ONE gives a suggestion of Bloch's personality. Peter Straub has remarked that the interview "brought Bob back to life; he was right there in the room again." And, although Bloch has been recognized within that community with numerous awards and paeans, he is little known outside it.
Hugh B. Cave wrote (in HORROR: THE BEST 100 BOOKS, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman): "What Bloch had to say in PSYCHO influenced the whole art of horror writing. Back onto dusty shelves went most of the...beasties of the Victorian novelists. To front and center came a probing of men's minds and an awareness of the frightening things to be found lurking there...Robert Bloch took us from then to now in one big, scary leap, raising the hair of his readers while they eagerly turned the page of what was scaring them, and showing writers how to handle a new kind of horror story."

Michael Avallone on Robert Bloch:

(excerpt from an article reprinted from The Scream Factory magazine, issue 10, without credit to the interviewer as posted) (thanks to James Reasoner for the pointer)

Although there’s a persistent rumor that Avallone edited the Frankenstein Horror Series, he says there’s no truth to it:

“As far as I can tell, the editor of that line should have been James T. Bryans. Jim was the major editor at Popular Library during that period.”

Avallone had earlier used the [Sidney] Stuart pen name for his adaptation of the film, The Nightwalker, which was scripted by Robert Bloch. In this particular instance, the author regrets his decision to utilize the pseudonym.

“That goes to show how stupid you can be. I did that in 1963, and I didn’t want to ride on Robert Bloch’s coattails, so I used the pen name. And to this day, I say ‘what a stupid bas­tard I was. Look how much better it would be to have it say ‘Michael Avallone [adapting/novelizing] the Robert Bloch screenplay.’”

Although the aforementioned book is a source of hindsight frustration to Avallone, the writer whose work he was adapting—Robert Bloch—is the subject of far different emotions.

“[Bloch is] my greatest friend. I get a letter every other week from him, for the last 20 or 30 years now. He is the nicest big name alive today. You cannot do better than Robert Bloch. In fact, I dedicated The Coffin Things to him. And what a checkered history that book had. They had a second printing of it, they bragged about Francoi Truffaut going to do a film ver­sion of it—this was 1969, I think—but then funds got frozen in France and they never got back to it.”

Returning to the subject of pen names, despite the cloak of anonymity provided by a pseudonym, Avallone says he never ‘took it easy’ when writing behind another name.

“I always gave it my best shot, even when I was working under a pen name, because even with a pen name, the agent still knows who you are, and the publisher still knows who you are.”

In fact Avallone goes so far as to say that “I think The Night Walker and The Beast With The Red Hands are two of the best things that I’ve ever done.”

Although Nightwalker was published in 1964 and Beast in 1972, Avallone’s association with the horror genre actually goes back much further.

“Between 1948 and 1951, I wrote my head off doing horror and fantasy. Real genuine, Weird Tales-kind of stuff. Anthony Boucher (editor of F&SF at that time) always said I came close but I wasn’t quite good enough. Weird Tales told me that they had to use the same authors, issue in and issue out. It was a real tough market for a rookie to crack. They practi­cally drove me out of the horror field because I wasn’t selling any of (my horror stories). I had about…27 stories. So I stopped that kind of short story output, and I started writing detec­tive fiction; and I kept writing it, because it sold like crazy.

Todd Mason on First World Fantasy Awards:
Cover by Gahan Wilson, of course:

From the Contento Indices:

First World Fantasy Awards ed. Gahan Wilson (New York: Doubleday 0-385-12199-7, Oct ’77, $8.95, 311pp, hc) 
9 · Introduction · Gahan Wilson · in 
11 · Map of Providence · Gahan Wilson · il 
15 · The Convention · Kirby McCauley · ar * 
17 · About the Fantasy Awards · Gahan Wilson · ar * 
19 · The Awards · Gahan Wilson · bi * 
21 · The Bat Is My Brother · Robert Bloch · ss Weird Tales Nov ’44 
36 · Beetles · Robert Bloch · ss Weird Tales Dec ’38 
46 · Acceptance Speech · Robert Bloch · sp * 
53 · About Robert Bloch · Misc. · bg * 
55 · The Forgotten Beasts of Eld · Patricia A. McKillip · ex New York: Atheneum, 1974 
63 · An Essay · Robert Aickman · ar * 
66 · Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal · Robert Aickman · nv F&SF Feb ’73 
97 · The Events at Poroth Farm · T. E. D. Klein · na From Beyond the Dark Gateway #2 ’72 
137 · A Father’s Tale [Brigadier Ffellowes] · Sterling E. Lanier · nv F&SF Jul ’74 
168 · Sticks · Karl Edward Wagner · nv Whispers Mar ’74 
187 · Come Into My Parlor · Manly Wade Wellman · ss The Girl With the Hungry Eyes, ed. Donald A. Wollheim, Avon, 1949 
198 · Fearful Rock · Manly Wade Wellman · na Weird Tales Feb ’39 (+2) 
253 · About Manly Wade Wellman · Misc. · bg 
254 · The Ballantines · Misc. · bg 
256 · Lee Brown Coye // An Appreciation · Gahan Wilson · ar Whispers #3 ’74 
260 · The Bait [Fafhrd & Gray Mouser] · Fritz Leiber · vi Whispers Dec ’73 
263 · The Vampire in America · Manly Wade Wellman · ar Whispers Dec ’73 
268 · The Shortest Way [Dama (& Vettius)] · David Drake · ss Whispers Mar ’74 
277 · From “Chips and Shavings” · Lee Brown Coye · ar Mid-York Weekly Oct 17 ’63 
279 · The Soft Wall · Dennis Etchison · ss Whispers Jul ’74 
290 · Toward a Greater Appreciation of H.P. Lovecraft · Dirk W. Mosig · ar Whispers Jul ’73 
302 · The Abandoned Boudoir · Joseph Payne Brennan · pm Whispers Jul ’74 
302 · Cradle Song for an Abandoned Werewolf [“Cradle Song for a Baby Werewolf”] · H. Warner Munn · pm Whispers Jul ’73 
303 · Guillotine · Walter Shedlofsky · pm The Fantastic Acros, 1970 
304 · The Farmhouse · David A. Riley · ss New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural #1, ed. David A. Sutton, London: Sphere, 1971; Whispers Jul ’74 


Okay, so, more than any other single book, except perhaps the Ellison collection/anthology Partners in Wonder, this one's responsible for my typing this bit of electronically-captured prose...for it was a rather delayed but nonetheless welcome celebration and representation of the First World Fantasy Convention, in Providence, RI, in 1975 (venue chosen in honor of H.P. Lovecraft, in whose likeness the annual award statues, the Howards, are struck, from a design by editor and world-famous cartoonist Wilson [and which award statues have since been reconfigured, due to growing distaste for Lovecraft's tendency to espouse various sorts of chauvinism]). I was aware, distantly, of the fannish subculture that had developed around sf and fantasy, and had spread to help create similar subcultures around crime fiction and comics (and was helping to create one around punk rock as this book was being published, even as it had particularly around folk music in the '60s), but this book is also an invitation to the ongoing World Fantasy Conventions and all their sibling gatherings, publication, etc. Isaac Asimov's introductions to The Hugo Winners volumes and the SFWA Nebula Award anthologies also had a similar effect, but they documented the fannish apparatus rather more sketchily than the speech transcripts, the bits of on-the-scene journalism and other matter usually not published in a trade-press (as opposed to fannish-press) book, left out at libraries where not-particularly-innocent children can stumble right across them (I was already a fan of first Life Achievement Award-winner Robert Bloch, whose stories collected here were more rare [at that time] than good, and of Manly Wade Wellman (his sample stories are better and more representative), and certainly knew of J.P. Brennan's and Robert Aickman's work...but I believe this might've been my first exposure to Dennis Etchison, Fritz Leiber, and certainly to T.E.D. Klein and Patricia McKillip, her excerpt being the major representative of non-horror fantasy in these proceedings (though David Drake, whose work I believe I'd seen in The Year's Best Horror Stories annual, skirts the line there, too). Never did develop a taste for Sterling Lanier's club stories in the Brigadier Ffellowes series, in the tradition of Gerald Kersh and Lord Dunsany, among others (who did it better)...Lanier might be remembered longest for being the editor at the Philly-suburb how-to publisher Chilton who encouraged them to take on a much-rejected epic sf novel by newish writer Frank Herbert, Dune, which gave him some leeway to publish some further fiction titles there, including his own work. And Lee Brown Coye...just the other day [at time I wrote this], the town of Hamilton, NY, saw an auction to fundraise to preserve a mural Coye did there...all in all, a fine anthology, but a more important document (that Stuart Schiff's Whispers magazine started publishing best-of/new fiction anthologies the next year didn't hurt, either).

FFM: WEIRD TALES, the Robert Bloch issue, Spring 1991, #300, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, illustrated by Gahan Wilson

Robert Bloch is, I would argue, the most important writer actually to have been a Weird Tales "discovery" though there is no denying that a sizable number of readers, as Fred Blosser noted indirectly today in comments, will suggest that his slightly older peer Robert E. Howard deserves that plaudit...Bloch's literary mentor and their mutual friend, H. P. Lovecraft, and most of  HPL's peers in largely making their names in the pages of WT such as Seabury Quinn, had all published some notable body of work before coming to "the Unique Magazine", and even such slightly younger peers as Ray Bradbury, who would begin contributing much of his best early work to WT a half-decade after Bloch, were spreading their contributions out to other markets to a greater degree than Bloch, who would be a stalwart contributor to, and soon a major star in, the Weird Tales firmament and remain so throughout the run of the "original" WT, until folding in 1954 (editor Martha Foley kept listing it as a consulted market for her annual volumes of Best American Short Stories into the 1960s, perhaps hoping that rights owner Leo Margulies would revive the magazine, as he kept hoping to do and finally did, briefly, in 1973). And Bloch's first major branching out was to contribute to a magazine hoping to be a more adventurous and less grim variation on WT, Strange Stories, one of a slew of new fantasy magazines founded by other publishers in the wake of Weird Tales in 1939, along with Unknown: Fantasy Fiction, Fantastic Adventures, and Famous Fantastic Mysteries, all of which Bloch would contribute notable work to in the years to come. Hence this, the most robust of the revivals of Weird Tales, offering the 300th issue (the numbering had been continued from the 1923-54 magazine through three previous short-term revivals) as a celebration of Bloch and his work.

• Contents:
• 3 •  Weird Tales (masthead) • (1988) • interior artwork by George Barr
• 4 • The Eyrie (Weird Tales, Spring 1991) • [The Eyrie] • letter column conductd by Darrell Schweitzer
• 4 •  The Eyrie • (1988) • interior artwork by Stephen Fabian
• 10 •  Letter (Weird Tales, Spring 1991) • essay by John Shirley
• 14 •  Letter (Weird Tales, Spring 1991) • essay by Herb Kauderer [as by Herbert Anthony Kauderer]
• 14 •  Letter (Weird Tales, Spring 1991) • essay by Walter Shedlofsky
• 15 • The Den (Weird Tales, Spring 1991) • [The Den] • essay by John Gregory Betancourt
• 18 •   Review: At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft • review by John Gregory Betancourt
• 18 •   Review: Lovecraft's Legacy by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Weinberg • review by John Gregory Betancourt
• 18 •   Review: The Brains of Rats by Michael Blumlein • review by John Gregory Betancourt
• 19 •   Review: Sleepwalker by Michael Cadnum • review by John Gregory Betancourt
• 19 •   Review: Screams: Three Novels of Suspense by Robert Bloch • review by John Gregory Betancourt
• 20 •   Review: Fire by Alan Rodgers • review by John Gregory Betancourt
• 21 • Weird Tales, the Magazine That Never Dies • essay by Marvin Kaye
• 22 • Beetles • (1938) • short story by Robert Bloch Weird Tales Dec 1938
• 23 •  Beetles • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 30 • Beetles Teleplay • short fiction/drama by Robert Bloch
• 30 •  Beetles Teleplay • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 50 • Robert Bloch: Writer & Gentleman • essay by Hugh B. Cave
• 51 • Weird Tales Talks with Robert Bloch • interview of Robert Bloch • interview by Robert Morrish [as by Bob Morrish]
• 56 • There Are No Ghosts in Catholic Spain • (1981) • poem by Ray Bradbury
• 57 • Tap Dancing • short story by John Gregory Betancourt
• 58 •  Tap Dancing • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 61 • Poem Written on a Train Just Leaving a Small Southern Town • (1980) • poem by Ray Bradbury
• 62 • One More Story to Tell: Excerpts from an Unauthorized Autobiography • essay by Robert Bloch
• 75 • Turn, Turn, Turn • short story by Nancy Springer
• 77 •  Turn, Turn, Turn • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 80 • The Grab Bag • short story by Robert Bloch and Henry Kuttner
• 80 •  The Grab Bag • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 85 • Fisher Death • poem by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
• 86 • Mothrasaurus • poem by A. R. Morlan
• 87 •  Mothrasaurus • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 89 • Weird Tales Talks Again with Robert Bloch • interview of Robert Bloch • interview by Bradley H. Sinor
• 92 • Otherwhere • poem by Walter Shedlofsky
• 93 • Playing for Keeps • short story by Lawrence Watt-Evans
• 97 •  Playing for Keeps • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 99 • The Sorcerer in His Wrath • poem by Darrell Schweitzer
• 100 • Rumors of Greatness • short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• 100 •  Rumors of Greatness • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 103 • Wager of Dreams • (1990) • novella by Michael Rutherford
• 103 •  Wager of Dreams • interior artwork by Gahan Wilson
• 130 • Weirdisms: Hell and Damnation • [Weirdisms] • essay by Jason Van Hollander
• 130 •  Weirdisms: Hell and Damnation • [Weirdisms] • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander

More to come!

FFB: THE BIG BINGE aka IT'S ALL IN YOUR MIND by Robert Bloch (IMAGINATIVE TALES, July 1955; Curtis Books 1971; included in THE LOST BLOCH, V. 1: THE DEVIL WITH YOU!, Subterranean Press 1999; Pulpville Press 2006)

This short novel was the fourth and last fantasy cover story (which you can read at this link) in a row from Robert Bloch for the magazine Imaginative Tales, a sibling publication of Imagination and latterly Rogue, which began its run with two  issues featuring cover-stories from Charles Myers's imitation Thorne Smith fantasy series about the magical sprite Toffee and her human companions...IT's policy throughout its run was to feature at least one novella or short novel per issue, but this was the last issue to not have a definite slant toward science fiction rather than fantasy, and this one is by the wispiest of pretense a science-fantasy story...the magical shapeshifting and related abilities of the protagonist are driven by a machine which manifests his neuroses in a concrete manner  (if Bloch's approach hadn't been so cod-Freudian and he'd taken his concept at all seriously, he probably could've sold the story to John W.  Campbell, Jr. at Astounding Science Fiction...it isn't too far in concept from some of the "psi" stories JWC did publish...albeit it's also mildly bawdy enough to have given Campbell the vapors, as fitted the Thorne Smith tradition this story also follows, and the early policy of IT just before its skin magazine stablemate was launched).

Elmer Klopp (perhaps to help speed the plow while working through this pun-filled short novel, Bloch also indulges in comedy of humors character names...most of the other characters' names themselves relatively weak puns) is lured into an experiment that will, it is hoped, cure his neuroses, by his fellow university student Ada Noid, the charming daughter of famous Professor Perry Noid, the inventor of the psychopathfinder. The gadget, as noted above, physically manifests projections of the greatest fears and suppressed desires of those it's applied to ...beginning immediately, in his case, with the mostly unwanted ability to denude any person Elmer looks at. Inebriating himself to keep that telekinetic power in check leads to the manifestation of a pink elephant that wreaks mayhem on the university's Homecoming parade and ceremonies. (Unlike the pachyderm on Harold McCauley's magazine cover painting, reprinted as cover of the the most recent edition, the pink creature in the story is a full-sized adult elephant.) And so it goes for Klopp and his acquaintances throughout the story, as he continues to work through his id, splits into twelve more or less identical versions of himself, and reintegrates to becomes a gorilla, albeit one who can still speak intelligibly (and not quite McCauley's portrait of a chimpanzee/human hybrid), and as such runs afoul of a mixed bag of Leninist spies, and gangsters and vampires who work with them. 

It's all farcical enough to be amusing, while being most interesting as an example of Bloch applying his engagement with abnormal psychology, so famously explored in such crime fiction novels as The Kidnapper, Psycho and American Gothic, to materials which manage, like their model Thorne Smith's somewhat satirical fantasies, to walk a line between the purely humorous and carrying a certain dangerous weight to them, verging in undertone toward the horrific sort of fantasy. Horror and gentler humorous fantasy being two other notable components of Bloch's literary career, as a notable contributor to such other fantasy and horror fiction magazines as Weird Tales (where a young Bloch would contribute his earliest professional fiction, after having read for the first time the fiction of the writer soon to be his mentor, H. P. Lovecraft, and many others, in earlier issues), Fantastic Adventures (an almost direct ancestor of Imaginative Tales, where Bloch had contributed stories to an editorial staff including eventual IT editor and publisher William Hamling), and John Campbell's fantasy magazine Unknown...even as Bloch continued to contribute to such more influential contemporaries of IT as Beyond, Fantastic, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. While minor work, this novel does reward the student of Bloch, as well as anyone who can appreciate an elaborated pun amid any number of rather simpler ones (and a few jokes which take a rather casual view of certain kinds of criminal behavior).  

That kinship to his psychological suspense fiction was clearly exploited to the hilt by the Curtis Books package, which manages to portray the story as a more titillating cousin to The Scarf or Night-World, and even manages to capture an image (presumably of Klopp as shaven gorilla) on its uncredited cover painting that looks a bit like a more bug-eyed version of Stephen King, still a young adult  and obscure writer then, not long after King's first sale to Robert Lowndes's  magazine Startling Mystery Stories, his first professional sale after placing high in Scholastic Magazines' annual competition and publication in Literary Cavalcade. Though at least one reference refers to the Curtis edition being a longer form of the story, a spot check of the texts look identical to me in all the editions I have at hand.

The later two editions put the story in context among other more obscure examples of Bloch's work (the Pulpville edition also reprints, in "Ace Double" two-front-cover fashion, the third IT cover story by Bloch, "The Miracle of Robert Weems," a shorter novella, and the short autobiographical sketch by Bloch that was published in the same issue, linked to above, as "The Big Binge"). Aside from some questionably nonfictional fillers and a few minor cartoons, the only other items in the Imaginative Tales issue are Hamling's editorial and the novelette "...So Very Dark" by Daniel Galouye, a story which deals, in somewhat larval form, with Galouye's continuing fascination, throughout his brief literary career (he died relatively young, from complications of WW2 injuries), with motifs of "darkness" as metaphor for the subconscious, and the dangers of manipulation of perception of reality, particularly on the part of governments and other sorts of authority. Almost a child of Asimov's "Nightfall," this story, if rather more elaborated and set against a Cold War framework.

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog, and spare a thought for those who are fortunate enough to attend the Bouchercon, the annual world convention for crime fiction writers, editors and other enthusiasts, now in progress in New Orleans, and those who have not been able to attend.

• Publication: Imaginative Tales, July 1955  
• Editor: William L. Hamling
• Year: 1955-07-00
• Publisher: Greenleaf Publishing Company
• Price: $0.35
• Pages: 132
• Binding: digest
• Type: MAGAZINE

• fep • Introducing the Author • essay by Robert Bloch
• 4 • The Editorial (Imaginative Tales, July 1955) • [The Editorial (Imaginative Tales)] • essay by William L. Hamling
• 6 • The Big Binge • novella by Robert Bloch
• 6 •  The Big Binge • interior artwork by Harold W. McCauley [as by Harold McCauley ]
• 100 • Magic Matter • essay by Joel Berendt
• 100 • To the Stars • essay by R. G. St. Clair
• 101 •  Cartoon: They only know one word of English - but it's the right one. • interior artwork by Luther Scheffy
• 102 • ...So Very Dark • novelette by Daniel F. Galouye
• 102 •  ...So Very Dark • interior artwork by W. E. Terry
• 127 •  Cartoon: Hey, Max, this world's younger than we thought • interior artwork by Kohler
• 128 • Science is Easy! • essay by S. A. Marin
• 128 • Universal Logic • essay by George Rose
• 129 •  Cartoon: Oh stop looking at me as if I were some sort of monster! • interior artwork by Luther Scheffy

• Publication: The Lost Bloch, Volume One: The Devil With You!I
• Authors: Robert Bloch
• Year: 1999-05-00
• ISBN: 1-892284-19-7 [978-1-892284-19-8]
• Publisher: Subterranean Press
• Price: $40.00
• Pages: 328
• Binding: hc

• 7 • Of Pennies, Pulps and Penury • (1999) • essay by David J. Schow
• 17 • Foreword (The Devil With You!) • (1999) • essay by Stefan Dziemianowicz
• 27 • The Devil With You • novella by Robert Bloch
• 119 • Strictly from Mars • (1948) • novelette by Robert Bloch
• 161 • It Happened Tomorrow • (1943) • novelette by Robert Bloch
• 207 • The Big Binge • (1955) • novella by Robert Bloch
• 313 • An Hour With Robert Bloch • interview of Robert Bloch • interview by David J. Show

FFB: Robert Bloch: THE BEST OF ROBERT BLOCH (Ballantine 1977); SUCH STUFF AS SCREAMS ARE MADE OF (Ballantine/Del Rey 1979), among other collections

Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber were the two most important writers to be mentored by H. P. Lovecraft, and were younger members of the group of corresponding friends known as the Lovecraft Circle, which also included Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth and a small slew of others; while Derleth would not only be Lovecraft's primary publisher after his early death but would write endless pastiches of HPL's work, often based however tenuously on unpublished fragments among Lovecraft's papers, it was Bloch and Leiber who really picked up the ball with Lovecraft's primary innovation, an emphasis on existential horror in a supernatural context...humanity wasn't in trouble so much (or at least not so primarily) because of being the prize in a struggle between good and evil gods and demons, so much as because we were just another incidental item in the environment of entities and forces that took note of us, if they could at at all, only when it suited them...and our welfare was never much of their concern, when they had concerns.  Of course, both Bloch and Leiber also wrote more traditional horror and fantasy fiction, and hybrids as well...but both also went on to explore new implications of their most Lovecraftian work, and find their own voices...Bloch particularly fascinated by psychopathia and Leiber with the evolution of myth...as might well be demonstrated by their most influential early stories: Bloch's "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" and Leiber's "Smoke Ghost"...and, of course, Bloch would eventually become most famous for creating Norman Bates and his family motel, as the author of Psycho, and Leiber perhaps dually as the chronicler of the picaresque fantasy adventurers Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and for his most famous and durable horror novel, Conjure Wife. And then there were the best of succeeding generations of Lovecraftian-influenced writers: Ramsey Campbell and Fred Chappell, Thomas Ligotti and T.E.D. Klein, and others. All diverse talents, and none moreso than Bloch...as his two late 1970s career retrospective collections of short fiction, both selected by Bloch himself, helped demonstrate...even given that they pointedly only took from certain areas of Bloch's writing. The Best of slightly overrepresented  Bloch's science-fictional work (while also including fantasy and horror fiction), in part because much of it was close to his heart and in part because it was being published in Ballantine's sf/fantasy line, so a year and change later, a second collection focused more thoroughly on his horror and including no little of his more outre suspense fiction, was issued as a natural companion.

The Best of Robert Bloch Robert Bloch  (Ballantine 0-345-25757-X, Nov ’77, $1.95, 397pp, pb)

• xi · Robert Bloch: The Man Who Wrote Psycho · Lester del Rey · in
• 1 · Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper · ss Weird Tales Jul ’43
• 21 · Enoch · ss Weird Tales Sep ’46
• 39 · Catnip · ss Weird Tales Mar ’48
• 55 · The Hungry House · ss Imagination Apr ’51
• 79 · The Man Who Collected Poe · ss Famous Fantastic Mysteries Oct ’51
• 97 · Mr. Steinway · ss Fantastic Apr ’54
• 113 · The Past Master · nv Bluebook Jan ’55
• 141 · I Like Blondes · ss Playboy Jan ’56
• 153 · All on a Golden Afternoon · nv F&SF Jun ’56
• 185 · Broomstick Ride · ss Super Science Fiction Dec ’57
• 197 · Daybroke · ss Star Science Fiction Magazine Jan ’58
• 209 · Sleeping Beauty [“The Sleeping Redheads”] · ss Swank Mar ’58
• 225 · Word of Honor · ss Playboy Aug ’58
• 237 · The World-Timer · nv Fantastic Aug ’60
• 271 · That Hell-Bound Train · ss F&SF Sep ’58
• 289 · The Funnel of God · nv Fantastic Jan ’60
• 319 · Beelzebub · ss Playboy Dec ’63
• 329 · The Plot Is the Thing · ss F&SF Jul ’66
• 337 · How Like a God · ss Galaxy Apr ’69
• 355 · The Movie People · ss F&SF Oct ’69
• 269 · The Oracle · ss Penthouse May ’71
• 377 · The Learning Maze · ss The Learning Maze, ed. Roger Elwood, Messner, 1974
• 393 · Author’s Afterword: “Will the Real Robert Bloch Please Stand Up?” · aw

Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of  Robert Bloch  (Ballantine 0-345-27996-4, Feb ’79, $1.95, 287pp, pb)

• ix · Introduction · Gahan Wilson · in
• 1 · The Tunnel of Love [“Hell Is My Legacy”] · ss New Detective Magazine Jul ’48
• 11 · The Unspeakable Betrothal · ss Avon Fantasy Reader 9, ed. Donald A. Wollheim, Avon Publishing Co., 1949
• 26 · The Girl from Mars · ss Fantastic Adventures Mar ’50
• 34 · The Head Hunter [“Head Man”] · ss 15 Mystery Stories Jun ’50
• 52 · The Weird Tailor · nv Weird Tales Jul ’50
• 74 · Lucy Comes to Stay · ss Weird Tales Jan ’52
• 81 · The Pin · ss Amazing Dec ’53/Jan ’54
• 96 · I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell · ss F&SF Mar ’55
• 107 · Luck Is No Lady · ss AHMM Aug ’57
• 124 · The Cure · ss Playboy Oct ’57
• 132 · The Screaming People · nv Fantastic Jan ’59
• 171 · The Big Kick · ss Rogue Jul ’59
• 181 · The Masterpiece · ss Rogue Jun ’60
• 186 · Talent · ss If Jul ’60
• 200 · The Final Performance · ss Shock Sep ’60
• 214 · Life in Our Time · ss EQMM Oct ’66
• 223 · Underground [“The Living Dead”] · ss EQMM Apr ’67
• 230 · A Case of the Stubborns · ss F&SF Oct ’76
• 248 · The Head · ss The Ides of Tomorrow, ed. Terry Carr, Little & Brown, 1976
• 257 · What You See Is What You Get · ss F&SF Oct ’77
• 273 · Nina · ss F&SF Jun ’77
• 284 · Author’s Afterword · aw

Everything in these books ranges from good to brilliant (from the surreal South African psychodrama "The Funnel of God" to the gentle nostalgic fantasy of "The Movie People", the key run-ups to Psycho "Lucy Comes to Stay" and "I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell") and while Bloch would go onto further good short (and long) work in the decade and half after the publication of the latter book, reading such later collections as Midnight Pleasures and Cold Chills will give you a better sense of his late career than you'll get from, for example, The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, which was reprinted in paperback in a typo-ridden edition with the utterly fraudulent title The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch. (As I mentioned to Sergio Angelini not too long ago, the complete short Bloch fiction would run more to thirty volumes than this set's three.) Looking at the contents of the three-volume set again, I see that while it does include some rather minor Bloch stories, and while overlapping heavily with these two volumes above for some reason omits such obvious stories as "That Hell-Bound Train", it, too, is a decent representation of Bloch's shorter work...but the awful packaging and error-riddled text of the paperback edition makes it a poor choice for first reading. You should read "Water's Edge", though...and won't suffer with "Talent" nor "The Animal Fair"...but "Freak Show" was a very poor choice to end with. Bloch's humorous fantasies, the Damon Runyonesque Lefty Feep stories and his Thorne Smith pastiches and others, are mostly missing from these volumes as well...among much else. And then there are the novels, and the occasional nonfiction...The Lost Bloch collections are utterly recommended...

Final Reckonings Robert Bloch (Underwood-Miller 0-88733-055-X (Vol.1), Mar ’88, $80.00 set, 371pp, hc) The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, Vol. I

• 1 · Mannikins of Horror · ss Weird Tales Dec ’39
• 11 · Almost Human [as by Tarleton Fiske] · ss Fantastic Adventures Jun ’43
• 27 · The Beasts of Barsac · ss Weird Tales Jul ’44
• 45 · The Skull of the Marquis de Sade · ss Weird Tales Sep ’45
• 61 · The Bogey Man Will Get You · ss Weird Tales Mar ’46
• 71 · Frozen Fear · ss Weird Tales May ’46
• 79 · The Tunnel of Love [“Hell Is My Legacy”] · ss New Detective Magazine Jul ’48
• 87 · The Unspeakable Betrothal · ss Avon Fantasy Reader 9, ed. Donald A. Wollheim, Avon Publishing Co., 1949
• 99 · Tell Your Fortune · nv Weird Tales May ’50
• 121 · Head Man · ss 15 Mystery Stories Jun ’50
• 135 · The Shadow from the Steeple · nv Weird Tales Sep ’50
• 153 · The Man Who Collected Poe · ss Famous Fantastic Mysteries Oct ’51
• 165 · Lucy Comes to Stay · ss Weird Tales Jan ’52
• 171 · The Thinking Cap · nv Other Worlds Science Stories Jun ’53
• 195 · Constant Reader · ss Universe Jun ’53
• 207 · The Pin · ss Amazing Dec ’53/Jan ’54
• 219 · The Goddess of Wisdom · ss Fantastic Universe May ’54
• 233 · The Past Master · nv Bluebook Jan ’55
• 253 · Where the Buffalo Roam · ss Other Worlds Science Stories Jul ’55
• 267 · I Like Blondes · ss Playboy Jan ’56
• 277 · You Got to Have Brains · ss Fantastic Universe Jan ’56
• 287 · A Good Imagination · ss Suspect Detective Stories Jan ’56
• 301 · Dead-End Doctor · ss Galaxy Feb ’56
• 313 · Terror in the Night · ss Manhunt Feb ’56
• 321 · All on a Golden Afternoon · nv F&SF Jun ’56
• 343 · Founding Fathers · ss Fantastic Universe Jul ’56
• 359 · String of Pearls · ss The Saint Detective Magazine Aug ’56

Bitter Ends Robert Bloch (Underwood-Miller 0-88733-055-X (Vol.2), Mar ’88, $80.00 set, 368pp, hc) The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, Vol. II

• 1 · Water’s Edge · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Sep ’56
• 15 · The Real Bad Friend · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Feb ’57
• 35 · Man with a Hobby · ss AHMM Mar ’57
• 41 · Welcome, Stranger · ss Satellite Apr ’57
• 49 · Terror Over Hollywood · nv Fantastic Universe Jun ’57
• 69 · Luck Is No Lady · ss AHMM Aug ’57
• 83 · Crime in Rhyme · ss EQMM Oct ’57
• 91 · The Cure · ss Playboy Oct ’57
• 97 · Sock Finish · nv EQMM Nov ’57
• 113 · Broomstick Ride · ss Super Science Fiction Dec ’57
• 121 · Daybroke · ss Star Science Fiction Magazine Jan ’58
• 129 · Betsy Blake Will Live Forever [“Is Betsy Blake Still Alive?”] · ss EQMM Apr ’58
• 143 · Terror in Cut-Throat Cove · nv Fantastic Jun ’58
• 175 · Word of Honor · ss Playboy Aug ’58
• 183 · That Old Black Magic · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Sep ’58
• 197 · The Deadliest Art [“The Ungallant Hunter”] · ss Bestseller Mystery Magazine Nov ’58; ; as “The Living Bracelet”, EQMM Jun ’59
• 203 · The Screaming People · nv Fantastic Jan ’59
• 233 · The Hungry Eye · nv Fantastic May ’59
• 251 · Show Biz · ss EQMM May ’59
• 257 · The Gloating Place · ss Rogue Jun ’59
• 265 · The Man Who Knew Women · nv The Saint Mystery Magazine Jul ’59
• 285 · The Big Kick · ss Rogue Jul ’59
• 293 · Night School · ss Rogue Aug ’59
• 303 · Sabbatical · ss Galaxy Dec ’59
• 311 · The Funnel of God · nv Fantastic Jan ’60
• 331 · ’Til Death Do Us Part · ss Bestseller Mystery Magazine Jan ’60
• 335 · The Show Must Go On · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Jan ’60
• 339 · A Matter of Life · ss Keyhole Mystery Magazine Jun ’60
• 345 · Pin-Up Girl [as by Will Folke] · ss Shock Jul ’60
• 351 · The Baldheaded Mirage · ss Amazing Jun ’60
• 363 · The Masterpiece · ss Rogue Jun ’60

Last Rites Robert Bloch (Underwood-Miller 0-88733-055-X (Vol.3), Mar ’88, $80.00 set, 398pp, hc) The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, Vol. III

• 1 · Talent · ss If Jul ’60
• 11 · The World-Timer · nv Fantastic Aug ’60
• 35 · Fat Chance · ss Keyhole Mystery Magazine Aug ’60
• 45 · The Final Performance · ss Shock Sep ’60
• 55 · Hobo · ss Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #2 ’60
• 59 · A Home Away from Home · ss AHMM Jun ’61
• 67 · The Unpardonable Crime · ss Swank Sep ’61
• 73 · Crime Machine · ss Galaxy Oct ’61
• 79 · Untouchable · ss The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Nov ’61
• 85 · Method for Murder · ss Fury Jul ’62
• 91 · The Living End · ss The Saint Detective Magazine May ’63
• 95 · Impractical Joker [“Deadly Joker”] · ss The Saint Detective Magazine Aug ’63
• 109 · Beelzebub · ss Playboy Dec ’63
• 117 · The Old College Try · ss Gamma #2 ’63
• 133 · A Quiet Funeral · ss The Skull of the Marquis de Sade, Pyramid, 1965
• 139 · The Plot Is the Thing · ss F&SF Jul ’66
• 145 · Life in Our Time · ss EQMM Oct ’66
• 153 · Underground [“The Living Dead”] · ss EQMM Apr ’67
• 159 · A Toy for Juliette · ss Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967
• 165 · The Gods Are Not Mocked · ss EQMM Aug ’68
• 171 · How Like a God · ss Galaxy Apr ’69
• 185 · The Movie People · ss F&SF Oct ’69
• 195 · The Double Whammy · ss Fantastic Feb ’70
• 205 · In the Cards · ss Worlds of Fantasy Win ’70
• 217 · The Warm Farewell · ss Frights, ed. Kirby McCauley, St. Martins, 1976
• 227 · The Play’s the Thing · ss AHMM May ’71
• 235 · The Animal Fair · ss Playboy May ’71
• 247 · The Oracle · ss Penthouse May ’71
• 253 · Ego Trip · ss Penthouse Mar ’72
• 269 · His and Hearse [“I Never Had a Christmas Tree”] · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Jun ’72
• 291 · Space-Born · nv Children of Infinity, ed. Roger Elwood, Watts, 1973
• 305 · Forever and Amen · ss And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire, ed. Roger Elwood, Chilton, 1972
• 321 · See How They Run · ss EQMM Apr ’73
• 331 · The Learning Maze · ss The Learning Maze, ed. Roger Elwood, Messner, 1974
• 343 · The Model · ss Gallery Nov ’75
• 351 · A Case of the Stubborns · ss F&SF Oct ’76
• 365 · Crook of the Month · ss AHMM Nov ’76
• 379 · Nina · ss F&SF Jun ’77
• 389 · Freak Show · ss F&SF May ’79

For more of this week's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.