It seems like a reasonable question as a first-time contributor.
The answer is: it’s easier to say who I’ve been, then who I am.
I was born into a home filled with books; walls of books, halls of books, rooms where it seemed the ceilings were supported by vertical rows of hardcovers, topped by a row or two of paperbacks. There were books by the bed, books on the kitchen table, books on the couches. Wherever you were, there was always a book within arm’s length and easy reach.
We all read. Even during the times – too many – when no one in the family was talking to anyone else around the dinner table, I can still remember us all sitting there with my mother’s Pot Roast & Potatoes . . . each of us well ensconced behind our books. No conversation, no small talk, just the gently reassuring sound of pages turning. Even my dog – the inappropriately named “Fang” – would, on a regular basis, steal a paperback novel, carry it out to the backyard and proceed to devour it; gripping it in his jaws and shaking it into confetti.
Fang, you see, was the critic in the family.
Over forty years ago, I discovered these other buildings – other than my suburban home – that were also filled with books. They called them: libraries; and when I received my first card I remember thinking that now, every word in the world that had ever been written was at my beck and call (okay, I had a strange vocabulary as a seven-year old, you should meet my sister.) And it was in this temple of prose – over the years, becoming the only setting where I always felt safe, loved, and in place – that I began what has been a lifetime fascination with horror, dark fantasy, and speculative fiction.
But it almost didn’t happen.
The first two books I wanted to check out – and I can still remember the pride of pulling out my library card for the first time – were Trains Of America, and Dracula. But the librarian (shallow soul that she was) refused to let me check out Dracula. She said it was inappropriate for a seven year old. {In another column, I’ll address the bigotry of appropriateness.} I couldn’t understand it! I’d seen Lugosi on Saturday afternoon TV!! Dressed as a ghost on Halloween, the temerity of the woman!!!
Okay, I didn’t say temerity . . . my ten year old sister probably did, though.
My mother – God bless all five foot four inches of pissed off PTA President that she was that day and many days thereafter – really laid into that librarian, saying that it was for my parents to decide what was appropriate, not for some narrow minded librarian who saw books as ornaments and not tools.
I didn’t understand the phrase back then, but I treasure it now.
She checked out Dracula on her own card, asking the librarian if she thought it was appropriate for her (my mother) and gave it to me to read; but with rules. If I got bad dreams, I had to give it up. If I didn’t understand things, I was to ask. If I was confused, I was to discuss what confused me.
And a horror/dark fantasy/speculative fiction writer was born. And over the years, I inhaled the fetid breaths and furtive glances that peopled these worlds. But not without, well . . . consequences.
My father was called to see my teacher when I turned in a third grade story about Vampires ( I capitalize the word out of respect) whose climax, as I dimly recall it now, involved crop dusting Chicago with Garlic Powder. Ricky is a strange little boy, the teacher told him. No particular surprise to my father.
There was my Dybbuk period (evil spirits from Second Temple, Talmudic and kabbalistic literature) when everything I wrote and read had demons (personal and supernatural; I’m still working on the personal ones.) And the teacher sent a note to my mother that said: Ricky is certainly talented, but lacks a conventional hold on the real world. I’m still not certain what that means, but it made my mother laugh; and she gave me the note (which she had saved through all these years) shortly before she died. I treasure it.
And then there were the werewolves.
My interest in werewolves began as a nine-year-old when – at one of my mother’s PTA functions – I met Lon Chaney Jr., Universal Studios’ The Wolf Man. I remember him as a huge guy – physically larger than life – very quiet, very nice; holding a tumbler of what I now know to be Scotch. He talked to me for all of two minutes, I can remember few details, but I vividly remember this: he said that he’d liked the book even more than the film that had made him a star.
The book?!
Now this was in a time when internets and home computers were a thing of speculative fiction and science fiction, so it took me a while to find it; but eventually I found The Wolf Man by Curt Siodmak in an old used book store on Vermont Ave in L.A. And when I did, all those howls in the night, blood curdling screams, frantic looks of despair, and broken clouds passing over an orange moon (and stuff not from my personal life, but in horror novels and movies) began to make sense.
Siodmak’s novel – and later his incredibly prolific and often profound work as a writer at Universal – served as allegory. Fang and Claw, Blood and Bone were there and important, but it was what lay beneath all that which mattered most. The message – however subliminal – that caused the connection that made a work of horror/dark fantasy/speculative fiction embed itself in our consciousness. It was appealing to what Harlan Ellison (whose Dangerous Visions was equally important to me) calls our mortal dreads, that bonds us to a work with ties that last for more than a moment.
Siodmak wrote about the Jewish experience in Europe prior to World War II. His cursed Wolf Man never asked for this to happen to him, and was persecuted for who and what he was, attacked without cause, his victims were marked by a pentagram (the politically acceptable form of the Star of David that Jews were forced to wear or were branded with) and he was at the mercy of the rising full moon . . . a popular allegory to the rising of the Third Reich in late thirties literature.
Allegory . . . the black heart of the beast.
As I grew and explored, I began to crave allegory like a Vurdalak his family’s souls. Dead teenager movies had little appeal to me. Olaf Stapleton’s: Odd John, Von Vogt’s: The Voyage of the Space Beagle caressed my spirit. Freddie Kruger was initially interesting as a symbol of teenage angst . . . before he became a rock star playing a medley of his sole hit in each film over and over again. Cross-genre pieces like Brian Aldiss’: Frankenstein Unbound reached me. Anne Rice intrigued, Stephen King, teased, Peter Straub confronted.
Jason and his hockey mask bored.
And as I drifted into the seriously mistaken career path of the arts – you will never find happiness as a writer; if you’re lucky, you’ll find occasional exhilaration and some measure of satisfaction . . . hopefully never too much – I continued to become different things at different moments.
The young adult who was certain that man could be saved.
The college grad who was certain that man couldn’t be saved.
After several years of national service, the man who knew beyond doubt that man shouldn’t be saved.
As a fledgling writer who knew he was the most talented novelist in the history of the planet whose words would heal the ill, make the blind see, and elevate the human condition.
As the international and New York Times Best Selling author who didn’t really care about man . . . so long as the checks kept coming and the book store assistant managers were attractive and deeply enamored of touring novelists.
To where I am today, who I am today: a man with a helluva lot more questions than answers, possessing a drive to write truth, to explore truth, to set down what he believes, why he believes it, and maybe make someone who reads it along the way stop to think a little bit about their place and time in the Universe.
Cyril Connolly once said: “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”
And that, I think, I know nothing for sure – is the essence of the mission of the horror/dark fantasy/speculative fiction writer. To express that self in all its gory glory. Because once expressed, once shared – in truth and with style – it will remain with its reader/viewer/experiencer forever.
Who the Hell (capitalized out of respect) am I – in a global sense?
I’m a fictioneer; sailing the high seas of ignorance, doubt, apostasy, and the occasional salvation (salvaged) moment. I’m a writer – blessed to be so – and honored by the community of writers (as opposed to creative typists) around me.
Who the Hell am I – in a more specific sense?
I don’t really know.
Too many chapters to go before I sleep.
Believe!
