The New Year often brings the challenge of new-ness. Resolutions beckon we do MORE this or LESS that, to change ourselves even as we struggle to write the correct new year without error. Regardless of what the previous year held, I always pronounce - usually in whatever forum affords me the most praise and affirmation - that I will read more in the next year. Inevitably, I laud my pronouncement with an obnoxiously feux-erudite reading list of titles and authors no one except me cares about, leading to a cricket chirping silence that, also inevitably, leads me right back to my stack of Archie comics in the bathroom. So it goes. Still, I earnestly do want to read more each year. Reading deep and reading well is a craft I hope to hone successfully in my days. This quest leads me to asking for recommendations from those I find on similar literary journeys. We book-nerds are a slim - and growing slimmer - breed. For this reason, in and out of the New Year season, let us bolster one another through our titles and volumes. Hulu, be damned! Netflix, can bite me! Caffeine, ravage me right! And with that, here's a writer I enjoy massively.
Jack Ketchum is difficult to recommend for two reasons. One, Ketchum writes horror. Two, Ketchum writes extreme horror. As you know, if you were to randomly hollar "horror literature" in a crowded coffeeshop these days (or at any time in the past three decades), you'd likely win yourself a treatise from some wide-eyed chatterbox about their favorite Stephen King title, most likely Misery or The Green Mile. If you're in a more ritzy neighborhood, the topic may turn quickly to Dean Koontz. In a really shitty nerd bar, someone will bring up Lovecraft. And God knows where you'd have to be to find yourself pressed against a wall enduring a diatribe on the post-war merits of Peter Straub. (You might wanna get outta there!) The point - which I lost in there somewhere - is that horror literature has it's stalwarts, as all art forms do. And it has those stalwarts, primarily Stephen King, because what Stephen King does, primarily, is rather quaint. King, for the most part, is rarely even remotely grisly or wack-o. And that's good for him. It's the quaint stuff that creates a household name. Even when it comes to horror fiction, most readers prefer to sleep with the light off. Start asking about King's really nasty stuff, "The Library Policeman" or "Rage" or "The Boogeyman", and the chatterbox's eyes will glaze over and the chatter will shift to how oh my gosh, but did you ever see Dolores Clairborne?!
Ketchum has never written a quaint thing in his career. In a Ketchum story, gratuitously Terrible Things happen to average joe people, while somebody in the story - Somebody who represents us, the reader - has to come to grips with this Terrible Thing. In a Ketchum story, the Terrible Thing usually stems from a hand that relishes making Terrible Things happen to people. And, in a Ketchum story, the details of the Terrible Thing are unavoidably significant. Take, for instance, Ketchum's most famous novel, The Girl Next Door. Based on a true story, TGND tells of a young teenage girl in the 60s who is kidnapped by a neighborhood lady, tied up in the basement, and made the whipping post for all the neighborhood boys. The lady of the house oversees all the whipping and humiliation, pushing the limits to new degrees of nasty, and assuring the boys that if anyone tells both they and the girl will endure an even worse punishment. As we know, children are born with the capacity for extreme good and extreme evil, and our jobs as family members and the communal Village is to point those kiddos towards the good. So what happens when the evil is encouraged instead? Well, to say Terrible Things happen to this poor girl is an understatement. So what could possibly be the merit of such a tale? Why either write or read something so despicable?
The answer is simple: The Girl Next Door is told from the perspective of a young neighborhood boy who feels conflicted about everything he's seeing in the basement, as well as his minimal level of participation. He can't sleep. He can't function. He knows what is happening is wrong, but he's terrified to do the right thing. Even at a young age the boy realizes some major aspect of his entire life is in the balance of his consistent decision to remain silent. Not to mention, the boy loves the girl. He has since he first saw her walking in her yellow sundress. But now she's bound and blindfolded. The yellow dress replaced with red stripes on her skin and deep purple bruises. It ain't quaint. The details reveal the full scope of the boys inner turmoil, perhaps even reaching deep into our own reservoir of life-altering action or inaction. As we see from the perspective of the boy who wants to intervene, compassion can be a dangerous thing.
It's here that we find the great hallmark of Jack Ketchum's writing, the thing that brings me back over and over again wishing I could bring other nerdy readers along with me: the scariest thing in Jack Ketchum's world is what happens to the one's we love. And it's for this reason that the details - as non-quaint as they appear at times - matter so greatly. Life pulls no punches. When the sun goes down, the light that guides most people is artificial. How do we approach such people? How do we let anyone we love out of our sight? Religion often seeks to answer such questions, but religion falls short when we allow our own inner light to remain artificial. We can ignore such questions. We can numb ourselves to such questions. Or we can face questions about Terrible Things with the help of artists and storytellers and comedians who take us to dark places to determine the source of our light. Compassion shatters many layers of darkness. So far, Jack Ketchum is my favorite compassionate storyteller.
At the end of this past year, Ketchum released two new titles. The first, Gorilla In My Room, from Cemetery Dance Publications, collects 15 of Ketchum's most recent stories. I've read three other collections of short writings by Ketchum, and this is by far the most diverse. A few pieces are even downright literary and beautifully written. We get Ketchum at his nastiest, as in "Winter's Child" and "Cow" - two stories about the same young lady who happens to be feral and also, well, a cannibal. We see Ketchum try his hand at a Western and a comic zombie story. And we see him deal with issues of child abuse, Alzheimer's, aging, and sexual violence. In each case we, the readers, look into the moment from the perspective of a bystander, usually a family member or loved one, trying to determine how to love their hurting someone well. Compassion can be a complicated thing.
Also in 2017, Ketchum published his third novel with film-maker Lucky McKee (director of May, The Woman, All Cheerleaders Must Die). The Secret Life of Souls, from Pegasus Books, is a short, tight, emotional power-punch of a read. The narrator's perspective shifts between four different members of a single family, including the family dog, which admittedly sounds cheesy except that it just isn't. Ketchum and McKee make it work. Each narrator's voice is unique so that by the half-way point the reader can recognize a new narrator in mere words. The story here follows a young actress, Delia, and her dog, Caity, through the beginning of an exciting career. Obviously, tragedy strikes, and the perspective of Delia and Caity suddenly begins to shift. This becomes evident even to Delia's brother when his perspective begins to shift as well. Exploring the potential depths of relational bonds, Ketchum and McKee avoid Hallmark musical overtures to show that true compassion is ultimately self-sacrificing.
As I said in the beginning, I make the same goal each January to read more. Of course, the goal should encourage quality over quantity: reading more GOOD stuff rather than just stuff. It's for that reason that in 2018 I'm aiming to read everything by Jack Ketchum that I have not already. I know there's some pretty ridiculous stuff in there. Heck, the dude got his start writing sleazy detective stories for men's magazines. But there's also a depth of character and, as I've said repeatedly, compassion in Jack Ketchum's work that I've not found elsewhere in modern pulp fiction. If you need a good quick place to start with Ketchum, I recommend his novel Red. If you're a dog-lover, you'll want to read Red with your four-legged friend nearby. If you've got a strong stomach, try The Woman, his first novel with Lucky McKee. Both titles also have movie versions that are not too bad. Ketchum makes a cameo in each. Otherwise, Ketchum's newest titles, mentioned above, are solid winners. Enjoy the dark . . . you're there already.
