What They Wrote: In Praise of Dark Fiction, by Jack Ketchum
review originally published by FEARnet, 2015
Review by Kevin Quigley
“You begin by loving books,” Jack Ketchum begins his collection of forewords, afterwords, and essays culled from books in the horror field. There’s a subtle contradiction inherent in this, though; Ketchum seems to also be saying that’s not how you end up. The critic – of books, of movies, of art – starts wanting only to praise, but all too often ends up finding only flaws. So Ketchum clarifies his stance: “I figured then and still do that there’s enough in this world to bash without bashing artists … I’ll pay it forward and give it back.”
In What They Wrote, Ketchum gives back in spades. His first essay, on Edward Lee’s Quest for Sex, Truth, and Reality, was written back in 1992, when Ketchum was just deciding to write reviews that simply appreciated rather than criticized. It’s a terrific place to start; Ketchum and Lee tread on some similar fictional ground – extreme horror, sexual perversion, a gleeful determination to ignore any bounds of decency – and Ketchum’s enthusiasm draws you right in. There’s an old adage that states it’s more fun to read bad reviews than good ones (Roger Ebert’s I Hated Hated Hated This Movie makes a compelling argument), but Ketchum’s smart yet conversational tone belies it. Even more fun than the review proper is the author’s note at the end, a current day reflection on the piece. If anything, he’s even more excited about Lee. There are exclamation points! And cheers! And an awesome inside joke about the ridiculous original cover to Ketchum’s masterpiece, The Girl Next Door. It’s got everything.
Thankfully, Ketchum doesn’t run out of steam in his first go-round. He writes lively about books and writers he loves, names you might or might not be familiar with – Richard Laymon, Lucy Taylor, Thomas Monteleone, more. He drifts back in time to discuss classic works like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, and offers strident arguments why these books are still necessary, still vital after all these years of influence. There’s a movie review about The Thing. His essays on two Stephen King books – Bag of Bones and From a Buick 8, two uncommonly gentle novels for King – seem unusual subjects for a writer like Ketchum, but horror, Ketchum knows, isn’t just about digging into someone’s intestines with your bare hands. “That’s not to say the shocks aren’t there. You can bet they are. But they’re balanced by a sense of easy familiarity and great sympathy … against a backdrop of unknowable strangeness.”
At its base, a review’s job is to influence the reader to take action. Ketchum intends his collection of enthusiasms to get you to go out and read, well, what they wrote. I hadn’t heard of Tim Lebbon’s White and Other Tales of Ruin, but now it’s at the top of my list. Ditto The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier, not to mention everything I might have missed by Ed Lee. Even more, I want to go back and re-read all of Ketchum, starting with Off Season and plunging deeper. The tone here might be kinder and gentler than in his novels, but it’s all Ketchum’s voice, insisting that you go darker and darker into the worlds that thrill him the most.