"Delightful" wouldn't have been the first word I'd use to describe a novel that has as its most horrific scene a very graphic torture/rape/murder of a"Delightful" wouldn't have been the first word I'd use to describe a novel that has as its most horrific scene a very graphic torture/rape/murder of a high schooler, but another reviewer used it and it's stuck with me. As always, Laymon is fond of delivering his thrills and his atrocities via a wide-eyed, Gee Whiz That's Neat! type tone. This is a delightful book full of twists & turns, shock moments both goofy and upsetting, an unusually deliberate pace, granular details typical for the author, a realistic setting in its suburban neighborhood and high school, an unusual cold case-style murder mystery, and an appealing, relatable, amusing cast.
There are two interesting protagonists, a father and daughter. The father is a hack writer of paperback horrors and appears to be modeled on the author himself. If that's the case, Laymon certainly wasn't abashed in depicting a person who goes off the deep end in his obsessions (while still retaining his basic decency and kindness) and who is sexually aroused 100% of the time, constantly ogling his wife and his friend's wife and, oh, the corpse with a stake in her heart that he has secreted away in the hopes of writing a true crime story about how he came across that body, and what happens when he finally pulls that stake out. The novel is very meta in its interrogation of both the writing process and how writers are inspired - and "meta" is a thing I never expected to find in a Laymon novel.
The second protagonist, his daughter, is a great character. A sympathetic, upbeat, and very believable teen who is wrestling with a crush on her thoughtful and dreamy English teacher (who also happens to be a viciously sadistic rapist and killer). I appreciated that one of the first things she does after he finally attacks her is to plot how exactly she will be murdering him, and how she'll get away with it. That's some pluck! This is a dark but, yep, delightful novel. And per usual with Laymon, it is also a novel that is extremely explicit and extremely horny. And full of surprises! Especially its whackadoodle ending....more
I love camping, and have loved it since I was kid. everything about it: walking in nature, splashing in water, setting up camp, the conversations arouI love camping, and have loved it since I was kid. everything about it: walking in nature, splashing in water, setting up camp, the conversations around the fire and the cooking and the early mornings waking up to the music of birds and insects, the nights spent in a tent or under the stars. Richard Laymon loves camping too: he spends nearly the first 200 pages describing a camping trip before bothering to get to the horror. the attack on the campers felt almost like an afterthought. I didn't mind the lazy pacing because it was really pleasant reading about this trip. characterization may not be the author's forte in general, but the characters here felt absolutely real. reading the various perspectives of child, teen, and adult took me right back to various camping trips throughout my life. Laymon gets all of the details right. and there's a genuine generosity of spirit displayed in this novel that makes it feel like something he wrote out of love for camping with a big group rather than just to bring in some money.
I was pleased to see Laymon control his sleazier traits. nearly every character is a horny character, but unlike past novels, I didn't get the sense that he was salivating while writing about his characters' sexuality. rape - a Laymon hallmark - unfortunately is present, but he restrains himself there too. although I could have done without it entirely, I did appreciate that he showed an unusual sensitivity this time. and there is a teen romance that is surprisingly tender and charming. Laymon even shows some compassion for the novel's antagonist - an old woman trying to survive in the wilderness despite being saddled with a brutally violent rapist of a son.
so overall this was an atypical novel for this author. sweet-tempered in tone, more concerned with the details of a trip than creating a tight and focused narrative. I liked that a lot. it also involved the supernatural, which is unusual for Laymon. the last quarter is definitely gripping. plus it includes zombies, because why not....more
one late October night, heartbroken college student Ed decides to soothe his troubled soul by taking a long nighttime stroll to Dandi DoUPDATED REVIEW
one late October night, heartbroken college student Ed decides to soothe his troubled soul by taking a long nighttime stroll to Dandi Donuts. and so begins an addiction. with each subsequent evening walk he learns more about the eerie, threatening, hypnotic underside of the sleepy small town of Wilmington. what lurks in Wilmington? well, let's see... a vindictive cycling senior, predators in a van with alluring bait, a sad and scary shut-in clown, cannibalistic homeless people lurking under bridges, a sociopath with the looks of a male model who fixates on Ed and his new lady, and an enticing young miss who makes a practice of sneaking into homes to make herself at home.
Richard Laymon, Richard Laymon! you wrote a good one! what a happy relief to finally find the book to justify my increasingly inexcusable desire to return to his trashy, sleazy worlds again and again. Night in Lonesome October is appealing and didn't inspire the usual guilt or feelings of squirmy dirtiness. Ed is a likeable (and increasingly feckless) hero who tries to do the right thing, nurses petty feelings of anger towards the lass who dumped him, is realistically horny (as opposed to the over-the-top uber-horniness of most Laymon teen protagonists), and his increasingly addictive behavior in exploring the disturbing underworld of the town around him is portrayed with interesting, often frustrating realism. and the ongoing motifs of nudity and voyeurism in Laymon's novels are handled with a lot more intelligence here - and in a way that rather expertly places the protagonist and the reader in the same shoes. very Hitchcock! very Blue Velvet!
the novel delivers genuine chills in set-piece after set-piece, from the creepy exploration of various silent homes to the image of a silent lumbering figure climbing over a fence on the edge of a ballpark at midnight to an increasingly threatening conversation with a lunatic to an ill-judged decision to have a little moonlit sex under a bridge. this was a genuinely tense novel.
it is also, per standard Laymon, a microscopic narrative. although it takes place over the course of several days, we are often in Ed's head on a minute-by-minute basis. although this can get a bit tedious at times, happily, it mainly works. it is all so you are there now.
i was also pleased at how Laymon handles his gay character. as is probably clear from my reviews, i'm a queer and so i am often rather thensitive to how queer supporting characters are portrayed. at first the hero's frenemy Kirkus was straight-up stereotype and i was annoyed. he's swishy and he speaks in some kind of affected Noel Coward voice and he is constantly predatory towards our hero's apparently hot little bod. but then we get Kirkus' horrifying backstory and i was rather blown away by just how tough Laymon decided to be when depicting how bad it can get for young queers. kudos! no punches pulled, and even better, the punches thrown land in surprisingly ambiguous and troubling places. and after this revelation... Kirkus is still the same pretentious, pathetic, and rather creepy guy, one who acts in an even more predatory style. it doesn't matter - Kirkus became real, to me and to Ed, and his move from asshole to assholish friend felt well-earned. oh and spoiler: he also saves the day, so there's that.
okay this review is really too long for its enjoyable but minor subject matter, so i'll just close out by saying that if you are a Laymon fan and if any of the above makes you think that this atypical Laymon offering lacks the typical Laymon excesses of torture, rape, sadism, and excessive blood-is-everywhere type violence... well, i guess don't worry. the climax has all of that, sicko.
i had a dream last night... a dream that Richard Laymon actually wrote a good book. not just a fun and pulpy trash rollercoaster that made me feel ashamed and dirty afterwards, but a novel of value. eerie, unpredictable, and surprisingly thoughtful. a protagonist who actually felt real and a journey that was strange and disturbing and grotesque... but somehow not cheap. not typical Laymon. it was not just a dream - it was a nightmare! a beautiful nightmare. i woke up tangled in my sweat-soaked sheets, confused and off-balance, wanting to dive back into the dream and finish that strange trip. but instead i had a cigarette; it's best to draw out these kinds of pleasures.
now here are some special Halloween visuals for your viewing pleasure:
richard laymon, idiot savant, ladles out another another tasty helping of fast-paced horror, amusing & ridiculous banter, inexplicable character motivrichard laymon, idiot savant, ladles out another another tasty helping of fast-paced horror, amusing & ridiculous banter, inexplicable character motivation, bloody mayhem, sexual torture, horny juveniles, and eye-rolling coincidence. this rich stew is chock-full of laugh-out-loud (or gasp-out-loud) moments that are berserk, bizarre, and often hilarious. why do i keep returning to his novels? they must be like crack to me. he is a terrible writer in so many ways, but a person cannot fault his expert ability with pacing or the overripe fecundity of his imagination. he's one of a kind.
this is a surprisingly ambitious novel in some ways, mainly in its structure. To Wake the Dead juggles multiple narratives that of course come together in the end - but those narrative strands are absorbingly different from each other. and there are a heck of a lot of them! a curator and her cop boyfriend deal with break-ins and murders at a museum while indulging themselves in romance and margaritas. a semi-mindless mummy snarls her way across various neighborhoods, ripping throats out and searching for babies. a mopey, rich blind girl sighs on the rooftop of her mansion, constantly dreaming of lovers appearing to comfort her. a horny high school teen is kidnapped and wakes to find himself in a room of cages, cages full of captives who must yield to complicated physical torture and sexual abuse each time the lights go off. three teen runaways flee to california and must deal with a range of predators, bickering the entire way. a repulsively-depicted drug addict and combo sexual predator/prey forms a crush on a gentleman who was kind to her. an egyptian emigre tries to figure out the mystery of the mummy while engaging in a series of sexual hijinks, one of which goes terribly awry. all of that, and then right in the middle of the book we get an old-fashioned, multiple-chapter flashback delivered quaintly through the journal of a young archaelogist finding a mummy's tomb. of course the journal graphically depicts a bit of wish fulfillment sex-with-twins, but hey that's richard laymon for you.
it is impossible to defend the author or the book. i usually feel like showering after reading one of his novels and i roll my eyes the entire time. it is an unclean sort of fun. but still, well, fun....more
Island is incredibly offensive, bizarrely interesting, and often a lot of frenetic, fast-paced fun. sleazy, escapist enjoyment; i felt guilty. the novIsland is incredibly offensive, bizarrely interesting, and often a lot of frenetic, fast-paced fun. sleazy, escapist enjoyment; i felt guilty. the novel is reprehensible and often terribly written. but like i said: fun! horrible fun. a bunch of survivors of a suspicious explosion on a private yacht run around a tropical island, getting picked off or captured & abused by unknown assailants. fortunately, a relentlessly horny teenage boy is on hand to be our fearless hero, audience identification point, and cataloger of all things he deems attractive or unattractive in women.
is Laymon a banal and vapid writer or is this all deliberate - could there be intent behind it? who knows. sometimes i can't help but get the impression that everything he knows about human conversation, emotion, and motivation is what he learned from bad tv and 80s slasher movies. well in this novel that debit actually works well because of the hilariously banal and vapid protagonist. the cataloguing of various cute physical attributes of his fellow castaways gets so repetitious and out-of-place and obsessive that the novel almost becomes an absurdist farce. no matter how dangerous or grueling the situation may be, no matter how often everyone is running for their lives or trying to stake out their tormentors... our hero still pops a boner at the slightest hint of T&A and his inner monologue remains ludicrously obsessed with the most puerile, laughable details. i'm not sure i've read anything like this.
the protagonist awkwardly getting in touch with his dark side a couple times was a nifty touch, although it also meant having to get through some repulsive, drooling depictions of abuse (par for the course for Laymon readers, unfortunately). but "nifty" is definitely not the right word for the very ending, one where our boy-hero decides to bring his exploration of that dark side to the next level. genuinely disturbing is probably a more appropriate phrase.
witness this finale, in which our horny young idiot of a protagonist finally gets some of his sexual fantasies fulfilled: (view spoiler)[ after many struggles, a lot of quick thinking, and a bit of luck, he manages to heroically save the day by violently dispatching both of the heinous, monstrous villains... and then simply decides to keep his fellow survivors imprisoned ("uh oh, I can't find the key to your cages!")... and so is able to take those villains' place, living in their island mansion, a bunch of naked women he's been salivating over throughout the novel now full of gratitude towards him... and now also available for his every whim - that is, if they ever want to get out of those cages... (hide spoiler)]. golly gee, i guess it really IS a happy ending for our brave lad!
that ending is diabolically clever. Laymon, you really went there - that does take some stones. to make matters even more unnerving, the tone of the novel's first person narrative, one that is in a journal format, is both angsty Young Adult and gee whiz, what a crazy adventure i'm having! that tone remains consistent from the zippy opening to the upsetting final decision. the reader is positively not let off the hook and i was left with that lingering, sickening, dread-filled feeling in my stomach that so many horror authors aspire to create but fail to obtain. maybe Laymon isn't such a bad writer after all. having a hero who gradually, increasingly exhibits villainous attributes is nothing new - but it was genuinely startling to see it happen in Island. and i suppose it can also be said that crudity can sometimes get more visceral results than ambiguity and literariness....more
unnecessary descriptions of child molestation in an odd subplot that is completely inessential to the narrative... sort of makes me question the authounnecessary descriptions of child molestation in an odd subplot that is completely inessential to the narrative... sort of makes me question the author's motives. overall, an incredibly overrated piece of crap. however, taken by itself, "giant human/rat monsters who are obsessed with sex" is sort of an amusing concept. the description of a pair of these fellows earnestly double-teaming their landlady was certainly a first for me.
richard laymon inspires intense debate!
(view spoiler)[if you feel like reading what follows, know that there are two "marks". there is me - lowercase mark (in honor of my idols kd lang and ee cummings) - and then there is a second Mark who is certainly not me, in any way.
only messages relevant to the debate are included.]
message 445: by mark
Chris wrote: "mark, really? Have you actually read the recent novels by both King and Koontz (recent being, say, the last 10 or so books)? Laymon, not so obvious, but it is there..."
hmmm....well although i am a flaming liberal with a few reactionary tendencies, i do tend to consciously avoid even recognizing political themes in novels. i find political themes to be dull & limiting and they are often just the surface layer anyway, thematically speaking. king & koontz may be on opposite sides of the political spectrum (particularly in who they cast as their villains or who they choose to deride)....but they both share two central things that, to me at least, are more interesting & important:
......
now as far as laymon is concerned...he's a freak! a cracked nut. and certainly no humanist.
message 446: by Kasia
Like you said, your opinion.. An author that I'm friends with said he met Laymon a few times and he was the nicest guy ( Koontz says the same thing too), so just because you read a few books by him doesn't mean you have him all figured out.
message 456: by mark
i have no problem with him being the nicest guy a person could met. lots of folks are. and that doesn't mean i won't have a problem with what they choose to express either. nor do i think it will mean that simply because i judge a person's works, the reasons they choose to focus on certain themes & ideas, and their overall ability....that doesn't mean i'm judging the whole person. what human truly knows every side to any fellow human anyway? but i do feel free to judge not just an artist's work but the representation of themselves that they are expressing through their work.
and from that perspective, in my opinion, laymon is an entertaining pulp writer with striking ideas and expertise at writing page-turners, capable of strong execution, but having poor technical writing skills, an inability to develop realistic characters, and a highly problematic engagement with child abuse & molestation & perhaps women in general. overall, a compelling writer in many ways.
message 457: by Kasia
How astute of you... I doubt Laymon wrote his books with hopes of making the most realistic characters ever, you know what you’re getting when you pick him up so if you keep reading him don’t be surprised with what you find. There is plenty of serious fiction you can turn to if you crave that sort of depth.
message 463: by Mark
One thing, to me, that hasn't been considered is that most of what us horror fans read is FICTION. Sure, once in a while, a writer's personal opinions may seep into a character he or she created, but in a way, saying that an author's character's are a mirror image of the author himself is like saying any actor who plays a character IS that character. All the folks who played Nazis in Inglorious Bastards - are they real Nazis? One even won an Academy Award for his performance it was considered so realistic.
Sometimes, what an author writes has nothing to do w/ his or her personal feelings on a matter. Sometimes, they just create characters and let them "live".
message 465: by mark
you raise a good point and one that should always be brought up.
to use your acting analogy: while i can't say that an actor who plays, say, a flamingly gay villain is therefore a flamingly gay villain in real life (that would idiotic), i can judge both (1) his actual acting ability and (2) the decision by the actor and director to play a gay villain in a stereotypical or offensive way. meaning, i can judge the content & the craft AND the reasons they choose to create a character in this way. i am not judging what they are doing in their personal lives; i'm looking with a critical eye at the choices and decisions & meaning that they are bringing to whatever they choose to display publicly. be it acting, writing, sports, whatever.
message 466: by Branden
I would say that is right, Mark, but you cannot then go on to judge how these individuals are in real life like you have with Laymon, saying that the man, the individual, has "a highly problematic engagement with child abuse & molestation & perhaps women in general". I'm an actor, and I have played countless roles. If I played a serial killer who kills women and children, it was because I was cast in the role (if in undergrad) or the money was good, not because I have a problem with women and children. Is this what you are saying? So, one of your critiques of the actor who plays a flamingly gay villain would be that the actor himself, based on his choice, is (insert whatever commentary on the actor you want here)? That is wrong and a poor judge of character. If I am misunderstanding you, I apologize.
message 471: by Mark
Other Mark, I agree you have the right to question why authors and screenwriters choose to portray a character in a certain way, or include certain repulsive scenes. But I still think it's a stretch to claim Laymon had a possible child abuse fetish.
Horror movies and novels have always been reflections of their time and when Laymon began publishing, kidnapping and serial murder were becoming big stories on the nightly news. Even small towns were no longer immune. I was very small at the time, but I still remember hearing reports about these new items back then. I remember being told never to take rides from strangers, run and scream if someone I didn't know tried to grab me - all of this and I lived in a tiny town where almost everyone knew everyone else. I think this sort of thing is what Laymon was pulling from. The cruelty of humanity - not the cruelty within himself.
I know several of you don't care for Laymon's writing style, the words "shlock" and "pulp" being mentioned, but I have to disagree with that assessment. I've been a pulp magazine fan for the last several years and have read extensively within each decades and each genres writers. Granted, many of the authors who wrote for the pulps wrote too fast, wrote too sloppy, and didn't engage in the most extensive character development. But, the pulps also birthed Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, to name but two; names that have had a huge influence on the way modern prose is composed. Hammett and Hemingway began their experiments in stripped down, minimalist writing techniques at about the same time and these writers are who I think Laymon most resembles.
message 475: by mark
- at no point did i say that that laymon had a possible child abuse fetish...egads! i have no clue about that and would not presume to weigh in on that or in regards to his personal family life. i literally have clue about what he is all about on a personal level. what i DID say is that he has a "a highly problematic engagement with child abuse & molestation & perhaps women in general". i am talking about laymon as a WRITER, not as the whole human being, certainly not as someone that i actually knew on a personal level. as a writer, laymon consistently include scenes of child abuse & molestation, sexualization of children, etc....as a reader, i find this preoccupation to be disturbing because these scenes are sometimes unnecessary and sometimes written in a way that i see as salacious or at the very least, insensitive. therefore i do find that he has a troubling engagement with depicting scenes of child abuse & molestation.
i could say, similarly, that hemmingway has a troubling engagement with women in general. i am only judging what i read and i am only judging the author insofar as he is allowing me to judge him by consistently engaging with certain topics in a troubling way within his novels. i am critiquing laymon the author, not laymon the actual person who i've never met. i have no idea what his fetishes were!
regarding use of the word "pulp": to me, this is not an insult, it is simply a description. laymon reminds me of the many pulp writers i've read who are short on technical skills but long on imagination and the ability to provide propulsive, exciting narratives. there are many, many writers that i respect who are clearly pulp writers. philip k dick comes immediately to mind. so does robert howard. as do your own examples. i like pulp! i may critique technical skills, or at least point out the lack of them, but for me at least, i enjoy so many things about writing and being able to write at a certain level is only one of those things. characterizations, basic ideas, atmosphere, world-building, etc are all things that i enjoy equally to ability to be a "good writer".
message 476: by mark
branden:
i do not think it is wrong, nor do i think it is being a poor judge of character. yes, i am judging a real side of a person, so in a sense, i am judging a part of their character. but i am not judging the whole person. that point really needs to be clear. i may judge a politician on the legislation he puts forward, that may be a character judgment because i may find he has poor engagement with something i care about, i may speak negatively about this side of him...but what i am absolutely not doing is judging him as a father or husband or philosopher or whatever. i am judging him in his role as a politician, just as i am judging laymon on his role as a writer. people don't just get off scott-free with me simply because they are doing a job or writing a novel for entertainment or just following orders. and they also don't get judged let alone condemned in their entirety because i am unaware of the entire person. i'm only aware of what they've put out for me to see and anyone should feel free to judge an artist's representation of themselves on a consistent, public basis.
back to the acting analogy, and the gay villain analogy as well....if there was an actor who consistently played only gay villains and who only played them as stereotypically & offensively as possible...then yes, i should feel free to judge that person as an actor and in particular the choices they've made when engaging in their art.
i'm not saying they should be criticized for taking particular kinds of roles - unless those kinds of roles are consistently offensive, whether in their conception or their execution. gay villains are awesome! but a gay villain or a black villain or whatever that is rendered stereotypically and crudely and offensively is not so awesome (unless there's some level of irony involved). and the actor who consistently takes offensive roles and/or plays them offensively is, in my opinion, an ass.
and again, this does not mean that i am judging them for what they do in their private life....i'm commenting on what they've chosen to present in their public life, work life, whatever kind of life that has connected with my life. as an actor, that person would be an ass to me but i would not presume to weigh in on them as a whole person.
message 478: by Kasia
Thats a lot of words.. You make the author sound like an actor, ok I'm done, this gave me a headache
message 481: by Mark
mark: I think the problem I have is in an earlier post you said "[Laymon:] is a freak. a cracked nut." then said "he has a highly problematic engagement with child abuse & molestation & perhaps women in general", which changed to "depicting scenes ...". There's a big difference between being occupied w/ something and being allegedly occupied w/ depicting something. Yes, it's semantics, and you may've meant the writer and not the person, but I feel that the way it was worded, and having made the "freak" retort earlier, it seems more like an indictment on the man himself.
I'm glad to hear you like pulp, too. The reason I thought you meant Laymon's writing being "pulpish" as an insult is because you married "pulp" with "having poor technical writing skills" while discussing Laymon earlier today. To me, saying someone has poor technical skills is insulting. And I disagreed w/ the idea that they're technically poor because, to me, they are reminiscent of Hemingway, Hammett, and even many of the minimalist short story writers who published throughout the 1980s and went on to influence writers like Palahniuk. Many people dislike this writing style, but it was featured in many of the Best American Short Story anthologies since it's inception and re: Hemingway and Hammett, influenced every writer that came after them to a lesser or greater degree. Given that, I wouldn't necessarily call that writing style "poor".
It's, of course, your prerogative to like or not like it, but I think it's a bit of an overstatement to claim the writing to be technically poor when it's indicative of two influential schools of writing.
message 495: by mark
ah! well that makes sense. it's funny in a way because this is rather a misunderstanding. when i called laymon a freak, a cracked nut, i really didn't mean anything by it. if anything, that's just a funny way, to me, of expressing how unusual he ise. i enjoy the company of freaks, am one myself, and enjoy reading their works. hell everyone's freakish or nutty in one way or another.
and i can see how you can connect that to my genuine critical viewpoint in regard to "problematic engagement with blah blah blah". however, they are not supposed to be connected. imo, laymon's a freak because he writes crazy stories with nutty characters and bizarre narratives. also imo, he has a "problematic engagement blah blah blah".....but the former is really not caused by the latter. even if his novels didn't include a single scene of child abuse, i'd still say he was a freak because of his crazy novels. and that's neither a good thing or a bad thing. it just means he's unique.
i'm still going to have to disagree with you re pulp & technically polished writing, and i love pulp. to me at least, a pulp writer does not usually have the sophistication or technical ability of a non-pulp writer. that doesn't mean i'm dismissing them or that they won't eventually get to that level of writing - or that they even need to try to get to that level.
message 497: by mark
Kasia wrote: "Thats a lot of words.. You make the author sound like an actor, ok I'm done, this gave me a headache"
golly, i thought this was a group for people who read! have i somehow stumbled upon the BiffBangPowWoweeMcWowClubForFolksWhoAlwaysAgree,Yahoo!!! group?
you know kasia, i'm so very sorry that you can't deal with critical comments about your hero laymon. i don't consider this a fan club, it is a discussion group. i have not personally attacked your hero, i have critically analyzed his writings. which i should be free to do without any inane commentary re "this gave me a headache" and "a lot of words". feh!
message 498: by Mark
I think Kasia is under the same impression I was: that your authorial critiques were spilling over into personal critiques. So to her, it DID feel like you personally attacked Laymon. I will let her tell you whether he's a hero, or an author she enjoys.
You have to admit: you even said it was a lot of writing ["boy i'm talkative today":], remember? :D
message 500: by Maciek
I don't think Laymon was a freak. Since he was a horror writer, he propably decided to put as much stuff into his books as possible - including sluttish women and lots of gore.
message 502: by Aloha
It's actually pretty fun, popping up into hilarious and strange situations, like popping into this forum at just the right time when Branden is confused about the Marks. I can sympathize with Branden. LOL
It's the Mark vs. Mark in the Matrix. The battle is on! :oD
message 516: by Phil
I really liked The Cellar but the peodophile stuff in it stops me from recommending it to people. I do think it's pretty dodgy.
message 517: by Chris
Again....it was PART of the story...whatever...incidentally, Phil, I recall the scene you speak of and thank you for mentioning it...but for chrissakes'...it is HORROR...sometimes the horror portrayed is REAL, as in not supernatural and I don't think Laymon was at all glorifying such a heinous act. Like what Ketchum did with TGND, takes a lot of guts to "go there."
message 520: by Kasia
Mark wrote: "Kasia wrote: "Thats a lot of words.. You make the author sound like an actor, ok I'm done, this gave me a headache"
golly, i thought this was a group for people who read! have i somehow stumbled u..."
He’s not my hero, I simply like his writing but personally I don’t think it’s fair for you to hint that he’s some psycho and secret child molester or something, besides he’s not even around to defend himself.. I think you’re pissed because you spend all that time writing things and I didn’t reciprocate with an effluvia of words, you can certain feel what you want but you say that someone is a nut and is crazy then five minutes later you say it doesn’t mean anything, that its just fun talk, then I guess nothing means anything if we don’t mean the things we say.. You wrote some comments and I responded to them, you want to have the freedom to analyze his writing and post things about him yet you don’t want me to comment on it that I have a headache, well then don’t give me one, mmkay?
message 521: by Phil
Chris wrote: " Again....it was PART of the story...whatever...incidentally, Phil, I recall the scene you speak of and thank you for mentioning it...but for chrissakes'...it is HORROR...sometimes the horror port..."
Jeez Chris I didn't say Laymon was glorifying anything. But thanks for assuming the worst :P
I agree on the HORROR thing though, if you're gonna read or watch horror you have to expect to be horrified every now and again. Still, even if someone says they like horror, there's still stuff you have to be careful of recommending, imo.
message 548: by mark
Chris wrote: "I have been reading Laymon novels since 1987. Other than teen-agers having SEX--which, ahem, they DO--NONE of his books portray child abuse...."
then you have not actually read his novels, my friend! or you are from opposite world. The Cellar and Island both have extended scenes of child abuse, unnecessarily presented in one case and salaciously presented in the other. apparently child abuse is also present in Darkness Tell Us, Beast House, and The Traveling Vampire Show, although i cannot attest to that personally.
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