~Post by Joe T.
So, it’s October. Somehow, it’s become the month most emblematic of horror even though true fans of the genre know that spring is truly the most horrific part of the year. Anyway, it’s October and the BookPeople Horror Book Club, The Nightmare Factory, has a new book for you (and me) to read.
Ramsey Campbell is one of those writers they call “a writer’s writer.” Which means a writer who doesn’t sell but who all the writers who do sell, read. Of the greatest horror writers of the 20th century, he’s one of the few who are actually in print (and this is not a knock on your favorite writers – even Stephen King is a fan.)
After making his bones as an H.P. Lovecraft acolyte, he diverged (much like Psycho novelist, Robert Bloch) in a way so as to forge his own path. Somewhere along the way, he became the horror writer who’s won the most awards that horror writers are nominated for. He’s that good.
That brings us to The Darkest Part of the Woods. This book returns us to the geography that a juvenile Campbell created as a setting for his Lovecraftian stories. And it is good. But that is not the reason why the book is worth reading.
Thomas Ligotti, probably the greatest horror writer alive today, claims that to write true horror, one can only write short stories, not novels, because short stories can maintain a tone of terror, of horror, and novels can only sustain horror in bits and pieces while the bulk of the novel is really just realism/naturalism.
I believe that Darkest Part of the Woods is Ramsey Campbell’s response to that criticism. Almost every paragraph deals with the woods, the branches, the moss, and all the wooded parts of the world. A mood is created. Whether it fails or succeeds is up to you. Me, I think Ramsey Campbell created as close to a horror novel as we can based upon Ligotti’s definition.
We’ll be discussing all this and more on Tuesday, October 18th, 7p at the next meeting of The Nightmare Factory, BookPeople’s Horror Book Club. Read the book and come on down, or just come on down and talk horror fiction with us. If you buy the book here, we’ll give you a 10% discount. The club’s free to attend.
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