Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant (2012)
Approaching Charles L. Grant (1942-2006)
Readers unfamiliar with Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant may prefer to read these notes only after reading the collection.
Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant (2012) edited by Stephen Jones is the indispensable collection of the author's short fiction. It also provides an interview with Grant, insightful prefatory material, and reminiscences by Peter Straub, Kim Newman, and Thomas F. Monteleone.
Stories in the book take place in the UK (London and Stonehenge), the southwestern U. S., Manhattan, Oxrun Station in Connecticut, and Hawthorne Street -- wherever on earth that is.
Grant had many strengths, but I think foremost was his commitment to open-ended conclusions for his stories. Combined with carefully modulated ostranenie [defamiliarization, strange-making] in characterization, setting, and narration, this skill at conveying indeterminacy when everyday life meets horror is more important in understanding Grant's fiction than his own programmatic statements calling for "quiet" horror.
I used to agree with readers who found Grant's style slow and thwarting. Today, after forty years of not reading Grant, I find the style rich, beguiling, and perfectly modulated. To my surprise, I also found reading the stories a second time beneficial. My initial readings were fast, second passes much slower.
In looking at individual stories below, I have mostly dispensed with summaries. Instead, I have tried to use systematic #keywords and an enticing quote. The "Cf." reading suggestions are not meant as 1:1 matches for plot; they are my readerly free-associations. Your free-association mileage will vary.
“But the Other Old Man Stopped Playing” (1973)
#Greece #last_man #post_apocalypse #shepherd #ressentiment #satyr #syrinx
Cf. “The Man Who Went Too Far” by E. F. Benson
“They…they gave up, old man. The wait was too long. The temples were dead. For all that, you’re a better man than they.”
Windless silence. The moon added pale fringes to the clouds that passed around it. Nikos fought to convince himself that this wasn’t happening. He had seen too many ruins for it to be true, saw too many men and women and children with cameras who stole something from the marble every time a shutter clicked.
“White Wolf Calling” (1975)
#greatplains #rancher #adult-child-friendship #immigration #parenthood #childhood #winter
Cf. “The Interlopers” by Saki; “There Shall Be No Darkness” by James Blish; “The Hunter” by David Case
Another excellent story that seems to take place in an isolated corner of the Great Plains. Rumors are spreading about a white wolf whose sighting predicts death. Retired store owner Mars, our protagonist, is skeptical. He spends his winter days befriending and playing with Tommy, the little son of a neighbor who recently arrived from Czechoslovakia. Grant excels here at evoking an unforgiving climate and a rural crisis that permits no miscalculations. It's a tense and suspenseful story, and a fitting story to end the collection.
"Through All His Blood Runs Shadow" (1976)
#NYC #July #widow #alley #feeding
C.f. “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne; "Smoke Ghost" by Fritz Leiber; "The Crows" by Ray Bradbury; "The Man of the Crowd" by Edgar A. Poe
“Sam, I don’t want you to think I’m overdoing this religious thing of mine. I’m not a hysteric nor am I mad. If nothing else, this trip has convinced me of that. You see, I’ve discovered a new kind of evil, I know how it operates, and I can’t do a thing about it.”
“From All the Fields of Hail and Fire” (1976)
#small town #arson #standing stones #fathersandsons #nightaction
Cf. “N.” by Stephen King; “The Temple” by E. F. Benson
“From All the Fields of Hail and Fire” has it all: a nighttime arsonist on the loose, adults dying in the flames, and their children disappearing. Will the isolated town of Covington be wiped out? In dreams, volunteer fireman Dave Tanner’s preteen son Gary – and Gary's best friend Kim – determine their enemy emanates from the standing stones in Savage's field. On a night of thunder, lightning, hail, and snow, the pair head for a showdown.
“A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye” (1977)
#future #eugenics #actor #makeup #simulacra #avatar #performance
C.f. "The Vampire Trap" by Reggie Oliver; Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
In the beginning the idea had been a tempting one. Begun by the British and expanded by the Americans, the tapes were the foundation of a dream-induced system through which young people would hopefully be matured without actually suffering through the birth pangs of adolescence. Hospital wards with soft colours, nurses with kind faces, and for two hours and twenty minutes every other day the young were wired and hooked and taped to a machine, which I and others like me, those actors with no place to go, inhabited. We wrestled with tigers, endured floods, endured women and men and disasters personal. It was, as the narration stressed again and again and again—who knows how often?—all very symbolic, and all very real.
“When All the Children Call My Name” (1977)
#smalltown #cop #children #vanishing #playground
Cf. It by Stephen King; "Ritual" by Arthur Machen; "The Child That Went with the Fairies" by J. S. Le Fanu
“Well, I myself have a new job,” I said when she couldn’t offer me gossip. “I just saw Marve and he thought I’d make a great Chief of Police.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yeah,” I said, and grinned. “Actually, he wants me to babysit a playground.”
“You don’t mean the one on Hawthorne Street?”
“That’s right! How’d you know that was the one?”
She fussed with the ashes of her cigarette, took a nervous puff and sent the smoke toward her lap. “Well, a lucky guess. It’s the only one I know of not watched by a school guard.” She faked a smile and brushed a strand of hair back behind one ear. “Aren’t you superstitious?”
“About what, a playground?”
“For God’s sake, Kit, haven’t you talked to anyone since you got back? Didn’t Marve tell you?”
I blinked stupidly and shook my head.
“Just around the time you came back,” she said, “one of the kids was murdered there.”
“Needle Song” (1979)
#financialcrisis #family #parents #children #misapprehension
Cf. "The Dead Valley" by Ralph Adams Cram; "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury
[....] his father, he recalled, had been complaining about things called deterioration, depreciation and plummeting values just before he had been hospitalized; and perhaps if Eric understood it more he might be convinced that this was what was killing the street, and all the other streets in all the other towns. He frowned, scratched at his chin and rhythmically, lightly, thumped his head back against the wall. Maybe. And maybe his father was so involved in just being an adult that he couldn’t see what was real anymore. That’s what Caren had said after her spaniel puppy had been killed by a driver who hadn’t even bothered to stop to say he was sorry.
Murder.
The word popped into his mind unbidden.
“Eric,” Caren had said that afternoon, “we can’t just break into the house and kill her. How can you kill her?”
"A Garden of Blackred Roses" (1980)
#HawthorneStreet #portmanteau #circulation #badplace #mentor #Dimsdale's #parentsandchildren #DarkForces
Cf. "Jerry Jarvis's Wig" by Richard Harris Barham; "The Red Rosary" by W. J. Wintle; "The Copper Wig" by Reggie Oliver
Suddenly, choking, he threw the flashlight at the now glaring red, at the eyes that told him they did not like being alone....
"Quietly Now" (1981)
#smalltown #strangedeaths #teachers #students #school #basement #lore
Cf. 'Salems Lot by Stephen King; The Totem by David Morrell; "They Bite" by Anthony Boucher
[....] The darkmoon was legend, a Halloween tale, but it didn’t change the fact that people sometimes died. He thought it would have been sufficient for them to see one two-column photo of a spring-thaw corpse huddled in a small cave, of a partially devoured woman huddled beneath a tree, of a fleshless family unprotected in their tents, sleeping bags slashed and clothes rent at the seams. But at least once a year someone refused to heed common-sense warnings, and once a year the stories returned.
"Every Time You Say I Love You" (1981)
#widower #lawyer #necromancy
Cf. "The River Styx Runs Upstream" by Dan Simmons; "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King; "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs
[....] he’d read about a woman who had robbed her child’s grave because she wanted to perform some voodoo rites on the body. Ken sympathised. Empathised. Went to bed that night and dreamt of Lou and her lips and her arms and the smile that provided lanterns through every phase of night.
“Coin of the Realm” (1981)
#OxrunStation #tollbooth #downsizing
Cf. “The Late Shift” by Dennis Etchison
That Wes's intellectual game-playing was not playing at all, that he was right about the depression that had fallen on people, the need to escape, the need for comfort. But he was also wrong about one vital matter: those gods, all of them shunted aside in the glare of science's advance, were not calmly returning to embrace their people again.
They were angry.
They hated.
“Old Friends” (1981)
#OxrunStation #basement #reunion #matrices
Cf. “Born of Man and Woman” by Richard Matheson; “The Small Assassin” by Ray Bradbury; “Riding the Bullet” by Stephen
[....] There was autumn grass slowly browning under brightly dying leaves; the brittle cold air that seemed to make the pavement crisp under the feet of the passersby who were hurrying to the college's stadium where the high school games were played; the languid haze of burning piles of leaves; a ragged cloud of starlings that swooped silently toward the scent of popcorn and candy; the clouds.
“Home” (1981)
#OxrunStation #pets #animals #neighbors #sandbox #marriage #parenthood
Cf. “Where the Summer Ends” by Karl Edward Wagner; “The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce; “What Was It?” by Fitz-James O'Brien
Almost without realising it, Art found himself emerging as the neighbourhood’s leader. He organised a block search for signs of a dog pack, spurred by reports—though vague and unsubstantiated—that one was in fact roaming through the village. There had been incidents of children being bitten after sunset, and at least two young runaways were thought privately to have been killed by the night-marauding animals. And though they were given every co-operation by Chief Stockton and the police, Art and his neighbours finally decided that Western Road, at least, was not being terrorised by something out of a B-movie’s nightmare.
“A Night of Dark Intent” (1981)
#OxrunStation #Station Herald #seance #dinner party
Cf. “Mr. Tilly's Séance” by E. F. Benson; “The Hanging of Alfred Wadham” by E. F. Benson; “Night-Side” by Joyce Carol Oates; "The Great Pumpkin Arrives at Last" by Sarah Langan; “The Last Seance” by Agatha Christie; “Mrs. Morrel's Last Séance” by Edgar Jepson
Later, he promised himself as he ran down the hill, he would find out how they did it. For now, however, he had to admit that what they had done was effective—they had lulled him, and frightened him, then driven him from the house because they knew he would expose them.
“Something There Is” (1981)
#horrorwriter #connoisseur #classics #panic
Cf. “The Space-Eaters” by Frank Belknap Long; “Rat” by Stephen King
[....] hunting for a clue to the authors' ability to write eloquently about the unspeakable, darkly about the commonplace; over and over and over again until he had memorized nearly every florid, majestic, purple, and bitter bitten paragraph. Nightmares. Sweat. The sounds of blood dripping whenever he turned a page.
“Pride” (1982)
#OxrunStation #killings #lawyer #sisters #submission #shifter
Cf. “Ancient Sorceries” byAlgernon Blackwood; “The She-Wolf” by Saki
“Someone,” she said, “who’s been looking for someone like you. Not weak in the old sense, but not always strong enough to fight his own battles. A wonderful streak of feminine sensitivity, plus a little masculine posturing he knows is a sham. A man, Brian, who was more alone than he knew.”
"Confess the Seasons" (1982)
#OxrunStation #teacher #inheritance #Manichean #heresy #friendship
Cf. The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel
Then I sat beside Greg, grabbed his jaw and wrenched his face around to mine. “The next time you’re in the O.R., you look up into the observation seats, at the interns or the visitors in the top row, the ones near the door, the two guys whispering in the corner. The next time there’s an accident, check the crowd, near the back.”
“Recollections of Annie” (1983)
#brother-sister #husband-wife #parents-kids #woeofmarriage #woodworking #snowsculpture #February
Cf. "The Shadows on the Wall" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; “The Last Rung of the Ladder” by Stephen King
“I remember when I was a kid,” he said quietly, “how Annie and I would spend hours and hours every day building snowmen in the backyard. I think we must have made a hundred of them over the course of a winter, each one different, and bigger than the last.” He paused, and smiled. “She had all the ideas, and I had the muscles. I look back on it now, and I can’t believe she got me to do all that work.”
“I can believe it,” Marsha said tonelessly. “Your sister was a…well, let’s say she was a strong personality.”
“And We'll Be Jolly Friends” (1984)
#return #childhoodhome #Vietnam war #veteran
#homecoming
Cf. "Something Had to be Done" by David Drake; "The Ghost Village" by Peter Straub; "The Same in Any Language" by Ramsey Campbell
“Y’know,” Archie said, examining the end of his cigarette with care, “I always wanted to know what it was like being shot. Weird, I guess, all that blood and shit.”
Corey spread his hands. “I had to hang on, don’t you get it? A guy had to hang on or he went crazy!”
Susan walked up to him, patted his cheek, kissed his brow, and smashed his left kneecap with one swing of the poker.
“The Generation Waltz” (1984)
#parents-children #evilchild #death #estate #aftermath
Cf. "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe; "Gramma" by Stephen King; The Bad Seed by William March; "Yellowjacket Summer" by Robert R. McCammon
She scowled. “That, boy, is a cruel and ungodly thing to say about your only son.”
“My only son, Gram, was a bastard. A sadist. Why he turned out that way I don’t know. But he did. And because he’s my son, I miss him. And because he was what he was, though, I don’t miss the bastard a bit.”
She turned her head away, but he hadn’t been dismissed. Gram always cleared her throat after saying all she had to say; in public or on the telephone, that was the period in her speeches.
“He was like me,” she’d whispered then. “Too much like me. Too much of me passed on. Skipped your folks, you and your brother, thank God. Sean got it all.”
“Are You Afraid of the Dark?” (1984)
#babysitter #witch #bogbutter #hide-and-seek #olddarkhouse #pedicide #cops-and-robbers
Cf. "Snickerdoodles" Nancy Springer; "The Trick" by Ramsey Campbell; "If Damon Comes" by Charles L. Grant
“You see, Jeremy, there are some people who just aren’t cut out to be parents. They haven’t the innate skills, or the temperament for it. Soon enough, they learn that children aren’t pets, they’re real human beings, and that’s quite a revelation, don’t you think? That children are human beings?”
“Penny Daye” (1985)
#UK #Stonehenge #ghost #guide #tourist
Cf. "The Unsettled Dust" by Robert Aickman; "Mr. Pigsny" by Reggie Oliver
I shivered.
Peter nodded and passed me the flask.
We made the circuit, all the way around to the ragged, aslant Heel Stone, and I was trying to imagine what the circle must have been like with all its pieces intact and standing, when I saw her.
The woman from Salisbury station.
She was in the middle of the monument, wearing the same clothes, sitting on one of the fallen blocks.
I grabbed Peter’s arm and pointed. He looked, lifted his shoulders against the wind, and pulled me back off the path before handing me the flask. By this time I was more warm inside than out, and my mind had a tendency to wander into places where I knew I didn’t belong. But I did see her. I wasn’t so drunk that I was imagining it. I knew she was there.
Especially when Peter said, “She’s dead, you know.”
"The Last and Dreadful Hour" (1986)
#OxrunStation #ArmstrongOrchard #RegencyTheater #trapped #andthentherewerenone #eros
Cf. "To Wake the Dead" by Ramsey Campbell; "The Raft" by Stephen King; Demons [film]; The Exterminating Angel [film]
"It's really nice there," she said, still whispering, taking a sidestep to block him. "I had a picnic there once."
"Picnics are good things," he told her, wincing at how inane he must sound. "I used to go on them myself when I was younger." Thinking: She's on something, that's why she's not in school anymore. What a hell of a thing to happen to such a nice kid. A hell of a thing. "But I have to admit I've never-"
"It's cold there," she said. "Really cold."
“Crystal” (1986)
#UK #London #painting #deaths
Cf. "The Ebony Frame" by E. Nesbit; "The Room in the Tower" by E. F. Benson; "The Road Virus Heads North" by Stephen King;
It was heavy, much heavier than it had a right to be.
He turned it around and looked at the portrait.
Narrow face; narrow chin; wide, dark eyes that matched the dark hair curling under her jaw. The hint of a lace-trimmed velvet bodice. Bare shoulders. Nothing more.
Attractive, he decided, but with an odd distance in her gaze.
He hefted it. Tilted it to the light when he felt the shopkeeper watching. Frowned as if in concentration and debate, shrugged as if in reluctant decision, and carried it back, waiting patiently as the women fussed with the unfamiliar coinage, finally giving up and handing the man some bills, their faces sharp in daring him not to give them their due.
"This Old Man" (1987)
#oldage #kidsmoveback #dog #friendship
Cf. "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs; "The Word Processor" by Stephen King;
But what can an old man do, he thought as he sat in the bedroom and looked out the window; you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have powerful friends, what can an old man do to save his own life?
“Spinning Tales with the Dead” (1988)
#fatherhood #friendship #fishing #river #July #mourning #remembrance #specters
Cf. '"They"' by Rudyard Kipling; "A Pair of Hands" by Arthur Quiller-Couch; "Harry" by Rosemary Timperley
“You know, Eph,” he said, looking away and down and touching the boy’s hair again, “once upon a time I decided I was going to be president of the United States.”
Eph didn’t look around, but he knew the boy was listening.
“That’s right. I decided to chuck it all—the security of a good job, the love of a good woman, friends, and family—and spend my millions becoming head of this country so I could straighten it all out before it fell into disrepair. I ran a good race too. Took more states than the papers said I would, and some they said I wouldn’t win on a cold day in hell.” He pulled in the line hand over hand, clucked at the empty hook, and delicately wound and stabbed a new worm around it.
“Trouble was, of course, Cody took more than I did. At least he took the ones with the most electoral votes. That’s what counts, you know. It don’t matter how many people vote for you; if the other guy has the electoral votes, you’re a footnote in the next history book unless you’re stupid enough to try again.”
“Dad,” the boy said, still not looking around, “you never ran for president.”
“Sure I did.”
“Against William Cody?”
“Right.”
“He never did, either.”
“Then who did all those people vote for, Sitting Bull?”
“Snowman” (1988)
#UK #London #meetcute
Cf. "The Good Husband" by Nathan Ballingrud; "Nunc Dimittis" by Tanith Lee
“Hey, can you talk?”
He grinned.
And the theatre lights went out. All of them. Without so much as a dramatic flicker or two, or a hiss or a spark.
“God,” she said, and hugged his arm more tightly. “I didn’t bargain on this, you know. I’m supposed to be here on vacation. Cheap rates and all that, but this I didn’t bargain on.”
“Not to worry,” he said, feeling the dark at his back, seeing faint blurs of light where the streetlamps still glowed on Charing Cross Road.
“We’re not far. I’ll take you right to it.”
“Alice Smiling” (1990)
#UK #London # mothers-daughters #spousal
Cf. "Columbo: Try and Catch Me" (TV 1977); "The Gardener" E. F. Benson; "At the Farmhouse" by E. F. Benson
Hannah finally joined her, a stone in her hand she threw angrily at the rails. “I hate him,” she said tightly. “That bastard, I hate him.”
Alice flicked dirt off the top of the wall. “If I say something, you’ll not hate me?”
“Go ahead, what the hell.”
“You’re not strong enough, you know.”
Hannah laughed again, another twig breaking. “And you were strong enough for Father?”
“Too strong.”
Hannah shrieked.
And Alice knew it was no good then, that the woman was bound to be a target all her life. Douglas knew that, and used her, and Hannah didn’t understand. It was why he was afraid of Alice; she wasn’t a target at all.
Alice sighed, glanced over to Bessie’s and hoped she wasn’t watching. Then she turned to her daughter and opened her arms and smiled. “Come to me, dear,” she said softly. “Come to mother.”
Hannah looked around, eyes red-rimmed and full. She tried to speak and couldn’t, tried to refuse and didn’t dare, took a long and deep breath and let her mother hold her.
“It’s all right,” Alice said, nearly crooning. “It’s all right, don’t you worry.”
Hannah sobbed.
“I’ll put it right. I promise you. I’ll put it right, don’t you worry.”
Hannah wailed.
“One Life, in an Hourglass” (1991)
#GreenTown #RayBradbury #carnival #answeredprayers
Cf. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
And on the mantel as well, four hourglasses. Faceted crystal. Round walnut top, square walnut base. The first three were full of grey at the bottom, their tops long since empty; the last one had nearly run out, running slowly.
So very slowly.
Well, Miss Sixteen, he had said, I would say you’re about the most beautiful creature I have ever seen in my life. Liar, she had answered with a giggle. He smiled. She shivered, out there in the meadow, Mother’s shawl around her shoulders. Shivered again when he brushed a tender thumb across her cheek.
Miss Sixteen, he had whispered.
Cora, she had answered, half-closing her eyes, lips opening just a little. Cora Fallman.
Ah, he said, and you can call me Mr. Dark.
“Sometimes, in the Rain” (1994)
#UK #London #ghost #widower #siblings #brother-sister
Cf. "Near Zennor" by Elizabeth Hand
Finally I couldn’t stop the asking: “What do you think she wants?”
We walked on.
He didn’t know, didn’t have a clue, and we debated the possibilities over a couple of drinks, over supper, over a couple of drinks more; we talked about it to Maggie McClure—theoretically, of course and the Aberdeen’s owner had no opinion one way or the other except that she was getting tired of hearing Youngman asking everybody in creation about seeing his wife, what the meaning was, or if he was really crazy.
“Riding the Black” (1997)
#Contemporary southwestern US #western #apocalypse #postwar #landgrabs #learnsbetter #horsemen
Cf. “Carnivàle” (TV 2003)
He rode inside [The revival tent], holding the black [horse] in check when the hundred or more on hard folding chairs realised he was there.
In front, on a high stage, the little preacher in his black suit held up his Bible, stuck in the middle of a verse, mouth open, eyes wide, a finger pointing to the canvas roof.
“You!” the preacher cried. “You…dare!“
Rob ignored him.
He eased the black forward, down the centre aisle, looking at the faces for the one face he needed.
“You! Dare! In the House of the Lord!”
Amy sat on the aisle.
He saw her, he smiled, he rode on.
“Be gone, Satan!” the preacher commanded.
When the black reached the stage, it snorted, laid back its ears, stamped once, and wheeled.
No one spoke, no one cried, no one prayed, no one moved.
Rob rode back up the aisle, slowly, without a sound, until he saw Amy again.
She had half-risen from her seat, dropped back when he reached her, and leaned over, and said, “Tell Jean and Pete the buffalo are coming.”
“The Soft Sound of Wings” (1998)
#smalltown #widower #ex-cop #killeronthelose #vigilante #neighborhoodwatch #kids #school
The paper was on the front porch. I brought it in, sat on the living room couch, and read it nearly cover to cover. Even the horoscope, which told me I’d best take care with business associates today or they were going to screw me royally and leave me lying in the gutter.
What I looked for, I didn’t find—a story that would tell me they had caught the murderer of a young thief found in the park three weeks ago, just after school began. Or the murderer, probably the same one, who had dumped the mutilated corpse of a fellow killer on the lawn of the grade school last spring.
It almost made me wish I were back on the force.
Almost.
I was getting older; I wasn’t getting more stupid.
A town like this doesn’t have much in the way of violent crime. A few break-ins now and then, a drunken fight on the occasional weekend, petty arson, but seldom anything as serious as dying. That didn’t start until the people from the suburbs and the city decided they’d had enough of locking every door and window in sight, and moved out here. The problem was, the more who came out, the more trouble was brought with them.
Naturally, they were the ones who screamed loudest about police protection and quality of life and what kind of place is this to bring up a child.
My answer has always been the same: a pretty damn good one until you guys came along.
* * *
Through eleven introductions to his Shadows anthology series, an increasingly exasperated Charles L. Grant stood athwart what he saw as the increasing cynical merchandising of unmotivated violence and gratuitous gore in horror writing and publishing. He often drafted Lewton-era RKO films and Wise's The Haunting (1962) as examples of what he prized as the quiet and suggestive style horror writers should embrace.
Of course, most horror writers never embraced such an approach. And in point of fact, when he spelled out the raw facts of narrative life in his own stories and novels, Grant didn't, either. What Grant praised as quiet was his own skill at distancing from story events and character emotions. This gap was a product of writerly skill and commercial instinct, a hard-won prose style and a mastery of strange-making in plot, setting, and characterization. Grant shared this skill with few other horror writers in English. Bowen, Aickman, Jackson, Campbell, and Straub come to mind as best exemplars; Grant at his best moments approached their level of accomplishment.
Grant's stories exhibit little appetite for portraying the sublime. The ‘elevation and amplification’ we enjoy in E. F. Benson, Algernon Blackwood, and Arthur Machen is displaced instead with well-motivated, impressionist/hysterical crises scenes using stream-of-consciousness prose of great skill. Whether breakdowns depicted are social or individual, Grant is always curious to plumb the machinery of breaking itself reflected in the psyche of protagonists.
* * *
Home base
Both the Hawthorne Street stories and Oxrun Station series (stories and novels) allow Grant to eschew recurring protagonists. Recurring characters are usually peripheral: thus, the narrator of prologues and epilogues to Nightmare Seasons (1982), The Orchard (1986), Dialing the Wind (1989), and The Black Carousel (1995) offers a brief reflection on the fates of characters in each quartet of novellas, but is himself only a sideline observer. The Station itself is the recurring antagonist, a personified nemesis dealing-out negation and negations of negation to any random citizen.
Grant's "four quartets" named above defer hints of resolution until after stories are finished. Hence, the telescoping intensity of a few epilogue sentences. Grant being Grant, learning where and how surviving protagonists end up cannot be confused with a declarative resolution to their story.
* * *
Charles L. Grant, like peers Dennis Etchison and Karl Edward Wagner, was a master of both short fiction and the craft of anthology-building.
The period 1975 to 1995, Grant's peak in fiction-writing, coincided in the U. S. with a downturn in prospects for a number of mass struggles that remade mass psychology after 1945. While the proletarian civil rights movement ended Jim Crow, it could not link up with a fighting labor movement, whose militancy waned after the 1945-46 strike wave and the opening of the Cold War witch-hunt in 1947.
By the mid-1970s, a long-term downturn in profit rates in all the imperialist countries opened a period of union-busting and attacks on democratic rights. This was punctuated abroad with successful efforts to defeat popular revolutionary movements and governments in El Salvador, Grenada, and Nicaragua.
As a Marxist, it is important for me to stress that Charles L. Grant's fiction does not flow from the era's Reagan-Thatcher political course. Grant's characters and the horrors they try to endure are part of a sophisticated fiction-making process. Grant's times are depicted in his fiction, but as with any writer's tales, are best seen as unconscious manifestations of the story iceberg.
Jay
22 May 2024
