By Shel Rogers
“My sole wish is to frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter.”
-Henry James
I’m not a big fan of modern culture, but when I first encountered Horror to Culture, I was intrigued. It seemed to me that here were two fellas trying to figure out just where the line is between fact and fiction.
Let me tell you, it’s really thin. Nonexistent even. Some people think we’re living in a simulation, and they may be right. If this seems like a weird segue into an article about Peter Straub, good. Read it and weep, then, as you would with Straub’s work.
First, I want to highlight what I consider to be Straub’s masterwork, the Blue Rose Trilogy: Koko, Mystery, and The Throat.
The best thing about Straub’s Blue Rose trilogy is that each book can stand on its own while still completing one another. As for the concept of the blue rose itself, well, why are roses never blue in nature?
Because we don’t see ‘em that way. Color is what happens when light hits a surface, and the image is filtered through the network of our visual senses. Eyes to brain to memory. Despite what the old poem says, roses are not red, violets are not blue. We just see it that way. What things are in themselves is, like the title of Straub’s second book in the trilogy, a mystery.
Koko made me feel like I was trippin’ on acid when I read it. This was at thirteen, before I’d encountered psychedelic drugs, so I admit that connection came later. The book delves into the psychology of Vietnam vets as they try to discover the whereabouts of a serial killer that might be one of their own.
Koko is the first book to introduce us to a cast of characters from an Illinois town with a lot of strange goings-on. Among these is Tim Underhill, a reclusive writer who later becomes famous and finds the world more to his liking. Except for that creepy Illinois town, which he would rather avoid but somehow keeps finding himself drawn back to.
We’ll explore Straub’s collaboration with Stephen King later, but here I’d like to stress this common chord in their respective works, the author-as-protagonist.
Mystery introduces us to Tom Pasmore, a sort of American Sherlock Holmes, who will reappear in other Straub stories.
The Throat reunites Tim, Tom, and many of the other characters in the creepy Illinois town to finally unravel the mystery of the Blue Rose killer. Straub eventually followed up on the Blue Rose, with the short story collection, The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories, from 2010.
Though I consider The Blue Rose Trilogy to be Straub’s masterwork, he wrote many other exceptional novels over the course of his career. First and foremost being Ghost Story, from 1979, which is considered his breakout publication.
For those who haven’t read Ghost Story, it’s centered around another writer/protagonist by the name of Donald Wanderley, and the mystery of the reclusive “Chowder Society”, who reside in the small town of Milburn, in upstate New York (the town also appears briefly in the book, Koko).
Ghost Story is every bit as poignant and haunting (no pun intended) as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, or Hell House by Richard Matheson, and received a film adaptation in 1981, with an all-star cast that included Fred Astaire.
There’s also the excellent supernatural novel Julia, which takes many of the ideas of classical Gothic tradition and brings them into modern society (of the 1970’s). Julia is one of Straub’s more underrated works, even though it also received a film adaptation in 1977 entitled The Haunting of Julia, starring Mia Farrow.
Straub only wrote Julia due to the advice of his literary agent, after his previous manuscript, Under Venus, was rejected. In fact, Under Venus didn’t get published until a decade later, even though it’s officially the second novel Straub wrote.
Shadowland is another exceptional offering which masterfully blends elements of horror, fantasy, and magic, a coming-of-age story where the lines between reality and illusion are craftily blurred. Straub stated that Shadowland “poured out of me, as if from an inexhaustible source”, and credits traditional fairy tales as an inspiration for the work, as well as carrying on folklore from oral tradition. Also to be noted, he cites John Fowler’s book The Magus as an influence, as it deals with psychological illusions perpetrated by a master trickster.
Also fascinating, and in a similar vein, was A Dark Matter. More than anything because of his well-researched references to ceremonial magic, and most of all to Cornelius Agrippa. It was strange seeing that just poking out of the narrative like a thorn from the stem of a rose, but it recalled to me a lot of weird experiences I had with mysticism and ties these occult practices into the events of the late sixties in ways that recall the dark side of the hippy movement, as with the Manson Family and John Linley Frazier.
There are many other notable works, including Floating Dragon (1983), Mr. X (1999), and multiple short story collections such as Houses Without Doors, and 5 Stories, to name a few. Straub was a five-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, was nominated twice as many times, and was also a World Fantasy Award Winner and recipient of the August Derleth Award. Despite all this, it might be easy to say that Peter Straub was an underrated author.
More than likely, most readers first encountered Straub after his phenomenal collaboration with Stephen King, The Talisman from 1984. Here, Straub’s distinct contributions are evident, as he matches King word for word, which is no small feat.
The Talisman follows twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer, who discovers an alternate reality that exists within “The Territories”, a strange world consisting of “twinners”, who are parallel versions of people existing in the “real” world. His quest is for the magical talisman, in hopes to save his mother from cancer.
In 2001, this was followed up by the next stellar King/Straub collaboration, Black House, which served as a sequel. Black House not only tied into King’s fabled Dark Tower series, but ended on a cliff-hanger, establishing the fact that readers were traveling deeper into the mythical adventure of the Jack Sawyer Trilogy.
Sadly, Peter Straub passed away in 2022, at the age of 79, shortly after the announcement that The Talisman was set to become a Netflix series directed by the Duffer brothers (Stranger Things). Though Straub didn’t live to see the live-action adaptation of this beloved series, he did send notes and ideas off to King as to how he thought the Jack Sawyer Trilogy should end.
King himself recently stated that he’d reread the first two books and was taking notes. He’s also been leaving some cryptic messages about the Dark Tower on his social media pages in recent weeks. Might this mean “Constant Readers” will soon be returning to “The Territories”?
Peter Francis Straub died on September 4th, 2022. This article was meant to pay respects to his contribution to horror. If you’ve never read one of his books, there’s no bad place to start.
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Shel Rogers is retired, a fan of classic horror and science fiction, and enjoys their privacy.
