Literary fiction can travel quite a distance on boldness and inspiration, but genre novels require, above all, craftsmanship. The horror novel, in particular, relies on carefully planned and executed effects, and the author who embarks on the goal of terrifying the reader must remain as cold-blooded and calculated as an arch criminal in producing them. There is no place to hide in this kind of storytelling: these narratives aim at a visceral transformation in the audience—the spine must tingle! hairs must stand on end! the pulse must race!—and the writer who fails on these counts, fails absolutely. Cleverness and experimentation on their own can’t pull this off, but method and craftsmanship can.
Critics who have developed their literary tastebuds on more effete fare may easily misjudge the degree of difficulty involved in such endeavors. Indeed, the craft of terror can be, in many situations, just as demanding as the requirements of stream-of-consciousness, meta-narrative and the other academically sanctioned approaches to fiction. Yet even today, critics will sometimes dismiss H.P. Lovecraft , one of the most powerful prose stylists of his day, with smug putdowns. (Peter Damien recently proclaimed that "he was a godawful writer. He was so bad. I really cannot stress this enough.”) And they ignore the time-tested successes of Richard Matheson , Stephen King and other masters of the horror genre, at times even pointing to these authors’ popularity as self-evident proof of their lack of skill. Not long ago, they did the same to Edgar Allan Poe — at the time of his death he was lambasted by his own biographer as a drunkard, drug addict and lunatic. In fact , American literati had to be re-educated by the French on the merits of their own native son.
I say this as preamble to a discussion of Peter Straub’s 1979 novel Ghost Story which might, at first glance, be considered a mere…well, a mere ghost story. Nothing could be more familiar, less experimental. If the purpose of the postmodern novel is to call attention to its existence as a fictional construct, the goal in Straub’s work is the exact opposite. For its effects to work, they must remain unobtrusive and taken-for-granted. The last thing we want a horror novel to do is to call attention to the behind-the-scenes manipulations that undergird its effects—as with a magic trick, the revelation of the mechanisms at play dispel the magic, or in this instance, the horror.
A ghost story, what could be simpler? But if you mapped out a flow chart of this book on a sheet of paper…you would soon need a bigger sheet of paper. And then you would probably fill up the larger sheet, and require a big slab of butcher paper, enough maybe to wrap a ten-pound roast, a slab of steaks, and a pork butt. Then, and only then, you might have sufficient space to sketch a blueprint for this book.
Straub starts with a gritty interlude of a strange kidnapping involving an anxious abductor and a strangely complacent abductee, but we only later realize that this tale falls chronologically almost at the conclusion of the story. We will also learn, hundreds of pages later, that the victim in this part of the story is a manifestation of the villain in a later (that is to say, earlier) juncture in the narrative. I may start to confuse you if I mention that this malleable character appears in at least four other forms, under as many different names, in Ghost Story . Yes, my abbreviated description makes it sound confusing, but once you are immersed in Straub's novel, the complex twists and turns are handled so deftly that you never notice the intricacy of the plot or the convolutions of the structure.
What else do we have here? Well, where should I begin? At least a half-dozen characters seem ready to emerge as the main protagonist of this novel, and Straub moves them through their paces as if he were a chess grandmaster anxious to prove that even pawns can do the works of rooks and knights. Dozens of subsidiary characters also enter into the proceedings, and they often get thrust into the center stage to push the drama forward. Almost as many ghosts appear, and each of these has an agenda and a very personal way of haunting. Several romances flourish…and end in unexpected ways, and these aren't—as often the case in horror novels—grafted awkwardly on to the plot, but carry it forward in crucial ways. Various haunted houses figure in the story, each with its own quirks. Somehow Straub manages to tie all these strands together with nary a loose thread showing.
The chronology, for its part, never really falls into a sequential pattern, and the full story eventually requires a number of leaps and dashes across a period of more than fifty years, and the geographical settings span the entire United States, from the Berkeley campus to upstate New York to Florida. For a lengthy stretch, Straub moves into first-person narration, but then switches back to a semi-omniscient third-person.
I could go on and on, but as even this thumbnail sketch makes clear, this is an ambitious story with many moving parts. I could praise it in many ways, but perhaps the best way of doing so is by comparison with the acknowledged leader in the field of contemporary horror. In my opinion, Peter Straub is the closest rival to Stephen King in matters of formal mastery, the nuts and bolts of constructing a well-told horror tale, among living writers.
But here’s the key thing: the reader is hardly aware of the flurry of activity behind the scenes, since the action on stage is so compelling. People are dying under strange circumstances in Milburn, New York, and our anxious reader simply wants to find out what malevolent power is behind it, and how it can be stopped. In time, we learn that a long dark history is behind these happenings, and perhaps an even more ominous one lies ahead. Yet the complexity unfolds so gradually, and with such irresistible momentum, that the reader plows ahead oblivious to the deft planning and execution required to construct the lengthy chain of events that comprise Straub’s narrative.
The epicenter of these horrors is as unlikely as can be. A group of stately older gentlemen in the town of Milburn have been gathering together for friendly banter and refreshments for the last half century. The participants include two lawyers, a doctor, a retired hotel owner, and a ghostwriter (the pun may be intended). They call themselves the Chowder Society—the name applied derisively by one of the member’s wife—and these pillars of the community engage in a host of harmless rituals. They dress in formal attire for their meetings, and their lighthearted gatherings take an eerie turn after the unexpected death of one of their members—the ghostwriter, of course. In the aftermath, they now spend their time together sharing ghost stories. But these ghost stories have an uncanny way of intruding into their day-to-day life, or—perhaps even more upsetting—their recurring nightmares.
Occasionally Straub gets flashy—and is not above inserting erudite references to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen Crane into the text. More often, the allusions are subtle ones, such as the nod of the head to the Bates Motel of Psycho fame or to the horror films Carrie and Night of the Living Dead . But our author here isn't really anxious to call attention to himself. His writing is always supple, never awkward, and rarely ostentatious. Every detail is meant to fit into a larger picture, and those in turn eventually fit in with other images on an even larger canvas.
And, yes, this work succeeds on the most important level of all for a horror story—it provokes dread and anxiety. It keeps you turning the pages. It is haunting, in all the best and worst ways.
Of course, we expect that in a ghost story. But even authors who scorn genre and aspire to highbrow legitimacy might benefit from reading this particular Ghost Story . Believe it or not, they might even learn some writing lessons from it. For those who look down on the horror genre that could be the scariest takeaway of them all from this well-honed book.
Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from Basic Books.
In my opinion, Peter Straub is the closest rival to Stephen King in matters of formal mastery, the nuts and bolts of constructing a well-told horror tale, among living writers.