Joseph Payne Brennan

[David A. Riley]

Joseph Payne Brennan's collection, The Feaster From Afar and Other Ghastly Tales is out from Midnight House within the next few weeks.

"A project over ten years in the making! At long last, Stefan Dziemianowicz and John Pelan have assembled the definitive collection of Joseph Payne Brennan’s non-Lucius Leffing tales. This remarkable set will run four volumes, each containing a mix of the classic, the familiar, and the obscure. Nearly one hundred stories collected in a beautiful, four-volume set. From his early appearances in Weird Tales through the run of Macabre magazine in the 1950s, to the renaissance of the supernatural tale in the 1970s, Joseph Payne Brennan was admired for his lyrical prose and outré vision. In this first collection we present a mix of some of Brennan’s finest supernatural tales ranging from regional ghost stories to tales of cosmic dread that rank with the best of Lovecraft, Wandrei, & Smith. The Feaster from Afar & Other Ghastly Tales will be strictly limited to just 500 copies at $45.00 the copy."



I already have this on order and am looking forward to getting this in my hands.

David

[carolinec]

Looks like superb artwork too!
;D

[David A. Riley]

I have just learned that Midnight House's Joseph Payne Brennan collection The Feaster From Afar is now shipping.
And by all accounts sales are going fast.
Anyone wishing to order a copy should email [e-mail]

David

[David A. Riley]

Midnight House has a new website, which can be used to order copies of their books, including this:

www.darkmidhouse.com/

This is the book's cover:



I've now finished readi8ng this book, and can recommend it wholeheartedly. It's a cracking good read.

David

[dem]

I see they're planning to publish all his work over four volumes. Are they doing it chronologically, in which case I'd guess Feaster From Afar would have much of Nine Horrors & A Dream and the stories from Macabre (?), or, as is the case with their two Birkin volumes to date, is it a mix of stories from different stages of his career? I do like Brennan's work, am just not sure I'd want four volumes of it above some previous Midnight House titles. Wasn't it them who reprinted J. U. Nicolson's Fingers Of Fear, for example?

Can't say I'm a big fan of "strictly limited editions." Provided a book is selling, why not keep it in print as long as people want it? As if this game isn't elitist enough as things stand.

[David A. Riley]

I can't say i'm a big fan of "strictly limited editions." Provided a book is selling, why not keep it in print as long as people want it? As if this game isn't elitist enough as things stand.

I must admit I agree with you there, Dem. Although Midnight House books are not really "strictly limited editions", but are normally published in a print run of 500 copies. Not large, but hardly limited, compared to most small press print runs these days, including those published by POD, which Midnight House's books aren't. The usual limited print run is about 200 to 300 copies. As a result some of the older Midnight House books are still available direct from the publisher at their original prices. In fact, there's a copy of Charles Birkin's The Harlem Horror which I will be ordering shortly. I've been promising myself for some time to delve into his stuff and this looks a good place to start.



Yes, they did do Fingers of Fear.



I think it is probably still available from them.

As for the Brennan book, I normally take some time to work my way through a one author collection, but I managed this in only a few days, he was so readable. Puts to shame many of today's practioners in the genre. If the next three volumes are of this class, I will certainly be buying them.

David

[dem]

If you get a chance, could you post a list of contents for Feaster .... And do please let us know how you get on with Birkin, Mr. Riley! On the face of it, The Harlem Horror is a slightly curious, non-supernatural selection from all points of his career, but ... what do I know? To put you in the mood:

In the words of Charles Birkin, the tale of terror "is a mirror held up to reflect the face of evil, a frighteningly distorted representation of the corruption of the human soul".

A lot of people have missed the point of what Birkin says and what he writes. For he is probably the finest writer of Grand Guignol this country has produced but has seldom been given his due credit. All too often his work has been dismissed by macabre enthusiasts as just tasteless horror, mere sensationalism and his inclusion in anthologies of such stories has probably not helped. Yet a close examination of his stories shows something else - a literary craftsman who is an expert in his chosen field.

- Hugh Lamb, introducing Dinner In A Private Room, Cold Fear (W. H. Allen, 1977)

[David A. Riley]

Dem wrote:

If you get a chance, could you post a list of contents for Feaster ....

285 pages. Stories include:

Slime
The Corpse of Charlie Rull
On the Elevator
Canavan's Back Yard
The Willow Platform
The Seventh Incantation
City of the Seven Winds
Black Thing at Midnight
Canavan Calling
The North Knoll
Monton
The Other Things
Long Hollow Swamp
Vampires from the Void
Extermination
The Gulf of Night
The House on Stillcroft Street
The Business about Fred
The Feaster From Afar
The Peril That Lurks Among the Ruins
Forringer's Fortune
Lottman's End
Zombique
The Keeper of the Dust

This book includes an introduction by John Pelan and is illustrated by Allen Koszowski.

Some of the stories were originally published in Weird Tales in the 1950s, The Magazine of Horror, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Macabre, Whispers and The Satyr's Head & Other Tales of Terror.

David

[dem]

Now having seen the contents list, I can well understand your enthusiasm. I only have copies of maybe twenty-odd of his stories, and the fact that Pelan and Dziemianowicz include most of them in here suggests they've begun their proposed 4 volumes with something approaching a greatest hits collection (of his most famous weird terror tales, it seems to me that only Levitation and The Horror Of Chiltern Castle are missing ?). Although he was still contributing horror fiction to the esteemed likes of Whispers in the 'eighties, i've always thought of Brennan in terms of the 'fifties, probably because the animated ooze classic Slime is so reminiscent of the lovable Horror-SF B movies of the decade, most notably the misunderstood-juvenile-delinquent-saves-world classic, The Blob. Another personal favourite, Black Thing At Midnight - the hideously mutilated corpse of beachcomber old man Fallon returns to the empty Seabreeze Manor, and destroys hapless Jenkins the Janitor - has a winning touch of the E.C.'s about it and would have made for a great strip had Graham "Ghastly" Ingels been let loose on it. Not entirely dissimilar is the earlier On The Elevator: A rotting ship is dislodged from the sea bed during a storm and pieces of wreckage wash ashore. Presently a figure in a rotting black raincoat slopes through the lobby of the Atlas Hotel on Ocean Street and into the elevator before the night-porter can get a good look at him. A piercing scream from the woman in 311 heralds a night of terror. The Business About Fred from The Satyr's Head adopts a far more gentle approach as Brennan demonstrates he's as equally at home with a gentle ghost as he is a malevolent festering corpse, while Cavanan's Back Yard and it's sequel feature a bookseller whose garden was hexed by a witch, appears to extend forever and God help anyone who wanders too far from the house! Cosmic terror, monsters from outer space, rotting dead fellows coming back from the grave - all this from a guy who was an acclaimed poet and proper pulp author. What more could you wish for?

[billdemo2]

After reading The Horror At Chilton Castle in a Mary Danby anthology and Slime in a Jon Pertwee anthology, I am very keen to read more of Brennan's output. The comparison to EC Comics is very apt. I can imagine the tales you mention fitting seamlessly into the pages of Tales from the Crypt.

Another great story by Brennan is "The Calamander Chest". Unfortunately, I haven't managed to read the story myself, but I dead hear it being read by Vincent Price in one of the spoken word albums he released, and it was certainly a memorable tale.

[kooshmeister]

I've only recently discovered Mr. Brennan myself, though his short story Slime, specifically a very wonderfully eerie audio version read by Edward E. French on YouTube (which makes judicious use of ominous pipe organs, really giving it that old-fashioned horror movie feel). I learned of the short story from the comments on Liz Kingsley's review of The Blob, and it sounded so good I had to read it. Failing to find it anywhere online, I couldn't believe my luck when I found French's YouTube channel. I listened to each of the three parts over three nights and have fallen madly in love with it, enough that I just nabbed The Shapes of Midnight (which actually would make a good alternate title for Slime) off of eBay, primarily because it is the story depicted on the cover. And what a cover!



That cover is awesome. I miss horror covers like these. This beats William Essex's own Slime any day (and I love that cover, which is probably the most exciting thing about a frankly bloated and meandering book that could've done with being half the length it actually was).

Am I the only one who thinks Officer Storr, as depicted there, looks an awful lot like Michael J. Fox? "Jeez, Doc, this is heavy!"

Of the other stories in the book, I am particularly interested in reading The Corpse of Charlie Rull, Canavan's Back Yard and Who Was He?, based on what I've learned of their plots. Charlie Rull in particular really does sound like something straight out of EC Comics, and which would probably star an aged Lon Chaney, Jr. if it were adapted into a movie, similar to Indestructible Man.

[dem]

Koosh, if you like Slime, you can't fail to appreciate Victor Norwood's outrageous plagiarism of same, Night Of The Black Horror. Great cover art a bonus.

Victor Norwood - Night Of The Black Horror (Badger #44, Jan. 1962)

[ramseycampbell]

I wonder if Joe ever learned about this? He was convinced that the film The Blob plagiarised his tale.

[kooshmeister]

Jan 18, 2019 20:41:26 GMT dem said:

Koosh, if you like Slime, you can't fail to appreciate Victor Norwood's outrageous plagiarism of same, Night Of The Black Horror. Great cover art a bonus.

Victor Norwood - Night Of The Black Horror (Badger #44, Jan. 1962)

On it!

Meanwhile, I also listened to Edward E. French's readings of The Corpse of Charlie Rull and Diary of a Werewolf. The latter may have juuuust edged out Slime as my favorite Brennan story. It really felt like something Lovecraft would've written. The unnamed narrator's descent into utter madness is believably detailed by Mr. Brennan, and I found it interesting that, some early attempts to catch rabbits aside, he expresses no particular desire to hunt and kill animals - only his fellow humans (and in fact mourns for all the bears and foxes and such the people of Juniper Hill kill thinking they're "the thing"). It gave him a sympathetic quality he otherwise lacked.

As for Charlie Rull, well, it was a little too short for my liking, but hot damn was it violent for a 50s story. The death of the serial killer in particular was nasty, especially the way Charlie hurls the body parts and entrails onto the highway. Imagine being a happy, 50s nuclear American family driving along minding your own business when suddenly arms, legs, guts and blood start raining onto the windshield, hood and road...

What I like is how in each story so far, Brennan doesn't fall back on the "idiotic cops" crutch of so many other writers. Chief Underbeck, Sheriff Maceland (sp?) and the unnamed captain in Charlie Rull have all been depicted as levelheaded individuals more than up to the task which confronts them (save Underbeck, who at least has the good sense to realize he's in way over his head and call in the Army). I like it when the plot doesn't require the characters to be morons to function.

Also, despite the fact good triumphs over evil at the end, each story has somehow still has a bizarrely fatalistic/nihilistic tone (again, very Lovecraftian; fitting since AFAIK Brennan was a big fan of ol' H.P.), making the victories seem somehow hollow/pyrrhic. I like it.

Anyway, I'll definitely check out Night of the Black Horror, dem!

EDIT: Bah! EBay didn't turn up anything, and they want $50+ for it on Amazon. Phooey. Payday it is, then (I also still pine for the elusive Rodent Mutation) someday)! And speaking of straight up ripoffs, anyone read The Crawling Dark and Demonic Color by Pauline Dunn, which were not only apparently the same book published twice under different titles, but also a total ripoff of Dean Koontz's Phantoms?



A shame, as those are two more of the very kinds of covers I meant when I was praising The Shapes of Midnight (Crawling Dark's in particular reminds me of the cover for the novelization of John Carpenter's The Fog).

[kooshmeister]

Was able to grab Nine Horrors and a Dream on eBay. Talked the seller down from $100 to about $62.



Definitely on a Brennan kick lately.