In almost every horror anthology there's one recurring name that piques my attention because the stories under that name almost always land among my highlights: Joe R. Lansdale. I also keep on hearing how great he is, even more so since I started working at a crime and mystery bookshop, because Lansdale shines both in horror and crime fiction. So, you know how you have an endless back list of authors' names you want to read some day? Well, Lansdale was one of those names perpetually in the back of my head. I even have his
The Best of Joe R. Lansdale sitting on my shelf, because you know me, I'll buy it and let it sit there for years before finally reading a book and then get frustrated because I had this gem in my home all these years.
Yeah, so it was only when Lansdale assembled his short stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft in the collection In the Mad Mountains that I finally took the time to read a full Lansdale book, and let me tell you, it was worth it.
The collection comprises eight stories which more or less, directly or only implicitly, with humor or seriously, feature the Weird Mythos. Before every story he gives a short explanation as to how the idea to write that specific story came to him, which is neat and interesting.
The book opens with a trope which is a personal favorite of mine: a Faustian bargain in order to be able to play music or an instrument like no other can. The Bleeding Shadow struck a chord with me, pardon my pun, in which the learned music is a kind of literal language, a spell more like, that can provoke and cause things to happen in reality. The bargain conventionally struck with the devil is of course made with other eldritch entities here, entities who are even less fond of humanity than Lucifer.
A mix of various tropes and themes from all over seems to be a kind of signature style for Lansdale, an amusing pattern that can be intentionally laugh-out-loud funny such as in the second story, Dread Island, in which our main characters are Huckleberry Finn and Jim who end up on an island populated by the Brer People and also various Great Old Ones causing mayhem and destruction. I have a rudimentary knowledge on Tom
Sawyer, but the quasi "naive" voice
of Huck, and his funny conversations with Jim as well as the sarcastic remarks of the latter, were enjoyable even for me as a lay person. Similarly, The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning pastiches The Murders in the Rue Morgue as well as The Thing on the Doorstep, and the titular In the Mad Mountains combines both At the Mountains of Madness and Titanic, and both stories follow the above pattern.
As enjoyable as this kind of blending and mixing of tropes and fictional figures, then pouring them into a Lovecraftian mold is, it can, just a little bit, tire you out, and I personally wanted to read more original fiction by the author himself. I found them in two stories: The Tall Grass, which was by any measure one of the finest horrors I have read and really succeeded in creeping me out in this day and age, as well as Starlight, Eyes Bright, atmospheric, eerie, quiet, an isolation almost palpable...
In the Mad Mountains is a very unique, very original collection all in all. Lansdale can do horror, and he can do humor, and both mixed, and at times that's exactly what I want to read. I'm glad to have finally broken into Lansdale territory, and glad to see his work is so extensive. There's so much to discover here.
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