More on Manly Wade Wellman

Apparently I spoke too soon on the whole, "Who Fears the Devil" thing.  Having finished the book, it's far more than just a string of creepy Appalachian monster tales. 

For one thing, the book builds as it rolls along.  Every few tales John Silverstrings gets a little more detail added to his description.  When he confronts later supernatural creatures, he uses knowledge learned from earlier confrontations.  John as a character gets a little deeper and a little deeper with each story.

Note the word 'confronts' in the previous paragraph.  This isn't a monster hunter book.  Sometimes John fights monsters - he literally punches them in the jaw.  Sometimes he watches while the monsters deliver some much needed justice to a well deserving scoundrel.  And sometimes John even redeems the monsters.  In at least one case he fixes the monster by fixing the monster up with a wife.  You wouldn't see that in today's pink-slime sf/f.

I use the term 'monsters' loosely.  Some of these supernatural creatures are true monsters, some are lost wayfarers reminiscent of Lovecraft's Elder Things, and some are humans corrupted by power.  The classic evil witches and sorcerers in this book are all different from each other and feature some fairly Lovecraft-esque degeneracy, but they are all monstrous in their own way.

The best part of this book, though?  It's a very uplifting book.

Numerous passages proclaim that the night cannot stand against the day, and even though it is never quoted, the reader is frequently reminded of the passage in the Bible that the gates of hell cannot prevail.  Going into the book, I had thought John's silver string guitar would be the magic +5 weapon that solves everything, but more often than not it was a non-entity.  Sure, the silver helps.  Sure, the songs of hope and light can drive back the darkness.  But most often, it was John's simple goodness that guided him down the right path and allowed him to withstand the hurricanes of evil power.

During this haunting season, its nice to be reminded that the monsters have their own fears.  Even the devil himself flees before the light.  It's great sustenance for the soul in a time when Hollywood is falling all over itself to tell the world that all is darkness and life in meaningless and sometimes monsters kill regular people for no reason and there's nothing - nothing! - you can do but accept the cold harsh truth of existence and the futility of trying to do right by others.  It's hard to imagine a book like this being made by the bleak people of Hollywood.  It's just too darn hopeful.

Even in cases where Hollywood allows for some victory, it must always be transitory.  Witness the long dénouement of the current monster movie golden child - Stranger Things.  Yes, the monster is defeated, but only at great cost.  And!  It planted worm babies in Will's stomach with it's throat-dong, so it's got that going for it.  Seriously, did nobody else notice that this program showed an alien raping a ten year old boy's face and impregnating the kid in the process?  Fun for the whole family!

Getting back to Manly Wade Wellman...

And the romance!  There's actually a lot of romance in this book.  A touch of it with John in fine episodic television style, but mainly the romance is between the people John encounters and aids.  It's all very chaste and very suggested.  Not suggestive, just suggested.  It isn't overtly in your face, but tasteful and pleasant and...well, romantic.  It stands in stark comparison to what passes for romance in the few Magic Girl books I've read.

Really, it's hard to know where to end this post.  There's so much right with this book that I wish I could remember who recommended it.  I'd really like to thank them for several hours of fun reading, and a bunch of supernatural tales that didn't leave me wanting to take a shower to rid myself of the clinging stink of evil.

The Pulp Archivist

I shouldn't be telling you this.  It feels a bit like a magician giving away his secrets.  Most of what I write here is a response to or inspired by other bloggers.  If you start reading those bloggers, you might have less use for me.  If that's so, so be it.  Far better for you to get the words straight from the horse's mouth* than to get it through my own off-centered filter.

Fellow traveler and fellow contributor to the Puppy of the Month Book Club, Nathan Housley, has his own blog up and running now.  It's called, The Pulp Archivist, and it's well worth a follow.  I particularly appreciated his pointing to Dean Wesley Smith's analysis of pulp writing speed. 

Nathan's thoughts helped put the Lester Dent Formula into context for me:

He describes various levels, up to Pulp Speed Six, or 2,000,000 original words per year.  That's more words in one year than G. R. R. Martin has published for the entire Song of Ice and Fire series over the course of twenty years.  Those levels of production explain the pulps' reliance on structures and formulas, as organization assists in creation.  When you're relying on one cent a word to pay the bills, streamlining the creative process is a must.

He also delves into the classic pulp works, both written and spoken.  If you love the pulps, and if you appreciate his detailed write-ups at the Puppy of the Month as much as I do, you should be reading his blog on the regular. 

Who Fears the Devil

Caught up in too much work, too much writing, too much pulp revolutioning, too much wargaming, and too much fathering, what's a man to do?

Combine them as much as possible.  I wargame with my teen son and tween daughter.  (If you stretch the definition a bit, I even wargame with my three year old.)  I read Cirsova to my four year old, and now thanks to a G+ recommendation, I read Manly Wade Wellman to my four year old, too.  It's October, so it's time for a little creepy story telling. Also, these tales are a part of our cultural heritage - at least while we still have our own culture, anyway - and after reading the Hobbit several times over to each of the older kids, it's time to expand our horizons beyond the Tolkien.

Silver John is a wandering troubadour of the Appalachian country, and Manly Wade brings you the stories of his encounters with the monsters of Americana.  Most of these stories were published in the old pulp magazine Planet Stories, and so they may be available for free somewhere on the internet, but it was worth the three dollar price point to save the hassle of finding them, collecting them, and wrestling them onto my ancient cell phone.  (Late 2014 is Babylonian-style ancient in cell phone years.  I'm using a museum piece.)

These are some fun little stories.  The monsters of each story are not like the standard humanoid theme and variation that you see in most modern fantasy, nor are they simple European Grimm's tales moved over to the New World.  Of course, you do see Appalachian style witches, but for the most part these are unique critters vaguely described and organically grown out of the rocky Appalachian soil.  Wellman has a gift for character descriptions that provide detailed characterizations and set the stage for the story to follow, and the downhome style of speech used by the first person narrator is note perfect for the stories he tells.

If you love short fiction, and are in the mood for some atmospheric and moody Creepshow style monster tales, this is well worth a shot.