Horror Street: Interview with Jack Ketchum

Interview with Jack Ketchum
[Alessandro Manzetti] You have chosen as a pseudonym the name of a famous bandit, Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, the king of robbing trains, hanged in 1901 in Clayton. What is the reason for this choice? What do you have in common with Black Jack Ketchum? Do you consider yourself an outlaw, at least in literature?
[Jack Ketchum] Outlaws usually get jail time or worse. So no, I don't consider myself an outlaw, though I do have a piece in The Outlaw Bible Of American Literature. A lot of my writing has a hard edge, I'll admit, but I'm a softie at heart. What I liked about Ketchum was, first, his name, which could be pronounced "catch him". Then I loved his famous last words before they hanged him on the gallows. "I'll be hell before you finish breakfast, boys. Let her rip!"
[AM] Before becoming a full-time writer, you were singer, actor, teacher, timber seller, even literary agent for Scott Meredith. What can you tell us about this experience? Is it true that among your customers there was Henry Miller?
[JK] Yes, I was Henry's agent for a few years. Delightful man, delightful experience. The full story is in my little book of memoirs, Book of Souls. I worked as an agent for about three and a half years, handling big projects for the likes of Henry, Robert Bloch, Nick Tosches and Marion Zimmer Bradley and smaller projects for Arthur C. Clark, Norman Mailer, Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) and many others. But the job was grueling, often extremely distasteful. I came to call it The Cosmodemonic Literary Agency. I learned a huge amount about publishing and met a lot of editors, enough to get me started on my own career, but eventually I had to quit or go crazy.

foto di Steve Thornton

[AM] Your first novel, Off Season (1981) is characterized by stark realism, you use language as a razor, the scenes are very brutal and bloody. The dynamics of history and the theme of cannibalism make us think immediately to The Hills Have Eyes by Wes Craven. What's different in Off Season?
[JK] Something must have been in the air back then about cannibalism because Craven was making his movie about the same time I started writing Off Season. I think my book tried to go for more realism, fewer plot-holes, and no dogs. Though don't get me wrong, it's a fun movie.
[AM] It 's reality that is always the leading actor of your stories, nothing supernatural, the fantastic gives way to the daily horror, to a disturbing iper-reality. Your novel The Girl Next Door (1989) is inspired by a true story, the one of Gertrude Baniszewski and its torture, children and youths involved in violence and nightmares, a story that touches some of the themes of The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. What impressed you about this story to convince you to write a novel and what differences are there in your interpretation? Was the film adaptation of Gregory Wilson (The Girl Next Door 2007) able to express more or less than the book?
[JK] There's a lot to write about in this story, a lot of themes and issues. Isolation, secrets, herd-mentality, how adults manipulate adolescents, women who hate women, loneliness, sisterhood, the lure and nature of cruelty -- and I expended them to include the feel-good phoniness of post-WW2 American suburbia by pushing the story back in time, and of course, injecting an element of innocence and young love. I think the movie's extremely faithful to the spirit, characters and themes of the book -- and Greg '50s got the ambience down entirely. I felt that everybody involved wanted to protect the integrity of the book. Pretty rare for the movies. Cast, crew and screenwriters all did a terrific job. Because of money problems they had to change my ending a bit, but all told I'm very proud of it

foto di Steve Thornton

[AM] The collection Peaceble Kingdom (2002) contains stories that span several topics and genres, from science fiction to noir, from suspense stories to horror. Among surreal pages there’s always the man that is in the center of your stories, with all the shades of darkness in his heart. In Closing Time and Other Stories collection (2007) the goals seem the same, with greater penetration on human psychology, which you can explore through a large mirror where you reflect violence, madness, irrationality, the worst side of ourselves. We see ourselves in that mirror, after all. Could you choose two of these stories and talk about it?
[JK] My two most popular pieces in Closing Time and Others Stories are Return and Closing Time, and they couldn't be more different, so I might as well talk about them. Returns is one my very rare ghost stories, about a guy who comes back after being mowed down in traffic to his angry alcoholic wife, who may or may not be about to do something awful to his well-loved cat. I'd just put down a well-loved cat of my own so the emotional content runs pretty deep. Closing Time is something of a milestone for me. I was talking to Peter Straub one afternoon shortly after the World Trade Center fell and we found that we had the same problem. We could think of nothing to write about more terrible than what our City had just witnessed -- we were well and truly blocked. After some months Closing Time was the one that broke it for me. I decided to write about terrorism, on a small personal scale, set in the direct aftermath of 9/ll, interwoven with the story of my breakup with a woman I'd loved for some years. I thought I was writing about terrorism. But when I read it over I realized that no-- I was writing about loss.

foto di Steve Thornton

[AM] Stephen King has described the short story like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger, how would you define it?
[JK] A brief affair, not a marriage.
[AM] In your novel, Lost (2001) your style seems different from other previous works, the writing becomes mesmerizing, despite a very powerful opening, explore the details of the characters through a microscope, making evident the smaller parts. These differences in your language, rhythm and atmosphere, are due to the desire to experience? What do you think of this novel?
[JK] like this novel, though a lot of people I know don't. They never seem to be able to really explain why, though. But as to style, well, I'm no stylist. You won't immediately pick up one of my novels or stories and hear the same voice each time. I'm no Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. I adapt the style and structure of the story to the characters and the situations I put them in. You'll hear echoes of McCarthy in Red, for instance, and a bit of Raymond Chandler in my Stroup yarns, like the novella Sheep Meadow Story. I wanted to sound like Henry Miller once. I didn't.

foto di Steve Thornton

[AM] How was born your novel The Crossings, a western-horror set in Arizona, after the Mexican War? Thinking about the wild west, have you ever thought of writing a novel featuring Tom ”Black Jack” Ketchum, your namesake?
[JK] Black Jack's real story wasn't all that interesting, colorful though he was. I'll leave him to the history books. The Crossings started out its life as a screenplay. I got about 15 pages into it and then put it down in favor of some other project, some book or other, and then I saw Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood's film, which was so damn good I pulled it out again for another look and decided it was prose first, then maybe down the line, a movie.

foto di Steve Thornton

[AM] How do you imagine your future right now?
[JK] In love and unintubated.
[AM] And now, two Horror Street classic questions:
In this heading we try to learn about new landscape of horror literature, through direct experience of the authors. What are the new trend of horror? Could you name some new authors who are conducting original projects?
[JK] The only discernable new trend I see in horror is pretty discouraging -- sexy teenage vampires. The people who are writing really good, original stuff, pushing the envelope, like Graham Joyce, T.M. Wright, Tim Lebbon, King and Straub, Ed Lee, Thomas Tessier, Joyce Carol Oates, Ian McEwan, Joe Hill, Stewart O'Nan, Charlie Huston, Ian Banks, Elizabeth Massie -- I'm leaving out a lot more, I know -- aren't newcomers but old hands, except for Hill. I think Sarah Langan is doing some really good work, and Rio Youers

[AM] We leave the reader to imagine of walking along a dark and lonely road going back home, and having to turn the corner. Who (or what) does he find around the corner?
[JK] Way back in college I wrote a short screenplay called Small Woods Where I Met Myself. I'll go with that one.
Thank you Jack (Dallas) for being the guest of Black Place blog (Il Posto Nero)
Tomorrow in Palermo at Palab there will be a Lost private screening, premiere in italian, with author Jack Ketchum, director Chris Sivertson, and lead actor Marc Senter after the film, via skype for Q&A and cocktails. Info: 331.273.4118 - 329.787.4001
Author's Profile
Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym for Dallas Mayr (born in Livingston, New Jersey on November 10, 1946). He is the recipient of four Bram Stoker Awards and three further nominations. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, including The Girl Next Door (2007 film) and Red (2008 film). In 2011 Ketchum received the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award for outstanding contribution to the horror genre.
He wrote several novels, like Off Season (1980), The Girl Next Door (1989), Offsprings (1991), Red (1995), Ladies’ Night (1997) Right to Life (1998), The Lost (2001), The Crossings (2004), Old Flamse (2008), The Woman (2010), and short fiction like The Box (1994), The Rifle (1995), Sheep Meadow Story (2001), Gone (2002), Closing Time (2003), Returns (2005), appeared in his collection Peaceble Kingdom (2002) and Closing Time and Other Stories (2007). Films adaptations: The Lost (2006) by director Chris Sivertson, The Girl Next Door (2007) by Gregory Wilson, Red (2008) by Lucky McKee, Offsprings (2009) by Andrew van den Houten. The film adaptation of The Woman was completed in 2011, co-written by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee. Web Site