Masques

by J N Williamson

  JNW: How is horror differing?

  MATHESON: Horror seems more teeth-gritted, these days—as though people are saying, “If you are going to make me forget what I’m really afraid of, you’re going to have to increase your horrors geometrically until my flesh crawls, my stomach gurgles, and my screams become semi-human.”

  It sort of reminds me of De Sade’s 120 Days in Sodom. (I read that as research for the film De Sade; that’s carrying research pretty far, I’d say.)

  JNW: True devotion!

  MATHESON: These guys in this castle can’t maintain their excitement with the simple perversions. They get worse and worse, until they are so abominable that sex has been left far behind and only horror continues. And continues—and continues. I see this tendency in movie audiences these days.

  And in a lot of writers happy to provide a full measure of gut-wrenching horror; all the market will bear.

  JNW: Sometimes without the slightest originality of idea.

  MATHESON: A similar thing is happening with the plethora of horror novels, I think. I don’t read them but I see the covers on the book racks and they get more ghastly all the time. For some reason, children seem to be fixated-on these days; why, I don’t know. I suppose Blatty started it with his book. Are children now the outside agency of all evil? One would think so to look at all the covers with those crazy-eyed kids lurking in attics, on the verge of committing some atrocity. What happened to the age of innocence? Psychologists talk about the pity that young people are being deprived of their childhoods, being forced prematurely into the adult world.

  JNW: Which isn’t what it’s cracked-up to be, even when it is cracked-up!

  MATHESON: Horror writers seem to be laying a guilt trip on children. Plus, they don’t think they’re going to live very long because of the atom bomb. Poor children! It is no comfort to me to believe that, whatever happens . . . they will survive. While they’re here in our world, it should be a little nicer for them, a little more nurturing.

  JNW: Covers to my own books underline what you’ve said about “crazy-eyed kids,” but largely, Richard, the covers have had little to do with what’s inside the books. My first novel, The Ritual, shows on the cover a sort of young Buddha with a single growing horn. My Playboy book, The Banished, depicts zombie-like children with glowing eyes. And my Dell title, Babe’s Children, pictures one nasty-looking small boy and a ghost-like double. But in all cases, in the novels themselves, the children were victims, not catalysts of evil. I believe this happens to a large number of writers in horror, but whether it’s the artist’s fault or an editor’s, I don’t know. What about another cycle of horror? Will publishers and filmmakers be more selective next time?

  MATHESON: When they dominated the market—when the public sought its diversion through books and magazines, then weekly movies—publishers and filmmakers could afford to be more selective. They were always in business to make money—isn’t that the American Way?—but they didn’t always have to stoop to the lowest denominator, appeal to the lowest in man’s nature in order to make that money. Now television has forced their hands. Predictably, they are going for the guts. They want to stay in business. Not all (are tasteless). There are men of honor in this world now, as there have always been. But most of them? Greed, man, greed! The single human motivation which, I believe, has brought more misery into this world than any other.

  JNW: Does Richard Matheson see himself as “typecast”?

  MATHESON: Of course. Articles refer to me as “Science fiction writer Richard Matheson.” I’m not . . . but categorization is always rampant. People need to pigeon hole. Not just writers. Everyone. In every way. I happen to accept a good deal about astrology, but where is this pigeon-holing more apparent—and cringe-making—than when you meet someone at a party and they ask what sign you are, and you tell them and they smile smirkingly, and say, “Oh. One of those”? End of conversation. You have just taken up residence in a pigeon hole.

  JNW: I believe it has to do with a practical need to have a line about another person while simultaneously evading the obligations arising from real friendship.

  MATHESON: There’s a wonderful song in the show Working. A young woman sings, “Just a Housewife.” It’s a sad song and very telling. Another vivid example of categorization. I’m not trying to say categories don’t exist. What I am railing against is categorization based on prejudgment, with a total lack of full evidence. In that world, I am “Science fiction writer Richard Matheson.”

  JNW: Have you made peace with that kind of thing? MATHESON: No.

  JNW: I’ve never made peace with the way fine supernatural novels by Peter Straub, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Herman Raucher were considered “genre” books but some novels with such elements are treasured by the lit-crits.

  MATHESON: To me, there are no genres. There are good stories and bad stories. The genre idea is an afterthought by publishers or editors . . . a bad afterthought.

  JNW: Hurray!

  MATHESON: But people need it. They understand the world better if everything is on a ready-made shelf. So why fight it? Writers should write the best material they can, then hope they can escape categorization with it. Or, like Stephen King, elevate the category to such a height that it lives right alongside of “mainstream” and usually beats it out, certainly from the standpoint of popularity.

  JNW: TV programs made for sheer entertainment also come under fire. And by the way, isn’t your son’s program another, different kind of fantasy?

  MATHESON: Everything on television is fantasy-adventure. Or fantasy-comedy. Or fantasy-reality.

  JNW: The quantity of violence which offends certain sensibilities doesn’t disturb you?

  MATHESON: I find it amusing that no matter how violent the action, no one ever gets so much as a bruise—from eight to nine o’clock anyway; the magic TV hour when no one gets injured in accidents or fights. That is certainly fantasy!

  JNW: Have you considered writing for The A-Team. Or, knowing another passion of yours, sir, acting on the program?

  MATHESON: No, I haven’t thought of writing for (it); I couldn’t. I don’t know how. It isn’t that simple. And my acting is confined to local theatre groups. I know how difficult it is to be a really good actor and would not attempt to venture out of my shallow depth. I think I could have been a fine actor—just as I think I could have been a fine songwriter or a fine composer. But . . . I never “paid my dues” in these areas. . . . I wish the day of the Renaissance Man were still with us. But I think it went out with royal sponsors. If you have to support four children without a monarch to give you ducats for your work, you tend to narrow your output to those areas which are the most feasible from a commercial standpoint. I did, anyway. My conservative side. So I do the rest as hobbies. I enjoy them immensely but I know my limitations. I regret them but I know them.

  JNW: As an avocational actor, you’re better equipped than many writers to evaluate performers. With what actors would you begin your own ensemble company of players? William Shatner?

  MATHESON: While spending a year and a half preparing my mini-series outline, I took occasional pleasure visualizing performers in various parts . . . Richard Chamberlain. Jane Seymour. Peter Ustinov. Christopher Plummer. George Hearn. Derek Jacobi. John Saxon. Fritz Weaver. Leslie Nielson. Cloris Leachman. Julie Harris. Jose Ferrer. Robert Stephens. Sian Phillips. Burgess Meredith. David Wayne. Jessica Tandy. Viveca Lindfors. Hume Cronyn. Olivier; Gielgud. Ron Moody. Robert

  Foxworth. Timothy Dalton. Pat Hingle. Barbara Harris. Lee Grant. Janet Suzman. Martin Balsam. Jason Robards. Michael Learned. Norman Lloyd. Kate Nelligan. Uta Hagen. Dan O’Herlihy. Maureen Stapleton. Peter Straus. Richard Jordan. Patty Duke. George Grizzard. And, of course, William Shatner. With an ensemble company of these brilliant players, one could conquer the dramatic world!

  JNW: How lovely, hearing so many of my own favorites cited! I think Stapleton, Phillips, Tandy, Hingle, that glorious Kate Nelligan and Chris Plummer—well, their work sh
ould be preserved permanently. Richard, what does “immortality” as a creative artist mean to you?

  MATHESON: I have never thought about immortality as a writer. I would like to contribute something worthwhile to this world as a creative person before I toddle off to the next phase . . .

  Sometimes, I pass my short story collections or novels, on a shelf, and actually start, and think, “Oh, yes, I wrote those, didn’t I?” I never think of them, never reread them. I have a tendency to forget everything I wrote and think only about what I’m doing now. What I wrote in the past is of little interest to me. I enjoy the actual act of writing; that is where the most pleasure comes from. After that, it is detail and business, and hoping that people will like what I’ve done.

  JNW: How would you like to be remembered?

  MATHESON: I would like to be remembered as a helpful human being and as one of the better story tellers. I’ve tried. I’ve failed a lot. For the failures, I feel regret. I try not to repeat them.

  J.N. WILLIAMSON is the author or editor of nearly 30 books, 20 short stories, and 15 articles, all published since 1979. Among them are such specials and lead books as The Evil One, Death-Coach, Hour, Playmates, the hilarious Death-Angel, and the supernatural novels The Banished (Playboy), Ghost Mansion (Zebra), and Ghost (Dorchester). William F. Nolan compared the latter to the work of Stephen King and Peter Straub and, with reviewers, called Williamson “a born storyteller, Williamson’s second novel, The Houngan, won a Best Fantasy award from West Coast Review of Books, his most recent novels include The Dentist and Babel’s Children (Dell) and The Offspring (Leisure).

  A native of Indianapolis, Jerry Williamson attended Shortridge High School from which Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., graduated. Prior to writing novels, while rearing six children with his wife Mary, he wrote stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and was thrice an editor-in-chief in Indiana.

  Williamson’s chapter on the art of horror writing is part of the 1984 revised Writer’s Handbook. In his introduction to J.N. Williamson’s Anomalies, author Thomas Millstead wrote: “He has blended fantasy, mythology and terror in striking ways that have earned a permanent niche in the ranks of American fiction.”

  JOHN MACLAY was born in Pennsylvania in 1944, received his B.A. and M.L.A. from Johns Hopkins, served in the Army, and has been advertising director of a biomedical company and a billion-dollar bank, president of an historic preservation group, master of a lodge, the publisher of 15 books on local architecture and history and 10 short novels, the author of a dozen published stories, and a collector of books, coins, antiques, and Civil War items. He lives with his wife and partner Joyce and two sons in Baltimore and on a farm near Gettysburg.