David Morrell
The Totem

INTRODUCTION

One of the first things I learned as a writer was when in doubt don't throw any pages away. That rule has frequently been of help, especially when due to over-familiarity with a manuscript in progress I edited a book too stringently, taking out scenes that shouldn't have been omitted, needing to go back and reinsert them, grateful that I'd saved the original versions. My filing cabinets became crammed with material that I eliminated from various works. Even after those works were published, I continued to save the files.

As a consequence, this is what you might call a "found book." In 1991, the British publisher, Headline, decided to reissue my only (to date) out-and-out horror novel, The Totem. It had first been released in hardback by the American publisher, M. Evans, in 1979 and had subsequently been reprinted by Fawcett in paperback one year later. The hardback was eventually discontinued. By the end of the eighties, so was the paperback. My memory of the story dimmed.

Thus when Headline suggested that it might be interesting for me to write an introduction to its new edition, I decided that I'd better reacquaint myself with the text so I'd be accurate about what I was introducing. But when I pulled The Totem off the shelf and studied it, I discovered to my dismay that the book I remembered was not the book that had been published. So much was different. So much was missing. Where was this scene, and where was that? I asked myself with increasing shock.

Abruptly a barrier in my memory fractured. I suddenly recalled that when I'd submitted The Totem in the late seventies, my editor had not been pleased. "It's too big, too sprawling," he'd said. "Where's the love interest? How come it takes so long to introduce your main character? Why isn't this about the military as in First Blood?" Given the ultimatum that if the novel wasn't changed it wouldn't be accepted, I reluctantly produced an alternate version of The Totem, half as long, twice as fast, with my main character appearing on the first page, and yes, with a love interest.

Not that I feel uncomfortable about that version. I think it's effective, and I'm gratified that it has acquired a reputation among horror fans. Critics have described it as one of the best horror novels of the seventies. It's been cited in Horror: 100 Best Books, and Denver 's Rocky Mountain News in 1989 placed it on that newspaper's Halloween list of "10 Scariest Books." But it's not the book that I wanted published, and after I reread The Totem in preparation for writing the Headline introduction, I couldn't resist the impulse to search through my files, and with delight, I discovered the original version that the turmoil of my negotiations with the book's 1979 publisher had forced me to forget.

The manuscript was dusty, dogeared, and yellowed, written on a typewriter, not a word processor. I felt as if I'd opened one of those metal boxes that are sometimes placed in the cornerstones of buildings so that historians from a later age can open them and study the once-contemporary objects sealed within them. I can't emphasize sufficiently how much I'd repressed my memory of the first version of The Totem. It's no exaggeration to say that I truly couldn't remember having written it. As I said, a found book. A time capsule from and about the sixties and the seventies. And having found it, I couldn't help smiling. There were the scenes that I'd subconsciously been missing. There were the length and scope and texture that I'd wanted. An expansive alternate style. A new beginning. A quite different ending. And as for the middle… well, let's put it this way: the story is twice as long and two-thirds dissimilar. There isn't just more plot-the extra material gives the plot a different twist. So what you're about to read is the intended version of this novel. If you're familiar with The Totem in its previously published form, you're about to enter its alternate universe. I think you'll find some pleasantly scary surprises.

David Morrell Santa Fe, 1994

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