In Laymon's Terms

Donn Gash

OME PEOPLE JUST don’t get it.

A while back, I was reading a review of a Richard Laymon novel. Which novel isn’t all that important. While I’m at it, I’ll leave out the name of the reviewer too. As much as he might deserve it, I’m not going to embarrass him. Besides, I can almost guarantee you’ve never heard of him.

It seems Mr. Reviewer had taken an extreme and personal disliking to this particular Laymon offering. Mr. Reviewer was offended. Hell, he had bypassed offended and gone straight to royally pissed. The novel in question wasn’t just bad in his estimation; it was a personal attack against himself, and any other reader of high moral character.

The review started off nasty and proceeded to get nastier. The first portion consisted mostly of vague gripes and non-specific moaning. As I read along, I wondered what was wrong with this guy. He wasn’t bashing Richard Laymon’s prose or style. He didn’t have anything nasty to say about the author’s technique. Most of his bitching seemed to be of the personal variety, aimed squarely at Laymon. I became more and more puzzled.

Finally, about halfway through the review, he spelled it out. His beef was with the behavior of the characters in the novel. Not just a few of the characters, mind you, but all of them. He had come to the conclusion that real people would never act the way these characters did. He illustrated his point by listing some of the characters’ offending behaviors. As he did so, I couldn’t help but smile.

His argument boiled down to this: Richard Laymon was a terrible writer and a terrible person because his characters engaged in sexual behavior that made Mr. Reviewer uncomfortable. Worse yet, the novel contained passages in which the female protagonist was victimized by men.

Holy crap! You mean women aren’t victims of violence in real life? Richard Laymon is just making this stuff up to make women look weak and powerless? Gee, all those statistics you hear about rape and domestic violence on the news must be fake.

And the sexual behavior exhibited by the characters? That was all wrong because they allowed their hormones to influence their decisions, usually yielding a bad result. Well, hey, that doesn’t happen in real life either. Lord knows, I’ve never let sex cloud my judgment.

What a bonehead. Mr. Reviewer, in all his infinite wisdom, had decided Laymon’s work lacked value, simply because it did what it set out to do, which was make him, the reader, squirm. This moron, in all his uppity, politically-correct glory, had never allowed himself to enjoy the unique ride that a Laymon novel provides.

One of Richard Laymon’s gifts as an author was the ability to create flawed, identifiable, intensely human characters. Naturally, as a horror writer, he places these flawed, but essentially good people in the most dire of circumstances. We’re talking life and death stuff here, folks. Very often, these are characters at a crossroads in their life, at a point when they are perhaps least prepared to make decisions which carry heavy implications. In many cases, these vulnerable characters are asked to choose between desire and what society deems proper.

So you have these extremely human protagonists facing not only external conflicts like deranged hitchhikers, serial killers, and the occasional beast, but they’re also battling their own inner conflicts. Conflict, as you know, is what drives the tale. If everybody in a story makes the right decisions, and they all get along, it’s not very interesting, is it? Frankly, it’s not a story at all.

But here’s where Laymon really gets you. This is where his work grabs you by the throat and takes you in a direction most wouldn’t dare. He forces you, the unsuspecting reader, to face those same moral dilemmas as the protagonist. Oh, he’s sneaky about it to be sure. You don’t realize it until you’re too far into the story to stop.

Would you accept the Master of Games’s money and play the game, even if at each new step his game grew more and more dangerous? If your boyfriend went to the corner store and never came back, would you go out looking for him or remain in the safety of your apartment? Tough decisions. And Richard Laymon places you in the middle of it. You can’t help but ask yourself, “What would I do?”

We all have our moral convictions. We also have our weaknesses. What would it take for you to turn your back on those convictions? We like to think of ourselves as righteous people with values we would never lay by the wayside. But hey, people do it every day. Affairs, murder, thefts, kidnap, rape, and all manner of wicked deeds are committed at an alarming rate. I’d be willing to bet a large portion of the perpetrators considered themselves good folks. Chances are, they felt their acts were justified, at least to some degree. Maybe they did it for love. Or maybe they were caught up in a moment of uncharacteristic greed. Or even good old-fashioned revenge. You can bet they rationalized it somehow.

You’d never do that though. Or would you? That’s the brilliance of Richard Laymon’s work. Time and time again, he asks you, the reader, to examine yourself, your own beliefs. Sometimes that’s not easy. Hell, some people don’t want to look deep inside themselves and see the things they would never admit to anyone. It’s easier to say, “No way. I’m one of the good guys. I’d never do anything like that.”

I tend to believe dear Mr. Reviewer falls into that category. It’s too difficult for him to admit that under the right circumstances he might do something shady or even terrible. It’s simply not okay for him to contemplate a scenario whereby his clean, tidy view of the world is disturbed.

Sadly, he’s missing the whole point. Horror is about holding a mirror up to the face of humanity and taking notice of the scars and blemishes, the darkness that bubbles just below the surface. Horror shouldn’t make us feel all warm and snugly. We’re supposed to be shocked, and yes, sometimes even offended. And while we ought to be scared of what’s out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting to grab us, ghoulies and creepy-crawlies aren’t what we should be most afraid of. The most terrifying thing is what’s inside of us, lurking in the shadows of our own souls. The monster within is always more frightening than the one “out there.”

Mr. Reviewer just doesn’t get it. Most of his fellow reviewers and critics don’t get it either.

You and I do though, don’t we? Richard Laymon sure as hell did, and for that we can all be grateful.