Lansdale, Joe R. 1951–

(Joe Richard Lansdale, Ray Slater)

PERSONAL: Born October 28, 1951, in Gladewater, TX; son of Alcee Bee (a mechanic) and Reta (in sales) Lansdale; married Cassie Ellis, June 25, 1970 (divorced, 1972); married Karen Ann Morton, August 25, 1973; children: (second marriage) Keith Jordan, Kasey JoAnn. Education: Attended Tyler Junior College, 1970–71, University of Texas at Austin, 1971–72, and Stephen F. Austin State University, 1973, 1975, and 1976.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Barbara Puechner, 3121 Portage Rd., Bethlehem, PA 18017.

CAREER: Writer and novelist. Goodwill Industries, transportation manager, 1973–75; Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX, custodian, 1976–80; LaBorde Custodial Services, Nacogdoches, foreman, 1980–81; writer, 1981–. Also worked variously as a bouncer, bodyguard, factory worker, carpenter, ditch digger, plumber's helper, goat farmer, rose-field laborer, and karate instructor.

MEMBER: Horror Writers of America (vice president, 1987–88), Western Writers of America (treasurer, 1987).

AWARDS, HONORS: Six Bram Stoker Awards, Horror Writers of America, including 1988 and 1989; American Horror Award, 1989; British Fantasy Award, 1989, for novella; Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, Mystery Writers of America, 2001, for The Bottoms; American Mystery Award; Horror Critics Award; "Shot in the Dark" International Crime Writer's Award; Booklist Editor's Award; Critic's Choice Award; New York Times Notable Book designation.

WRITINGS:

MYSTERY/SUSPENSE NOVELS

Act of Love, Zebra (New York, NY), 1981.

The Nightrunners, illustrated by Gregory Manchess, introduction by Dean R. Koontz, Dark Harvest (Arlington Heights, IL), 1987.

Cold in July, Ziesing (Shingletown, CA), 1989.

Savage Season, Ziesing (Shingletown, CA), 1990.

Lansdale's Limited Edition: Cold in July [and] Savage Season (boxed set), Ziesing (Shingletown, CA), 1990.

Freezer Burn, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1999.

The Bottoms, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 2000.

A Fine Dark Line, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Sunset and Sawdust, Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.

Lost Echoes, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard (New York, NY), 2006.

"HAP COLLINS AND LEONARD PINE" MYSTERY NOVEL SERIES

Mucho Mojo, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1994.

The Two-Bear Mambo, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Bad Chili, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Rumble Tumble, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Captains Outrageous, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 2001.

SCIENCE-FICTION/FANTASY/HORROR NOVELS

Dead in the West (western), Space & Time (New York, NY), 1986.

The Magic Wagon (western), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1986.

The Drive In: A "B"-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1988.

The Drive In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels, Bantam (New York, NY), 1989.

Batman: Captured by the Engines, Warner (New York, NY), 1991.

On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks (chapbook), Roadkill Press (Denver, CO), 1991.

Terror on the High Skies (juvenile), illustrated by Edward Hannigan and Dick Giordano, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992.

(With Andrew H. Vachss) Drive-By, Crossroads (Holyoke, MA), 1993.

Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo (graphic novel), illustrated by Timothy Truman, Sam Glanzman, and others, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1994.

The Boar, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 1998.

Waltz of Shadows, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 1999.

Blood Dance, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 2001.

Zeppelins West, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 2001.

Flaming London, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 2005.

HORROR STORY COLLECTIONS

By Bizarre Hands, illustrated by Mark A. Nelson, introduction by Lewis Shiner, Ziesing (Shingletown, CA), 1989.

Stories by Mama Lansdale's Youngest Boy, Pulphouse (Eugene, OR), 1991, expanded edition published as Best Sellers Guaranteed, Ace (New York, NY), 1993.

The Steel Valentine, Pulphouse (Eugene, OR), 1991.

Steppin' out, Summer '68, Roadkill Press (Denver, CO), 1992.

Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back, Pulphouse (Eugene, OR), 1992.

Writer of the Purple Rage, CD (Baltimore, MD), 1994.

Electric Gumbo, Quality Paperback Book Club, 1994.

A Fistful of Stories, CD (Baltimore, MD), 1997.

The Good the Bad, and the Indifferent, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 1997.

High Cotton: Selected Stories, Golden Gryphon Press (Urbana, IL), 2000.

Bumper Crop, Golden Gryphon Press (Urbana, IL), 2004.

Mad Dog Summer, Golden Gryphon Press (Urbana, IL), 2006.

EDITOR

Best of the West, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1986.

The New Frontier: The Best of Today's Western Fiction, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Pat Lo Brutto) Razored Saddles (horror), illustrated by Rick Araluce, Dark Harvest (Arlington Heights, IL), 1989.

(With wife, Karen Lansdale) Dark at Heart: All New Tales of Dark Suspense, Dark Harvest (Arlington Heights, IL), 1992.

(With Thomas W. Knowles) The West That Was, Wings Books (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Knowles) Wild West Show, Wings Books (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Richard Klaw) Weird Business (horror), Mojo (Austin, TX), 1995.

OTHER

(Under pseudonym Ray Slater) Texas Night Riders (western), Leisure (Champaign, IL), 1983.

Atomic Chili: The Illustrated Joe R. Lansdale (comic-strip adaptations), Mojo (Austin, TX), 1996.

(With Edgar Rice Burroughs) Tarzan: The Lost Adventure, Dark Horse Comics (Milwaukee, IL), 1996.

Contributor to anthologies, including Fears, 1984, and Book of the Dead, Bantam, 1989. Contributor of articles, stories, and reviews to magazines, including Horror Show, Modern Stories, Espionage, and Mike Shayne. Manuscript collection held at Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, TX.

ADAPTATIONS: Lansdale's short story "Bubba Ho-Tep" was filmed by American Cinematheque, 2003; Sunset and Sawdust was adapted to audiocassette.

SIDELIGHTS: Horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, suspense, western: Joe R. Lansdale's fiction encompasses all of the above, frequently combining several genres in the same story or novel while defining a distinctive voice of its own. Lansdale's "preferred genre is the fantastic," the author once told CA, "but suspense runs a close second, followed by mystery, westerns, and the mainstream." "Actually," continued Lansdale, "much of my work and intended work is a combination of these things…. I like all kinds of horror and fantasy writing, especially the contemporary horror tale. I am not too fond, though, of the vague ending that seems so popular in many publications today. Much of what I write, although it is called horror, is really just oddball or weird fantasy, perhaps never becoming scary, but certainly striking a note of the unusual."

Lansdale's work was characterized by New York Times Book Review contributor Daniel Woodrell as "country noir," likening him to such authors as James M. Cain and Erskine Caldwell. (Lansdale has listed Cain as a major influence). The "country" in this case is East Texas, where Lansdale was born, raised, and continues to reside. The "noir" refers to the dark vision of human nature and contemporary life that pervades nearly all of his work. Other writers Lansdale mentions as influential include Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Flannery O'Connor, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Richard Matheson. Lansdale departs from these literary icons on at least two counts, each of which reflects one of his stated non-literary influences: B-movies and comic books. No matter the genre in which he is writing, graphic horror and violence are usually present. No matter how dark the vision he is rendering, satirical and humorous elements often abound.

Author of well over one hundred stories, Lansdale first made his mark in the arena of short fiction. "I prefer the short story medium," he told Stanley Wiater in Dark Dreamers: Conversations with the Masters of Horror. "I think if I could make a living as a short story writer, I would do that primarily." Lansdale's stories began appearing widely in both commercial and alternative publications by the late 1970s. Some of this work is collected in By Bizarre Hands and Stories by Mama Lansdale's Youngest Boy. Best Sellers Guaranteed combines the stories from the second collection with "The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-out Found in a Harlequin Romance," a previously anthologized novella.

Lansdale's short stories are showcased in several other collections. High Cotton: Selected Stories contains twenty-one of Lansdale's best-known stories, including "The Night They Missed the Horror Show," in which some bored small-town boys skip the late-night horror movie and instead drag a dead dog around town, to horrific results when a group of psychopathic, but curiously dog-loving racists discover what they are doing. "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back." "combines the themes of tattooing as sadism and roses as predators," noted reviewer Anne Dingus in Texas Monthly. The collection "seems to be the best introduction to the author you could ask for, chock-full o' nuts and guts and the keen, whip-smart passion of an artist at the height of his talents," commented Marc Savlov in the Austin Chronicle. Bumper Crop, is another collection that is "dark, tender, gruesome, evocative, funny—sometimes all in the same story: It's hard to pin down Lansdale's fiction," observed Charles De Lint in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. "God of the Razor" centers around a demonically possessed blade that compels anyone who touches it to acts of murder. "Bestsellers Guaranteed" spins "a dark little fantasy about a murderously competitive publishing industry," commented Booklist reviewer Elliot Swanson. "Chompers" explores what happens when some false teeth take on a peculiar hunger of their own. Though the stories might not be acceptable to readers with weak constitutions, they are "perfect for everyone else trying to get through the pain of contemporary American life," remarked a Publishers Weekly contributor. "Lansdale has a real storyteller's gift, the kind that can make a tall tale or a serious character study equally evocative," De Lint concluded.

Lansdale's novels began appearing in the early 1980s. Although marketed within particular genres, they transcend traditional genre definitions. Typical of a Lansdale western is Dead in the West. Set in pioneer days in Mud Water, Texas (a fictionalized version of Lansdale's own Gladewater), it relates a series of events involving animated corpses that would seem more at home in a contemporary horror tale than in a western. The Magic Wagon, set in East Texas in 1909, tells of a traveling medicine show that includes a wrestling chimpanzee and the corpse of Wild Bill Hickok.

Prime examples of Lansdale's science fiction and fantasy/horror fiction can be found in The Drive In: A "B"-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas, and The Drive In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels. In the first novel, the patrons of a Texas drive-in movie are whisked into another universe where the horror films they have been watching and the drive-in itself become the sum of their reality. Scenes of rape, cannibalism, and necrophilia are portrayed. In the sequel, the patrons leave the drive-in to enter the strange world surrounding it, where they encounter both dinosaurs and vampires.

Among Lansdale's mystery and suspense novels are his "Hap Collins" mysteries. Savage Season, set in the 1990s, relates the story of Hap Collins, a sixties draft-dodger who is lured by his ex-wife Trudy into a scheme to locate stolen money at the bottom of the Sabine River in East Texas. Accompanied by his friend Leonard, a gay Vietnam veteran, Hap must eventually confront the nefarious gang with whom Trudy has become involved. Hap and Leonard return in Mucho Mojo. After Leonard inherits a house from his uncle, the skeleton of a murdered child is discovered under the floorboards. Hap and Leonard proceed to track down the killer.

Collins and Leonard reappear again in Bad Chili, a tale which follows the amateur sleuths as they track down the murderer of Leonard's gay lover. This "raucously funny mystery" was lauded by Lev Raphael in the Lambda Book Report as "remarkable for its range of characters with no animus whatsoever towards gays…. Straight and gay characters [are] treated as equals." "The narrative, including a breathless finale, is droll, crude, touching and very nasty … extravagant, lovable characters mix with outrageous, despicable actions to irresistible effect," commented a Publishers Weekly critic. Similarly, Wes Lukowsky declared in Booklist: "Simultaneously funny and tragic … wildly profane yet invariably humane. In his unique way [Lansdale] reveals the human condition." With Bad Chili, proclaimed People contributor Pam Lambert, "Lansdale demonstrates just why he has become a cult figure in every genre from horror to humor."

In Rumble Tumble, Collins and Leonard come to the aid of Collins's girlfriend's daughter who is involved in prostitution. According to a Publishers Weekly critic, readers familiar with Hap Collins might desire a "new direction" for future installments. In contrast, Nikki Amdur, writing in Entertainment Weekly, maintained that each successive Hap mystery "gets more heroic."

Lansdale's fiction has often been praised and blamed for similar reasons. The extreme, graphic violence he depicts can be viewed as gratuitous, shock for its own sake, or as a pointed exaggeration of the violence in America. Depending on one's perspective and sensibilities, his humor on the darkest subjects can be perceived as poor taste or as satire on American popular culture. Critics do agree that there is far more to his work than run-of-the-mill genre fiction written for the sake of entertainment. Lansdale has provided his own definition of "good fiction" for Kevin E. Proulx in Fear to the World: Eleven Voices in a Chorus of Horror: "Good fiction can actually tell you how people relate to one another. How they really feel about things. What life is all about. What makes it worth living, or, for some people, not worth living. I find a lot more truth in fiction than nonfiction, and that's why I prefer to write it."

In addition to his short stories and series work, Lansdale continues to write stand-alone mysteries tinged with his blend of humor, horror, and over-the-top mojo storytelling. In Freezer Burn, perpetual loser Bill Roberts experiences diminished circumstances when his mother dies. Though her Social Security checks continue to come in, they have stacked up uncashed—Bill is afraid to forge his mother's signature on them, and she is unable to sign them since she is dead and rotting in a back room, unburied because Bill is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to pay for a funeral. To raise some cash, Bill and two buddies decide to rob the fireworks stand across the street. They fail, however, and during his escape through the swamps, Bill is subjected to so many mosquito bites that his face swells and makes him unrecognizable. Next, he joins a traveling carnival and freak show, where he meets the beautiful blonde sexual dynamo, Gidget. Unmindful of his past failures, Bill joins Gidget in a plot to kill the circus owner and take over the traveling show. With this novel, Lansdale "continues to amuse and astonish with his outrageous storytelling," commented Library Journal contributor Bob Lunn. Wes Lukowsky, writing in Booklist, called Lansdale a "master storyteller and an immensely talented writer." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Freezer Burn "a page-turner suitable for bus or beach and for anyone with a predilection for tacky raunchiness and a yen for what teenagers call 'gross-outs.'"

The Bottoms garnered comparisons to legendary southern writer Harper Lee, of To Kill a Mockingbird fame, and other prominent southern scribes. Harry Crane, an old man, tells the story of strange happenings that occurred when he was a youth. In Depression-era Texas, eleven-year-old Harry and his younger sister Tom (for Thomasina) discover a gruesomely mutilated corpse of a black woman in "the bottoms," a remote and isolated rural area. Harry's father, Jacob, the local constable, investigates and discovers that an unknown assailant is murdering and dumping black prostitutes.

The Klan and the locals are outraged that Jacob would give the same investigative effort to the dead women as he would to whites. Meanwhile, Harry and Tom have become convinced that the murderer is not human, but is instead the legendary Goat Man, a monstrous creature said to live in the bottomlands around the Sabine River. When a black man is lynched for the crime, the locals think the problem is solved, but then a white woman is murdered in the same fashion, and Harry, his father, and the townspeople realize that their problems are far from over. The novel is a "strong read, written in a style that invokes Flannery O'Connor, with a touch of Faulkner's quirky characters," noted reviewer Janice Bees in Kliatt. "Effectively combining mystery and family history, it offers a vivid, multifaceted glimpse back to a simpler, but not necessarily better, time," remarked Wes Lukowsky in Booklist. Austin Chronicle reviewer Mike Shea called the book "an East Texas ode to ramshackle rural childhood and the mysteries and ever-present complications of adulthood and small-town society."

A Fine Dark Line is a novel also told in retrospect, as middle-aged Stanley Mitchell recalls the events from a hot, languid Texas summer when he was thirteen. An innocent, ordinary young boy, Stanley lives what seems like a typical southern life with his father, owner of the local drive-in, homemaker mother, and pretty sister Callie. While exploring the remains of a burnt building behind the drive-in, Stanley discovers a mysterious cache of love letters that once belonged to Margaret Stilwind. Stanley, fascinated by the letters, sets out to discover what happened to Margaret, a long-ago relative of the area's rich and prominent Stilwind family. Assisted by former reservation police officer Buster Lighthorse Smith, Stanley discovers that Margaret was murdered, as was another young woman, and that the history of the letters marks a complex, scandalous story forgotten by the Stilwinds and the locals. As Stanley struggles to piece together the old mystery, he also struggles with his own dawning realization of the presence of unpunished evil in the world and the loss of innocence that knowledge brings. Lansdale "clearly knows and loves his subject and enlivens his haunting coming-of-age tale with touches of folklore and humor," commented a Publishers Weekly critic. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the novel "the best ever from talented Lansdale" and "a genre-crossing tour de force to spark the most jaded appetites."

In the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, Darrell Schweitzer summarized Lansdale's work: "A sense of twisted realism is a leading characteristic of Lansdale's fiction, as is an intensely vulgar idiom and a tendency to pile outrageous and absurd situations on top of one another to such a degree that, in the hands of a lesser writer, the result would have to be either parody, or trash." "But," continued Schweitzer, "Lansdale's fiction is redeemed first, by an authentic regional voice, which captures the ways and mores (and seamy underside) of rural Texas life as no outsider ever could. Then there is a strong, uninhibited sense of macabre humor, which marks Lansdale as the funniest horror writer since Robert Bloch (whose influence Lansdale acknowledges). But he is also effectively satirical, enormously inventive, and genuinely grim when he chooses."

Lansdale once told CA: "My writing is done to entertain and to please me. And to put bread on the table. I like to think my work has something going for it besides momentum. That there is some thematic depth that will ring in the reader's head afterwards like an echo. I'm attempting to blend the pacing and color of genre fiction with the character and style of the mainstream. And maybe doing a damn bad job of it. But I'm trying.

"The Martian series by Edgar Rice Burroughs got me started, and I've been writing my own stories ever since. My work ranges from popular to literary. I believe the purpose of fiction is to entertain. Enlightening the reader is nice, but secondary. If you don't have a good tale to tell, no one is listening anyway…. I am also interested in screenplays, and hope to work in that medium on occasion."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Proulx, Kevin E., Fear to the World: Eleven Voices in a Chorus of Horror (interview), Starmont House (Mercer Island, WA), 1992, pp. 43-58.

St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Wiater, Stanley, Dark Dreamers: Conversations with the Masters of Horror (interview), Avon (New York, NY), 1990, pp. 111-118.

PERIODICALS

Austin Chronicle, September 29, 2000, Marc Savlov, "Joe R. Lansdale Reviewed," reviews of High Cotton: Selected Stories and The Bottoms, and Mike Shea, "Lansdale's Revenge," profile of Joe R. Lansdale.

Booklist, August, 1994, Wes Lukowsky, review of Mucho Mojo, p. 2028; January 15, 1995, Wes Lukowsky, review of Writer of the Purple Rage, p. 895; August, 1995, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Two-Bear Mambo, p. 1910; July, 1997, Wes Lukowsky, review of Bad Chili, p. 1775; July, 1998, Wes Lukowsky, review of Rumble Tumble, p. 1829; July, 1999, Wes Lukowsky, review of Freezer Burn, p. 1928; June 1, 2000, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Bottoms, p. 1798; December 1, 2002, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of A Fine Dark Line, p. 649; March 15, 2004, Bill Ott, review of Sunset and Sawdust, p. 1270; April 15, 2004, Elliott Swanson, review of Bumper Crop, p. 1432; November 15, 2005, Ray Olson, review of Flaming London, p. 33.

Entertainment Weekly, November 6, 1998, Nikki Amdur, review of Rumble Tumble, p. 82.

Investor's Business Daily, November 6, 2001, Murray Coleman, "Joe Lansdale Overcame 1000 Rejections: Power of Words: Mystery Writer Relies on Real-Life Situations to Keep His Readers Turning the Pages," profile of Joe R. Lansdale, p. A06.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2002, review of A Fine Dark Line, p. 1573; January 15, 2004, review of Sunset and Sawdust, p. 56.

Kliatt, January, 2002, Janice Bees, review of The Bottoms, p. 13; July, 2002, Janet Julian, review of The Bottoms, p. 49; July, 2004, Bette Ammon, audio-book review of Sunset and Sawdust, p. 57.

Lambda Book Report, March, 1998, Lev Raphael, review of Bad Chili, p. 30.

Library Journal, October 15, 1998, Bob Lunn, review of Rumble Tumble, p. 99; July, 1999, Bob Lunn, review of Freezer Burn, p. 133; March 15, 2004, David Wright, review of Sunset and Sawdust, p. 107; April 1, 2005, Cliff Glaviano, review of audiobook Sunset and Sawdust, p. 132.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, 1999, Charles De Lint, review of The Boar, p. 32; September, 2004, Charles De Lint, review of Bumper Crop, p. 30.

New York Times Book Review, October 2, 1994, Daniel Woodrell, "Bones beneath the Floorboards," review of Mucho Mojo, p. 37.

People, November 10, 1997, Pam Lambert, review of Bad Chili, p. 44.

Publishers Weekly, May 30, 1994, review of Mucho Mojo, p. 34; October 17, 1994, review of Writer of the Purple Rage, p. 62; August 7, 1995, review of The Two-Bear Mambo, p. 444; July 7, 1997, review of Bad Chili, p. 52; September 22, 1997, review of The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent, p. 70; September 29, 1997, James Hynes, "Joe R. Lansdale: Black Belt in Pulp Fiction," interview with Joe R. Lansdale, p. 59; June 22, 1998, review of Rumble Tumble, p. 87; October 5, 1998, review of The Boar, p. 80; July 12, 1999, review of Freezer Burn, p. 72; August 20, 1999, review of Waltz of Shadows, p. 56; May 15, 2000, review of Blood Dance, p. 88; December 2, 2002, review of A Fine Dark Line, p. 37; February 9, 2004, review of Sunset and Sawdust, p. 57; February 16, 2004, review of Bumper Crop, p. 156; April 19, 2004, review of Mad Dog Summer, p. 45; October 17, 2005, review of Flaming London, p. 44.

Texas Monthly, March, 1997, Anne Dingus, review of Atomic Chili: The Illustrated Joe R. Lansdale, p. 100.

ONLINE

January Magazine, http://www.januarymagazine.com/ (May 1, 2006), Claude Lalumiere, "The Fantastic, the Imaginative, and the Weird," review of High Cotton.

Joe Lansdale Home Page, http://www.joelansdale.com (May 1, 2006).

Mostly Fiction, http://mostlyfiction.com/ (April 23, 2004), Judi Clark, review of Sunset and Sawdust.