by Charles Beaumont(New York: Bantam Books, 1959)
Paperback, 183 Pages, Short Fiction Anthology
ABCD Rating: BACKLIST
For the Ghoul in you…
From the Cover: Most people won’t admit it … but lurking in the dark halls of everyone’s minds is a germ of ghoulishness. It shows up in anything from a gleam in the eye at midnight to a snap of a neck at dawn. Most people try to keep it a secret, but Charles Beaumont is proud of every awful thought he has, and lots of them come out as short stories. The Hunger is a collection of such stories. Some of them are funny, some vaguely “peculiar,” some just plain gruesome. If you are lily-livered or chicken-hearted or a dangerous maniac, don’t read these stories. Otherwise, you need them – most people need a good violent shudder every now and then.
This collection contains the following stories: “Miss Gentilbelle,” “The Vanishing American,” “A Point of Honor,” “Fair Lady,” “Free Dirt,” “Open House,” “The Train,” “The Dark Music,” “The Customers,” “Last Night in the Rain,” “The Crooked Man,” “Nursery Rhyme,” “The Murderers,” “The Hunger,” “Tears of the Madonna,” “The Infernal Bouillabaisse,” and “Black Country.”
My Review: As I mentioned in my Friday Finds about three weeks ago, I came across this book thanks to Mark Justice at I Was a Bronze Age Boy and when my sister-in-law wanted to know what I might like as a house-warming gift, I sent her the link to The Hunger and now, here we are.
I didn’t know what to expect going in to this book, all Mark Justice does is post the books’ covers (though I through secondary information that this would fall in the horror/thriller genre … something reminiscent of the original Twilight Zone or Outer Limits series) but that didn’t stop me from diving in to the short stories in this book. Right off the bat Beaumont shocks the reader into submission. “Miss Gentilbelle” is a very disturbing story and one that I’m still not sure what to do with. It takes the idea of the parent who wanted a girl instead of a boy in a very frightening direction. It is, quite frankly, one of the most disturbing stories (if not the most disturbing story) in the collection.
“The Vanishing American” is a fun story about fears of alienation and obsolescence and overcoming inhibitions, but with a very nice twist, especially for 1959. That was one of the hardest things to wrap my head around; the fact that a lot of these stories were written in the 1950s. Many of them seem so current and topical, that it is, frankly, astounding. “The Crooked Man,” for example, deals with the issues of heterosexuality and homosexuality and what is the societal norm and what happens to those who transgress that norm. Pretty advanced stuff for pre-Stonewall 1959, when homosexuality was still recognized by the public at large and the medical establishment as a mental disorder, and homosexuals could be committed against their will.
Some other of my favorites were “Fair Lady,” “Free Dirt,” and “Open House” each of which deal with increasingly sociopathic behavior, and how—all too often—that behavior gets out of hand. “Open House” is especially unsettling in this respect. Really quite unnerving.
And then there is “The Murderers” and “The Infernal Bouillabaisse.” I posted a Teaser from “The Murderers” just this past Tuesday, and the story really does live up to the expectation those two simple sentences set up in the Reader. As for “The Infernal Bouillabaisse,” it is a delightful little story (not a phrase I necessarily expected to use in relation to any of the stories contained herein) and it is one that gave me a very strong sense of déjà vu. I am not 100% certain, but I seem to recall having read this story before, I just can’t recollect where right now. It’s a little maddening.
Going in with very little expectations is a great way to approach a book like The Hunger, especially when you have read as much horror as I have. Beaumont is obviously working in the same vein and style of fiction as Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury … that sort of “timeless” fiction, that is unsettling, unnerving, and—often—downright terrifying, but that leaves so very much up to the Reader’s imagination (see my review of Richard Matheson’s short story “Duel” and its companion review of Stephen King and Joe Hill’s “Throttle” to see what I am talking about).
This really is a great collection of short stories, though I hesitate to issue a blanket recommendation. They most decidedly are not for everyone, and so I can only say if you like to be kept awake, unsettled, or just unnerved, then maybe you should ferret out a copy of The Hunger, because it will definitely keep you jumpy long after the book has been closed and the lights have been turned off.
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