20th CENTURY GHOSTS
Joe Hill
Harper Paperbacks
Fiction/Short Stories
Hardcover: 9780061147975
Paperback: 9780061147982

20th CENTURY GHOSTS by Joe Hill is a collection of short stories that had been shopped around for publication but was summarily rejected. Why? Because, well, short story collections by unknown authors --- as the conventional wisdom goes ---don’t sell. The book was duly published in Great Britain, and in the meantime Hill wrote a novel titled HEART-SHAPED BOX; his family tree then came to light, to great fanfare. At that point, as might be expected, the potential for 20th CENTURY GHOSTS was…reconsidered. So here we have the American publication of that collection --- with a story not included in the British edition --- as if, having read HEART-SHAPED BOX, one needed prodding to pick up anything with Hill’s name on it. As if.

One important caveat: Hill is not a horror writer, at least not in the classical sense. His work certainly is informed by that august genre, but also one detects echoes of the Johns --- Cheever, Updike and Barth --- superimposed over the Lovecraft. In the process, by coincidence or deliberate design, Hill, at his early age and at this late date, has stretched the boundaries of the literary short story.

20th CENTURY GHOSTS opens with what at first glance is a straight horror story, which, on that merit alone, is one of the more terrifying ones I have ever read. “Best New Horror” concerns a gentleman named Eddie Carroll, who annually edits an anthology of the best short horror fiction of the previous year, culled from a wide variety of sources. He receives, unsolicited, a submission from Harold Noonan, the former editor of a small university literary magazine titled The New North Literary Review. Noonan had published a story, “Buttonboy,” written by Peter Killrue, a groundsperson at the university. The subsequent firestorm over its publication resulted in Noonan’s excoriation and dismissal. The story is extensively summarized in the narration of “Best New Horror” and is the stuff of nightmare. Wanting to publish it, Carroll sets out to make contact with Killrue in order to obtain his permission. The result, as well as the summarization of “Buttons” and some of Killrue’s other work, will keep you up for a few nights with the lights burning.

Next is “20th Century Ghost,” which, while having supernatural elements, is, in its own way, a love story. That, perhaps, is the hallmark of Hill’s short fiction --- this merging of the horrific and supernatural with the everyday. Think of being caught in some brambles, which are only a short distance from a heavily traveled road that you can see but never reach. Actually, Hill’s work isn’t even that easily definable. “You Will Hear the Locust Sing” is a cautionary tale about nuclear testing yet has elements that would not have been out of place in a 1950s science fiction story. A young man --- his name, Francis Kay, is not coincidental --- is apparently exposed to radiation from an atom bomb test and is transformed into a cockroach-type creature. Not satisfied to explore the story from that standpoint only, Hill turns it into a tale of alienation and loneliness before bringing things to a close with a shocking ending.

In some ways “Voluntary Committal” would be wholly appropriate for adaptation as an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” It concerns a high school adolescent who falls in with a bad crowd of one, and his brother, a psychologically impaired savant who is incapable of independent living on some levels yet is more emotionally stable than his sibling on others. While you won’t soon forget how the “lesser” of the brothers helps the “greater,” the subtle focus of “Voluntary Committal” is on the relationship of the brothers as opposed to what happens one fateful evening in their basement. Another story, “My Father’s Mask,” is a fantasy --- a coming-of-age tale in one sense but also a deeply disturbing story of multiple levels of deception. And “Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead,” despite its horrific backdrop, is not a horror story at all, but rather a bittersweet tale of lost loves, chance encounters and (possibly) second chances.

20th CENTURY GHOSTS is further proof that Hill’s talent runs deep and true, and, it would seem, has yet to be fully plumbed. I can’t wait to see what he does next, how and to whom.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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