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A review by modernzorker
The Cellar by Richard Laymon
2.0
Laymon's a polarizing force in the world of horror literature. People can argue the merits of Barker, Campbell, Herbert, and Simmons, some of the most literary horror authors the genre has birthed, but Laymon brooks no debate -- he literally is the guy you either love to death or you cannot stand, and I fall unashamedly in the first camp. When Laymon's on top of his game, no other horror writer can touch him. He brings the creeps, he brings the humor, he brings the bumbling immaturity of the direct-to-video B-grade horror film to life in his prose, and he does so without apology. Laymon's writing is what it is, aspiring to no pretensions, often taking off like a Navy fighter jet and never slowing down. Once he's got you aloft, that's when you discover there's no parachute, no eject button, and the guy flying the thing's a maniac. All you can do is hold on for dear life and pray the guy remembers how to land. The good news is, 70% of the time you're in good hands. "The Cellar" beats the odds while remaining his most polarizing work. Why only 2 stars? Because it polarized the hell out of me, and I love the dude. Allow me to explain.
I've seen numerous critiques of Laymon over the years from people claiming he had no idea what he was doing, that he was a shit writer, he couldn't plot his way through a stroll in a park much less a novel, his technique smacks of rank amateurism that never improved all that much over a thirty-year career, he was a talentless hack. I understand where this critique comes from, but it's all a charade.
Laymon earned an MFA in writing. The guy taught other people to write as his day job. He produced more novels, short stories, novellas, and content during his all-too-brief life than anyone reading this review has likely managed to churn out. He selflessly gave help to so many once-aspiring writers who've now gone on to become successful authors in their own rights. The evidence speaks for itself: Laymon knew exactly what he was doing.
What he did, for virtually his entire career, was give the literature-driven snobs of the day who refused to give horror a second glance because it was all so, well, horrible, that it couldn't possibly be art, exactly what they were expecting. If nobody was going to give horror props, if people were going to pretend horror was just dull-witted numbskulls running around with power tools chasing after big-breasted bimbos without an ounce of common sense, then Laymon was going to get in on the gag. "You think horror's absolutely beyond redemption," he asks of these nose-in-the-air sorts, "then that's exactly what you're going to read." Leave it to other writers to try and change the unchangeable minds of the highbrow crowd was his philosophy. And in the meantime, let's you and me have some laughs at their expense.
"The Cellar" is two slim, gore-soaked, nails-peeled-off, knuckles-shattered middle fingers to every snob on the planet who called out the horror genre (and its readers) for being so awful and hideous and vile. It absolutely is awful, and hideous, and vile, and beyond redemption. For this reason, I hate it...but in hating it I have no one to blame but myself. I could have stopped reading at any time, put the book away, and done something else with my time. But I didn't. Instead of focusing my time and attention on something else, I burned right through those pages up until the ending which, despite having not read it since 2003, I still remember to this day because it made me verbalize the most epic "you gotta be fuckin' kidding me" since John Carpenter's "The Thing".
Laymon wasn't kidding.
To prove it, he wrote two more novels and a novella set in this same Beast House world, and each one of them displays the same complete lack of shame and fucks that "The Cellar" does. Of course I read all three of them, because at some point they had to get better, right? They didn't, and once again, the joke was on me.
There's no cleaning up this particular cellar. It's befouled beyond contemplation, filled to the foundation with filthy characters doing even filthier things to one another, and there's not enough brain bleach in the world to take care of the problem. I will likely never read "The Cellar" again, because once was enough.
But Laymon wasn't writing "The Cellar" for me. He wrote "The Cellar" to make a point. An amateur, talentless hack literally could not do what Laymon did with this book. Talentless hacks have readers abandoning books early. It takes someone truly gifted, truly skilled, truly understanding in the art, to get readers to belly-crawl through a literary cistern, emerge on the other side, and understand that they went along for the ride willingly.
"The Cellar" is shockingly effective, and proof Laymon understood the power of words from the first paragraph of his first draft. It's a terrible book, beyond redemption by any stretch of the imagination, but by god, if you start it, you will finish it.
You'll hate yourself for doing so, and you'll have no one to blame but yourself. My two-star rating is indicative strictly of this. For sheer technique it's worth all five, but five-stars are reserved for the sorts of books I feel almost anybody could read and enjoy. Anybody who reads and enjoys "The Cellar" didn't get the joke, and I'm not interested in encouraging anyone else to go on that journey unprepared.
I've seen numerous critiques of Laymon over the years from people claiming he had no idea what he was doing, that he was a shit writer, he couldn't plot his way through a stroll in a park much less a novel, his technique smacks of rank amateurism that never improved all that much over a thirty-year career, he was a talentless hack. I understand where this critique comes from, but it's all a charade.
Laymon earned an MFA in writing. The guy taught other people to write as his day job. He produced more novels, short stories, novellas, and content during his all-too-brief life than anyone reading this review has likely managed to churn out. He selflessly gave help to so many once-aspiring writers who've now gone on to become successful authors in their own rights. The evidence speaks for itself: Laymon knew exactly what he was doing.
What he did, for virtually his entire career, was give the literature-driven snobs of the day who refused to give horror a second glance because it was all so, well, horrible, that it couldn't possibly be art, exactly what they were expecting. If nobody was going to give horror props, if people were going to pretend horror was just dull-witted numbskulls running around with power tools chasing after big-breasted bimbos without an ounce of common sense, then Laymon was going to get in on the gag. "You think horror's absolutely beyond redemption," he asks of these nose-in-the-air sorts, "then that's exactly what you're going to read." Leave it to other writers to try and change the unchangeable minds of the highbrow crowd was his philosophy. And in the meantime, let's you and me have some laughs at their expense.
"The Cellar" is two slim, gore-soaked, nails-peeled-off, knuckles-shattered middle fingers to every snob on the planet who called out the horror genre (and its readers) for being so awful and hideous and vile. It absolutely is awful, and hideous, and vile, and beyond redemption. For this reason, I hate it...but in hating it I have no one to blame but myself. I could have stopped reading at any time, put the book away, and done something else with my time. But I didn't. Instead of focusing my time and attention on something else, I burned right through those pages up until the ending which, despite having not read it since 2003, I still remember to this day because it made me verbalize the most epic "you gotta be fuckin' kidding me" since John Carpenter's "The Thing".
Laymon wasn't kidding.
To prove it, he wrote two more novels and a novella set in this same Beast House world, and each one of them displays the same complete lack of shame and fucks that "The Cellar" does. Of course I read all three of them, because at some point they had to get better, right? They didn't, and once again, the joke was on me.
There's no cleaning up this particular cellar. It's befouled beyond contemplation, filled to the foundation with filthy characters doing even filthier things to one another, and there's not enough brain bleach in the world to take care of the problem. I will likely never read "The Cellar" again, because once was enough.
But Laymon wasn't writing "The Cellar" for me. He wrote "The Cellar" to make a point. An amateur, talentless hack literally could not do what Laymon did with this book. Talentless hacks have readers abandoning books early. It takes someone truly gifted, truly skilled, truly understanding in the art, to get readers to belly-crawl through a literary cistern, emerge on the other side, and understand that they went along for the ride willingly.
"The Cellar" is shockingly effective, and proof Laymon understood the power of words from the first paragraph of his first draft. It's a terrible book, beyond redemption by any stretch of the imagination, but by god, if you start it, you will finish it.
You'll hate yourself for doing so, and you'll have no one to blame but yourself. My two-star rating is indicative strictly of this. For sheer technique it's worth all five, but five-stars are reserved for the sorts of books I feel almost anybody could read and enjoy. Anybody who reads and enjoys "The Cellar" didn't get the joke, and I'm not interested in encouraging anyone else to go on that journey unprepared.