Richard Laymon

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Richard Carl Laymon (born January 14, 1947 in Chicago , † February 14, 2001 in Los Angeles ) was an American writer who was mainly known for writing horror novels . He also wrote under the pen names Carl Laymon , Richard Kelly, and Lee Davis Willoughby . His novels are characterized by a simple, sometimes script-like style and live through their uncompromising portrayal of sex and violence. Laymon has made his way through works like The Cellar or Island thus profiled as an author of the "strikingly repulsive".

Life and career

Richard Laymon was born in Chicago on January 14, 1947, the second son of Hugh Kelly Laymon and Wanda Kathleen Hall. His father, a soldier in World War II , worked for the publisher Henry Regnery, while his mother looked after the children and the home. The family moved to Southern California in 1963. Studied English literature at Willamette University in Oregon. He completed his studies in Los Angeles at Loyola University with a master's degree and a teaching and librarianship degree.

Edgar Allan Poe served Laymon as a literary role model: "I imagined myself to be a kind of [...] Edgar Allan Poe." In 1997 Laymon visited his grave in Baltimore.

Laymon had already started writing short stories during his school days. His role models were Mark Twain , Ernest Hemingway and above all Edgar Allan Poe . While he was making up new stories in his room, the parents believed that he was doing homework. His first “prose works” and poems were printed in the school newspaper. During his student days, he expanded his hobby into a part-time job: he sold short stories to various magazines such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine , Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine as well as Mike Shayne , Cavalier and Gallery .

After completing his studies, he worked as an English teacher at a Catholic girls' school and married Ann Marie Marshall in 1976, with whom he had a daughter named Kelly in 1979. Two years later, Laymon became a library assistant at John Adams Junior High School, where after a while he was promoted to library director. After being recommended to Warner Books by literary agent Jay Garon , Laymon published his first novel, The Cellar , in 1980 , which became a bestseller in the United States and England. A total of over 250,000 copies were sold and broadcasts into French, Italian, Spanish and German followed. The Woods Are Dark (1981), his second novel, sold relatively poorly and abruptly ended his career in the United States. Laymon blamed the editors, who unnecessarily shortened his work and thus falsified the content:

“Whole paragraphs had been crossed out. The timing was mixed up. Grammatical errors were introduced due to changes in punctuation. I can't describe how badly the novel was mutilated. "

In addition, after this novel he was eyed suspiciously by US publishers for his unvarnished depiction of sex and violence, which made further publications difficult. During this long journey he had to look for a job at a law firm in order to survive financially. He then worked for Hughes & Crandall as a reporter for four years .

In Europe, however, especially in England, the success continued. His longtime agent Bob Tanner referred Laymon to English publishers, who have now published his other novels in bound versions - a sign of his increasing popularity. In the USA, on the other hand, his novels were only marketed in paperback, if at all.

At the beginning of the nineties, Laymon experienced a renaissance thanks to the small publisher Cemetery Dance in the USA: Richard Chizmar, publisher, published some of his works as limited and signed special editions. The novels sold so well that second editions had to be printed. With increasing recognition, Laymon worked with his stories and novellas in various anthologies until he finally published his own in 2000: Bad News . In the same year he was appointed President of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and was able to celebrate his greatest success with readers and critics with the vintage fiction The Show - in 2001 he was posthumously awarded the Bram Stoker Award for it. Richard Laymon died unexpectedly on February 14, 2001 of a heart attack .

In Germany, his literary work was translated by Wilhelm Heyne Verlag and Festa Verlag , especially after his death in 2001 . Several novels were also published posthumously in the USA , such as Amara in 2002 (German: The Cage ) or 2005 Into the Fire (German: The Hole ).

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Laymon's work includes more than sixty short stories and over thirty novels, which often cause controversy due to their depictions of violence and sex, and their very simple writing style. Due to the intervention of the Federal Inspectorate for Media Harmful to Young People , the Roman Island (German: Die Insel ) has only been available as a censored version since September 2008. In other works, too, some passages were toned down during the translation.

Laymon's excursions into the fields of youth fiction and westerns are less well known, which may be because they don't quite fit his image as an enfant terrible . He also published them under pseudonyms. He brought out the youthful horror novels Your Secret Admirer (1980) and Nightmare Lake (1983) as Carl Laymon and the Western The Lawmen (1983) as Lee Davis Willoughby .

Laymon's novels fall into two categories: natural and supernatural horror . Almost half of his works contain supernatural, fantastic elements; in the rest, the “evil” finds its way into supposed idylls and safe places in a realistic way in human form. The Cellar (dt. The basement ), Resurrection Dreams (dt. The grave ), Flesh (dt. Parasite ), the Stake (dt. The stake ) One Rainy Night (dt. The rain ), Body Rides (dt. The Guest ) include, for example, supernatural phenomena, while Blood Games (German: The Meeting ), Savage (German: The Ripper ), Island (German: The Island ), Quake (German: The Inferno ) as well as After Midnight (German: Night ) and The Traveling Vampire Show (dt. The Show ) treat realistic horror.

The theme is mostly the intrusion of evil into safe, intact worlds:

“The real monster in Laymon's novel [s] is not an undead creature living in a distant castle, but the neighbor next door. The horror arises from everyday life in an ordinary village, like many others through which one could drive somewhere on the way. "

The affected people, who hardly expect terrorism and are therefore most vulnerable, are put to a tough test of survival. The usual civilization collapses. The victims usually outgrow themselves, act through vigilante justice, but also succumb to their lowest instincts and feel - similar to Viennese actionism - precisely because of this their pure will to live. Dulled by the modern consumer society, the pain inflicted on them makes them feel real life again . In doing so, Laymon remains without any pity, bypasses compromises and concessions. This often leads to "disillusioning and devastating" endings, such as in the novel The Cellar , where no one gets away. The moral values ​​in Laymon's work are controversial. The writer Dan Marlowe describes Laymon as " Stephen King without a conscience". Laymon writes about a completely arbitrary and godless world, which makes his work a terrible reflection of human nature.

In some of his novels, Laymon explicitly dealt with autobiographical experiences. He described his difficulties and experiences with publishers in The Stake (1990), in Quake (1995) he processed his experiences with three California earthquakes.

Laymon worked a lot with dialogues, which is why some of his books read like scripts. The Cellar, for example, is directly inspired by films such as Night of The Living Dead (1968) and The Crazies (1973), which is reflected in the style of the book: Simple scenes and few descriptions dominate. The writer Brett McBean also said that the reader is inevitably reminded of a film when reading it through a simple plot, high speed, visual flair and heavy dialogue. He describes The Woods Are Dark as Laymon's most film-like novel.

Awards

His novel Flesh (Eng .: Parasite ) was voted best horror novel of the year by the Science Fiction Chronicle in 1988 . Flesh , Funland and A Writer's Tale and the collection of short stories A Good, Secret Place were also nominated for the Bram Stoker Award . Laymon won this award in 2001 for The Traveling Vampire Show (dt .: The show ). Since he died shortly before the award ceremony, his daughter Kelly accepted the award for him.

Film adaptations

Laymons short story The Tub (dt. The tub ) was by the Australian 2003 Carter Doyle filmed. The film was shot in Melbourne and the production costs were around 8,000 Australian dollars . The premiere took place on November 14, 2003 at the Out are the Lights Showcase Festival For Charity .

Director Clifton Holmes and producer Dwayne Holmes filmed with minimal budget and effort in 2000 the novel In the Dark (dt .: The game ) in black and white. In addition, the brothers have a trailer for Resurrection Dreams (dt .: The grave ) rotated. Other productions such as the adaptation of Island (German: Die Insel ) or After Midnight (German: Nacht ) failed because no funding was found.

Independent -Filmemacher Chris Sivertson a screenplay written for the film version of The Traveling Vampire Show (dt .: The show ). The project has not yet been implemented.

Fonts

Individual publications

The Beast House Chronicles

  1. The Cellar (1980) (German House of Terror , 1991, ISBN 3-442-08087-8 / In the basement , included in the anthology Der Keller , 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-43351-9 )
  2. The Beast House (1986) (German: Das Horrorhaus , contained in the anthology Der Keller , 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-43351-9 )
  3. The Midnight Tour (1998) (German midnight tour , contained in the anthology Der Keller , 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-43351-9 )
  4. Friday Night in the Beast House (2001) (German The Door , 2017, ISBN 978-3-453-67673-2 )

Fastback range

  1. Shootout At Joe’s (1984)
  2. Dawson City (1984)
  3. The Intruder (1984)
  4. Last Hand (1985)
  5. Live Bait (1985)
  6. Lonely One (1985)
  7. Night Ride (1985)
  8. Guts (1985) (aka The Hearse)
  9. Caller (1985)
  10. The Cobra (1985)
  11. Marathon (1985)
  12. Cardiac Arrest (1985)
  13. Night Games (1985)
  14. The Trap (1985)
  15. The Beast (1986)
  16. The Night Creature (1986)
  17. Beginner's Luck (1986)
  18. Halloween Hunt (1987)
  19. Thin Air (1987)
  20. Return (1987)

Short story collections

Autobiography

In 1998 Richard Laymon published A Writer's Tale , an autobiography limited to 526 copies, in which, among other things, he discusses the genesis of his individual stories.

literature

Books

  • Richard Laymon: A Writer's Tale. Deadline Press, 1998, ISBN 0-9631367-7-1 .
  • Frank Festa: Omen - The Horror Journal (No.1). Festa Verlag , 2003, ISBN 3-935822-69-3 .
  • Robert N. Bloch: Richard Laymon. In: Joachim Körber (Hrsg.): Bibliographisches Lexikon der Utopisch Fantastischen Literatur. Corian Verlag , 1997.

Magazine and newspaper articles

  • Jack Adrian: Obituary: Richard Laymon. In: The Independent . March 19, 2001, p. 6. (Obituaries).
  • Library features author. In: Herbert River Express . October 2, 2004, p. 9. (News).
  • Iain Sharp: Master of gore ensures this is no island paradise. In: Sunday Star-Times . Aug 11, 1996, p. 4. (Books).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Robert N. Bloch: Richard Laymon . In: Joachim Körber (Hrsg.): Bibliographisches Lexikon der Utopisch Fantastischen Literatur . P. 2.
  2. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 14.
  3. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 15.
  4. ↑ a b c d Robert N. Bloch: Richard Laymon . In: Joachim Körber (Hrsg.): Bibliographisches Lexikon der Utopisch Fantastischen Literatur . P. 1.
  5. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 16.
  6. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 52.
  7. ^ Herbert River Express. P. 9.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Adrian, Jack. P. 6.
  9. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 21.
  10. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 20.
  11. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 294.
  12. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 194: Laymon reports 70,000 copies sold.
  13. ↑ Richard Laymon quotes the following in the foreword ... by Kelly Laymon in Laymon, Richard: In the Dark Forests . Festa Verlag, 2011, p. 6.
  14. ^ Festa, Frank. P.56.
  15. ^ A Writer's Tale. P. 29.
  16. ^ Festa, Frank. P. 60.
  17. ^ List of works by Richard Laymon (bonus material). In: Richard Laymon: The Hole . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , 2012, p. 526.
  18. ↑ Book censorship. In: Schnittberichte.com. Retrieved December 28, 2012 (German).
  19. ^ Herbert River Express. P. 9.
  20. ↑ a b c Festa, Frank. P. 57.
  21. ↑ Brett McBean in his afterword to Laymon, Richard: In the Dark Forests . Festa Verlag , 2011, p. 256.
  22. ^ Festa, Frank. P. 59.
  23. ↑ Brett McBean in his afterword to Laymon, Richard: In the Dark Forests . Festa Verlag , 2011, p. 255.
  24. ^ Past Bram Stoker Nominees & Winners. In: Horror Writers Association. Retrieved December 17, 2018 .
  25. ^ The Tub. In: Internet Movie Database. Retrieved February 20, 2012 .
  26. ^ Box office / business for The Tub. In: Internet Movie Database. Retrieved December 2, 2012 .
  27. ^ Brothers And Arms - an interview with Dwayne and Clifton Holmes. In: Richard Laymon Kills. Retrieved December 27, 2012 .
  28. ^ The Traveling Vampire Show. In: New York Times. Retrieved December 27, 2012 .
  29. ^ The Traveling Vampire Show (Overview). In: New York Times. Retrieved December 27, 2012 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 16, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Laymon, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laymon, Richard Carl; Kelly, Richard (pen name); Laymon, Carl (pseudonym); Willoughby, Lee Davis (pseudonym)
SHORT DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 2001
Place of death los Angeles