The following posts include (1) "footnotes" for The Doris Piserchia Website (link at left), (2) texts-in-process that will eventually appear there, (3) texts from other websites, and (we hope) (4) stimulating discussion threads. The picture to the left is the back cover of The Spinner (book club edition), depicting a citizen of Eastland "hanging out" while Ekler the cop and Rune the idiot-superman look on.
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In the previous post I analyzed Mr. Justice so much it almost died on the examination table; at some point I'll combine those notes on plot and character with a discussion of the author's style (looking closely at some quoted passages), which I hope will restore some of the mystery and magic to the novel. In the meantime, I'm going to strap another subject onto the gurney: Blood County, 1981, a fine horror novel about which very little has been written.
As those familiar with DP's bibliography know, she wrote that book under the pseudonym "Curt Selby." This paragraph precedes the frontispiece:
Curt Selby was born and raised in a remote valley of West Virginia, and is thoroughly familiar with the life of the isolated mountain folk with whom he is kith and kin. After serving in the armed forces, Selby found work in the East Coast state where he married and makes his home. He has written and sold many novels under other signatures, but this one is drawn from his own youth and experiences.
This passage contains multiple ironies: (1) The reader thinks this is Selby's most personal book--that he finally came out from under the aliases to tell a story based on his own background. One problem: Selby doesn't exist. (2) Piserchia published eleven books under her own name, but wrote the one "drawn on her youth and experiences" under a pseudonym. (3) In this most personal of her books, the isolated mountain folk who are her kith and kin are depicted as a pack of bloodthirsty vampires.
Nevertheless, the book does contain some beautiful and affectionate writing about the world DP left behind, and in discussing the novel, I plan to succumb to the urge to look for autobiography at every turn. What follows is a chapter by chapter summary, a form of note-taking that will eventually be a review.
Chapter 1. Clinton Breen receives a telegram from home announcing that his brother Jared is dead. He's so distracted he steps off a curb and is hit by a car. The gaping, mortal wound on his head barely fazes him; by the time the driver, Portia Clark, tracks him to his apartment a few hours later it's healed. Clinton tells her he's fine and doesn't need her help. Sugarman Phelps, Clinton's alcoholic "surrogate mother and father" arrives at the apartment from Blood County, W. Va. He reiterates that Jared is dead; Clinton says: "I don't see why you have to be so afraid of him."
Chapter 2. A train travels east carrying war casualties. Somewhere around Illinois or Pennsylvania, one of the coffins springs open and a fiend with long fangs and glowing red eyes emerges. As he prepares to bite the soldier guarding the coffins, the soldier recites the Lord's Prayer, and the fiend shows dawning awareness, relaxes his grip, and jumps from the train. (In Chapter 9 we learn this scene is a flashback to Clinton's vampire awakening.)
Chapter 3. From her hiding place under a mansion in Blood County, Gilda Lamprou watches a child, Charlie, playing. She gives him bubblegum in exchange for a few drops of "what keeps him functioning," a routine that's been going on for some time. She fears her husband, Duquieu, will be "harsh" if she "simply snatches the brat and does what she longs to do all at once."
[outline continued in comments--or read the completed version here.]