#ted klein

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Farm Cat

TED Klein: Submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the possessed evil cat Poe: not a cat! :( Lovecraft: not a cat! :( Junji Ito: not a cat! :( Cordwainer Smith: not a cat! :( Frank Belknap Long: not a cat! :( King: a possessed evil cat! that's a great idea! King: i'm gonna remember that!

King: you know, Ted, i also have a story about a possessed evil cat Klein: my name isn't Ted Klein: it's TED King:

Klein: so this guy is visiting a farm and the farm cat starts acting all fucked up Klein: like killing all the hens and also reading his journal Poe: the cat reads his journal? Klein: i know, right? Klein: no respect for boundaries! Klein: typical cat Lovecraft: he's right

King: i also have a story about a possessed evil cat! Junji Ito: nyah :( King: and i also have a story about a possessed evil dog Koontz: oh no :( King: see, i'm a radical centrist when it comes to possessed evil animals King: why can't we just meet in the middle?

King: sure there are bad dogs like cujo King: but there are also good dogs like radar and kojak King: and there's bad cats like church King: but there's also good cats like general and clovis King: in conclusion, pets are a land of contrasts

Klein: what if a sleeping bag ate people Koontz: AAAAAA!!!! Klein: yeah, i know, pretty scary huh? Koontz: AAAAA!!!! Koontz: AAAAA!!!! Klein: it's not that scary RL Stine: i dunno, it's pretty scary

Klein: this guy is on a plane Klein: and he's all like 'don't worry' Klein: 'it may seem implausible that somehow 16 tons of steel could fly through the air' Klein: 'but i'm sure the power of my belief will keep me aloft' Klein: like wile e coyote before he looks down

[vintagerpg]

Dark Gods (1985) is a large part of T.E.D. Klein’s rather small body of work — the rest consists of the novel The Ceremonies, which is an expansion of the short story “Events at Poroth Farm,” a collection of shockingly mediocre short stories called Reassuring Tales (2006)and collection of essays, Providence After Dark (2019), in which he goes full Boomer. If you stick to the 20th century stuff, though, you’re in for a treat. Especially this volume.

Before we go on, though, I want to note that two of these novellas, “Black Man with a Horn” and “Children of the Kingdom” tackle racism in varying degrees, mostly focusing on the idea of white fear of the Other. For some folks, the division between the characters being racists and the author being a racist is unclear. I don’t really agree with that; I think Klein is obviously positioning his narrators as being wrong-headed, but I also don’t think the way Klein goes about it would be regarded as acceptable if they were written today — it’s more than possible to portray racist characters without perpetuating racist tropes and language. I don’t love using the “for their time” argument, but, well, I think we ought to give these stories a little room.

Anyway, there are four novellas here. “Children of the Kingdom” concerns the supposed machinations of horrible things living underneath Manhattan. “Petey” is about a cocktail party and how it ends. “Black Man with a Horn” is about a mediocre writer of Lovecraftian pastiche getting caught in a Lovecraftian pastiche. Finally, “Nadelman’s God,” which won a World Fantasy Award, tells the story of an ad man discovering the far-reaching consequences of writing bad poetry.

To say more about the individual plots is to spoil them. I’m not one for spoiler warnings, but Klein’s real talent is putting his straightforward, unadorned style to the task of slowly building dread, usually amidst an array of seemingly mundane social situations. I would say, though, that his use of the urban environment is groundbreaking (only Fritz Leiber in Our Lady of Darkness really beats him to the punch) with the concept of the “City,” or its shadow, looming large in all the stories. More than anything, though, I think Klein is the first iron clad proof that “Cosmic Horror,” so long tied to the views and stylings of Lovecraft, actually has varied applications. His whole corpus is Cosmic, without being terribly Lovecraftian (even the pastiche), and in demonstrating that possibility, he opened the door for other, later writers to go even further abroad.

[vintagerpg]

The Events at Poroth Farm (1990) was T.E.D. Klein's debut short story (first published in 1972) that formed the basis for his excellent novel The Ceremonies (1984). Despite being included in a couple of Year’s Best Horror anthologies, the story was difficult to find prior to this Necronomicon Press version (which boasts some minor revisions and corrections by the author). It’s one of my favorite horror stories ever and I think there is a solid argument for it being one of the best horror stories written in the second half of the 20th century (and it is, at least to my recollection, free of the controversial themes that mars some of Klein’s later work).

It sees a writer preparing for a course on Gothic literature by spending the summer in a rented room on a remote farm in South Jersey owned by a couple who practice an unnamed Amish-like religion that proscribes modern technology. The isolation is right there from the start, as is a light (an entirely unrealized) sexual tension between the young couple and their lodger. It almost feels like a different kind of story entirely, but then something crawls out of the woods and into one of the couple’s cats, then into more human lodging. Whatever it is does a good job of impersonating people, but it often forgets to blink. The result is catastrophic without ever losing the sense of intimacy and isolation (something the larger novel doesn’t succeed so well at, thought it’s still a banger).

Jason Eckhardt’s stipple-full illustrations really sold the story for me, now and in 1992. That one of the night sky is just beyond perfect. You might be familiar with Eckhardt’s name because I think his work on Chaosium’s Lovecraft Country sourcebooks is so excellently atmospheric. His work for Necronomicon Press is on the same level.

[vintagerpg]

The Glass Harmonica, written and illustrated by Barbara Ninde Byfield and published in 1967, is a collection of “revelations of the mystical order of things.” It was later published under the name The Book of the Weird because I am not sure the actual glass harmonica is ever once mentioned in the text.

This is a book written in the mode of an encyclopedic reference book, a form I adored as a kid (I still have tons of these - The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, Take Warning: A Book of Superstitions, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, and on and on and on). I found this one in high school, after reading a mention of it in T.E.D. Klein’s “The Events at Poroth Farm” (in my estimation, perhaps the best horror story of the latter half of the 20th century, and not just because it is set in New Jersey; you should check it out).

The Glass Harmonica is a little bit whimsical, a little bit irreverent, a little bit sly and is a guide to all the things you might find in a fantasy story or folktale. It is of particular interest because it came out during the fantasy boom of the late 1960s and reflects the overarching themes of the period. Its a breezy, lighthearted take on fantasy, free of the preconceptions that would begin to harden in the 70s (thanks, in no small part, to D&D).

It is packed with lots of fine details. My favorite, I think, is a two-page spread illustrating all sorts of landscape features: moor, mead, thicket, gorge, quagmire and more.

The art is quite interesting, I think. A bit rough, a lot unpretentious. It is maybe the best evidence that the sort of art made famous by early D&D existed long before RPGs.

Join our Patreon!

[eleemosynecdoche]

Theodore Eibon Donald Klein is, well, you know how in Road House Patrick Swayze is some kind of super-bouncer and everybody is in awe of him even though nobody normal would care? Klein is like that but for horror writers. I'm sure Thomas Ligotti said something to the effect of, "Man, Teddy is the single greatest argument against my worldview" at some point in the mid-80s, all right? That's how much in awe people are of this guy who you've not only never heard of, but can't even find articles about on io9. All this respect and awe comes from a career that has consisted of a fairly decent tenure at Twilight Zone Magazine as the editor, a novel, a novella, an anthology of four more novellas, and a limited-press collection of short stories. All of it except the limited-press done in the 80s. There are people whose fanfic output was restricted to a period between 1993 and 1997 on USENET with a greater body of literature to their name. So, does this guy live up to the hype? That depends on taste. Klein has been described, by the author of a Call of Cthulhu rpg adventure, as focusing on urban vs. rural. Frankly, that's shit. Klein focuses on yuppies/generic middle-class horrors getting an over-the-top comeuppance, with two noteworthy exceptions. The first exception is his novel The Ceremonies, which is showoffy and really good. It also allows the yuppie protagonist to redeem himself. The second is his novella "Black Man With A Horn", which is about the author Frank Belknap Long, mostly know for the Cthulhu Mythos story about the time-traveling dogs, rejecting middle-class morality and embracing his stories as meaningful in the face of death. Also there's a fish monster that kills you by being an incredibly bad kisser. So, in the end it's all about yuppies. Other stories: "Petey": thieving yuppie gets shit wrecked by monster, unleashing possibly apocalyptic event through his incuriousness. "Children of the Kingdom": racist yuppie figures out Latin@ people don't have webbed fingers or luminous eyes just slightly too late. "Nadelman's God": hateful cynicism on part of advertising executive summons down evil god, who follows exec around like a puppy. "The Events At Poroth Farm": yuppie gets chance to use degree, fails, possibly ends world. There you have it.

[toomuchhorrorfiction]

T.E.D. Klein (born July 15, 1947)

[dogsandbooksandbeer]

Elinor enjoys being read to. Tonight, it’s T. E. D. Klein’s The Ceremonies.