Jack Ketchum (1946–2018)
Author of The Girl Next Door
About the Author
Image credit: Georges Seguin
Series
Works by Jack Ketchum
Ich bin nicht Sam 3 copies
D.O.A. II 3 copies
Gone 3 copies
Sheep Meadow Story 3 copies
Übler Abschaum 2 copies
Horror 101: The Way Forward 2 copies
Meine besten Erzählungen 2 copies
Returns 1 copy
Extras 1 copy
The Holding Cell 1 copy
Amok Jagd 1 copy
Hide and Seek-french 1 copy
Joyride-German 1 copy
Off Season- french 1 copy
Red-Japanese 1 copy
Right to Life-japanese 1 copy
Przebudzenie 1 copy
Sie erwacht 1 copy
Cold House 1 copy
The Haunt 1 copy
Dust of the Heavens 1 copy
Seascape 1 copy
Associated Works
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighth Annual Collection (1995) — Contributor — 331 copies, 6 reviews
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection (2001) — Contributor — 258 copies, 2 reviews
Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer (2010) — Contributor — 149 copies, 26 reviews
Shining in the Dark: Celebrating 20 Years of Lilja's Library (2018) — Contributor — 116 copies, 2 reviews
Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane (2012) — Contributor — 97 copies, 6 reviews
Mister October: An Anthology in Memory of Rick Hautala (Volume 2) (2013) — Contributor — 62 copies, 18 reviews
Graven Images: Fifteen Tales of Dark Magic and Ancient Myth (2000) — Contributor — 57 copies, 1 review
In the Shadow of the Towers: Speculative Fiction in a Post-9/11 World (2015) — Contributor — 42 copies
Mister October: An Anthology in Memory of Rick Hautala (Volumes 1 and 2) (2013) — Contributor — 17 copies, 15 reviews
Butcher Knives and Body Counts: Essays on the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film (2011) — Contributor — 14 copies, 1 review
A Haunting of Horrors, Volume 2: A Twenty-Book eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult (2014) — Contributor — 10 copies
Piercing the Darkness Anthology: A Charity Anthology for the Children’s Literacy Initiative (2014) — Contributor — 7 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Ketchum, Jack
- Legal name
- Mayr, Dallas William
- Other names
- Livingston, Jerzy
- Birthdate
- 1946-11-10
- Date of death
- 2018-01-24
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- actor
teacher
literary agent
author - Awards and honors
- Bram Stoker Award (Short Story ∙ 1994)
Bram Stoker Award (Short Story ∙ 2000)
World Horror Convention Grand Master Award (2011) - Short biography
- Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym for a former actor, teacher, literary agent, lumber salesman, and soda jerk. He is also a former flower child and baby boomer who figures that in 1956 Elvis, dinosaurs and horror probably saved his life. His first novel, OFF SEASON, an updating of the Sawney Beane story, prompted the Village Voice to publicly scold its publisher in print for publishing violent pornography. He has always wondered what they would think of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. His short story THE BOX won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award from HWA.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Livingston, New Jersey, USA
- Place of death
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Discussions
Jack Ketchum in Thing(amabrarian)s That Go Bump in the Night (December 2011)
Jack Ketchum Type Horror in Thing(amabrarian)s That Go Bump in the Night (September 2007)
Reviews
Dear Holy Diary,
Please never let me reach the point in my career when I feel that I must validate myself as a "literary" writer by producing overwritten, pretentious claptrap. Please let me always find contentment in being the best at whatever it is that I truly am - and if that's simply a pulpy horror writer of dubious literary merit, then may I accept my fate with grace.
Amen.
Two stories here:
"Papa", by Ketchum, is the stronger of the two, and is only ten pages long. A man is mistaken for show more Hemingway and invited back to a guy's apartment to partake in some absinthe. This literary tale likely holds little of interest for the average Ketchum fan as it has ZERO horror/weird tale elements, but at least it feels honest in its telling. Ketchum has a strong sure voice, and I fault him not a bit for whatever inspired him to write this tale that would be right at home in the pages of the New Yorker magazine.
"Bleeding Things" by Lebbon is a different matter entirely. It absolutely reeks of desperation, and I can picture the author wearing a t-shirt that says "take me seriously!" in a big bold font across the chest. Some would say it's beautifully written, and if your aspirations as a reader involve a trip down Erudite Lane then you might not mind perpetuating the fraud on display here. The language is flowing and beautiful at first glance, but it doesn't take long for the baroque facade to disintegrate into the gaudy and garish. This confused tale of war-torn Berlin, a woman who drinks absinthe and bleeds gold, strives for the sublime and achieves the absurd. show less
Please never let me reach the point in my career when I feel that I must validate myself as a "literary" writer by producing overwritten, pretentious claptrap. Please let me always find contentment in being the best at whatever it is that I truly am - and if that's simply a pulpy horror writer of dubious literary merit, then may I accept my fate with grace.
Amen.
Two stories here:
"Papa", by Ketchum, is the stronger of the two, and is only ten pages long. A man is mistaken for show more Hemingway and invited back to a guy's apartment to partake in some absinthe. This literary tale likely holds little of interest for the average Ketchum fan as it has ZERO horror/weird tale elements, but at least it feels honest in its telling. Ketchum has a strong sure voice, and I fault him not a bit for whatever inspired him to write this tale that would be right at home in the pages of the New Yorker magazine.
"Bleeding Things" by Lebbon is a different matter entirely. It absolutely reeks of desperation, and I can picture the author wearing a t-shirt that says "take me seriously!" in a big bold font across the chest. Some would say it's beautifully written, and if your aspirations as a reader involve a trip down Erudite Lane then you might not mind perpetuating the fraud on display here. The language is flowing and beautiful at first glance, but it doesn't take long for the baroque facade to disintegrate into the gaudy and garish. This confused tale of war-torn Berlin, a woman who drinks absinthe and bleeds gold, strives for the sublime and achieves the absurd. show less
Red by Jack Ketchum
When most people think of Jack Ketchum, they think of horror. You think of horror again when you read a book blurb that sounds like a more realistic, friendlier version of Pumpkinhead. So hey, it’s a horror story right?
Well, not really. Life has decided to stop being predictable after all. Red is much more than the typical revenge story it touts itself as being. Av doesn’t believe a crime can’t be forgiven, but he doesn’t believe in scapegoats, liars, or not manning up to your show more mistakes and accepting responsibility. This story stands on the shoulders of a larger one which is slowly revealed to the reader.
The protagonist is an older widow with only his small self-owned store, empty house, and old dog left. They keep each other company as they’ve aged together and seen their loved ones pass on. The sympathy stake is buried firmer since his wife died tragically, and the dog was a birthday present from her to him. It’s not just anger at the act, but at the senselessness of it that gets to both Av and the reader who follows him on the ride.
Ketchum writes with a slow, sweeping grace. His writing is literary, but I do hold qualms with some of his sentence lengths and comma aversions the first few chapters. Thankfully this settles down.
I applaud the slow, believable progression of anger. The blurb reads like it’s a classic revenge tale, but it’s really not. The story is more intricate that you’d believe as he goes through every channel he can to try and see the boys admit to what they did and apologize. It’s not just about punishment and getting revenge, but something for the senseless act, even if it’s only an admission of guilt. The psychology behind this comes out as the story unfolds and why this is so important to the man.
The ending is heartbreaking as it reaches its inevitable conclusion, all that could be avoided, as the consequences swing to full closure on the karma wheel. show less
Well, not really. Life has decided to stop being predictable after all. Red is much more than the typical revenge story it touts itself as being. Av doesn’t believe a crime can’t be forgiven, but he doesn’t believe in scapegoats, liars, or not manning up to your show more mistakes and accepting responsibility. This story stands on the shoulders of a larger one which is slowly revealed to the reader.
The protagonist is an older widow with only his small self-owned store, empty house, and old dog left. They keep each other company as they’ve aged together and seen their loved ones pass on. The sympathy stake is buried firmer since his wife died tragically, and the dog was a birthday present from her to him. It’s not just anger at the act, but at the senselessness of it that gets to both Av and the reader who follows him on the ride.
Ketchum writes with a slow, sweeping grace. His writing is literary, but I do hold qualms with some of his sentence lengths and comma aversions the first few chapters. Thankfully this settles down.
I applaud the slow, believable progression of anger. The blurb reads like it’s a classic revenge tale, but it’s really not. The story is more intricate that you’d believe as he goes through every channel he can to try and see the boys admit to what they did and apologize. It’s not just about punishment and getting revenge, but something for the senseless act, even if it’s only an admission of guilt. The psychology behind this comes out as the story unfolds and why this is so important to the man.
The ending is heartbreaking as it reaches its inevitable conclusion, all that could be avoided, as the consequences swing to full closure on the karma wheel. show less
Let me start out by saying that if you're concerned about whether this novella is going to be too Pro-Choice or too Anti-Abortion, you've already missed the point and should probably read something else. Now that we have that out of the way...
Right to Life starts out with a woman being abducted on her way to an abortion clinic, and nothing really good happens to her after that. Ketchum handles the story with the brutal realism he's known for, and the only real flaw with it overall is show more probably the length, although I would be hard-pressed to argue that Right to Life would actually benefit from a novel-length treatment. It's hard not to compare this novella to The Girl Next Door, which is unfair considering the complexity of characters and events in the latter, and the unconscious comparison of the two works is probably the only reason that Right to Life failed to have a significant impact on me. Ketchum achieves what he set out to do, and does it well, but ultimately doesn't take the subject matter anywhere new if you are already familiar with his other work, especially his reoccurring theme of captive women (The Girl Next Door, The Woman). It's good Ketchum, don't get me wrong, but it's not the one you're going to recommend to others first when they tell you they've never read his work.
The two short stories included appear somewhat inferior - once again, perhaps due only to his masterful handling of novel-length pieces - with Brave Girl feeling more like a cheap Andrew Vachss knockoff, and Returns loses it's impact by mirroring a sentimentality already displayed ten pages ago in the ending of Right to Life. All things considered, they probably should have been aborted, and Right to Life released as an only child. show less
Right to Life starts out with a woman being abducted on her way to an abortion clinic, and nothing really good happens to her after that. Ketchum handles the story with the brutal realism he's known for, and the only real flaw with it overall is show more probably the length, although I would be hard-pressed to argue that Right to Life would actually benefit from a novel-length treatment. It's hard not to compare this novella to The Girl Next Door, which is unfair considering the complexity of characters and events in the latter, and the unconscious comparison of the two works is probably the only reason that Right to Life failed to have a significant impact on me. Ketchum achieves what he set out to do, and does it well, but ultimately doesn't take the subject matter anywhere new if you are already familiar with his other work, especially his reoccurring theme of captive women (The Girl Next Door, The Woman). It's good Ketchum, don't get me wrong, but it's not the one you're going to recommend to others first when they tell you they've never read his work.
The two short stories included appear somewhat inferior - once again, perhaps due only to his masterful handling of novel-length pieces - with Brave Girl feeling more like a cheap Andrew Vachss knockoff, and Returns loses it's impact by mirroring a sentimentality already displayed ten pages ago in the ending of Right to Life. All things considered, they probably should have been aborted, and Right to Life released as an only child. show less
In the basement, with Ruth, I began to learn that anger, hate, fear and loneliness are all one button awaiting the touch of just a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction.
And I learned that they can taste like winning.
After Jack Ketchum (who's real name is Dallas Mayr) died, a few short weeks ago, I was determined to revisit some of his work. I also suggested it to a friend of mine, who'd said she'd specifically avoided the novel up to now. Unfortunately, I pushed her to read show more the book, because it truly is the single most important book Ketchum ever wrote. She stopped on page 192, saying she couldn't go on, and I get it.
This is only the second time I've read this book, and it'll likely be the last. This is not a book that leaves you glad that you read it. It's not a book you read for entertainment.
In his introduction to Jack Ketchum's last published collection of short stories, Gorilla In My Room, Edward Lee tells this story:
One time Ketchum and I were sitting in a convention bar, in between panels, readings, etc., and I was yammering over my beer about some book I'd read that was flawed from a "writerly" standpoint but I found that I enjoyed it anyway. Then I said something like, "It seems to me that if a novel possesses flawed components but it's still entertaining, then it's done its job. An iffy plot doesn't matter, shitty characters don't matter, crummy dialogue doesn't matter, as long as some other element of that book entertains the readership."
Ketchum replied rather perfunctorily, "Bullshit. I don't want to entertain readers, I want to provoke them. I want to make them think. Think about what's really going on out there, to consider that it's not all tiptoeing through the tulips, to recognize that some really awful shit could be awaiting them around the next corner. Bad, bad shit. Real horror that gets its hands on real people every damn day, when they least expect it. If all my books do is entertain, then they've failed. For a book to be good, it needs to perform, and it performs by provoking the reader into thinking, and to come away from that thinking with something useful."
Nowhere was Ketchum more successful with that than with this novel. This is a masterclass in how to provoke a reader. It's an ugly book about an ugly subject.
But Jack tackles it perfectly. He starts talking about pain. But there's pain, and then there's pain, and Ketchum ultimately delivers the pain. But, just as the plot slowly progresses and sucks you in, so do the lines that Ketchum crosses.
Read the first quarter of this novel. You could easily believe you're in one of Stephen King's masterful coming of age stories. It, perhaps. But he turns the screws so slowly at the beginning, giving a glimpse of what could have been, the view from the top of a glorious Ferris wheel ride, before plunging the reader back down to that world where some really awful shit awaits the characters—and the reader—around the next corner.
Truly horrible things happen in this novel, and I am the first to disavow gratuitous violence and torture in a book or movie. But it's never gratuitous here. Ketchum grabs the sides of your head and demands that you watch, not because he wants to gross you out, or titillate you. He wants you to watch and be reviled by it, to be sickened by it.
Because, at least for me, he shows how any aggressor slowly, yet carefully dehumanizes their victim, whether through mental or physical abuse, violence or torture. It's a terrible thing, the most reviling thing one human can do to another, yet we do it all the time, every day. And sometimes we just shake our head, turn away and mutter, "that's too bad." And sometimes...sometimes...our anger, our hate, our fear, and our loneliness, when turned upon another, can taste like winning.
Ketchum makes you feel shame for that.
We are a world of casual violence. We choose guns over children. We watch murders while eating popcorn. We protect rapists and blame the victims. We send people to jail for longer sentences when they sell drugs than when they take a life.
We are a broken world. But we mostly ignore it.
In this novel, for a brief time, Ketchum does not let you turn away from that.
I cannot stress how important this novel is, nor the impact it's had on my own writing. This is a horror novel, but not because of any vampires or supernatural presence. The monsters here are completely human. They are you and me. show less
And I learned that they can taste like winning.
After Jack Ketchum (who's real name is Dallas Mayr) died, a few short weeks ago, I was determined to revisit some of his work. I also suggested it to a friend of mine, who'd said she'd specifically avoided the novel up to now. Unfortunately, I pushed her to read show more the book, because it truly is the single most important book Ketchum ever wrote. She stopped on page 192, saying she couldn't go on, and I get it.
This is only the second time I've read this book, and it'll likely be the last. This is not a book that leaves you glad that you read it. It's not a book you read for entertainment.
In his introduction to Jack Ketchum's last published collection of short stories, Gorilla In My Room, Edward Lee tells this story:
One time Ketchum and I were sitting in a convention bar, in between panels, readings, etc., and I was yammering over my beer about some book I'd read that was flawed from a "writerly" standpoint but I found that I enjoyed it anyway. Then I said something like, "It seems to me that if a novel possesses flawed components but it's still entertaining, then it's done its job. An iffy plot doesn't matter, shitty characters don't matter, crummy dialogue doesn't matter, as long as some other element of that book entertains the readership."
Ketchum replied rather perfunctorily, "Bullshit. I don't want to entertain readers, I want to provoke them. I want to make them think. Think about what's really going on out there, to consider that it's not all tiptoeing through the tulips, to recognize that some really awful shit could be awaiting them around the next corner. Bad, bad shit. Real horror that gets its hands on real people every damn day, when they least expect it. If all my books do is entertain, then they've failed. For a book to be good, it needs to perform, and it performs by provoking the reader into thinking, and to come away from that thinking with something useful."
Nowhere was Ketchum more successful with that than with this novel. This is a masterclass in how to provoke a reader. It's an ugly book about an ugly subject.
But Jack tackles it perfectly. He starts talking about pain. But there's pain, and then there's pain, and Ketchum ultimately delivers the pain. But, just as the plot slowly progresses and sucks you in, so do the lines that Ketchum crosses.
Read the first quarter of this novel. You could easily believe you're in one of Stephen King's masterful coming of age stories. It, perhaps. But he turns the screws so slowly at the beginning, giving a glimpse of what could have been, the view from the top of a glorious Ferris wheel ride, before plunging the reader back down to that world where some really awful shit awaits the characters—and the reader—around the next corner.
Truly horrible things happen in this novel, and I am the first to disavow gratuitous violence and torture in a book or movie. But it's never gratuitous here. Ketchum grabs the sides of your head and demands that you watch, not because he wants to gross you out, or titillate you. He wants you to watch and be reviled by it, to be sickened by it.
Because, at least for me, he shows how any aggressor slowly, yet carefully dehumanizes their victim, whether through mental or physical abuse, violence or torture. It's a terrible thing, the most reviling thing one human can do to another, yet we do it all the time, every day. And sometimes we just shake our head, turn away and mutter, "that's too bad." And sometimes...sometimes...our anger, our hate, our fear, and our loneliness, when turned upon another, can taste like winning.
Ketchum makes you feel shame for that.
We are a world of casual violence. We choose guns over children. We watch murders while eating popcorn. We protect rapists and blame the victims. We send people to jail for longer sentences when they sell drugs than when they take a life.
We are a broken world. But we mostly ignore it.
In this novel, for a brief time, Ketchum does not let you turn away from that.
I cannot stress how important this novel is, nor the impact it's had on my own writing. This is a horror novel, but not because of any vampires or supernatural presence. The monsters here are completely human. They are you and me. show less
Lists
Overdue Podcast (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 108
- Also by
- 57
- Members
- 6,902
- Popularity
- #3,543
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 277
- ISBNs
- 227
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
- 36
