The hunger and other stories

If ever there was a book of short stories that started with a BANG!, this is it! “Miss Gentibelle” is the story, and BANG it is! “There’s been a lot of death in this house…” That parrot - oh my god!

I recognized the author's name from the old Twilight Zone t.v. episodes and I thought I'd take a chance. I wasn't disappointed! 17 short stories by Beaumont, most of them appearing for the first time in this collection. The first story was definitely my favorite, but there is enough darkness and creepiness to go around! And "The Crooked Man" was a big mind bender for me, with a world where heterosexuality is illegal and homosexuality is the norm! That one first appeared in 1955 - way ahead of its time!

LOVE this blurb from the back show more cover:

“If you are lily-livered or chicken-hearted or a dangerous maniac, don’t read these stories.”

You’ve been warned!

“The moon is the shepherd,
The clouds are his sheep…” show less

Like Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont was a prolific contributor to the original Twilight Zone. However, unlike Matheson, he never achieved the same fame as a writer due to his untimely death at age 38 from what we now can guess was early onset Alzheimer's. He left behind only a few collections, and two novels (one of which, The Intruder, served as the basis for Roger Corman's brilliant adaptation with William Shatner). The Hunger, his first collection, can't really be considered Twilight Zone-material. While it does have elements of the fantastique, it leans much more towards psychological horror and dark comedy. The first story, "Miss Gentilbelle" is the most intense of the lot, and absolutely floored me; it's about a former show more southern belle living in a gothic mansion who forces her son to dress and live as a girl, and kills his pets as punishment for "transgressions". I felt like puking after reading it, but it's brilliant. The rest of the stories are not as intense, and some of them are semi-clunkers, but there are some real diamonds in there: "The Infernal Bouillabaisse" is a neat twist on the cannibal restaurant story, and "Black Country" is set in the jazz milieu of the late 1950s, and prefigures Cortazar's The Pursuer. Also of note is "Free Dirt", an EC style shocker with a twist ending. Beaumont's prose is also more poetic and lyrical than his contemporaries, and he is far closer to Shirley Jackson in evoking emotion than Matheon's razor-sharp hardness. show less

This Halloween season, I was in the mood for some classic, twisted stories. For a long time, I've wanted to read some of the authors who were instrumental in the writing and development of The Twilight Zone. I decided to start with Charles Beaumont, who was involved with the writing of more than twenty episodes of the classic series.

Immediately, I was pulled toward the Night Ride collection. I felt drawn to it. But I looked at the ratings and reviews of all of Beaumont's work and decided it would be more prudent to start with his first collection, The Hunger. This was where I went wrong.

The writing style is very much of its time. This is great. I was in the mood for the dark, twisty 1950s vibe. With the exception of a couple notable show more stories, however, this collection didn't really grab me. Many of these relied too much on shock value, whether provided by the twist, or merely by the depravity of the subject. There's also a playfulness in many of these stories that, given their dark nature, comes off as a bit crass. Some of this was the times, but I would venture to guess that part of this was the maturity of the author, and later stories would show more masterful orchestration.

I can't say that Night Ride would've been a better selection for me, as I haven't read it. I do get the impression, however, that it would've better satisfied my thirst for Twilight Zone nostalgia. Maybe someday I'll find out. Or maybe I'll just catch up on my Shirley Jackson reading. show less

Yes, I know Beaumont was an important American horror writer, but I just don't enjoy his stuff, particularly his 1950s-1960s society settings, they just grate on me.