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Stumpage Reports
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Thursday, December 26, 2002 :::
A New Book to Read!: or, Satan's Minions of Colonial South Carolina
I have been a fan of Robert McCammon since the mid 1980's. He is definitely one of the better writers to emerge in the wake of Stephen King's popularization of the horror genre. In McCammon's last few books, such as Gone South, Boy's Life, and Mine, it was obvious he was moving beyond writing horror. He published his last book in 1992 and everybody's been wondering where he has been. When I worked at the library, I was "the guy who read horror novels," and staff members would direct McCammon-jonesing patrons to me. His web site explains his absence and unfortunately, he wrote this new book in 1999 and has since retired.
The new one is Speaks the Nightbird. It is set in South Carolina in 1699 and involves accusations of witchcraft and other skullduggery. I am only 159 pages into the 700+ page book but it looks good. The author has done his research (part of the reason it took so long to write the book) and he does a good job of conveying the language of the 17th century, but you don't feel like you are wading through Pilgrim's Progress or Robinson Crusoe. The author characterizes the people in the book through their action and their thoughts, not through direct description of them. Its something subtle I've noticed that authors do not always do. He gives a great sense of the filth and disease these people lived with, even the rich folks with their George Washington clothes on. Also the sense of this small outpost of civilization, perched on the edge of a forest the size of a continent. A forest these folks believed was filled with savage indians and satan's minions.
I am enjoying ever word of Speaks the Nightbird . I'm usually sad for a minute when a good book ends, but I'll mourn more than usual when this one is over, since there may not be anything else from McCammon.
Some of his earlier books were fun twists on the horror genre. For example, Wolf's Hour, always a guilty pleasure of mine, is about a werewolf who is a secret agent who fights Nazis in World War II, sounds silly but it works. In his next-to-latest book, Gone South, we mature into the sophistication of characters like a siamese twin bounty hunter and his Elvis impersonater sidekick on an allegorical journey into the heart of darkness of the Louisiana bayous.
I am off to Charleston, SC for a few days with the Lady I Can't Think of a Nickname For. Hopefully we will have time to visit the home of Charles Pinckney. Regular readers of Stumpage Reports know of him as The Advocate of the Southern Slave Power Conspiracy.
P.S. I saw Gangs of New York last night. Scorsese, the best living American film director, retains the crown. A great, sprawling, sometimes messy, vision. Daniel Day Lewis and Scorsese both deserve Oscars, but we all know the Oscars lost any credibility years ago, if they had any to begin with.
::: posted by tom at 11:49 AM
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