The Disch

Back around March of this year, I made mention how I'd written my first ever fan letter to an author I'd been reading over the years, Thomas Disch. I'd written this letter mostly because I was pretty sure it was going to get to him since he lives just a few miles down the road from me. None of this sending off a note of thanks to an author in care of a publisher or any such nonsense; just a heart-felt note dropped at the local post office and put into his post office box about five inches from our own. All said and done, I was pretty happy with myself for actually doing the thing, since I'm more of the type to admire quietly from afar. You can imagine my surprise when Thomas Disch appeared on our doorstep this past Saturday just to drop by and thank me for the note.

I actually stood there with my mouth open for a full two beats before I remembered myself and invited him in. We sat down and I fawned over him and we talked about his books and the different kinds of critical review he writes (art and theater), his poetry, his science fiction, and his new passion, painting. Of course my real interest was in his writing process and though we didn't get into it in depth, I gathered enough morsels for our next time together which will probably be when I take him up on his invitation to go over to his place and see his paintings.

I was actually trying not to be such a wide-eyed gawker around him, tempering my enthusiastic "I just love 'em" gushing and talking about what about his stories that I loved. When he asked me what my favorite book was (The Sub), he confided in me that although that series of books (The MD, The Priest, The Businessman, The Sub) are considered his supernatural Minnesota series named for their repeated location in that state, The Sub was very much written about Barryville and Sullivan County, a depressed, rural area whose main industry is hunting and prisons and while I can't admit to actually having known that for fact, it became obvious to me that I had imprinted his story over where we lived, being able to pick out landmarks and geography for the last few years. It was as if two worlds finally touched and it rang like a bell for me.

Anyway, it was totally cool and I'm looking forward to talking to him again sometime. Anyone in for a good read along the horror vein should check out his books, though a few are now out of print. They're very well written and have a thick streak of black humor that makes them even that much better.