Synopsis
Robert Bloch was destined to make generations nervous about showering when he penned PSYCHO. But there's more to his story than just a brief stay at the Bates Motel. In ONCE AROUND THE BLOCH, he recounts it all, in the fast, furious and funny way that only he can.
ONCE AROUND THE BLOCH takes us from Bloch's early years in Chicago to his first fateful encounter with the pulp magazine classic, Weird Tales. Within its pages, he discovers the peerless horror fiction of H.P Lovecraft, and he begins a correspondence with Lovecraft which changes the course of his life. It is Lovecraft himself who first suggests that young Mr. Bloch might just have the knack for dreaming up literary terrors of his own. And how right he is.
As a young family man in Wisconsin, our struggling author finds the inspiration for his masterwork, PSYCHO, thanks to the real-life exploits of a - mercifully - distant neighbor. His name is Ed Gein, and he is lonely, backwoods sort of fellow with a penchant for digging up corpses for company (not to mention arts and crafts). And he's not above making a few fresh corpses of his own when excavating gets dull. In the hands of a master craftsman, this raw material will become the stuff of legendary nightmare, and Norman Bates will be born.
But ONCE AROUND THE BLOCH is not just the story of a literary life - it is also a tale of Tinsel Town. Aside from providing the genesis for Alfred Hitchcock's favorite black comedy, Robert Bloch has also lent his talents to the big and small screens over the years as a scriptwriter. He has helped to create such cinematic terrors as STRAIT-JACKET (directed by the immortal showman, William Castle), ASYLUM, and THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, and written teleplays for TV cult classics like THRILLER, NIGHT GALLERY and STAR TREK.
Reviews
Bloch, famed creator of Psycho , treats us to a whirlwind, goodhumored survey of his long and impressive career. He chronicles his beginnings as a writer for horror and science fiction pulp magazines ( Weird Tales , Unknown Worlds , etc.), his early dabblings in radio and TV scripts, the appearance of Psycho and his subsequent adventures in Hollywood and his return to novels with Psycho II . Bloch entertains with accounts of his forays into politics in Milwaukee, Wis., and his tongue-in-cheek footnotes spice the text with humor, but his faux-naif puns (on statutory rape: "Why anyone would want to rape a statue I'll never know") wear thin. Bloch has been friend or acquaintance to generations of horror and suspense writers, and fans will enjoy his tales of science fiction conventions. But in this view of his life, Bloch substitutes glibness and easy wit for depth, falling back on name-dropping and anecdote when he might have offered his readers a glimpse of his emotional landscape at such times as the breakup of his first marriage or during his struggle as an impoverished writer for many years. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The irrepressible Bloch (Psycho, and gobbets of brethren) kicks off his bouncy autobiography by calling it ``unauthorized,'' as if it appeared from apparitional fingers without his permission. Don't believe it: This is pure Bloch--and much better than his recent excelsior-packed novel, Psycho House (1990). Bloch sets out with gusto and never falls into doldrums, which suggests that even at age 77, if given a strong subject, he can summon the same youthful zest that flowed in Weird Stories and Amazing Stories back in the mid-30's, when he first published at age 18. Phony footnotes abound, including: ``This is not a footnote'' and ``Why anyone would want to be known as the author of Psycho is beyond me. For some time I've attempted to persuade the editors of Who's Who to amend my listing as follows: `Robert Bloch is the author of The Iliad, The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, and The Complete Works of Isaac Asimov.' '' Bloch, we learn, is a midwesterner of German Jewish parentage who first worked as a pulp writer (his mock-Runyonesque character Lefty Feep, he intimates, introduced a slangy new daffiness to sf and fantasy), then as a greatly admired pulp writer with a fan club, then as an aspiring hack for Milwaukee politicians (he actually got a mayor elected), then as a radio-drama writer. His winning a Hugo for his story ``That Hellbound Train'' and the filming, in midlife, of Psycho boosted his career ever upward. Throughout the memoir, anecdotes abound concerning great writing friends (Arthur C. Clarke; August Derleth; H.P. Lovecraft, whose correspondence with the youthful Bloch set Bloch on his writing career) and actor folk (from Karloff to Joan Crawford): Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch tells us, forever said that Bloch was responsible for everything in the film version of Psycho, including the last famous line, ``I wouldn't hurt a fly.'' Brilliant, loopy, Blochian, and a towering example of modest self-deprecation and lampoonery on a Lilliputian scale. Seriously. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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