A Carnival of Robert Bloch Stories

I recently spent some time reading or re-reading some Robert Bloch stories because some friends and I were chatting about his work.

I have a number of his anthologies tucked away, and I'm gradually picking up the new releases from Valancourt. 

I guess I'd failed to notice how many carnival stories Bloch produced, and if we stretch it to amusement parks, there's an interesting cycle. 

Reading now brought back a few memories and generated a few Bloch chills as well. 

The parish fair when I was a kid still included remnants of the side shows of earlier years. My parents skewed me toward the rides, and we bought Cokes from the Shriners booth and avoiding the more salacious attractions. I suspect even then the Wild Man of Borneo was watered down from the geek shows of  prior decades. I have a very vague recollection of a peripheral glimpse of the "wild man" huddled in small cage as we passed an attraction. I believe he was draped in hair and just growling.

I recall some of the carnival art as well, and a few snippets of a barker over a PA, but that's about all I can summon to the surface. 

I think I recalled that first after reading and gaining more understanding from Harlan Ellison's essay "The Gopher in the Gilly" in Stalking the Nightmare about his being left behind in jail by a carnival with a true geek who sweated pure alcohol. It's a pretty chilling true tale.

Bloch's "Double Whammy" incorporates the grotesque exploitation of a carnival geek into its mix. It's like a variant on Nightmare Alley but finds a new fate for it's protagonist/cad in EC Comics/karmic destiny fashion. 

Despite some familiar strokes, it delivers a Bloch twist that fits while making the skin crawl. It first appeared in Fantastic Stories in February 1970. The cover on that doesn't hint at the style of horror in store.

The Animal Fair's maybe the best of the carnival tales, that one a recent re-read for me and even more chilling than when I was a kid.

It's Manson Family inspired and captures some of the same dark chills of "Double Whammy" from a little different character perspective. The final chill  

"Freak Show" from 1979 presents almost a walk-through of a sideshow attractions, the freak show as it was known in the day, with a little different turning of the tables as the story progresses. Bloch could aways find a new spint.

 "The Girl From Mars,"  is also a carnival story despite that sci-fi sounding title. It visits similar territory, serves up another cad, also deserving of karma's wry justice. It's original magazine appearance in Fantastic Adventures with art by Rod Ruth. 

Amid the Lovecraftian tales, his realistic crime thrillers and other Bloch brilliance, Bloch's carnival stories serve a grotesque little subset worth seeking out. 

On Heritage and Identity

Family lore’s always held the Williams clan stretched back to Ireland. I’ve visited the Emerald Isle, and

“Danny Boy,” along with Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart” from his album The Wind that came out not long before my old man died, always played a part in mourning his passing. 

I always had a feeling in visiting Ireland, and even the western shores of Scotland, that I was walking where progenitors had strolled, farmed and fished. 

So I was talking to my wife Christine’s aunt on a recent visit, and she mentioned the free FamilySearch website. 

I used up free Ancestry searches long ago, dabbling to extent my interest stretched past family lore. A general knowledge seemed enough. 

But I dabbled a little more with FamilySearch and opened up a gateway stretching further than I’d imagined on my father’s side. (Ireland seemed to be a branch on his mother’s tree.)

Adjacent footnotes and records seem to confirm the path. The Williamses branch back from my grandfather Sidney Glover Williams Sr. (I’m technically Sidney III) to his father William Milton Williams to David Crockett Williams and his pop Bird and eventually back to Virginia not far from where I live now but then on to England and the merchant and tailor Sydrach Williams. Apparently that Syd visited Italy and ran afoul of the Inquisition at one point.  

Before him? It’s back to Wales. 

Wales!?

A customs officer said as we showed our passports on the way to Scotland once upon a time that since we’d seen Ireland and were headed for the Highlands, we’d need next to visit Wales to have a complete picture of the UK.

I’m having to rethink homeland a bit because the “Son of Williams” line stretches back to Griffiths and Gruffydds in what was once the county of Caernarvonshire in the Northwest region of Wales. 

Maybe some people sailed over from Ireland, but the Gruffydd son of Gwilyms of Penrhyn folk have pretty deep roots in The Land of the Dragon and were involved in moments like the resistance to the Norman Conquest.

All of it brings a bit of awe even as my thinking recalibrates. A little more interest is piqued, at least to explore the history of Wales we didn’t get into that much when I took upper level British history classes in college, thinking I might need that in my writing. I’ll have to do a bit more thinking on identity and heritage than I ever have. 

One thing’s for sure. I’m going to have Christine retool the outline for my obituary to include descendant of Welsh kings!