“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1943)

[spoilers] This Robert Bloch story, according to editor David G. Hartwell of the Dark Descent anthology, is arguably his best, which is a pretty big statement about someone who was so insanely prolific and also author of the literary property behind Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Psycho. I’m not arguing against it (I still need to read Psycho!), but only, as an ongoing Bloch skeptic (too much hackwork and not enough better than meh, he started early and lived long), raising an eyebrow to hear the argument. In fairness, it might be the best thing I’ve read by him, but “The Hungry House” from The Weird (edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer) at least rivals it. Bloch’s primary flaw is a broad vaudevillian tendency to crack glib and jokey, all puns and dad jokes welcome. That’s less of a problem here (though it persists) and my interest in the Jack the Ripper story gets me the rest of the way over the hump. I’m fascinated by the case and up for regular reviews of the details, which takes up a portion of this story. Bloch’s semi-vampiric premise is that Jack the Ripper is immortal, committing blood sacrifice to extend his life. He disappeared as Jack the Ripper, media celebrity, but continued to kill. An investigator, an Englishman, has been on the case for years when he approaches the first-person narrator, a Chicago psychiatrist, to enlist his aid, which involves attending a bizarre trendy bohemian loft type of party along with handfuls of Chicago references. The story’s twist is brazenly gimmicky but Bloch gets away with it somehow and the story is considered by many to be a stone classic. It’s fairly a surprise that the narrator, the Chicago psychiatrist, turns out to be himself Jack the Ripper. But you really can’t think about this too much or it all falls apart. The investigator’s interest in the psychiatrist is never really given. Chicago, not to mention the world, is a big place for such happenstance. And why, as the narrator, is he withholding from the reader who he is, other than for a short story effect? In the end this story doesn’t work so well for me. Bloch is interesting because he straddles two major strains of 20th-century horror, starting out as a teenage disciple of H.P. Lovecraft, and evolving into the straightforward dialogue-driven story with a surprise (and/or ironic) ending so popular at postwar midcentury. He is fully the latter here, by 1943. In many ways the story seems designed merely to spring its gotcha surprise, rather than offer any insight about Jack the Ripper or his legend.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Read story online.
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"In the Slaughteryard" (1890)

When I talked about horror lying within an intersection of true-crime, this very strange story with its overwrought title is not actually what I had in mind. It's from Mary Danby's Realms of Darkness collection, but it's not much like any horror story I know, certainly of the era. I'm sure it found a much better home in the collection whose cover is pictured above. Yet in its way the story speaks to the intersection very well—as tawdry, unseemly, lurid, with raw hints of derangement and sadism, as if serial murder itself might be a kind of plague contagion, for victims and killers alike, leading to general bloodlust and society quivering on the verge of the breakdown of all norms. See also The Purge (or "The Lottery," which is altogether more elegant than either). The whole point of this story appears to be to make itself as extremely unpleasant as possible for genteel 1890.

Jack the Ripper, of course, who'd finished his work and disappeared a scant two years before this story appeared, deserves all credit for establishing the serial killer as demented media celebrity, writing taunting letters to police and newspapers, sending along irrefutable proof as the whim moves, and generally conducting entire metropolitan areas into waves of panic and revulsion. He was the first, before Zodiac or Manson or Son of Sam, and in a certain perverse view he might still be the best ever—the Babe Ruth of serial killers. He invented it, aided by the media ecosystem in London. Jack the Ripper's irrefutable proof by mail, for example, was a sample of a victim's kidney. But why go into detail.

"The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" (1967)

It turns out that Harlan Ellison's longish story is not just riffing on poor Robert Bloch's previous story, "A Toy for Juliette," but is self-consciously the next chapter. I say "poor" Robert Bloch because he has also been roped into writing the introduction to this story and really doesn't have a lot to say. Of course it sounds like Bloch has high regard for Ellison (he would have to, either way) and I get the sense it's sincere, though he appears somewhat bewildered by the requests. In many ways, Bloch and Ellison are opposites. Both are fascinated by cruelty, but Bloch is more circumspect, laying little traps in his writing that are designed to bloom cunningly into clarity. Whereas Ellison is verbose and explicit. Bloch is a folk song murder ballad. Ellison is an opera. Ellison's story is three times the size of Bloch's, and doesn't come with much of a surprise the way Bloch's does—indeed, was engineered to. I think of Ellison as sort of the Lester Bangs of science fiction, which means in part that I'm OK with his excesses. What interests me most about these two stories is the suggestion of an old guard / new blood distinction. Bloch started publishing in the 1930s. Also, for what it's worth, he's probably known more as a horror or maybe crime fiction writer. In his afterword, Ellison discusses how hard his story was to write. It took more than a year in fits and starts. And it feels a little labored, not to say overdone. It might be the story he was hoping for from Bloch, with the Victorian savagery of the killer juxtaposed by the gleaming technology of The Future. It's going to be heavy for the future when it tangles with Jack the Ripper, man. And so it is, at some length. Bloch's story might be better—if it's more gimmicky, it's also more crafted, and unpleasant, which has to be part of the point. Ellison's is more like a report from his brain which has stalled with vapor lock on the creative problem. It can be highly effective, and in general is one of the most tightly written stories here, but it never has much of anywhere to go. Ultimately it's Jack the Ripper who does most of the work in all of these stories, including Bloch's original from the 1940s, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper." In other words, they tend to be ever more grotesque exercises in "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison

"A Toy for Juliette" (1967)

Robert Bloch's turn at the Dangerous Visions open mic comes with a long backstory and a surprise sequel. Bloch, who is probably best known today for writing the novel on which Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is based. was an early acolyte and correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft. In 1943, Bloch published one of his most famous stories, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," which imagines the legendary London serial killer as an immortal being who must kill women periodically to live on. In many ways the story made Bloch's career. It was often anthologized and often imitated. With that in mind, almost 25 years later, editor Harlan Ellison asked Bloch to write a story for this collection about Jack the Ripper in the future. This story is the result. However, in his lengthy introduction to the story—which is actually longer than the story itself, and includes direct input from Bloch—Ellison admits it wasn't the story he had been thinking of. It is certainly solid in terms of psychotic cruelty, sadism, etc., which Bloch was good at. Practically clinical, in fact. Still, Ellison had his idea and asked Bloch's permission to do his own version of Jack the Ripper in the future, and also asks him to write the introduction for it (you can see that these story introductions and afterwords are a lively and integral part of the collection). That's the next story in this special two-part episode, which Ellison counsels us to read in tandem—the whole thing, both introductions, both stories, and both afterwords by the Ellison/Bloch tag team. More on that next. "A Toy for Juliette," meanwhile, is basically a chamber drama with a time travel sideshow involving sadists. Or psychopaths or sociopaths—always get those two mixed up. It's post-apocalyptic times in the future. Not many humans on the planet. Juliette and her grandfather are hunkered up in some stronghold, from which Grandfather time travels, collecting specimens from the past. Bloch goes a bit far in suggesting they include Amelia Earhart and other famous disappearing people. Once Juliette gets hold of them she tortures them to death. The story spends a considerable amount of time on her methods. Then Jack the Ripper shows up as a specimen—he's another famous disappearing person, of course (conceivably, Grandfather could get around to the Zodiac killer as well). "A Toy for Juliette" is a creepy and unpleasant story, and totally professional. We'll see what Ellison had in mind for the Jack the Ripper scenario next.

Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison