This is part of a roundtable on The Best Band No One Has Ever Heard Of. The index to the roundtable is here.
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Discussing obscure bands that time forgot is a longstanding tradition. Unearthing obscure writers is maybe less so — perhaps just because musicians have a larger audience in the first place, so obscurities aren’t as obscure? Or maybe because the DIY, primitivist tradition in music is relatively well-established; even zine culture seems more associated with punk rock than with any sort of literature.
But be that as it may, I thought I’d see if anyone wanted to weigh in on best writers no one has ever heard of. I’ll kick it off by pointing to a couple of my favorite unknowns. Here’s an appreciation of the unpublished teen diarist Virginia May Garcia. And another of the great online erotic horror writer Tabico.
So who’s your vote for best writer no one has heard of? Let us know in comments, if you’re so moved.
Virginia May Garcia
I came in here to talk about Fredric Brown and Dawn Powell, but as both of those authors are currently in print, I feel somewhat silly in the face of the examples above. I think that “no one has heard of” is much more difficult in writing than in music because it takes longer to read something than it does to listen to something and make a snap judgement in whether or not something clicks for you as a member of the audience.
I did however like the bit about how humans are hierarchical and that is why we like lists. I think we’re also somewhat damned in that we will often have the belief that our rankings are correct, but really everything is subjective (not new thoughts, I know).
I look forward to seeing what other writers are put forth here.
Who are Fredric Brown and Dawn Powell? I at least haven’t heard of them (success!)
I’m wondering if anyone else is going to bother to post at all; interest in writers no one has heard of is apparently small (which seems predictable, maybe, but still…)
Fredric Brown is a writer of genre fiction who was very active in the pulps. He wrote very commercial fiction; short sharp pops of pure pulp pleasure. He was active in and an inspiration to Hollywood but never achieve the awareness of similar authors (for example Richard Matheson). His crime fiction worked in many different tones as he could tell humorous series mysteries (such as Ed and Ambrose Hunter, the first of which The Fabulous Clip Joint won the Edgar for first novel), he did dark brooding pyschodramas (such as The Far Cry; which may be my favorite amateur detective story), he did complex puzzle mysteries where he actively encouraged the reader to try to find the solution before the characters and his novel The Screaming Mimi is the basis for Dario Argento’s first movie, The Bird With Crystal Plumage.
His use by Argento is not the only time he would be mined by Hollywood either. A look at his IMDB page shows his inspiration in series such as Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and more.
The one which may be most well known in geek circles is “Arena” which was the basis for a Star Trek episode. But his diversity in detective fiction extended to his sci-fi as well.
His diversity in tone was matched by his willingness to experiment with structure turning in some unusual books such as His Name Was Death.
The thing I love most about Brown though is his endings. His endings could punch you right in the kisser (even if they didn’t always make sense).
A lot of his sci-fi is being picked up in ebook form and published and it’s unfortunately at the expense of his other genres (similar to how it’s easy to get Fritz Leiber’s fantasy / sci-fi but not his horror). Centipede Press is putting out lovely (but costly) editions of his darker detective fiction, and there was an aborted attempt to put out the Ed and Ambrose Hunter books in omnibus editions (sadly only one volume w/ four works made it out).
If any of this sounds interesting, I’d suggest either The Fabulous Clipjoint or His Name Was Death for starting points in his crime, What Mad Universe or Martians go home for his Sci-Fi.
My vote is always for Jack Butler, whose first novel, Jujitsu for Christ, just came back in print last year (I helped get it there!). Butler’s varied, genre-hopping canon is a lot better suited for our post-Chabon/Lethem/Diaz/etc era than it did in the early 80s when he started publishing: Jujitsu for Christ (1986) is a lyrical/experimental/funny/sad novel about the Civil Rights Era in Mississippi, which he then followed with Nightshade (1989), which is a science-fiction novel about a vampire on Mars. Then came Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock (1993), a sprawling postmodern mega-novel narrated by the Holy Ghost, which got nominated for the Pulitzer; then Dreamer, a CIA thriller. (Plus a couple volumes of poetry and a book of short stories.) I hope having J4C back in print will lead to a broader rediscovery of his work — it’s really beautiful.
A second for Dawn Powell, too — I read A Time to Be Born last year and loved it. Like Edith Wharton with all the star-crossed love replaced by petty spite and witty put-downs.
I had a bit typed up on Dawn Powell but then I hit alt+q instead of alt+tab and lost it. :( She’s essentially your drunk fun aunt sniping at everyone at the party. Before she did wonderful social satires, she did these very nice rural slice of life books. My favorite of her earlier work is Dance Night which is about people who have nothing in town except for a factory and a weekly dance competition. So good!
Huh, that sounds fun. Are you familiar with E.F. Benson? It sounds a little like that maybe?
I have heard of the Lucia books through reputation alone but I haven’t actually read anything. Any particular starting point you’d suggest?
They’re all great; Miss Mapp is maybe my favorite, if I remember correctly (it’s been a long while since I read them.)
Benson also wrote some absolutely champion horror stories. I had an anthology of them entitled ‘The Horror Horn’.
American: Stanley Crawford? Euro: Alberto Savinio (or his brother, di Chirico)? Saltykov?
Fredric Brown’s short fiction is marvelous. The Geezenstacks is surely one of the great spooky stories of all time. All of his short fiction was collected in this book by the NESFA Press (New England Science Fiction Association).
Re: the Lucia books, those were particular favorites of my mom so I’ll probably get to them one of these days (after I finish Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time books, also family favorites).
My own nominee would be Charles G. Finney, for The Circus of Dr. Lao. There’s really nothing else like it and despite a few dated touches, it holds up quite well indeed. A circus of fantastic/mythological figures and creatures comes to a small town in Arizona. Hilarity ensues. That’s about it really, but it’s stayed with me for years. Some versions have illustrations by the fabulous Boris Artzybasheff. The other stuff I’ve tried to read by Finney hasn’t been nearly as good.
Oops, here’s the link for the Fredric Brown short story anthology:
http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Brown-1.html
The Circus of Dr Lao is an illustrator’s dream … it really is one of those few books that illustrators (of a certain generation) always bandied about and drooled over
R. A. Lafferty is a great SF writer with a unique style. He’s at least as deserving of “mainstream” critical acclaim as Bradbury, Vonnegut, or LeGuin, but never received it for some reason. His novels tend to be an acquired taste, so I’d start with his short stories; my preferred gateway would be Nine Hundred Grandmothers, his first collection. (Out of print but available used.)
If that’s not obscure enough, there’s Lawrence Miles, who was sort of like the Alan Moore of Dr. Who novels. (Don’t laugh; there was a period of a decade or so when no new Doctor Who was being made and the novels were given a lot more freedom than licensed fiction is generally allowed.) His best novel is generally agreed to be Dead Romance, which may be the most nihilistic work of licensed fiction ever. It’s a standalone novel, and the Doctor isn’t in it, though it’s set in the Who “multiverse”. Also very good, and accessible, is Alien Bodies, which is a Doctor Who novel, but requires minimal knowledge of Doctor Who. (In fact, knowing the new series may only confuse you.)
John Dolan, without hesitation.
Not exactly unknown, but close enough, and probably not on many people’s radar here.
Google “Canada Was a Cakewalk,” read the available sample, buy it (it’s only a dollar from the one evil corporation and two from the other), then buy Pleasant Hell and start searching the internet for his other essays.
Dolan is “The War Nerd,” right? I just started reading some of his stuff. Pretty interesting.
If we’re going to submit SF writers then let me warmly recommend John Sladek. Perhaps only Robert Sheckley compares to him for intelligent,laugh-out-loud SF comedy. Try to track down his masterpiece,’The Reproductive System’. Alas, he died too young…
@ Jack
Yes, he is the War Nerd (though is voice when he writes under that name isn’t quite the same as when he writes under his own).
I really don’t like Mark Ames, the guy who co-founded and edits that “The Exiled” site. He’s like a 10th-rate Hunter S. Thompson, who’s probably overrated to begin with. But The War Nerd is interesting.
Whatever you think of Mark Ames’ writing, he’s done some supremely important journalism (on the Silicon Valley wage fixing cartel, with Yasha Levine on the Koch brothers’ engineering of the early Tea Party) and scholarship (Going Postal, his book on school and workplace shootings from the Reagan era through the ’00s).
Since I neglected to mention it before, I’ll say here that Dolan’s poetry collections are also very much worth reading (People with Real Lives Don’t Need Landscapes, Stuck Up, Slave, in reverse chronological order and order of importance).
* That is, IN order of importance AND in REVERSE chronological order.
@Alex: I love John Sladek’s book The New Apocrypha: A Guide To Strange Science And Occult Beliefs. A wonderful antidote to Erich von Däniken et al and a perfect companion volume to Martin Gardner’s better-known Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, which is of course also excellent.