A Matter of Taste

A Matter of Taste

08/01/2006

Jack Ketchum’s Off Season is by no means new; it was originally published in 1981. However, the new Leisure Books edition features an Afterword, written by the author, which actually approximates the intended original version of the book. This is important because the edition that was initially published by Ballantine was a somewhat toned down version of Off Season. But to Ketchum’s credit, it was such a shocking debut for an author that a review in the Village Voice castigated Random House, Ballantine’s parent company, for publishing “violent pornography.”

Jack Ketchum (a pen name used by Dallas Mayr) was hoping to launch a major writing career with Off Season. Instead, the release pretty much temporarily scuttled his writing ambitions, as the book was pulled off the shelves by an embarrassed Ballantine, even though it had sold out in its first printing. Nonetheless, the book won Ketchum many fans and supporters, including pre-eminent horror authors Robert Bloch and Stephen King.

Reading the book today—having never read the original—I would have to contend that the book still has the ability to shock, over 25 years after its original release, although it must be stated that in the horror marketplace of today, a great many books surpass Off Season in regard to gore and sex.

The novel is a re-telling of the tale of Sawney Beane, an actual robber/cannibal who lived with his family in a cave, residing in Scotland during the reign of King James I. For years, the entire clan preyed upon travelers who ventured into their region. Many other authors and film-makers down through the years have been directly or indirectly inspired by the Sawney Beane saga, but few have presented so unflinching an account of modern cannibalism.

Ketchum places his cannibal clan in the America of the 1980’s. Since the classic narrative form for this sort of tale would be urbanites venturing forth into the unknown back-country, Ketchum has a houseful of Manhattan residents vacationing in rural Maine. Three couples (three men and three women) are staying at a beach house together. Carla, the woman who invites everyone to the cottage and who, by rights, would seem to be the focus of the story, meets an early demise. But she is anything but expendable, as Ketchum is quite accomplished at characterization, so the reader is naturally drawn to the main characters in the book, which makes what happens to them all the more disturbing. But of course, being the good horror writer he is, Ketchum also occasionally relates to the reader the point of view of the cannibals, which makes for quite a disturbing little scenario in and of itself.

This is a tale that would have been told quite differently in the hands of, say, Stephen King. While King utilizes many of the same literary devices as Ketchum, and both men write books with similar themes, King (and many other horror writers) infer a great deal of the carnage in their books. Ketchum records every minute detail in an unflinching hand. Where most human beings in a civilized society would expect the eye of the author to waver, and would themselves look away, Ketchum hones in on each atrocity and presents it to the reader—in loving detail. The contrast in style between Ketchum and most other horror authors holds true even when comparing Ketchum to Clive Barker, who has a more visceral approach than King, but whose literary style makes his gore somehow more palatable to the reader than the approach taken by Ketchum.

If the reader can get past some of the more horrifying moments, he or she will be rewarded with a gripping tale. Where a King or a Straub would have various subplots occurring to divert the reader’s attention, Ketchum basically just bludgeons his way through the main story (although he does have a slightly different story going on in regard to the perspective of the senior police officer involved in investigating the incident), and catalogues the ongoing battle that ensues between the urban-folk and the cannibals.

I would have to caution anyone with delicate sensibilities to perhaps pass this book up. To anyone who can get through the more visceral aspects of the book, I would highly recommend it, not only because it is a fine read, but because it has a place in the history of horror fiction as a book that may have been more widely recognized had it not been initially suppressed.