Robert Bloch: "The Show Must Go On," "Daybroke," "Show Biz," "The Masterpiece," and "Dig That Crazy Grave!"

At the Antiques Crossroads antiques mall in Hagerstown, MD, I purchased for five bucks a somewhat brittle copy of the 1963 paperback edition of Robert Bloch's Blood Runs Cold, a collection of 17 stories.  I like the green cover, but the main reason I was willing to spring for it is that I doubted some of the stories were readily available at the internet archive.  

Blood Runs Cold was first printed in 1961 as a hardcover in the Simon & Schuster Inner Sanctum Mystery series, and "Inner Sanctum Mystery," as well as a blurb from Anthony Boucher and a reference to Psycho, appears on the cover of my copy.  On the first page of the volume, under the hint that the book is full of nasty sex, is a fun warning, the publisher disclaiming all responsibility for shocks readers may suffer!  

We'll be reading the contents of Blood Runs Cold here at MPorcius Fiction Log over three blog posts.  We've actually already read in other venues three of the stories that the collection reprints: "The Cure" (I said it was competent but marred by a pun ending) and "I Like Blondes" (I called it silly) in Playboy, and "Word of Honor" in The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy (I judged it "Acceptable.")  That leaves fourteen tales from detective magazines, SF magazines, and men's magazines for us to investigate, and we will grapple with five of them today.

"The Show Must Go On" (1960)

"The Show Must Go On" made its debut in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, in an issue with a good cover with a bold composition and strong use of color.   

It is intermission!  An actor goes to the bar by the theatre--a drink will help him prepare for the big role he is to play after intermission.  A man confronts the actor, jabbing a gun into his stomach and claiming the actor impregnated his daughter!  The angry father comes to think the actor is mentally ill, and decides not to pull the trigger.  The actor hurries off to the theatre, and we get our groan-inducing trick ending--the actor is John Wilkes Booth and the tough role he is about to play is that of murderer of President Lincoln! 

(Bloch of course is fascinated by famous murderers of the past, like Lizzie Borden--see "Lizzie Borden Took an Axe..."--and Jack the Ripper--see "The Hungry Eye.")   

I was particularly disappointed by the gimmicky ending because Bloch did a good job with the confrontation with the angry father and with the portrayal of a love 'em and leave 'em cad of an actor--the enraged man's daughter is named "Livvie" and the callous Booth actually calls her "Lizzie," having banged so many chicks he can't even remember all of them, which I thought was pretty funny.

I'll call this acceptable filler.  I don't know enough about Booth and the assassination of Lincoln to know how much of this story is based on the truth and how much Bloch just made up--did Booth really take a drink at a bar before the attack?  Was there a real Livvie?  Maybe people who have read Lincoln biographies would have known from early on what was going on, but I was surprised on the last page, as I didn't spot any clues as to time period or location or anything.

"Daybroke" (1958)

"Daybroke" made its debut in the one and only issue of Star Science Fiction, a magazine edited by Frederik Pohl and which was blessed to have as art director Richard Powers.  I wrote a few lines about Star Science Fiction when we talked about one of its stories, Brian Aldiss's "Judas Dance."  Pohl liked "Daybroke" enough that he included it in Star of Stars, the book showcasing the stories he felt best from the Star anthologies and this lone magazine issue, as well as in The Science Fiction Roll of Honor.

It is easy to see why Fred Pohl, alumnus of the Young Communist League, would like "Daybroke": it is an attack on America's corrupt consumer society!  (We've seen Bloch's attacks on our society before; "The Funnel of God" is perhaps the most memorable.)  A rich guy has set up a bunker sheathed in lead in a mountain overlooking an unnamed American city.  He stays there alone because he fears nuclear war.  Sure enough, the war comes!  The city below is hit!  Our protagonist then dons his special armored suit and goes out to explore the devastation.  Bloch details all the things he sees as he passes through the countryside, the suburbs, and then into the city, where there are surviving civilians looting and surviving servicemen guarding an official building, in which sits a general, who expresses satisfaction that the United States has won the war. 

There isn't much plot to "Daybroke;" mostly the story is a list of the dead people and destroyed property the protagonist sees and the attendant easy symbolism--e.g., the breaking of statues of Hope, Faith and Charity have revealed them to be hollow--and Bloch's implied or just explicitly stated complaints about the citizenry of these United States: we care more about cars than each other, more about sports than the high arts, more about celebrities than our own spouses, and on and on.  We also have to endure Bloch's wordplay; e.g., when the armored survivor looks upon the ruined vehicles on a highway, we get three car puns--sample: "The Dodges no longer dodged"--and three alliterative car phrases--sample: "bodies of Buicks."  An artist was killed while painting, and we are told his remains are spread on a canvas "as though the artist had finally succeeded in putting something of himself into his picture...."  Bloch stretches our credulity by having the effects of the bombing be whatever facilitates the creation of his symbolical tableaus; some people are decapitated by the blast, others are reduced to ooze, others are frozen standing in place, still others have their clothes stripped off so they are naked.  

Tedious and lame red meat for those who have contempt for the American people and think the US is no better than the Soviet Union, though maybe even they will feel Bloch's pathetic jokes undermine his "message."   

"Show Biz" (1959)

Another lame story expressing Bloch's complaints about American society, but whereas "Daybroke" had many complaints and many jokes, "Show Biz" has one complaint and one joke!  

The head of a PR firm meets with a college professor after the latter's repeated requests for a clandestine meeting.  Prof tells PR man that he has devised a blueprint for a scheme by which Hollywood and Madison Avenue types can use professional actors, cinema and advertising techniques, and psychological manipulation to take over America and then the world.  The PR exec murders the prof because his firm has already been doing just that and they don't want any competition. 

Lame filler. 

This banal criticism of the American voter debuted in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Cynthia Mason and Charles Ardai saw fit to include it in Future Crime, even though it doesn't really feel like it fits the criteria of a mystery or a depiction of the future.

"The Masterpiece" (1960)

This is the story from which the first page of the book gets its come-on line, "She lay naked on the bed," though the actual text of "The Masterpiece" has "She lay naked upon the bed...."  This is actually an entertaining crime story: no dumb jokes, little social criticism, short and to the point.

An old guy who lives in poverty in Argentina explains to us the tragic tale of his life.  He was an artist in Paris with a super sexy girlfriend.  Girlfriend had some shortcomings, some weaknesses, like a weak heart and an irrational fear of insects.  Oh, yeah, and she also loved money, and cheated on the narrator with a fat rich guy, Max, and eventually ran away with the obese moneybags.  The narrator achieved his vengeance by sneaking up on the young lady as she lay naked awaiting her wealthy lover and binding her.  Then he poured a box of spiders on her!  The girl died of fright because she saw on the spiders' bodies the red hourglass of the black widow!  The twist ending--our narrator painted those hourglasses on the little spiders, which were in fact harmless to humans! 

A possible problem with the story is posed by the fact that Wikipedia doesn't list France as a native habitat of black widows.  Oops!  Another thing about the story perhaps worth noting is that it suggests Bloch hates modern abstract art; the narrator painted portraits and other realistic canvases and despises Max for following fashion and collecting abstract painting.  (Bloch hints that he disdains abstract art in "Daybroke" as well.)     

After its debut in a copy of Rogue with a somewhat repellent cover, "The Masterpiece" was included by Josh Pacter in his anthology Top Horror, which it seems was published three times without Pacter's name appearing on the cover.

"Dig That Crazy Grave!" (1957)

Oh no, a story the very title of which is a weak joke!  Well, this is the longest story we'll be reading today, so maybe it provides Bloch the space to develop real characters and a real plot and not just lame jokes and some tired criticisms of society.  

“Dig That Crazy Grave!” is about jazz!  We’ve read quite a few stories about jazz recently, and they often include crazy metaphors and surreal images that struggle to convey to readers how really good jazz makes you feel.  Bloch steps up to the plate and takes swings like this one:

…dreams, when the statues come alive and move, and the great hands from the sky reach down and pluck at your entrails like a bass….

We also get the suggestion from the story's main character, a college professor, that the face of the leader of the story's jazz band as he bangs the drums, a “face that was almost blank with inner concentration,” bears the same expression he has seen on “the faces of women during ecstasy.”  Bloch likens listening to good jazz to having sex, the band “playing the audience like an instrument,” making the audience “moan the long moan of the cat on the oh-so-cool tin roof.” 

This might make jazz sound awesome, but Bloch has come not to praise jazz, but to bury it!  The college prof is writing a book on the sociological aspects of jazz—how jazz musicians and fans are a distinct self-selected subculture with their own lingo and so on—and he takes his girlfriend Dorothy on a date to see JoJo Jones and his band.  Dorothy is a jazz skeptic—she sees that the jazz musicians are phonies, their outfits and slang just a sham to appeal to the public.  But soon JoJo has won Dorothy over to the cause of jazz, and she is sitting on the stage every night as his band performs, “letting the crowd pour over onto” her.  Dorothy herself becomes artificial and phony and sexually licentious, wearing tons of make up and a dress that reveals plenty of cleavage and growing her fingernails into long painted talons.

Dorothy also joins the band in smoking pot (Bloch employs some slang for smoking marijuana that I haven’t heard before, like “taking a charge.”)  When the prof now hears jazz he realizes it is “noise, an animal bleating, savage and senseless,” a magic spell used by the sorcerer to control his worshipers, and sees the jazz musicians as being like vampires as they feed on the energy of the audience.  The musicians shoot Dorothy full of “H,” hoping to give her more energy upon which to feed, but she can’t handle the drug and dies.  The prof finds Dorothy’s body and the jazzmen decide they have to kill him as well to hide the disaster from the police.

I think “Dig That Crazy Grave!” is pretty good.  The structure and pacing and all that are good, and the idea of seductive weirdos stealing your girlfriend is an effective basis for a story.  Bloch’s social criticism here—jazz and drugs are low forms of entertainment that appeal to the basest parts of us and are quite dangerous—may be out of tune with our times and a little hypocritical coming from a writer who makes his money appealing to readers’ lust for sex and blood, but Bloch actually illustrates and explores these ideas and integrates them into a story in which characters have a narrative arc and change over time—he doesn’t just give us a long laundry list of banal gripes like he does in “Funnel of God” and “Daybroke.”  I also have to admit that I sympathize with Bloch’s hostility to artifice and phoniness—I myself find cosmetics and long painted nails disgusting and depressing.  Finally, let me note that while I often complain about Bloch’s wordplay, in this story the puns and slang are put into the mouths of the characters, mostly the villains, and add to the atmosphere and buttress the themes of the tale instead of detracting from them.

"Dig That Crazy Grave!" debuted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, where we see Bloch's name on the sexalicious woman-in-peril cover. I may have liked it, but it looks like its attacks on jazz, drugs, and cosmetics (which one might see as veiled attacks on the personalities and contributions to our culture of women and black people, though all the story's characters are white) didn’t appeal to editors; according to isfdb, “Dig That Crazy Grave!” has not appeared in any other Bloch collection and has never been anthologized.

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Five characteristic Bloch stories, two of which I liked.  Not a stellar ratio, but if we measure by page count it looks a little better.  We'll tackle more tales from Blood Runs Cold soon, but first, a SF novel from the 1950s.