''Night in the Lonesome October'' (

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

) is a

horror novel Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. ...

by the American author

Richard Laymon Richard Carl Laymon (January 14, 1947 – February 14, 2001) was an American author of suspense and horror fiction, particularly within the splatterpunk subgenre. Life and career Laymon was born and raised outside of Chicago, Illinois, then li ...

. Released in October 2001, it was one of several books in the author's catalogue published posthumously, following his death in February of the same year. The title is a reference to the

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...

poem "

Ulalume "Ulalume" () is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1847. Much like a few of Poe's other poems (such as " The Raven", " Annabel Lee", and " Lenore"), "Ulalume" focuses on the narrator's loss of his beloved due to her death. Poe originally wrote t ...

Plot introduction

Ed Logan is a 20-year-old student at

Wilmington University Wilmington University (WilmU) is a private university with its main campus in Wilmington Manor, Delaware, with a New Castle street address. - It was founded in 1968 as Wilmington College by educator Dr. Donald E. Ross. As of 2016, the univer ...

. His girlfriend has dumped him, and feeling dejected he goes on a late-night walk to a doughnut shop. As the long October night drags on, he finds his odyssey disturbed by numerous odd encounters with street violence,

sexual predation A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically "predatory" or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to "hunt" ...

, and

homelessness Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are: * living on the streets, also kn ...

Style

In terms of genre, like a lot of Laymon's work, ''Night in the Lonesome October'' is closer to

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definit ...

than supernatural horror. Laymon is most often associated with "

splatterpunk Splatterpunk is a movement within horror fiction originating in the 1980s, distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depiction of violence, countercultural alignment and "hyperintensive horror with no limits.""Schow, David J." by Gary Westfahl in D ...

", a subgenre of horror fiction that came about in the 1980s and focuses on extreme and transgressive material. Laymon in particular was known for the presence of

sexual violence Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, act to traffic a person, or act directed against a person's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim.World Health Organization., World re ...

in his stories, although ''Night'' and some of his other later books are notably more muted in this respect.

Reception

Along with ''

The Traveling Vampire Show ''The Travelling Vampire Show'' is a 2000 horror novel by American author Richard Laymon. Plot The book follows three 16-year-olds on an idle summer day in 1963. The narrator, Dwight, and his best friends Rusty and Slim (a tomboy), find flyers ...

'', ''Night in the Lonesome October'' is often considered to be one of Laymon's best novels and a sign of an improved phase of his writing following a creative decline in the late 1990s. Publishers Weekly referred to it as "one of the eeriest, and one of hemost immediate, horror novels of recent decades", before lamenting the loss of one of horror fiction's "rarest talents." Charles De Lint of ''

F&SF ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (usually referred to as ''F&SF'') is a U.S. fantasy fiction magazine, fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House, a subsidiary of Lawrence E. Spivak, Lawrence Spiva ...

'' wrote that while the book is "written in a plain, simple prose", it will "prove to have surprising layers" the "further into the book one reads".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Travelling Vampire Show 2001 American novels American horror novels Novels by Richard Laymon