Yesterday in celebration of Joe R. Lansdale’s birthday, I ran the first half of my unpublished analysis of Joe’s works. Check out the previous entry for the full skinny behind this piece and how we got to this point in our tale.

Without further adieu, the conclusion:

My Dead Dog Bobby Signed/Numbered (Cobblestone Books) Art by Joe Vigil

Breaking the Box:
An Analysis of the Writings of Joe R. Lansdale

Part II

by Rick Klaw

Lansdale’s most bizarre use of a dog is in “My Dead Dog Bobby” (1987). This short short is told from the point of view of a young boy who takes care of his dead dog. This allegorical tale of family violence has been adapted into one strange children’s book.

Violence is almost a required element in Lansdale’s fiction. And it is always realistic. As an inductee into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame as founder/grandmaster of Shen Chuan, Lansdale understands pain, both receiving and inflicting. When his characters hit each other, you feel it. To further enhance the realism, no character is safe in his stories. Seriously, anyone can be killed or injured. In one of the later Hap & Leonard novels, Hap was being viciously tortured. Now we knew he would live, since he is the narrator of the tales, but how severe his injuries would be was up in the air. It wouldn’t have shocked anyone to see Hap lose a ball or two.

That brings to mind another essential Lansdale element: the dick joke. All of Lansdale’s works contain them. Some are more subtle than others, but one is always there. The jokes are almost always funny and often crude and disturbing. They are so ingrained in and are such a natural part of JRL’s work that he often forgets they are there. He once told me that The Bottoms didn’t have a dick joke. In that book, there is a guy called Root who runs around naked.

Dogs are not the only animals in JRL stories. “The Fat Man and the Elephant” (1989) tells the story of an overweight preacher who has a spiritual encounter with an elephant. The elephant’s caretaker (but not owner) is an elderly black man with an understanding of African spirituality. The preacher befriends the older black man who shows him an ancient way of using the elephant and its wisdom as a path to enlightenment. The use of African-Americans as spiritual teachers is a fairly common part of Lansdale’s stories and plays a significant role in The Bottoms and A Fine Dark Line. In other, lesser hands, the oppressed as a source of wisdom would be a stereotype, but JRL creates such vivid and unique characters that each is his own person.

Perhaps Lansdale’s best known preacher story is “By Bizarre Hands” (1988). Not only is it the title of his first short story collection, but this tale, reminiscent of the great Charles Laughton film Night of the Hunter, is one of his best written stories. A preacher travels the country molesting mentally disabled children. As expected, he pays his penance by the end of the story. The mistrust of religious figures is another recurring theme of Lansdale’s work. East Texas is part of the Bible belt and so growing up JRL saw more than his fair share of traveling preachers. “By Bizarre Hands” is one of two Lansdale stories to be adapted into a play.

Cover to By Bizarre Hands #3 (Dark Horse) by Dean Rohrer.
This issue featured the comic adaptation of the title’s namesake story.

In what may be Lansdale’s creepiest story, two not so-bright young men murder a woman and take her body to the drive-in movie. There, they take turns raping the corpse. The matter of[/quote] fact way in which the boys converse while committing heinous acts makes “Drive-in Date” (1991) one of the most disturbing stories ever. Not only a reflection of the deplorable way that many men view the opposite sex, this story is also a commentary on pornography and the objectification of women. Women are meant to service men, if not alive, then dead. To them, women might as well be dead

Drive-ins are common fixtures in Lansdale’s stories and novels. He speaks and writes nostalgically of a symbol of a bygone era. A time that, at least for JRL, was not necessarily better but much simpler. In Drive-In, Drive-In 2, and A Fine Dark Line, drive-ins are so central to the book that they are practically characters unto themselves. Inexplicably, “Drive-in Date” has been made into both a play and a short film.

Another subject of a short film, “The Job” (1989) is the story of an Elvis impersonator who becomes an assassin. This tough little story focuses on the influx of Vietnamese refuges to Houston in the 80’s and the resulting racial and cultural tensions.

Lansdale’s first feature film was based on an Elvis story. Bubba Ho-tep was a spot on adaptation of the novella of the same name. Basically, it’s your typical Elvis vs. mummy story. Except Elvis is in his seventies, and his best friend is a black man who claims he is John F. Kennedy (again, the wise old black man), whose brain is kept in a jar in the basement of the White House. Sadly, this story is not in High Cotton.

Like most writers, JRL stories often contain elements from his life. Two stories in this collection begin with bizarre events that actually happened. “Mister Weed-Eater” (1993) is well known to anyone who has heard Lansdale at a convention. He often recounts the story to a laughing, disbelieving crowd. A blind man was hired by the church next door to Lansdale’s to mow the lawn. But before knocking on Joe’s door to ask for help, as you can imagine, he butchered it instead. The main character/narrator Mr. Harold (not the blind man) is one of the dumbest, most pathetic Lansdale lead characters. He may be topped only by the lead in Freezer Burn.

Another favorite true story for Lansdale to tell is “The Phone Woman” (1991). A woman wearing a long wool coat and wool cap in the summertime asks to borrow Lansdale’s phone. “I got an important call to make.” When he lets her in, she has a seizure. Only later, after calling the paramedics, does he learn that “[s]he’s nutty as a fruitcake” and “[d]oes that all the time.” In book form, this one deviates quickly from the reality and goes into some very bizarre sexual territory. While Lansdale doesn’t necessarily shy away from sex, he rarely explores deviant sexuality as he did in this one. “Phone Woman” is of note for fans since it’s one of the few Lansdale stories that examines the writing process.

The popular and infamous God of The Razor (the subject of several short stories, the novel The Nightrunners, and a forthcoming anthology) terrorizes individuals in horrible ways. This enigmatic demonic entity seems to gain power from the terror of its victims. The God of the Razor stories tend to be the darkest and bleakest of all Lansdale tales. It’s as if the dark side of his soul has emerged to write a story. These stories tend to be unusual in the JRL œuvre since it’s one of few times that he deals with supernatural horrors. The ordinary world supplies enough horror. Arguably, the only Razor story in High Cotton is “Incident On and Off A Mountain Road” (1988). This frightening story is a woman’s stand-off with the God of the Razor. “Incident” has one of Lansdale’s better surprise endings.

Joe

Death is commonplace in Lansdale’s stories, but Death as a character almost never appears. “Not From Detroit” (1988) is the romantic tale of an old couple. When the wife dies, the husband races Death and his strange car. He catches Death and makes a deal for her soul. “Detroit” is one of many Lansdale stories to feature antagonists driving souped up vehicles. Lansdale’s father was a mechanic, so the car culture has been ingrained in his psyche. Other Lansdale stories that feature villains in powerful cars are The Nightrunners and Captured by the Engines. JRL himself appears to have little interest in cars. He just wants one that is comfortable and reliable.

Lansdale is best known to the general public as a crime writer, and with “Booty and the Beast” (1995), he doesn’t disappoint. It has all of the things I expect from a Lansdale story and more. We have a bizarre crime (stealing the Virgin Mary’s cunt hair), painful torture (involving honey and fire ants), knee slapping humor, and an ironic ending. It’s obvious when reading this story that it was the template for his novel Freezer Burn.

This is barely the tip of the dick (as JRL would say) when it comes to analyzing and discussing Lansdale’s vast and varied career. Some day academics will write entire books about the works of this diverse, influential, and important writer. Joe R. Lansdale, like Barbie, has blazed a new path and spawned many imitators and disciples. He has proclaimed to the literary world that literary writers can and will be whomever they want. He has charted a new road map to success.