The April 21, 2024 death of Ray Garton robbed us of one of horror literature’s most prolific and enduring talents. Garton’s first novel (1984’s SEDUCTIONS) was written when he was nineteen, and the entirety of his adult life was devoted to churning out solidly crafted horror fiction. He never really transcended the genre, but his work on the whole was far above average.
I made a point of keeping up with Garton’s prodigious output during the late eighties and early nineties. If my Garton reading slowed down after 1995 it wasn’t due to a lack of interest on my part, but, rather, the simple fact that I couldn’t keep up with his unvarying two-novels-a-year output—which also included a wealth of short fiction, movie novelizations and pseudonymously published young adult books. His work-a-holic ways, combined with an overall lack of misbehavior (if there are any tales of drugs or womanizing in his past I have yet to hear them), mean that, frankly, there aren’t too many news-worthy things to be said about Ray Garton.
I will, however, offer up some observations:
- Garton’s third novel LIVE GIRLS is widely proclaimed his “crowning achievement.” I don’t agree. Certainly that 1987 publication, about a Times Square peepshow infested with vampire babes, offered plenty of nasty fun, but I’ve always found it shallow and forgettable. A more worthy candidate for Garton’s crown jewel, in my view, would be 2001’s SEX AND VIOLENCE IN HOLLYWOOD, a consistently absorbing and unpredictable show biz roman-a-clef that also satisfies as an exercise in no-frills horror.
- It wasn’t at all unusual for horror writers in the 80s and 90s to alternate between mainstream and indie publishing, but Garton took that tendency to an extreme; indeed, I’ve long thought of him as King of the Small Press. Nearly every notable indie horror publisher of the late 20th Century—Charnel House, Dark Harvest, Cemetery Dance, Gauntlet, Centipede, Subterranean, Ziesing—had a selection of Garton titles in their catalogue, and those titles evidently sold well (because otherwise his name wouldn’t have meant much to them). Furthermore, many of his most memorable publications, such as the novel THE NEW NEIGHBOR, the collection METHODS OF MADNESS and the novella THE FOLKS, were small press products.
- Something that was quite unusual was for 1980s horrormeisters to stick it out through the 90s, when the horror boom went bust. Garton, never a conformist, didn’t join so many of his colleagues in decamping for other fields, maintaining his commitment to the spooky stuff throughout the 20th Century’s final decade and beyond.
- One annoying 1990s trend Garton unfortunately did follow was the horror epic craze, resulting in bloat-fests like DARK CHANNEL and BIOFIRE. Then again, though, the more-is-more approach worked quite well in the aforementioned SEX AND VIOLENCE IN HOLLYWOOD (whose initial hardcover edition clocked in at a hefty 510 pages), so perhaps Garton wasn’t entirely off base.
- Garton was a charter member of the “splat pack,” referring to the motley crew of horror scribes who brought about the splatterpunk movement that emphasized the genre’s extreme edges. His writing certainly fit in well with the splatterpunk ethos, although the man himself didn’t, being a quiet sort who eschewed the attention-seeking antics of fellow splat packers like David J. Schow, John Skipp and Craig Spector. That doesn’t mean, however, that Garton was at all hesitant (writing-wise) in his procurement of sex and gore, as no less an authority than PSYCHO author Robert Bloch is said to have given Garton the highest compliment any splat packer could ask for: “You’re not well.”
- Quiet he may have been, but Garton wasn’t without his share of controversy. As with many of history’s great shit-disturbers, trouble tended to find him. Prime example: in 1988 an especially outrageous chapter from his novel CRUCIFAX AUTUMN was censored by Time Warner, who furthermore retitled the book CRUCIFAX. This resulted in the chapter in question, containing literature’s first and only description of a tongue-administered abortion, being reprinted in GAUNTLET and MIDNIGHT GRAFFITI magazines, as well as the Paul M. Sammon anthology SPLATTERPUNKS: EXTREME HORROR.
- While on the subject of controversy: further ire surrounded the 1992 publication of Garton’s IN A DARK PLACE, a supposedly nonfictional account of a Connecticut based haunting (a case dramatized in the 2009 flick THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT) that was partially credited to the superstar paranormal investigators Ed and Larraine Warren. Garton claimed that in interviewing the participants he couldn’t get a consensus, and so, based on the advice of Ed Warren, ended up inventing most of the book’s content. Garton has further claimed that “Since writing the book, I’ve learned a lot that leaves no doubt in my mind about the fraudulence of the Warrens.”
One last thing about Garton: I’ve been rereading many of his early novels (most recently 1991’s LOT LIZARDS), and find that, the inevitable dated cultural references aside, they hold up remarkably well. This means they’re ripe for discovery by new generations of readers, and rediscovery by those of us who’ve already been acquainted with Garton’s unshackled scares.