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On the Trail to the Lost Lansdale
or We'll Get to the Bottoms of This
by Judi Rohrig
I've yet to meet a fan of Joe R. Lansdale who doesn't enthusiastically share his or her first experience at having read Joe, and they're usually wearing some satisfied, Cheshire cat grin, too. I know why. My first taste came in the form of a review copy of RUMBLE TUMBLE. Joe R. Lansdale. The name rang a bell. Something about being a tater baron.
 After I dug through Ed Gorman's DEAN KOONTZ COMPANION, I found a reprint of the intro Dean had written to Joe's THE NIGHTRUNNERS. Dean had lots of nice things to say about Joe. He even sat him in the same company with my all-time favorite writer, John D. MacDonald. Yet nothing Dean wrote could prepare me for the writing I found.
Times like that, when I was blue and thinking of my exit, I wished to go out between the legs of some wild redhead while striving for a double on a cool winter night, her hot breath in my ear, her fingernails buried in my ass like tacks in a bulletin board.
Tater baron indeed! What I found -- and am still finding -- is an extraordinarily unique writer who straddles genres with the ease of a seasoned wild west broncobuster bestride wild mustangs. And that's no exaggeration!
Joe R. Lansdale is a lone star champion storyteller who emblazons each of his works with his inimitable brand: a twisted vision, a wild abandon, yet a comfortable old-shoe voice whispering traditional values through the gnarled shadows of places like Mud Creek, the Big Thicket, LaBorde and the bottoms along the Sabine River. He's gotten us inside people like Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, Buster Fogg, Richard and Richie, Harry and Jimmy; the God of the Razor, Jonas Hex, Preacher Judd and even Jesus on the cross. His characters, even the minor ones, are so richly drawn that you not only don 't have to guess what they look like, you can sometimes smell them.
Yet, with all the talent the man possesses and being as prolific with the pen as he is, some of his work has not made it into print. Until now. In 1998, Subterranean Press published Lansdale's THE BOAR. It gave readers a simple slice-of-life tale about two young men and their quest for manhood through their attempts at destroying a savage wild boar appropriately named Satan. Then, following a dig through Joe's papers at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, publisher Bill Schafer found some wonderful Lansdale works that had been overlooked by the bigger houses or had been bounced around because of one reason or another, but never published. These works have been tagged the Lost Lansdale series. WALTZ OF SHADOWS, SOMETHING LUMBER THIS WAY COMES, BLOOD DANCE and a fourth book yet-to-be-announced allow Lansdale fans to take a look at a section of Joe's writings that we've been denied previously. Also up the road this year for Subterranean Press is the publication of Lansdale's much awaited THE BOTTOMS. But what's this new book about, and what does Joe think about this series of lost books? Well, I asked him!
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