LansdaleMAD DOG SUMMERThe highest compliment one writer can pay to another is to admit he wishes he’d written something by the other scribbler. Joe Lansdale has written two things I fervently wish I’d written. One of them is the piece you’re about to read. If you look up the phrase “Southern Gothic” in the future you’re likely to find “Mad Dog Summer” reproduced in its entirety as the definition. I do not say this lightly.Anyone who hasn’t been in a cave for the last fifteen years knows that Lansdale has excelled in the horror, western, suspense, and comic book fields; much of his work exhibits “crossover” features which blur (annihilate might be a better word) the distinctions between genres. This is a very good thing—not because it’s a gimmick but because there are no reasons for those distinctions to he there, except to limit less masterful writers.The other piece of Joe’s I wish I’d written? “The Night They Missed the Horror Show.”News, as opposed to rumor, didn’t travel the way it does now.
