Laird Barron is the author of novels, short stories, and essays. His work has been heralded as a revitalizing force in literary horror of the 21st century. He’s an outspoken proponent of the genre, of writers and artists, and standup weirdos everywhere.
His novella “-30-” was adapted into the feature film They Remain starring William Jackson Harper and Rebecca Henderson. More on that next week…
The First Four
If you haven’t read Laird, let us recommend here any of his first four short story collections. Their titles:
The Imago Sequence
Occultation
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All
Swift to Chase
Each is a masterful glimpse into the dark, containing stories that reward multiple re-readings and stick with you long, long after the last page is turned.
Here’s a metaphor that perhaps won’t mean much to many out there but here it goes anyway.
Some herald the first five Black Sabbath albums as in a category all to themselves. Totemic. Un-fuck-with-able. The kinds of things that if they speak to you at all, will speak to you for your whole life. Things that are of a genre and yet somehow also the entirety of the genre itself and yet also outside that genre.
Laird’s first four collections are like those Sabbath albums. If you’re on their wave length, they’ll be with you forever.
If you haven’t read his work, pick up any of them and start there. A circle, after all, has no starting point.
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