Charles Beaumont published "Black Country" in PLAYBOY MAGAZINE in 1954. It was their first short story. He also wrote 21 episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Tragically he died in his thirties of a dementia-related illness.
"Black Country" is the story of a jazz group, led by Spoof Collins, The story begins with his burial, his horn and music is buried with him. Spoof had hired a white kid (Sonny) who played a sax and a female pianist/singer (Rose), integrating the group because they played so well. Of course, sex enters the picture and so does the illness that will eventually kill him. And then comes racism as Sonny tells Spoof to take his black hands off of Rose. Spoof falls to pieces and eventually dies.
What makes this a ghost story of sorts is the effect of the buried horn and the buried man on Sonny after Spoof's death. This is a story that succeeds more on its terrific ambiance and sense of place than your belief in the plot. You can read it here. https://silo.pub/charles-beaumont-black-country.html
15 comments:
Thanks, Patti. Will definitely read that, as I like Beaumont. I remember "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" with Richard Long and Suzy Parker on Twilight Zone.
I finished Nathan Englander's FOR HE RELIEF OF UNBEARABLE URGES. In the title story, a Hasidic man in Jerusalem is so upset by his wife's refusal to let him touch her, even after she has been to the mikvah and is "clean," that he goes to the Rabbi in desperation for advice. He gives him a special dispensation to go to a prostitute. "Reb Kringle" is about a Rabbi with a long white beard who supplements his meager income each year by spending December as a department store Santa, at his wife's insistence. I liked the collection, which wasn't exactly what I expected,
The earliest published stories in Rodrigues Ottolengui's FINAL PROOF were commissioned and published by Jerome K. Jerome and were very good, but some of the others written for this 1898 collection - especially stuff like "The Duplicate Harlequin" and "The Aztec Opal" and "The Pearls of Isis" - are slight and eminently skippable.
As soon as I finish the latter book I am going to download 100 YEARS OF THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, edited by Lorrie Moore.
I've been a big fan of Charles Beaumont's work for decades. Excellent choice on your part.
Is that a newly out collection by Moore? Have never read Englander. Sounds good though.
100 Years of the Best American Short Stories was published in 2015. It covers the 100 years from 1915 on with 40 short stories.
I have read most of Beaumont and have always enjoyed his work. Died way too young.
Found it at my library, Jeff. Thanks.
Yes, want to read more of him.
I have a copy of Perchance to Dream: selected stories I could loan you. It's a Penguin Classic from four or five years ago.
Yes, I would like that, Steve. Thanks.
Oh, I do like stories with a musical theme, Patti. It sounds really atmospheric, too!
Very much so, Margot.
I knew I had heard of Beaumont but could not place him. I have a copy of Perchance to Dream, the one that Steve mentioned. It has been sitting by my bed a long time, unread. I was thinking his stories might be too weird for me, but now I have to try some.
Beaumont, as you note, died of what amounted to early-onset Alzheimer's, which really waylaid him by his early-mid '30s...his friends pitched in to finish his fiction and screenplays for him in his last years. He was widely admired by his colleagues in the LA area, particularly, among the group that was sometimes tagged the "Little Bradburys" (a bit sourly).
He's a nearly lifelong favorite of mine, as well. (He was also the first film columnist for THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SF.) As I noted in commenting on George's review of THE BEST FROM F&SF, Fifth Series), Beaumnont's "The Vanishing American" and Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts" were notable for being stories good enough to be purchased for F&SF and even included in the BEST OF volume without actually being fantasy or sf stories, if a bit off-trail (and presumably their strangeness kept them from being accepted by the likes of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST or THE NEW YORKER).
What put you onto the story?
"Black Country" was the first original-publication short story in PLAYBOY...the first new fiction they ran was the serialization of FAHRENHEIT 451 (after its expansion from the novella "The Firemen" as published in GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION), and they had run a number of reprinted short stories from the first issue, including a Somerset Maugham story from GOOD HOUSEKEEPING in the seventh issue (because PLAYBOY and GH are two magazines like peas in a pod); September 1954, with this story, was the tenth.
I fell in love with Charles Beaumont as a teenager when I discovered his story collection NIGHT RIDE AND OTHER JOURNEYS and then collected back issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) with his film columns. Beaumont wrote one mainstream novel THE INTRUDER, which was, as I recall, about racial unrest.
I just refreshed my memory of Beaumont's novel THE INTRUDER, which was orginally published by Putnam in a hardback edition in 1959. I had read a paperback reprint but a few years ago had bought a limited edition hardback reprint from Centipede Press. I bought it but had not read it until now and there is quite a bit about the film adaptation of The Intruder. It was a low budget film made on location in rural Missouri. It was directed by Roger Corman who would later work with Beaumont, Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan at American International Pictures. The writers had some roles in the movie. In fact, Nolan played one of the primary villains in the movie as a bigot protesting integration outside a school. The movie starred then unknown William Shatner, later achieved fame in the Star Trek series.
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