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A previously unknown bit of writing by Dean?
August 28, 2010
Ok, I’m not exactly announcing a new pseudonym here but I’ve never seen this bit of writing by dean mentioned anywhere. The books is Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, Second Edition from St. Martin’s Press published in 1985. This is one of those oversized reference books that are typically only held by rare bookstores and library reference collections. For each author there is a bibliography, brief biography, and a short essay about the author. (In this case the essay is by Ed Gorman.) However, this book differs from others of its type because it contains additional text described thus: “Living authors were invited to add a comment on their work.” And you guessed it, Dean wrote some “comments” on his work. Four paragraphs to be exact. For copyright reasons I won’t be presenting the complete text here but I will leave you with this quote:
“Phantoms, a long novel that attempts to stretch the horror novel to encompass a rational world-view, was published in 1983, and was something of a sidestep in my career, for at this time I do not intend to do any more straight horror novels in the future, although it, too, has sold well.”
I don’t know if the same text appears in the First Edition. I of course will be on the lookout.
UPDATE: I found a copy of the first edition in my local library and Dean is not included in that edition. So, as far as I can tell this content is unique to this book/edition.