The Horror...The Horror, by Rick Hautala: An Autobiography

Immortality...

Most of us crave it, and writers most of all wish it. For their work, at least. Rick Hautala has kept a big part of himself alive with his posthumous autobiography, The Horror...The Horror.

Hautala wrote this book in 2009, but he never released it. He passed away on March 21st of this year. It was a tragic blow to all lovers of horror, and especially to those who knew and loved him. His widow, Holly Newstein Hautala, found it among Rick's papers and had it published. I'm so pleased that she did so.

I've been a horror fiction fan for a long time, and of course I have encountered the fiction of Rick Hautala again and again. I always liked his work. Never really a stylist, Rick's fiction has a folksy quality. It brings to my mind a rural back porch storyteller from days gone by. Stories of the fantastic told in an old fashioned manner.

The Horror...The Horror is written in a similar way. It rambles, it meanders, and it is more than a bit irreverent. It is also painfully honest and candid.

Like a lot of readers, I have been a loner for most of my life. Books have been some of my closest companions, and horror books have been the best of them. I've always felt a kinship with those who write it. I've even thought of them as my friends. It saddens me to know that someone who I felt was a legend had so many hard times. Hautala's confessional account deals with his anxiety, his fears, his insecurity. We all feel these things to varying degrees, but Rick appears to have had it more than most.

Though most genre readers enjoy his works, Hautala is steadfastly humble about his talent in The Horror...The Horror. In fact, he voices doubt that he has much of it at all.

I met Rick once. I'm not a NECON guy, but he showed up at a Horrorfind Weekend one year. I enthusiastically greeted him and told him how much I enjoyed his work. He seemed a little uncomfortable about it.

Rick Hautala was good. There is no doubt about that. He's always been a fan favorite, and he was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Bram Stoker Award in 2011.

Parts of this book deal with his craft and he gives advice to fledgling writers. I'm not a writer of fiction, but I enjoyed these chapters. This isn't some boring technical manual on how to publish your work.

I was saddened to read that Hautala was a cigar user. Writers tend to lead sedentary lives and do not get enough exercise. I don't know how much affect smoking had on his fatal heart attack, but it could not have helped.

Part of me thinks The Horror...The Horror could have used the input of a good editor. It meanders a bit too much at times, and he seemed uninterested in doing the research that would have helped the book. His overuse of quotation marks gets a bit irritating at times, too.

However, I would not change a syllable of The Horror...The Horror. This book is pure Rick Hautala, and that's how it should be. It's a little goofy, a little awkward, but it has heart and honesty to spare.

It would have been nice to have seen The Horror...The Horror published in Rick's lifetime. Readers are responding to it now and they would have done so while he was around to get the feedback.

But, you know, this book serves in a way as the will and testament of Rick Hautala. He left us all his thoughts and his fears. He also left us his sense of joy and wonder. Everyone should read it. Everyone.