The Revelation (1989) by Bentley Little

The Revelation (1989) by Bentley Little: "The horror poet laureate!" a blurb from Stephen King tells us on the cover of every Bentley Little. Was King joking? Because poetry is Little's self-admitted non-starter of a skill. 

Little even goes on at length in the introduction to one of his collections about his dislike of poetry. And when your novel contains a great line like "the putrid stench of violence" -- well, yeah, poetry is not a strong suit. Though a reference in The Revelation to "air-borne winds" cracked me up more.

Little's first novel was The Revelation. It won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel in 1989. The Stokers can be pretty hit-and-miss. Or 1989 could have been a bad year for first-time writers. Though if I looked at the Stoker list, I'm pretty sure I'd find worse novels. Oh, look, the first First Novel award went to Lisa Cantrell's The Manse. OK, The Revelation is better than The Manse.

That's not to say that The Revelation isn't entertaining. Little is part of a sub-group of horror writers of the late 1980's that includes Richard Laymon and Douglas Clegg who combined the graphic horror and sexual violence of splatterpunk with Stephen King's normative settings and characters. The result isn't something I find all that appealing, as it often seemed to involve an awful lot of rapey monsters with barbed penises strolling through suburban America.

Little works best when he's just in there, shovelling like a madman. That doesn't make him scary, but it can make the gross-out parts compelling, though often in a 'WTF?' sort of way. A key component of The Revelation seems to have been inspired by the 'Dead Baby' jokes of the late 1970's. I kid you not. 

The characters here are pretty flat. The protagonist is an aspiring writer working for a Pepsi distributor (if nothing else, The Revelation probably sets the record for most uses of the word 'Pepsi' in a horror novel not written by Pepsico). There's a good sheriff, a mysterious travelling preacher, a telepathic priest with doubtful faith, a lovely wife, a telepathic boy with visions, and a lot of rural types who are there to get chewed up and spit out.

Everything builds to a climax that really seems like an advertisement for a really insane Pro-Life group. Actually, the whole novel seems like an advertisement for a really insane Pro-Life group. Why? Well, let's just say that dead babies and aborted fetuses fill the ranks of Satan's army! And what better tool to fight an evil fetus with than... a pitchfork! Oh, what a novel. So terrible and crazy I will lightly recommend it.