CHARLES BEAUMONT: SELECTED STORIES.
edited by Roger Anker.
Thanks are due to the following for their help in bringing this book to publication: Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Howard Browne, Roger Corman, Saul David, Harlan Ellison, Charles E.
Fritch, George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, Chad Oliver, Frank M. Robinson, Ray Russell, Jerry Sohl and John Tomerlin.
For friendship, advice and support: Cathy, Elizabeth and Gregory Beaumont, Larry Anker, Bill Farley, Edward Gorman, Dean R. Koontz, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert R. McCammon, Dave McDonnell, Paul Mikol, Scot Stadalsky, William Relling Jr., Darrell, Donna and Jason Rossi, Peter Straub, Robert Vaillancourt, Stanley Wiater and Douglas E.
Winter.
And a very special thanks to the following for the endless hours of driving, interviewing, conversing, all-night coffee shops and encouragement: Christopher Beaumont, Richard Christian Matheson, William F. Nolan and Dennis Etchison.
In memory of Nick and Ria Anker and of Chuck and Helen Beaumont---------------------
INTRODUCTION.
by Roger Anker ---------------------.
Though best remembered for his short fiction and nostalgic essays in _Playboy_, teleplays for _The Twilight Zone_; and his screenplay adaptation, _The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao_, Charles Beaumont"s creative talents have been evidenced in such diverse fields as science fiction, horror, whimsy, crime-suspense, and film criticism.
His prolific output also reflects his many interests and hobbies, including motor racing, music, hi-fidelity equipment, cartooning, and travel.
Tall, lean and bespectacled, Beaumont was always full of a thousand ideas and a thousand projects, and approached them all with what was fantastic energy. In a career which spanned a brief thirteen years, he"d written and sold ten books, seventyfour short stories, thirteen screenplays (nine of which were produced), two dozen articles and profiles, forty comic stories, fourteen columns, and over seventy teleplays.
Some of his books were inspired by his adventurous personal experiences. _Omnibus of Speed_ and _When Engines Roar_ (both co-edited with William F. Nolan) are about auto racing; _The Intruder_, a novel concerning Southern integration in the early sixties, was drawn from his extensive research on the subject.
Beaumont could never write fast enough to keep up with his ideas. A selfeducated man, learning for him was never confined to a cla.s.sroom; life had much to teach.
He was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago on January 2, 1929, and grew up on that city"s North side.
Of his early childhood, he wrote, "Football, baseball and dimestore cookie thefts filled my early world, to the exclusion of Aesop, the brothers Grimm, Dr. Doolittle and even Bullfinch. The installation by my parents of "library wallpaper" in the house ("A room-full of books for only 70~ a yard!") convinced me that literature was on the way out anyway, so I lived in illiterate contentment until laid low by spinal meningitis. This forced me to less strenous forms of entertainment. I discovered Oz; then Burroughs; then Poe--and the jig was up. Have been reading ever since, feeling no pain."
The only child of Charles H. and Letty Nutt, young Charlie Nutt was "fairly outgoing," yet very sensitive about his name. He once expressed to boyhood acquaintance Frank M. Robinson (co-author of _The Gla.s.s Inferno_ and _The Gold Crew_) his hatred for the continuous name teasing he"d endured: ". .
. the kids in school would call him "Ches" or "Wall" or would ask "Is your father some kind of a nut?" He later changed his name to Charles Mc.n.u.tt, but when that didn"t satisfy the situation, he changed it finally, legally, to Beaumont.
At an early age, he"d often "haunt" the editorial offices of the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company--publishers of _Amazing Stories_ and other pulp magazines--and, from an outer office, would gaze at the group of employees typing busily. To young Charlie Nutt, these people were giants, editing ma.n.u.scripts, and building a small empire, at that time, in Chicago. "I used to stand there and watch them slamming out 10,000 words a day," he once wrote. "They were G.o.ds to me . . ." Ironically, his first professional sale, "The Devil, You Say?", would appear in the January, 1951 issue of _Amazing Stories_.
At age twelve, mid-way through his two year bout with meningitis, Beaumont"s parents sent him to what they considered to be a better climate. In July, 1960, he told the _San Diego Union_, "I lived with five widowed aunts who ran a rooming house near a train depot in the state of Washington. Each night we had the ritual of gathering around the stove and there I"d hear stories about the strange death ofeach of their husbands."
During this period in Everett, he published his own fan magazine, _Utopia_, and soon became an avid fan of science fiction, writing letters to almost every magazine of this genre. By the time he was thirteen he had broken into print 25 times in almost as many magazines with these resumes and editorial criticisms.
His interests then shifted from typewriter to drawing board and his ill.u.s.trations began to appear in a number of pulp magazines under the brush name E.T. Beaumont. His first cartoon, done in collaboration with his friend and fellow artist, Ronald Clyne, appeared in _Fantastic Adventures_ in October, 1943.
In the early months of 1944, Charlie Mc.n.u.tt turned to drama and radio work, beginning as a featured actor on "Drama Workshop," a West coast show, and soon moved on to write and direct his own spot, "Hollywood Hi-Lights," a 15 minute show of movieland chatter and shop talk. His formal education was spa.r.s.e, of which, he wrote, "[I] barely nosed through the elementary grades and gained a certain notoriety in high school as a wastrel, dreamer, could-do-the-work-if-he"d-only-tryer and general lunkhead." He left high school a year short of graduation for a four month period of Army service (Infantry) before he was medically discharged for a bad back. This led to his enrollment into the Bliss-Hayden Acting School in California under the GI Bill. After starring in a local version of the Hecht-MacArthur play, _Broadway_, he was signed by Universal Studio as an actor, and was scheduled for a co-starring role in a Universal-International film. But despite much "hullabaloo in film magazines and newspapers," this never materializied, and Beaumont reluctantly gave up a theatrical career for one in commercial art. Soon he was sketching cartoons for MGM"s animation studio and working as a part-time ill.u.s.trator for FPCI (Fantasy Publishing Company) in Los Angeles. Beaumont later wrote, "[I] worked hard, managed to crack most of the pulp magazines with ill.u.s.trations, graduated to book jackets and slick magazine cartoons. But [was] forced, finally, to admit total lack of any real talent in the field."
When this failed, Beaumont turned to writing.
It was in the summer of 1946, that he met twenty-six-year-old Ray Bradbury (author of numerous screenplays, teleplays, essays, poems, and works of fiction, including _Farenheit 451_ and _The Martian Chronicles_) in Fowler Brothers Book Store in downtown Los Angeles, and began talking about his comic collection. Remembers Bradbury: "He said he had a lot of _Steve Canyon_, and I told him I had a lot of _Prince Valiants_ and some Hannes Bok photographs; so we decided to get together.
"Out of that beginning, of our mutual interest in comic strips, a friendship blossomed."
Bradbury began to read Beaumont"s short fiction and quickly became a major influence in Beaumont"s life--a mentor. "When I read the first one, I said: "Yes. Very definitely. You are a writer,"
recalls Bradbury. "It showed immediately. It"s not like so many people who come to you with stories and you say, "Well, they"re okay," You know, if they keep working they"ll make it. Chuck"s talent was obvious from that very first story."
For reasons of economic survival, Beaumont moved to Mobile, Alabama in 1948, where his father had obtained employment for him as a clerk for the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railroad. It was there that he met Helen Broun, and wrote in a notebook: "She"s incredible. Intelligent _and_ beautiful. This is the girl I"m going to marry!" A year later, they were married and moved to California. Their son, Christopher, was born in December of 1950; they would later parent three more children: Catherine, Elizabeth, and Gregory.
As Beaumont"s early writing brought him little more than rejection slips, he worked at a number of jobs, including that of a piano player ("Studied piano for six years, decided [I] couldn"t squeak by owing to immensely talented right hand and nowhere left") and, in 1949, a tracing clerk for California Motor Express, where he met John Tomerlin. When the two discovered they shared a pa.s.sion for words (as well as a skill for "geting out of work"), they quickly cultivated what was to become a lifelong friendship.
In mid-1951, another special friendship was made when Beaumont met a young, struggling writer by the name of Richard Matheson (who, in addition to many screenplays, teleplays and short stories, is known for works such as _I Am Legend_ and _The Shrinking Man_). As their families became veryclose, there soon developed between Beaumont and Matheson a constant interchange of ideas, out of which a number of varied and imaginative stories would emerge. Says writer Dennis Etchison (_Darkside_ and _Cutting Edge_), who"d attended Beaumont"s UCLA writing cla.s.s in 1963, "It"s pretty difficult to consider Beaumont and Matheson separately because as short story writers they came out at the same time; they worked together, they both came out of an influence from Bradbury, and they both had such a close friendship. I think there are great similarities, tradeoffs, and variations between their stories. They were just two of a kind that came up at one time."
As their careers grew, Beaumont and Matheson acted as "spurs" to one another. "He and I, in a very nice way, of course, were very compet.i.tive," says Matheson. "At first, I was a little ahead of him in sales. I"d call him on the phone and say, "I just sold a collection of short stories to Bantam," and he"d say, "Thanks a lot, thanks a lot," and hang up. [laughs] He wasn"t serious about it though. But he caught up to me. My first collection of stories [_Born of Man and Woman, 1954] spurred him on to his first collection [_The Hunger and Other Stories_, 1957]. Then we both did a so-called "straight" novel just about the same time [Beaumont"s _The Intruder_, 1959 and Matheson"s _The Beardless Warriors_, 1960]."
But the success which was to come their way, was still in the future. For now, Beaumont was working hard to break through. Says Ray Bradbury, "I was at Universal in 1952 on my very first screen project, _It Came From Outer s.p.a.ce_. And Chuck, coincidentally, was working there in the music department, handling a multilith machine, copying the musical scores. I would see him and have lunch with him there at the studio and encourage him, Those were hard years for him; he didn"t want to be in the music department doing all this "stupid" work. He wanted to _write_."
During this period, Beaumont was writing feverishly, but meeting with little success. His agent at the time, Forrest J. Ackerman, recalls: "I made approximately 78 submissions for him, but nothing happened for quite sometime."
When fired from Universal in June of 1953, Beaumont took the plunge into fulltime writing.
Late 1953 saw the Beaumonts in disastrous financial shape; Chuck"s typewriter was in hock and the gas had been shut off in their apartment. Writer William F. Nolan (co-author of _Logan"s Run_ and biographer of Dashiell Hammett) remembers Beaumont "breaking the seal and turning it back on; Chris required heat, and d.a.m.n the gas company! Chris got what he needed."
Nolan had met Beaumont, briefly, in 1952 at Universal, when introduced by Ray Bradbury. "I recall Chuck"s sad face and ink-stained hands. The first Beaumont story had already appeared (in _Amazing Stories_) and within a few more months, when I saw Chuck again, half a dozen others had been sold. Forry Ackerman got us together early in 1953, and our friendship was immediate and lasting.
I found, in Chuck, a warmth, a vitality, an honesty and depth of character which few possess. And, most necessary, a wild, wacky, irreverant sense of humor."
In February, 1954, Beaumont and Nolan began writing comics for Whitman Publication.
Together they turned out ten stories, after which Beaumont sold another thirty to become employed at Whitman as co-editor, where he helped to "guide the destinies of such influential literary figures as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Andy Panda."
Finally, in September of that year, Beaumont"s first major sale appeared in _Playboy_. "Black Country," a 10,000-word novella about a terminally ill jazzman, is considered by Ray Russell (_Playboy_ editor during the 1950s, and author of many works of fiction, including _Incubus_ and _Sardonicus_), the best story _Playboy_ ever bought. "Beaumont manages to set up a rhythm and sustain a pitch, a concert pitch--to use a musical term--and sustain that from the very beginning to the very end," says Russell. "It almost never relaxes. You"re on a beat throughout the entire story until _whhhh_, it"s over.
There are very few stories that have that, by Beaumont or anybody else."
_Playboy_ soon placed Beaumont on a five-hundred-dollar monthly retainer for first refusal right to his ma.n.u.scripts, and later listed him as a contributing editor.
Beaumont had reached the turning point in his career.
His stories began to appear in the most prestigious magazines in the nation, including _Esquire_, _Collier"s_ and _The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_. 1954 also marked the beginning of his career in television when, in April, his teleplay "Masquerade" aired on _Four Star Playhouse_. In the years to follow, hewould write a number of scripts, many in collaboration with Richard Matheson. "For a year or two, we wrote together on all sorts of projects: we did a couple of _Have Gun, Will Travels_, and old Western series, _Buckskin_, and there was _Philip Marlowe_, and the _D.A."s Man_. Real c.r.a.p, most of it," says Matheson, laughingly. "But it was fun, because we had never done this before . . . But eventually we decided that we really didn"t need to collaborate, and chose to go our own ways."
Beaumont"s entry into television, coupled with his success at _Playboy_, soon enabled him to partic.i.p.ate in what was to become a new and exciting hobby--auto racing. In February, 1955, Beaumont and Nolan attended their first sports car race in Palm Springs (an event in which actor James Dean was driving, and with whom Beaumont would later share a maintainance pit). The sport instantly became one of the great fascinations of their lives--a fascination which quickly carried over to John Tomerlin as well.
"Chuck was marvelous at talking people into doing things they had not thirty seconds before ever dreamed they wanted to do, and suddenly discovered that it was their lifelong ambition," says Tomerlin.
"And the next thing you knew, you"d be off and on your way doing it!"
The trio could soon be found attending and competing in weekend racing events on the West coast, at an average of one event per month, and writing voluminously for motoring journals such as _Road & Track_, _Autosport_, _The Motor_, _Sports Car Ill.u.s.trated_, and _Autocar_. A favorite hangout became the Grand Prix--a Hollywood restaurant which catered to the sports car enthusiast and professional alike, and featured racing music, racing records, and 8mm racing films, which were shown over the walls by multiple projectors. Of their racing abilities, Nolan says: "We weren"t great, by any means, but we were fairly good, fairly fast, and totally crazy--which means we weren"t afraid of anything."
Later this year, Beaumont made a major--as well as difficult--decision to act on his growing concern over the way his fiction was being handled by the Forrest Ackerman agency--an agency which dealt, almost exclusively, in science fiction markets. With increasing regularity, Beaumont had found himself turning toward "mainstream" storytelling and, in July, signed with Don Congdon, of the Harld Matson agency in New York. The move proved to be a beneficial one, and quickly helped in establishing Beaumont"s versatility. As Richard Matheson observes, "Chuck had no genre; he was not a science fiction writer, he was not a fantasy writer--although he did write some wonderful science fiction and fantasy stories--he wrote all kinds of fiction. A _lot_ of the stuff he wrote--for _Playboy_, what have you--was just flat, goodout fiction. Straight fiction. So there"s no category. His mind jumped from place to place."
Beaumont"s first short fiction collection, _The Hunger and Other Stories_ (G.P. Putnam"s Sons) was released in April of 1957 to favorable reviews. "The first sixteen tales of the book are interesting as instruments which reveal the scope and proclivities of a highly individual mind," says the _New York Herald Tribune_. "One is impressed by the creative gymnastics of the author . . . But in "Black Country,"
Beaumont, the author, is forgotten . . . Among all the stories it is this extraordinary work that pa.s.sionately tears into the heart of jazz which gives Mr. Beaumont undeniable stature as an artist."
In addition to the previously mentioned periodicals, Beaumont"s stories--both fiction and non fiction--were appearing in publications as _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_, _Fortnight_, and _Rogue_. (In _Rogue_, due to his _Playboy_ commitment, he appeared as "C.B. Lovehill" and "Michael Philips"). Other collections soon followed--_Yonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ (Bantam, 1958), _Night Ride and Other Journeys_ (Bantam, 1960), and _The Fiend in You_, a Beaumont-edited anthology (Ballantine Books, 1962). In September of 1957, his first novel was published, _Run From the Hunter_ (written in collaboration with John Tomerlin under the joint pseudonym "Keith Grantland").
Though he employed many writing styles, the distinct Beaumont "signature" was always in evidence. "His writing was brisk and very terse," says Bradbury. "There"s a great similarity to John Collier. Collier rubbed off on him, just as Collier rubbed off on me. And it was all to the good: good, short, to the point, imaginative storytelling. A lot of us are Collier"s indirect sons, but you learn as the years pa.s.s, to shake the influence. But it"s certainly there. I also see carryovers from my work in Chuck.
It"s inevitable, because we were around each other so much. I told him about Eudora Welty andKatherine Anne Porter. I think that also shows. And it"s all to the good."
By 1958, Beaumont had firmly established himself in television, scripting episodes for shows as _Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k Presents_, _One Step Beyond_, _Naked City_, _Thriller_ and _Wanted Dead or Alive_. Recalls Jerry Sohl, author of numerous scripts and novels, and with whom Beaumont had collaborated on several screen projects, including an unproduced version of _The Dunwich Horror_, "Chuck was the kind of person who could go in [to a producer"s office] and absolutely flabbergast you.
He"d do what you"d call "Blue Sky"--he"d pitch this story and no one would say that"s no good, because they"d be so fascinated with Chuck. He had this ability to absolutely overpower you with what it was that he was doing. The trouble with most writers is that they may be good writers, but they can"t sell themselves in television. Chuck Beaumont was able to do both; plus he could deliver the goods when the chips were down." In 1958, Beaumont also saw the film release of his first produced screenplay, _Queen of Outer s.p.a.ce_. (Two earlier screenplays, _Confession of a Teen-Ager_ and _Invaders from 7000 A.D._, both written in 1956-7, went unproduced). Of the film, Beaumont says: "[The] studio called me in to do what I"d thought was to be a serious study of a group of men who take a s.p.a.ce ship to Venus. But how serious can a picture be when the part of the world"s biochemist is played by Zsa Zsa Gabor? The picture [is] about these men who land on Venus and find a planet inhabited entirely by beautiful women.
"Naturally, I wrote the thing as a big spoof. Only trouble was the director and some of the cast didn"t realize it."
When Rod Serling"s _Twilight Zone_ made it"s network debut in 1959, Beaumont became one of the show"s princ.i.p.al writers, scripting 22 of its 156 episodes. Richard Matheson explains his and Beaumont"s involvement with the celebrated series. "The show was just getting started and Chuck and I had just joined this agency which was quite good at the time (we"d never had a good film agency before this), so they immediately started getting us appointments. There was a lot of work going on in television--half-hour television--and _Twilight Zone_ was about to screen their pilot episode. So Chuck and I went to pitch some ideas to Rod [Serling] and [producer] Buck Houghton." Beaumont and Matheson went on to become second and third, respectively, in production of _Twilight Zone_ scripts behind Serling, and were largely responsible for some of the series" cla.s.sic episodes.
Beaumont was also responsible for bringing a young, untried talent to _Twilight Zone"s_ core of princ.i.p.al writers. While George Clayton Johnson"s story output was relatively minor (four stories and four teleplays), when compared to that of Serling, Beaumont and Matheson, it was the _quality_ of his work which soon placed him on a level with the other three.
By now a close-knit "brotherhood" had formed between Beaumont and his friends--many of whom considered him the cornerstone or "electric center" of the group. "Chuck was like the hub of the wheel," explains Nolan, "And you had all these different spokes going out: Richard Matheson, John Tomerlin, George Clayton Johnson, OCee Ritch, Chad Oliver, Ray Russell, Rod Serling, Frank Robinson, Charles Fritch, myself. Spokes. All connected to Beaumont. He energized us. Fired us. Made us stretch our creative and writing muscles. He was always encouraging us to do better. It was a very stimulating period in our lives."
The summer of 1961 found Beaumont involved in an explosively-controversial project: the first motion picture to deal with the volatile problem of Southern school integration, based on his novel _The Intruder_.
The factual springboard for both novel and film was an article on rabble-rousing John Kasper in _Look_ magazine, printed in 1957 as "Intruder in the South," which described a power-hungry Kasper"s efforts to sabotage school integration in Clinton, Tennessee. Adam Cramer, the central figure in Beaumont"s story (protrayed by actor William Shatner), is on a similiar mission and also uses integration as a ready lever in an attempt to gain personal power. He fails, as Kasper failed, but not before mob violence has taken its ugly toll, as it actually did in Clinton; by the time Kasper left, a week after his arrival, bombings, acts of terror, and attacks on integrationists had become common in the small community.
Intrigued by Kasper, Beaumont packed a suitcase and flew to Clinton to interview him.
A year and a half later his novel was finished, and Beaumont was subsequently hired to do thescreenplay adaptation for director Roger Corman.
When Corman, whose forte had long been science fiction-horror, was unable to obtain studio backing, he financed _The Intruder_ on an independent basis. Filmed on location in and near Charleston, Missouri, on a shoestring budget of $100,000, and utilizing some 300 local townspeople in its cast, Beaumont went along to oversee his script and to essay the cameo role of school princ.i.p.al Harley Paton.
The film was never successful in general release due to complications over its controversial nature, but it was later exploited under the misnomer, _I Hate Your Guts_, and, later, _Shame_.
The early Sixties also saw the production of seven other Beaumont screenplays: _The Premature Burial_ (written in collaboration with Ray Russell); _Burn, Witch, Burn_ (with Richard Matheson); _The Wonderful World of the Brother Grimm_ (with David P. Harmon and William Roberts); _The Haunted Palace_; _The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao_; _The Masque of the Red Death_ (with R. Wright Campbell); and Mr. Moses (with Monja Danischevsky). In 1959, Beaumont also worked with Otto Preminger on _Bunny Lake is Missing_; however, Beaumont"s script was never used and he remained uncredited on the film.
By now, film and television offers were flooding in. At times Beaumont juggled as many as ten projects simultaneously, and would have to farm the extra work out to fellow writers William F. Nolan, Jerry Sohl, John Tomerlin, Ray Russell and OCee Ritch. "I gather Chuck did too much, didn"t he?"
observes Bradbury. "He overloaded himself; then had to farm the extra work out to his friends. I think there"s a similarity here to Rod Serling--Rod could never resist temptation. In other words, you"ve been neglected a good part of your life and no one is paying attention to you, and all of a sudden, people _are_ paying attention: they"re offering you jobs here and there. And the temptation is: Jeez! I never had anything. I better take that because it may not last! And that happens to all of us. So Chuck, I think suffered from "Serling Syndrome." Rod, in the last year of his life, did all those commercials, which he didn"t have to do. But he couldn"t resist, and I gather Chuck couldn"t resist all these things; then it got to be a real burden and he had to do something with it. So his friends had to come to his aid."
Although he"d attained a high-level of creative and financial success in film and television, Beaumont had often confided to close friends his desire to return to novel writing, and, in 1963, decided to finish _Where No Man Walks_--a novel he"d begun in mid-1957. John Tomerlin explains, "Once you begin working in Hollywood, unless you enter it through the back door of doing novels and then writing the screenplays and stories that you want to, you end up taking a.s.signments; usually, to a large extent, those a.s.signments are other people"s--you"re meeting their requirements. Even if the story is original, you must adapt it to their requirements. I think Chuck didn"t like doing that, and wanted very much to write books that he had seen himself writing."
But time was running out on Beaumont.
By mid-1963, his concentration began to slip; he was using Bromo Seltzer constantly to cope with ever increasing headaches. Friends remarked he looked notably older than his thirty-four years of age. By 1964, he could no longer write. Meetings with producers turned disastrous. His speech became slower, more deliberate. His concentration worsened. Meanwhile, his family and friends desperately tried to understand and treat his symptoms.
In the summer of 1964, after a battery of tests at UCLA, Beaumont was diagnosed as having Alzheimer"s Disease; he faced premature senility, aging, and an early death. "The saving grace to it," says Tomerlin, "if there is one, in a disease like that, is he was not really aware, after the very beginning, that there was anything wrong with him. When he first began to show strong symptoms of it, he would have kind of momentary flashes of great concern, as though he saw something happening and couldn"t understand what it was. But it was a fairly gentle process."
Charles Beaumont died February 21, 1967 at the age of thirty-eight, his full potential never realized.
His last hardcover book was _Remember? Remember?_, and as Bill Nolan observes, "there is so _much_ to remember about Charles Beaumont: [a] midnight call to California--Chuck calling from Chicago to tell me he planned to spend the day with Ian Fleming and why not join them? . . . the frenzied, nutty nights when we plotted Mickey Mouse adventures for the Disney Magazines. . . the bright, hot,exciting racing weekends at Palm Springs, Torrey Pines, Pebble Beach . . . the whirlwind trips to Paris and Na.s.sau and New York . . . the sessions on the set at _Twilight Zone_ when he"d exclaim, "I write it and they create it in three dimensions. G.o.d, but it"s _magic!_"... the fast, machine-gun rattle of his typewriter as I talked to Helen in the kitchen while he worked in the den.. . the rush to the newstand for the latest Beaumont story. .
Yet, Beaumont"s magic is still with us, evidenced by the four children who survived him, and in the stories which follow. He was a craftsman, the kind of writer who could be relied upon to perform the ultimate function of fiction--entertainment--adding always some ambiance, echoing, indefinable, the reflection of a storyteller who was more than a voice . . .
Roger Anker Los Angeles, California January, 1987 -----------------------------.
PREFACE.
by Christopher Beaumont -----------------------------.
Roger Anker has put together a good and varied collection of Beaumont short stories. But he"s done something more. He"s wrapped each and every story in the loving embrace of a friend. Matheson, Tomerlin, Bradhury, Nolan; all names I grew up with. Each one a distinct and pleasant piece of my memory. A memory that includes the picture of a young boy falling asleep, night after night, to the sound of his father"s typewriter, the keys finally becoming a familiar lullaby.
Do not think for a minute that the style and clarity found in these stories was not the result of countless hours spent shaping and reshaping, and then reshaping again, the words.
But somehow, in the midst of his pa.s.sion for the words, he found time enough, and love enough to be a father. And such is the quality of that love that it sustained his children; Catherine, Elizabeth, Gregory and myself, through the stormy weather that followed his death and the death of our mother.
Not only sustained, but inspired and confirmed our suspicions that certain things never die: a story well told, the steadfast loyalty of a good and true friend, and the memory of a father who somewhere knew that his time was short, and so pa.s.sionately shared all that he had to share.
And even now, some nights, I vaguely hear the typewriter keys tapping in the other room. The single bell at the end of the carriage. The sound of the roller twisting another lucky page into the works.
And then the tapping starts again and I begin to drift to sleep.
Good night, Father.
Introduction to