Literary Horror discussion

True Detective is an American television anthology drama series on HBO created and written by Nic Pizzolatto, with the first season directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga.[ Season one stars Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Potts, and Tory Kittles, and uses multiple timelines to trace two Louisiana State Police Criminal Investigations Division homicide detectives' hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana across seventeen years.

Nic Pizzolatto, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, states as influences on the show:

Thomas Ligotti
Laird Barron
John Langan
Simon Strantzas
Robert W. Chambers' "The King In Yellow"
Karl Edward Wagner's "The River of Night's Dreaming"
the recent anthology "A Season in Carcosa"

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/0...

This show is awesome so far. I love it. I am finally reading The King in Yellow because of it.
That was an interesting interview, thanks for posting it! I just watched the latest episode last night and I loved one thing that Cohl said: "Life is a disease."

I've been dying to see this show, though I am not a huge McConaughy (except Frailty and A Time to Kill). Can't wait to start watching it now. Interesting to see Laird Barron's influence on the show...

Charlene wrote: "This show is awesome so far. I love it. I am finally reading The King in Yellow because of it.

It's what finally pushed me to read it also. I really hope they are taking the references somewhere . . . they piled on some more this week. After reading A Season in Carcosa, I'm amazed at the gold that's been spun out of the King in Yellow stories.

I just came across another article about the show that actually provides a recommended reading list. :)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lincolnmichel...

Randolph, this show is as dark and gritty as they come. Also, the chemistry between the two lead characters is electric. They don't really like each other, but each sees darkness in the other. (That's the best way I can think to explain it.) When they're on screen together, every muscle in my body is tense, waiting to see what will happen.

Dropping in to say: brilliant grim show. As a longtime devotee of "The King in Yellow", really appreciate the references and hoping they are building strongly on it. (Also thinking I may need to rewatch a couple of the earlier eps and look for more unmasking references.)

True Detective is a great mini series, the acting is brilliant and photography and sound track are outstanding. If you enjoy this series try "Top Of The Lake" it was featured on the Sundance channel, and now available on Netflicks for streaming. The story takes place in New Zeland.

Karl, I forgot about the soundtrack! You're right...I heard a new version of a CCR song, Bad Moon Rising, I think it was and it was chilling. I have to find out who performed that.
The music in the show has a dark gritty feel to it which helps with the overall atmosphere.

Charlene wrote: "Karl, I forgot about the soundtrack! You're right...I heard a new version of a CCR song, Bad Moon Rising, I think it was and it was chilling. I have to find out who performed that.
The music in th..."

the show's executive music producer and composer is the legendary T Bone Burnett

Yeah, I was just checking out an interview with him at Mother Jones with 10 songs from the show. He talks about Cohle listening to Captain Beefheart, it was interesting.
It turns out the CCR song I was thinking of came from The Following.

Charlene wrote: "Yeah, I was just checking out an interview with him at Mother Jones with 10 songs from the show. He talks about Cohle listening to Captain Beefheart, it was interesting.
It turns out the CCR song I..."

It'a amazing how much the soundtrack adds to the show. Thanks for the heads up on the interview in Mother Jones.

I loved Elizabeth Moss as Zoey on The West Wing. It was very hard to get used to her on Mad Men. :)

No worries. I will have a hard time readjusting to her in yet another role. :)

I came across a clip from the show True Detective. Fans of Robert W. Chambers might find this interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OdWop...

I came across this today and I thought it was hilarious. There are no spoilers after episode 5, and that's a mild one.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2...

and this from the wall street j. linking True Detective to Thomas Ligotti

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/0...

more here form Quiteus:

http://thequietus.com/articles/14610-...

And here from the Arkham Digest about the King In Yellow as related to True Detective with Author/Editor Joseph S. Pulver Sr. who is known throughout the genre as the go-to guy for anything having to do with The King in Yellow.

http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2014/03/i...

I have seen the Yellow Sign! I have seen the Yellow Sign!

Ronald wrote: "I have seen the Yellow Sign! I have seen the Yellow Sign!"

What is the yellow sign? it is not in the human script !
Are you now possessed ?

Ha! :)

What did you all think of the last few episodes?

I was just able to check out those links. Thanks for posting them. I cannot wait until this week's final episode.

Rolling Stone just posted this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/ne...

Charlene wrote: "Ha! :)

What did you all think of the last few episodes?"

All the episodes have been really good. It will be sad to see the series end.

Very sad. I think I'm even going to give up my Walking Dead to watch the series finale.
The final scene of the last episode was chilling.

Charlene wrote: "Very sad. I think I'm even going to give up my Walking Dead to watch the series finale.
The final scene of the last episode was chilling."

There is 1 hour difference here for the two shows. the Walking Dead is on at 8:00 and True Detective is on at 9:00, I usually DVR the Talking Dead.

Here in the northeast, they are both on at 9:00 pm.
TWD is replayed at 11:00 pm, so I will just wait and watch that one.

I do not have a DVR. Hell, I just hooked up an HDTV and don't even have a broadband internet connection. (Though I will on Monday, so I'm psyched about that!)

this is kind of funny a parody of true detective intro via Law and Order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc6yyB...

Any one watched the "True Detective After Show" ??

There is one for each episode, here is the one for Show 7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UT6Ic...

Love Cheap Trick, they were my second concert. :)

Cool artwork. I wish I could afford this:
http:
http://spoke-art.myshopify.com/produc...

Neal Young sais "Rust Never Sleeps" now at least he got a rest.

So, the finale?
WOW.

Charlene wrote: "So, the finale?
WOW."

One can only hope that they continue this saga with the two stars. At least they left it open. And I liked CARCOSA !

Just saw your Rust comment. Nicely done. :)

I don't know if these two will continue? I'm not sure it has even been officially approved for another season.
Plus, how could they top this?

I read that due to the success of this series a second season has been optioned. However it will be with different actors , a different story line, and a different director. That said ... I guess it will all be different.

Don't read if you don't like spoilers !

http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/03/10/tru...

That is what I have read as well, Randolph. The article Karl linked to seems to clearly state that Woody and Matthew are done.

However, this guy can write. I did buy his book, Galvestonlast week, and I'm looking forward to working it into my reading schedule. That should help tide me over until TD comes back.

At the link that Karl provided above, there is a little side article on the right talking about who the cast could be for season two.

Randolph wrote: "Karl wrote: "I read that due to the success of this series a second season has been optioned. However it will be with different actors , a different story line, and a different director. That said..."

The writer will stay the same. Read the article above.

I think it's very rare for any show to have only one writer. If this is an example of the type of work that a single writer can produce for a show, I'm entirely on board with that.
I also saw a blurb yesterday, talking about M.M.'s performance and the fact that it is likely he will win an Emmy for TD. This would make him the first actor to win an Oscar and an Emmy in the same year. If he does win, of course.

Randolph, that's cool. I love the blues. Did you catch anyone good? :)

Sounds awesome. :)

Finished the series the other day and I thought it was excellent. Writing, acting, and visual style were all top-notch. I don't generally have much patience for TV drama series, as there tends to be a lot of runaround and loose ends as the writers try to manufacture plot to fill the time, but this one was extremely well done.

The show is relentlessly dark, though, even for someone like me who enjoys horror. The idea that women and children are helpless prey is pushed so hard and so often that after a certain point the show stopped being entertainment and started becoming a little repulsive.

Still, if you like (very) dark stuff, definitely worth giving it a go.

*spoilers*: I have to say I was very disappointed by the season finale. I was excited at the begining because it looked like high-quality noir, and then even more excited when I realized it was going to be about Chamber's King in Yellow, which is a book I love, and was my gateway to the cosmic horror sub-genre.
I was a little worried though, having read and disliked A Season In Carcosa, which is a collection of stories, each one a step-by-step re-telling of the same classic tale Chambers wrote more than a hundred years ago. The authors featured there are some of my favourite, and in my opinion even they couldn't bring anything new to the table, so what could True Detective add?
Then I thought that since it's a TV show rather than a short story, even if all it'll amount to is a re-telling of The Yellow Sign through swamp-noir, it will have to be less vague than the stories, and actually show us something rather than imply. I was hoping for a very cinematic vision of Carcosa - where the black stars shine etc, and I was really hoping for a represntation of The King in Yellow him(it?)self.
And then the finale came, they solved it in a silly way (green paint = green ears) but that's OK, the detectives reach their final destination and... no Chambers, no Bierce, no Barron (who was quoted word for word) or Ligotti or even Lovecraft (who's been done many times but never on HBO) - it's just some guy with an axe! The same guy we saw mowing the lawn on episode 2 or 3 and wasn't scary then but this time he mumbles some stuff and waves an axe. Carcosa is actually a kind of sewer with skulls and strange echoes, The King in Yellow is a pile of bones and shit with some yellow drape on it, and the human sacrifice is just human sacrifice for the sake of human sacrifice and no more, or something about light (good) versus darkness (bad), which is just lazy.
So why did he use the name King in Yellow? or Carcosa? Why not invent his own names for stuff? Why invoke the 'forbidden play' trope without delivering? It's like a joke - like naming your dog Cthulhu or refering to your grandparents as The Ancient Ones.
Did anyone else feel that way? I haven't read much reviews but I guess some must have.
I hope they'll go for something bigger next season\story but my expectation took a big blow.

Teddy wrote: "*spoilers*: I have to say I was very disappointed by the season finale. I was excited at the begining because it looked like high-quality noir, and then even more excited when I realized it was goi..."

Look at the immense spotlight that this show placed on Chambers book, and Barron and Ligotti. It has aroused interest in the book for millions of people. I say congratulations for sparking the interest in an area that rarely get any light at all.

Maybe, but those who have finished watching the series might fail to see the connection between Chambers' tale and the show True Detective, other than the use of the name King in Yellow, which has a completley different meaning and implications in Chambers' story. Barron might appeal to them more, since he sometimes goes noir in his stories, like The Imago Sequence, but once it reaches the stage of cosmic horror via huge monolith, monsters, indifferent gods etc, it hugely differs itself from True Detective, which didn't follow through in that regard.
So I agree that the show boosted the sales of Barron's books and I think that's a very good thing, because if anyone deserves more money it's Barron, but I think it has more to do with internet blogs pointing on the very light connection between the two than TD being an actual gateway into Barron's dark world.

Teddy wrote: "Maybe, but those who have finished watching the series might fail to see the connection between Chambers' tale and the show True Detective, other than the use of the name King in Yellow, which has ..."

TV normally really sucks. At best it may appeal to the lowest common denominator, perhaps at the fourth grade level. I'm amazed that some one was even able to pull off an inkling of the flavor of this story. Nothing in the Television medium is ever going to come close to portraying edgy convincing works of fiction. The Big Goons at the top would never allow such a thing. Honey Boo Boo anyone ?

I respectfully, completely disagree, Teddy.

1. I think if they had attempted to somehow put an appearance, a "look", if you will, to the King in Yellow, how could it be anything but a disappointment? There is no way a picture, or a scene can live up to 100 years of reader's imaginations.

2. I think any attempt by the show to make it anything other than realistic would have disappointed viewers. These people are tuning in for True Detective , not a video of the book by Robert Chambers.

3. I was interested in The King in Yellow and have had it on my TBR for quite a while now. I think you underestimate the intelligence of the people watching the show, to be honest. I didn't need a blog or Entertainment Tonight to tell me that the show was related to the work of Robert Chambers. I believe I had that figured out by episode one or two.

4. Regarding not following through as regarding Cosmic Horror, I again say that the show is called True Detective, not Cthulhu or anything else like it. It's at heart crime noir, not cosmic horror, however I liked the way Pizzolatto combined them into what I thought was one of the best shows I've seen in years.

5. The seasons of True Detective, as it stands now, are stand alone seasons. They're not interrelated, they may not be cosmic horror related and even the actors will not be the same.

6. Lastly, this show far exceeded my expectations. Far, far exceeded them. The intensity of the acting and the tense nature of the story and how it was told were outstanding, IMO.

I cannot wait to see what happens in season two. King in Yellow related or not. :)

Karl - I don't think TV is stupid, well maybe Honey Boo Boo is, but HBO produced some great series, like Sopranos, The Wire and even Game of Thrones is fun and well made. If anything, Twin Peaks, made 25 years ago, was a lot closer to what I expected from TD and was far superior in my opinion.

Charlene - Of course we can disagree. first 6. Don't get me wrong, the show had some great moments and even greater premise. I also enjoyed the acting etc, I was mainly refering to the finale.

1. I don't think a visual depiction of something out of this world is doomed to fail and disappoint. I didn't ASK for a depiction of The King in Yellow, I would never have dreamed of it before the show told us that the King in Yellow is the key to the mystery. So if it's doomed to fail, why mention The King and the rest (Him who eats time, Carcosa) at all?

2. I don't want a video of the book, though if made right it could be great. The show refers to the book by name but not in any other way, not even mood.

3. You say that I underestimate the viewers and yet you think a touch of true cosmic horror would have sent them packing. I disagree, I thought it was the perfect time for something like that. Twin Peaks was close in its own way, Lost was dumb as hell but had a much wilder and hard-to-swallow concept than my vision of TD.
If there's really no need for other-worldly concepts inserted into a well-made noir show then why imply to them at all?
I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with The King in Yellow, so that's why I felt so cheated when the show failed to do more with that great concept / story.

Randolph that's a great question, if it wasn't for Chambers' book (and Lovecraft, Barron and the rest) I would have thought much more highly of this show. It's a good show about detectives that for some reason uses (in a shallow way in my opinion) certin motifs from these authors, but in the end doesn't add them into something other than just a show about detectives solving a case.