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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781930846173
ISBN number: 1930846177
Label: Golden Gryphon Press
Manufacturer: Golden Gryphon Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 267
Printing Date: July 01, 2003
Publishing house: Golden Gryphon Press
Sale Popularity Level: 168869
Studio: Golden Gryphon Press
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Product Description:
This collection of Joe R Lansdale stories represents the best of the 'Lansdale' genre -- a strange mixture of dark crime, even darker humour, and adventure tales. The stories are varied in setting and theme, but they are all pure Lansdale -- eerie, amusing, and occasionally horrific. In 'The Pit', modern gladiators square off against one another using Roman methods. An alternate-history tale called 'Trains Not Taken' shows Buffalo Bill as an ambassador and Wild Bill Hickok as a clerk. Lansdale's love of large lizards and humour are evident in the stories 'Godzilla's Twelve Step Program' and 'Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland'.
Amazon.com Review:
Like Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale is a powerful and versatile author. He writes frequently funny, often disturbing suspense, horror, dark fantasy, science fiction, and Western fiction. And like King, he has a strong sense of place: he successfully invokes the spirit of the West and demonstrates a wonderful and distinctly Texan gift for a phrase. But don't be fooled--the resemblances are superficial. Joe R. Lansdale writes like nobody but his own self. And, unjustly, he's not yet a bestselling author.
The genre-jumping collection High Cotton is subtitled Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale, but could more rightly be called The Best of Joe R. Lansdale. If you haven't read Lansdale, this is the place to start. If you like Lansdale, you already know you want this collection, even if you already own By Bizarre Hands, which contains 7 of these 21 stories. If, however, you are of a delicate constitution or a sensitive nature, you might want to steer clear. Lansdale can be blunt, or gross, or grim, sometimes all at once.
Most of the stories in High Cotton are excellent, and some are already classics. 'Night They Missed the Horror Show,' a tale of bored young hell-raisers who discover dreadful new depths of trouble, is one of the great horror stories of the 20th century. The alternate-history Western 'Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches' packs a lot of big (and shocking) changes into four pages. In the crime story 'The Steel Valentine,' a fading athlete finds himself the captive of his lover's merciless, criminal husband. In 'The Phone Woman,' a man discovers his horrifying true nature in a violent act. And in the screwball 'Mister Weed-Eater,' a man's life is turned upside-down and inside-out by his innocent endeavor to help a blind groundskeeper.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over 20 books, including the Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mystery series. He has won the American Mystery Award, the Booklist Editor's Award, five Bram Stoker Awards, the British Fantasy Award, and the International Crime Writers Award. --Cynthia Ward
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Rated by buyers 
-
As a fledgling horror writer, I'm trying to digest some bits and pieces from masters of the genre. Consider this review more of a discusion of what I liked in the book. Like I said, I'm a fledgling writer myself, and once you start creating something, you realize how much easier it is to criticize than create--so I'm trying to keep it on the positive.
I enjoyed much of High Cotton. Personal highlights include "Mister Weed-Eater", "The Night They Missed the Horror Show", "Incident on and Off a Mountain Road", and my favorite, "Steppin' Out, Summer, '68". Each of these tales forced my hand, made me keep turning those pages to see what bizzare sight waited around the corner. Each contained just the right mix of grey humour for my taste.
In this mix of 21 tales, the reader really gains a respect for Lansdale's style of storytelling. He is from East Texas, and you hear the voice throughout, even when the story might be a bit wide of the darkly humorous horror for which he's known. A warning to the squeamish: this book will offend your senses and offers enough racial ephitats to make political correctness roll around in it's grave.
Lansdale knows how to entertain, and when he's on his game, he's among the best.
Rated by buyers -
I bought this book because I wanted to read the original story from which a very first season episode of Showtime's "Masters of Horror" was built around. The episode was "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road", and both the television adaptation and- I was happy to learn when I received "High Cotton" from Amazon- the original Lansdale story are top notch. In fact, the TV show was excellent largely due to its sticking extremely close to the Lansdale original.
Happily, there are many other great stories in this collection other than "Incident". As other reviewers have pointed out here, the stories range from darkly humorous to dark & gritty, the dark & gritty ones being my favorites. There are also a few good stories of the ironic and darkly poetic variety, where some poor schmuck gets an undeserved ton of bricks dropped on his life for no other reason than fate sometimes does that (I'm thinking mostly of the story involving the guy who tries to help the seemingly pathetic blind groundskeeper). The outright "funny" stories, like the one about Godzilla being in the twelve-step program (he wants to stop stomping on tourists), and the story about the inflatable dinosaur who wanted to visit Disneyland so he could meet Mickey Mouse, are also okay, but less memorable than the dark & gritty stories, which usually involve hapless characters taking a wrong turn somewhere and in short order finding themselves in the midst of one form or another of earthly hell.
Sensitive readers should note that there are many instances of racist humor, and many racist observations, throughout the book, as this or that character spouts something ignorant. In fact, there's so much of it that I started thinking that the author perhaps had a benign view of such things, or maybe even held those views himself. But, no, it ultimately becomes clear that Mr. Lansdale is just trying to accurately show how many people talk and think, and also demonstrate that such thoughts and observations can mean one of several things: that the character in question truly IS racist, or might just be a little ignorant and stupid but not truly bad. I say this because in several instances (especially in the last story), a couple of SEEMING racists meet up (after one of those wrong turns) with a group of true, hateful, monstrous racists, and... well, let's just say Mr. Lansdale makes it clear that there's a difference between dumb, ignorant spoutings and true evil.
With the exception of the occasional inflatable dinosaur and the not-as-friendly-as-it-seems housecat (and even the tales containing those offbeat elements were perfectly engaging), these are intense, dark, memorable stories, and I look forward to experiencing more Joe R. Lansdale in the near future. Just not quite yet. There's some grim stuff here, and I could use a breather.
Rated by buyers -
So, "High Cotton" reprints several of Lansdale's personally selected best stories. These stories, all of them except for one are also featured in his original collections "By Bizarre Hands", "Bestsellers Guaranteed", and "Writer of the Purple Rage", and are arguably the best of the stories featured in the original (and out of print) books.
Lansdale's follow-up, "Bumper Crop" collects many of the rest, but not very many stories from "Writer of the Purple Rage." If you can get a copy of "Purple Rage" get it. It has the original "Bubba Ho-Tep" novella, which is one of Lansdale's best stories and was made into the wonderful movie starring Bruce Campbell, which may be one of the most faithful adaptations of a writer's work ever put on film.
Anyway, "Booty and the Beast" is the newest (to me) story in this collection, which centers around a specific item associated with the Virgin Mary that brings doom to those who possess it. It is an entertaining story. The best stories here, however, are the ones his true fans have read before: "The Night They Missed the Horror Show" (his signature story), "The Phone Woman", and "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back", "Not From Detroit", and many others. The stories also have introductions by Lansdale telling how they were conceived. There is also an introduction at the front of the book explaining how he came to write short stories and why he deosn't write as many anymore.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading the stories again and I hope this one stays in print for a long time, so that readers don't have to track down out of print collections to see what a fabulous writer this man is. These are the stories that made him famous, using his unique blend of humor, horror, and gritty realism to form a truly effective story. Highly Recommended!
Rated by buyers -
High Cotton by Joe R. Lansdale is the best short story collection I have ever read so far! The stories are funny and will make you laugh aloud -- so don't read this book in public places! Funny story: I was reading this book whilst waiting to board the plane in the airport, and I could not stop laughing! Security guards started to crowd around me -- just because I was acting in a 'peculiar manner' due to the loud laughing... so Joe R. Lansdale, it's your fault people are laughing out loud in public places whilst reading your book! Read this book and you will know what all the fuss is about.
Rated by buyers -
"High Cotton" is representative of the period when Joe Lansdale was still writing hardcore horror - and no one did it better. The stories in this collection are truly disturbing and graphic, reaching splattery heights without ever straying too far from Joe's East Texas sensibilities. Plenty of sick twists and thinly veiled stabs at racial injustice to keep our more "sophisticated" readers interested. For those of us who like down and dirty country-fried horror, you can't do any better than this collection.
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