Robert Bloch

Born: Chicago, Illinois; April 5, 1917

Died: Los Angeles, California; September 23, 1994

Also wrote as • Tarleton Fiske • Will Folke • Nathan Hindin • E. K. Jarvis • Wilson Kane: John Sheldon • Collier Young

Types of plot • Psychological • invertedContribution • Robert Bloch wrote many crime novels, as well as science-fiction novels, screenplays, radio and television plays, and hundreds of short stories. Working in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, Bloch portrays characters who are plagued by their psychological imbalances. In addition, he gives new life to the surprise ending. Often the reader is shocked or even appalled at the ending with which he is confronted. Unlike many writers in the genre, Bloch does not always let those who are right succeed or even live. In fact, many times those who are good are the ones done away with.The characters Bloch employs are quite ordinary. They are hotel owners, nuns, psychiatrists, and secretaries. The use of seemingly normal people as inhabitants of a less than normal world is part of what makes Robert Bloch one of the masters of the psychological novel. His novels do not have vampires jumping out of coffins; instead, they have hotel owners coming out of offices and asking if there is anything you need.

Biography • Robert Albert Bloch was born on April 5, 1917, in Chicago, Illinois. He attended public schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During his early years in school, Bloch was pushed ahead from the second grade to the fifth grade. By the time he was in sixth grade, the other children were at least two years older than he. While Bloch was more interested in history, literature, and art than were most children his age, he was not an outsider and was, in fact, the leader in many of the games in the neighborhood.

At age nine, Bloch attended a first-release screening of the 1925 silent classic Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney. He was at once converted to the genres of horror and suspense. In the 1930’s, he began reading the horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft. When he was fifteen, he wrote to Lovecraft asking for a list of the latter’s published works. After an exchange of letters, Lovecraft encouraged Bloch to try writing fiction. By the time he was seventeen, Bloch had sold his first story to Weird Tales magazine. As a tribute to his mentor, Bloch wished to include Lovecraft in a short story titled “The Shambler from the Stars.” Lovecraft authorized Bloch to “portray, murder, annihilate, disintegrate, transfigure, metamorphose or otherwise manhandle the undersigned.” 

Lovecraft later reciprocated by featuring a writer named Robert Blake in his short story “The Haunter of the Dark.”Bloch worked as a copywriter for the Gustav Marx advertising agency in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 1942 to 1953. Copywriting did not get in the way of creative writing, however. Besides a short stint as a stand-up comic—Bloch was often in much demand as a toastmaster at conventions because of his wit— he wrote scripts for thirty-nine episodes of the 1944 radio horror show Stay Tuned For Terror, based on his own stories. After leaving advertising, he turned to free-lance writing full-time. Bloch was married twice, first with Marion Holcombe, with whom he had a daughter, Sally Francy. In 1964 he married Eleanor Alexander.

In 1959 Bloch received the Hugo Award at the World Science Fiction Con-vention for his short story “The Hellbound Train.” The following year he re-ceived the Screen Guild Award, the Ann Radcliffe Award for literature, and the Mystery Writers of America Special Scroll. He later served as that organi-zation’s president (1970-1971). “The Skull” received the Trieste Film Festival Award in 1965. He received the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society Award in 1974 and the Comicon Inkpot Award in 1975. The World Fantasy Convention presented him with its Life Achievement Award in 1975. He also received the Cannes Fantasy Film Festival First Prize for “Asylum.”Bloch earned several Bram Stoker Awards, granted by the Horror Writers Association, for his autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, (1994), for his fiction collection The Early Fears (1995), for his novelette “The Scent of Vinegar” (1995), and for lifetime achievement (1990). At the 1991 World Horror Convention he was proclaimed a Grand Master of the field. Likewise, the World Science Fiction Association presented Bloch with a Hugo Special Award for “50 Years as an SF Professional” in 1984. Bloch died of esophageal cancer in 1994.

Analysis • Robert Bloch began his writing career at age seventeen when he sold his first short story to Weird Tales magazine. His early crime novels The Scarf (1947) and The Kidnapper (1954) reflect his fascination with psychology and psychopathic behavior. Bloch was quite prolific and published Spiderweb and The Will to Kill, in addition to The Kidnapper, in 1954. He later revised The Scarf in order to tighten the ending and eliminate any sympathy the reader might have felt for the main character, a psychopathic killer. While Bloch’s efforts at the early stages of his professional career cannot be called uninteresting, they are flawed by a certain amount of overwriting which serves to dilute the full impact of the situation at hand.

In 1959, Bloch published Psycho, the compelling tale of Norman Bates, the owner of the Bates Motel. In his novel, Bloch brings together all the terrifying elements which have been present in his earlier works. Bates, like many of Bloch’s past and future characters, is an apparently normal human being. The citizens of Fairvale think he is a little odd, but they attribute this to the fact that he found the bodies of his mother and “Uncle” Joe after they died from strych-nine poisoning. 

Psycho has become the model for psychological fiction. The character of Norman has also become a model because he appears to be so normal. In fact, until near the end of the novel, the reader does not know that Mrs. Bates is not, in fact, alive. The part of Norman’s personality which is still a small boy holds conversations with Mrs. Bates which are so realistic that the reader is completely unaware of the split in Norman’s personality. The horror the reader feels when the truth is discovered causes the reader to rethink all previous events in the novel.One of the most successful scenes in Psycho occurs when the detective, Mil-ton Arbogast, goes to the house to speak with Mrs. Bates. Norman attempts to convince his “mother” not to see the detective. Bloch writes:“Mother, please, listen to me!”

But she didn’t listen, she was in the bathroom, she was getting dressed, she was putting on make-up, she was getting ready. Getting ready.And all at once she came gliding out, wearing the nice dress with the ruffles. Her face was freshly powdered and rouged, she was pretty as a picture, and she smiled as she started down the stairs.Before she was halfway down, the knocking came.It was happening, Mr. Arbogast was here; he wanted to call out and warn him, but something was stuck in his throat. He could only listen as Mother cried gaily, “I’m coming! I’m coming! Just a moment, now!” 

And it was just a moment.Mother opened the door and Mr. Arbogast walked in. He looked at her and then he opened his mouth to say something. As he did so he raised his head, and that was all Mother had been waiting for. Her arm went out and something bright and glittering flashed back and forth, back and forth—It hurt Norman’s eyes and he didn’t want to look. He didn’t have to look, either, because he already knew.Mother had found his razor. . . .The reader can clearly see from the above passage how convinced Norman is that his mother is indeed alive. It is also evident how skilled Bloch is at convincing his reader that a particular character is at least reasonably sane. A similar situation occurs in Psycho II, in which Norman Bates escapes from the state mental hospital. Dr. Adam Claiborne, certain that Norman is alive, even after the van in which he escaped has been found burned, goes to California to at-tempt to find Norman. 

By all accounts, Norman is still alive and leaving evidence to support this theory. In fact, Claiborne claims to see Norman in a grocery store. The reader is, however, shocked to learn at the end of the novel that Norman did indeed die in the van fire and that the killer is Dr. Claiborne himself. Again, the reader must rethink the events preceding the startling dis-closure.In none of his novels does Bloch rely on physical descriptions of characters to convey his messages. For example, the reader knows relatively little about Norman Bates. He wears glasses, is overweight, and has a mother fixation, among other psychological problems. By the end of the novel, the reader is well aware of Norman’s mental state. Before that, the reader, like the citizens of Fairvale, sees him as a little odd, even more so after the murder of Mary Crane, but the reader has no clue as to the extent of his problems until the end of the novel. This is what makes Norman, as well as the rest of the mentally unstable inhabitants of Bloch’s world, so frightening. Bloch gives the reader a vague physical picture of many of his characters so that the reader is left to fill in the details which make these characters turn into the reader’s next- door neighbors. Bloch’s antagonists could be anyone. 

appear normal or near normal on the outside; it is what is inside them that makes them so dangerous.In spite of Bloch’s talent, his novels are predictable. After one has read several, one can almost always guess the ending. While the reader is not always correct, he is normally quite close to discovering who the criminal is. The problem with predictability in works such as Bloch’s is that the impact of the surprise ending, to which he has given new life, is diminished when the reader had been reading several of his books in quick succession.Since the publication of Psycho, Bloch has written a number of novels and short stories, as well as scripts for such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Thriller. He has also written science-fiction novels and short stories. While Bloch became better known after the release of the film Psycho by Alfred Hitch-cock, it cannot be said that this novel is the “only” good novel Bloch has writ-ten. His style has tightened since his first publications, and Psycho marked his development from a merely good novelist to one who has achieved a lasting place in the genre.

While Bloch writes in the style of H. P. Lovecraft, his novels cannot be said to imitate those of Lovecraft. Lovecraft is known for gruesome tales guaranteed to keep the reader awake until the wee hours of the morning if the reader is silly enough to read them in an empty house. Bloch’s novels tend more to-ward the suspenseful aspects of Lovecraft without many of the gory details. Lovecraft gives the reader detailed accounts of the horrible ends of his characters. In Night-World (1972), Bloch simply tells the reader that a character has been decapitated and that his head has rolled halfway down an airport run-way. The nonchalant way in which Bloch makes this pronouncement has more impact on the reader than any number of bloody descriptions.Bloch terrifies the audience by writing about criminals who seem to be normal people. These are the people one sees every day. The crimes that these supposedly normal people commit and the gruesome ends to which they come have also become quite normal. Bloch’s reaction to the atrocities of society is to make them seem normal, thereby shocking the reader into seeing that the acts and ends are not normal, but rather abnormal and more shocking and devastating than people realize.