Title: Once around the Bloch
First published: 1993
Description: Robert Bloch was destined to make generations nervous about showering when he penned PSYCHO. But there's more to his story than just a brief stay at the Bates Motel. In ONCE AROUND THE BLOCH, he recounts it all, in the fast, furious and funny way that only he can. ONCE AROUND THE BLOCH takes us from Bloch's early years in Chicago to his first fateful encounter with the pulp magazine classic, Weird Tales. Within its pages, he discovers the peerless horror fiction of H.P Lovecraft, and he begins a correspondence with Lovecraft which changes the course of his life. It is Lovecraft himself who first suggests that young Mr. Bloch might just have the knack for dreaming up literary terrors of his own. And how right he is.

As a young family man in Wisconsin, our struggling author finds the inspiration for his masterwork, PSYCHO, thanks to the real-life exploits of a - mercifully - distant neighbor. His name is Ed Gein, and he is lonely, backwoods sort of fellow with a penchant for digging up corpses for company (not to mention arts and crafts). And he's not above making a few fresh corpses of his own when excavating gets dull. In the hands of a master craftsman, this raw material will become the stuff of legendary nightmare, and Norman Bates will be born.

But ONCE AROUND THE BLOCH is not just the story of a literary life - it is also a tale of Tinsel Town. Aside from providing the genesis for Alfred Hitchcock's favorite black comedy, Robert Bloch has also lent his talents to the big and small screens over the years as a scriptwriter. He has helped to create such cinematic terrors as STRAIT-JACKET (directed by the immortal showman, William Castle), ASYLUM, and THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, and written teleplays for TV cult classics like THRILLER, NIGHT GALLERY and STAR TREK.
Subjects: American Authors, Authors, American, Authorship, Biography, Horror tales, Science fiction, Science fiction, history and criticism, Horror tales, history and criticism, Bloch, robert, 1917-1994, Science fiction, authorship, Authors, biography
People: Robert Bloch (1917-)
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3503.L718 Z465 1993