Brian McNaughton

Brian McNaughton (23 September 1935 – 13 May 2004) was an American writer of horror and fantasy stories who mixed horror, sex, satire and dark humour. The Throne of Bones, a collection of some of his tales about ghouls, won the 1998 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection.

For all their laughter, ghouls are a dull lot. Hunger is the fire in which they burn, and it burns hotter than the hunger for power over men or for knowledge of the gods in a crazed mortal.

Quotes

Vampires, like virgins or priests, are things that women believe in. We must never fail to humor them in such matters.

• Vampires, like virgins or priests, are things that women believe in. We must never fail to humor them in such matters.
  • "Child of the Night" in 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories (1995) edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg

• When I was three or four, an older kid tried to scare me away from a barn full of dangerous junk by telling me the Bogeyman lived there. I spent a lot of time crawling around beneath rusted machinery and through barbed wire looking for the Bogeyman, but no luck. I've always loved a good scare, perhaps because the "Oz" and "Alice" books, the first things my mother read to me, are pretty scary stuff for a toddler. They had some wonderfully horrifying radio shows in those days, too — Suspense, Escape, and Quiet, Please. I still regret that I was listening to Charlie McCarthy when Orson Welles terrorized the country with his Martian invasion . . . As my membership in the Horror Writers Association attests, I don't mind the label.
  • "An Interview with World Fantasy Award Finalist Brian McNaughton" by Jeff VanderMeer, in The Ministry of Whimsy (1998)

• I believe that we are soft creatures in a world with some very hard edges. It's remarkable that we survive at all, much less do high deeds or write great music. I think … tension … is a condition of our existence, and I do my best to depict it.
  • "An Interview with World Fantasy Award Finalist Brian McNaughton" by Jeff VanderMeer, in The Ministry of Whimsy (1998)

The Throne of Bones (1997)

Goul or ghul, in Arabic, signifies any terrifying object which deprives people of the use of their senses … ~ William Beckford

• I had always been impatient with superstition. If I ever met a God, I would apologize for disbelieving in Him, but not until then.
  • "Lord Glyphtard’s Tale"

• For all their laughter, ghouls are a dull lot. Hunger is the fire in which they burn, and it burns hotter than the hunger for power over men or for knowledge of the gods in a crazed mortal. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves behind only a slag of anger and lust. They see their fellows as impediments to feeding, to be mauled and shrieked at when the mourners go home. They are seldom alone, not through love of one another's company, but because a lone ghoul is suspected of stealing food. Their copulation is so hasty that distinctions of sex and identity are often ignored.
  • "Meryphillia"

Misattributed

• Goul or ghul, in Arabic, signifies any terrifying object which deprives people of the use of their senses; hence it became the appellative of that species of monster which was supposed to haunt forests, cemeteries, and other lonely places, and believed not only to tear in pieces the living, but to dig up and devour the dead.
  • Attributed to McNaughton online, this actually is a quote from an English edition of The History of the Caliph Vathek (1786) by William Thomas Beckford, as translated by Samuel Henley.

External links

• Author page at Goodreads
• Brian McNaughton at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database