Sad news. Here's a piece I did on him for the 2010 World Horror Convention’s program book. It's about Dallas the writer, of course, but also Dallas the friend, the good guy.
Dallas Mayr: An Appreciation
“Good news, Paul. Dallas Mayr is going to be on our quad.”
So said Doug Winter as we threaded the underpasses along the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut. This was sometime in the early-mid nineties as we headed for Rhode Island and NECon.
(For those unfamiliar with Camp NECon, it’s a summer con for horror folk; over the years it has rotated through a number of college campuses, but in every case we campers stay in the dorms.)
I remember saying, “Dallas Mayr? Who the hell is Dallas Mayr? And why is that good news?”
“He writes as Jack Ketchum.”
I said, “The Girl Next Door Jack Ketchum?”
Doug nodded.
My first thought was – and I wasn’t the first to think it – why someone would switch a cool, stand-out name like Dallas Mayr for the pedestrian Jack Ketchum.
My second was that I wasn’t so sure I wanted to sleep next door to the author of one of the most disturbing books I’d ever read.
I forget who recommended The Girl Next Door. Doug, maybe. Even so, when I saw that cheesy cover, I almost moved on. I mean, if a short-skirted, bobby-socked, saddle-shoed, ponytailed, pompom-waving cheerleader with a skull face captured the essence of the novel within, I wanted no part of it. Gimme a break.
But the recommendation had been strong enough to push me past the cheesy wrappings and plunk down my money.
Right now you’re expecting me to say something like, And boy am I glad I did.
Well, I’m not so sure. That I’m glad, I mean. Of course it’s always a treat to find a well-written book with solid characters and an engrossing plot – a description that fits perfectly The Girl Next Door. And if it’s a horror novel, so much the better.
But The Girl Next Door was more than I’d bargained for. No comfortable supernatural forces here. (I say “comfortable” because in most cases your conscious and/or subconscious finds it easy to distance itself from the supernatural because it’s, well, not real.) The Girl Next Door turned out to be an unflinching stare into the abyss of human evil. It doesn’t take place in a neverland, and it has no ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. It happens next door, to real people. For all I knew, similar appalling events could have been going on in my neighborhood while I was reading the book and I wouldn’t have had a clue.
Plus, The Girl Next Door offers no redemption.
I can’t remember a more disturbing book. Ever. I guess that was why it stayed with me – is still with me.
And that was why I wasn’t ready to start tossing confetti and donning funny hats because this fellow, Ketchum or Mayr or whoever he was, was staying in the same quad. I mean, NECon is all about fun, and how much fun can you expect from a guy with that bleak a view of humanity?
What can I say? When I’m wrong, I’m really wrong.
Dallas Mayr the man bears no resemblance to Jack Ketchum the author. Dallas is well read, erudite, witty, articulate, sophisticated, quick to laugh, and a great raconteur. He’s written – under various pseudonyms – just about everything a freelancer can write. In the early seventies he wrote ad copy. His fiction career began in 1976 (as Jerzy Livingston) with a short story titled “The Hang Up.” For the next half-dozen years Jerzy paid Dallas’s bills by writing fiction, non-fiction, book and record reviews for the likes of Swank, Stag, Genesis, Penthouse, Creem, High Society, the Franklin Library, and on and on.
Really, how many authors can say they’ve sold to everything from Porn Stars to Classic Decorating and Home Crafts Magazine?
In 1981, after Ballantine published Dallas’s first novel, Off Season, Jerzy began to wither, his precious bodily fluids transferred to Jack Ketchum,
Some people say Off Season is more disturbing than The Girl Next Door. In fact the Village Voice damned it as violent pornography – and that was the expurgated version! I came to Off Season later and, no question, it is disturbing. But it didn’t get under my skin like The Girl Next Door. (For which I am thankful.)
Three years later he did Hide and Seek. And three years after that came Cover, and then he began hitting his stride: She Wakes, The Girl Next Door, Offspring, and so on. You know them.
But do you know the man?
Do you know that he used to be an agent for the Scott Meredith Agency?
Do you know that he’s been an actor? (I remember watching TV a few years ago and on comes this commercial for some college, and there’s freakin’ Dallas playing a professor shilling the school.)
Do you know that he can sing – really sing – and his Anthony Newley impersonation is so dead on you’d think he was channeling the guy?
And do you know he has the worst, girly bat swing in the history of softball? (Trust me. I’ve seen it.)
Dallas is envied by his fellow writers for what we perceive as a rock-star lifestyle: drinking, women, drinking, smoking, drinking...
He tells me he’s quit smoking. Hope so. We want him around a while longer. I don’t think he’s quit women. How could he? They won’t leave the poor guy alone. And Dallas certainly likes the women – preferably alert and breathing, but he’s been known to make exceptions.
But that’s Dallas’s convention lifestyle. Is that the real Dallas Mayr? Deep inside is he a sad, lonely man crying out for a wife, a house, two kids, and a dog?
Nah.
The real Dallas’s life probably falls somewhere between the convention Dallas and his recurring character – my favorite – Stroup.
For me, one of the best things about NECon is knowing that Dallas will be there and we can hang out. One of the best things about this year’s World Horror Convention is that he’ll be here, walking among you.
Don’t be afraid to approach him. He’s a legend but genuinely friendly and truly accessible. Especially if you buy him a drink.
Just don’t ask him to demonstrate his softball swing. Please.
Dallas Mayr: An Appreciation
“Good news, Paul. Dallas Mayr is going to be on our quad.”
So said Doug Winter as we threaded the underpasses along the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut. This was sometime in the early-mid nineties as we headed for Rhode Island and NECon.
(For those unfamiliar with Camp NECon, it’s a summer con for horror folk; over the years it has rotated through a number of college campuses, but in every case we campers stay in the dorms.)
I remember saying, “Dallas Mayr? Who the hell is Dallas Mayr? And why is that good news?”
“He writes as Jack Ketchum.”
I said, “The Girl Next Door Jack Ketchum?”
Doug nodded.
My first thought was – and I wasn’t the first to think it – why someone would switch a cool, stand-out name like Dallas Mayr for the pedestrian Jack Ketchum.
My second was that I wasn’t so sure I wanted to sleep next door to the author of one of the most disturbing books I’d ever read.
I forget who recommended The Girl Next Door. Doug, maybe. Even so, when I saw that cheesy cover, I almost moved on. I mean, if a short-skirted, bobby-socked, saddle-shoed, ponytailed, pompom-waving cheerleader with a skull face captured the essence of the novel within, I wanted no part of it. Gimme a break.
But the recommendation had been strong enough to push me past the cheesy wrappings and plunk down my money.
Right now you’re expecting me to say something like, And boy am I glad I did.
Well, I’m not so sure. That I’m glad, I mean. Of course it’s always a treat to find a well-written book with solid characters and an engrossing plot – a description that fits perfectly The Girl Next Door. And if it’s a horror novel, so much the better.
But The Girl Next Door was more than I’d bargained for. No comfortable supernatural forces here. (I say “comfortable” because in most cases your conscious and/or subconscious finds it easy to distance itself from the supernatural because it’s, well, not real.) The Girl Next Door turned out to be an unflinching stare into the abyss of human evil. It doesn’t take place in a neverland, and it has no ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. It happens next door, to real people. For all I knew, similar appalling events could have been going on in my neighborhood while I was reading the book and I wouldn’t have had a clue.
Plus, The Girl Next Door offers no redemption.
I can’t remember a more disturbing book. Ever. I guess that was why it stayed with me – is still with me.
And that was why I wasn’t ready to start tossing confetti and donning funny hats because this fellow, Ketchum or Mayr or whoever he was, was staying in the same quad. I mean, NECon is all about fun, and how much fun can you expect from a guy with that bleak a view of humanity?
What can I say? When I’m wrong, I’m really wrong.
Dallas Mayr the man bears no resemblance to Jack Ketchum the author. Dallas is well read, erudite, witty, articulate, sophisticated, quick to laugh, and a great raconteur. He’s written – under various pseudonyms – just about everything a freelancer can write. In the early seventies he wrote ad copy. His fiction career began in 1976 (as Jerzy Livingston) with a short story titled “The Hang Up.” For the next half-dozen years Jerzy paid Dallas’s bills by writing fiction, non-fiction, book and record reviews for the likes of Swank, Stag, Genesis, Penthouse, Creem, High Society, the Franklin Library, and on and on.
Really, how many authors can say they’ve sold to everything from Porn Stars to Classic Decorating and Home Crafts Magazine?
In 1981, after Ballantine published Dallas’s first novel, Off Season, Jerzy began to wither, his precious bodily fluids transferred to Jack Ketchum,
Some people say Off Season is more disturbing than The Girl Next Door. In fact the Village Voice damned it as violent pornography – and that was the expurgated version! I came to Off Season later and, no question, it is disturbing. But it didn’t get under my skin like The Girl Next Door. (For which I am thankful.)
Three years later he did Hide and Seek. And three years after that came Cover, and then he began hitting his stride: She Wakes, The Girl Next Door, Offspring, and so on. You know them.
But do you know the man?
Do you know that he used to be an agent for the Scott Meredith Agency?
Do you know that he’s been an actor? (I remember watching TV a few years ago and on comes this commercial for some college, and there’s freakin’ Dallas playing a professor shilling the school.)
Do you know that he can sing – really sing – and his Anthony Newley impersonation is so dead on you’d think he was channeling the guy?
And do you know he has the worst, girly bat swing in the history of softball? (Trust me. I’ve seen it.)
Dallas is envied by his fellow writers for what we perceive as a rock-star lifestyle: drinking, women, drinking, smoking, drinking...
He tells me he’s quit smoking. Hope so. We want him around a while longer. I don’t think he’s quit women. How could he? They won’t leave the poor guy alone. And Dallas certainly likes the women – preferably alert and breathing, but he’s been known to make exceptions.
But that’s Dallas’s convention lifestyle. Is that the real Dallas Mayr? Deep inside is he a sad, lonely man crying out for a wife, a house, two kids, and a dog?
Nah.
The real Dallas’s life probably falls somewhere between the convention Dallas and his recurring character – my favorite – Stroup.
For me, one of the best things about NECon is knowing that Dallas will be there and we can hang out. One of the best things about this year’s World Horror Convention is that he’ll be here, walking among you.
Don’t be afraid to approach him. He’s a legend but genuinely friendly and truly accessible. Especially if you buy him a drink.
Just don’t ask him to demonstrate his softball swing. Please.
This post was last modified: 05-25-2019, 08:21 AM by fpw.
FPW
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"It means 'Ask the next question.' Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It's the symbol of everything humanity has ever created." Theodore Sturgeon.
I never met the guy, and to be honest, I never wanted to. His books unsettled me so deeply that I thought they had to be written by a madman. Discovering that he was indeed a kind soul makes me sad that I never sought an opportunity to meet him.
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.”
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