Psycho

The story of Psycho is one I’ve long been familiar with due to Hitchcock’s excellent, groundbreaking film, but it wasn’t until recently that I was privileged enough to read the seminal Robert Bloch novel of the same name on which it was based.

This is a great book, hands down. The story itself is intriguing, the characterization near flawless, the prose itself is tight, the pace is relentless and we are left wanting for nothing at the end of the tale. In fact, the genius of this novel is in its sparsity, and in the decided minimum of gory spectacle that we now associate with the horror genre.

Consider the famous “shower scene” that spawned a thousand copy cats in literature and film alike and made me personally afraid to draw the curtain all the way. In Bloch’s book, the scene is only four paragraphs long, and short paragraphs at that. This doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the scene but rather it intensifies it. Here’s why: It’s not what we “see” or read here that makes this particular passage so terrifying. It’s what we don’t. It’s the fact that Bloch gives us only certain relevant facts and leaves the rest to our imagination. We don’t need more to be revolted.

Beyond the novel’s highly effective leanness, the characterization of Norman Bates is impeccable, and one of the first glimpses into the mind of a “psychopath” in the literary canon. Bloch does a masterful job both in depicting Norman and making us sympathize with him. As someone working in a closely related genre, I paid especial attention to all the ways in which Bloch provided us with just enough background that we found Norman’s horrific acts understandable, i.e. the description of the overly domineering mother and his meekness up until and right after each murder.

Unlike the legions of “serial killers” and “psychopaths” that populate much of contemporary horror fiction, Norman Bates isn’t a traditional sociopath. His emotions aren’t at all divorced from the act of killing, and he views each murder with a sense of expediency. After all, Mary does the unthinkable, she titillates Norman and she questions his behavior. He isn’t emotionally capable of dealing with either. His subsequent murder of Milton Arbogast he also views as necessary and in fact downright unavoidable.

If I have any beef with this novel, it’s that Bloch does such a terrific job with the character of Norman Bates and his dysfunctional relationship with his mother that the supporting characters and situations seem one dimensional and insipid by comparison. Mary’s relationship with Sam seems to exist only as a plot device and at the conclusion of Psycho, one is left wondering if Sam has exchanged Mary’s memory for her sister Lila’s obviously more animated attentions. Mary’s initial theft which necessitates her flight from Texas also seems like merely a means of getting her to the Bates Motel and not like the act of a particularly rational or intelligent person.

In short, I very much enjoyed this novel, and found it to be a textbook example of how to write about sympathetic psychopaths, which is a technique I attempt to employ in my own work.