The Height of the Scream

With publication of The Height of the Scream, Ramsey Campbell assumes his rightful position as one of the modern masters in the genre. This young writer from Liverpool, England who began his career as a literary acolyte of H. P. Lovecraft has now fashioned his own uniquely arresting vision of reality. The world of Ramsey Campbell is centered in the tenebrous interior of the human mind and from there proceeds through a haunted landscape in which surreal specters and libidinous phantasms arise to confound mortal existence. In stories such as Missing or The Words that Count, Campbell presents his characters in apparently ordinary surroundings, while other tales in this collection incorporate explicitly spectral manifestations which serve to intensify the author's searing conception of human behavior. Thus the doppelganger motif is introduced into The Scar not from the conscious attempt to compose a ghostly tale, but because the relationship between the two protagonists has become so intense that Campbell is compelled to summon a supernatural extension of reality in order adequately to express his artistic vision. This agonizing ambiguity between the real and the unreal creates a hazy chiaroscuro against which Campbell's anguished characters endure the tyranny of their essential natures. It is the author's attitude toward his work which imparts to these tales of horror a quality they might not otherwise possess. Although the world of Ramsey Campbell is presented with almost unbearable honesty, there is also an implicit compassion which lingers between the lines of these stories; it is this compassionate perception into human reality which permits Campbell, at his best, to convey the reader beyond mere horror and lead him into tragedy.