The horror author who wrote Julia, Ghost Story, and The Talisman with Stephen King has passed away.
Author Peter Straub has passed away. His portrayal of the supernatural in works like Julia, Ghost Story, and The Talisman frequently felt too expansive and fanciful to be adequately captured by the boundaries of the horror subgenre. The New York Times reports that Susan Straub, Straub’s wife, confirmed the information and stated that Straub passed away at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York from “complications after breaking his hip.” At 79, Straub.
In his early years, Straub, who was born in Milwaukee in 1943, began to stammer and had to relearn how to walk after nearly being hit by a car. Before earning a master’s degree from Columbia University, he developed into a voracious reader and studied English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (the New York Times obituary mentions that he resided across the street from singer Steve Miller). He and his wife relocated to Ireland in the 1960s so he could pursue a doctorate, but instead, he authored and released his first book, Marriages.
Later, Straub said that he didn’t like his debut book, telling Zack Handlen for The A.V. Club in 2010 that it was “full of teenage blunders and actual aimlessness,” and that he has never permitted it to be reissued as a result. With his third book, Julia, Straub started to experiment with the supernatural; despite his best efforts, the book was mistakenly classified as a horror book because it featured a ghost.
After Julia became popular, Straub started incorporating more supernatural themes into his writing even though he still subtly resisted being classified as a horror author (especially with books like the best-selling Ghost Story). According to his obituary in the New York Times, he stated that he wanted to “lift the horror genre upstairs a little bit,” not by completely rejecting it but rather by making “a little more of the material than has been made of it in the recent past.” Later, Julia was turned into the Mia Farrow movie The Haunting Of Julia (also known as Full Circle), while Ghost Story was turned into a Fred Astaire feature.
Around that time in the 1970s, Straub became friends with another burgeoning author named Stephen King who was assisting in the redefining and re-popularization of the horror genre. King, comparing Straub to Philip Roth “but he wrote about bizarre things,” told the Times that Straub was “not only a literary writer with a poetic sense, but he was readable.” The Talisman, a dark fantasy tale about a youngster exploring another version of our world, was co-written by King and Straub in 1984. Even though it received mixed reviews, the book was a huge success (at least in part because King and Straub were arguably at the height of their powers at the time), and it was followed by a book called Black House which was a tie-in with Stephen King’s other multiverse-spanning dark fantasy series, The Dark Tower.
We are deeply sad to hear that Peter Straub has passed away. He was an incredible writer, a master craftsman. He leaves behind an incredible oeuvre and a reputation as one of the nicest guys in the field. RIP to a legendhttps://t.co/4dEBPMBPje
— McNally Robinson Booksellers (@mcnallyrobinson) September 6, 2022
According to Straub’s statement to The A.V. Club that the two of them had discussed writing a third book “now and again” and would likely sit down and plan it out within a few years, a third Straub/King collaboration was always just on the verge of happening. Even though the third book was never completed, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer have now agreed to work on a Talisman adaptation for Steven Spielberg (who has held onto the rights since before the book was published).
A Dark Matter, Straub’s last book, was released in 2010 and received a Bram Stoker award from the Horror Writers Association. His wife, daughter (novelist Emma Straub), son (who owns a production firm in charge of adapting his father’s works), and three grandkids are his only surviving family members.
FAQs
Emma Straub and Peter Straub are they related?
Peter Straub, a writer of suspense and horror, is the father of Straub. She is married to graphic designer Michael Fusco-Straub, with whom she has two sons.
When was Emma Straub born?
STRAUB: I do, indeed. I do, and I mean a lot. I’m 42 now, after all. Although I haven’t totally embraced it since I won’t be 40 until April of 2020.
What’s the subject of Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow?
In the novel This Time Tomorrow, Alice Stern, who has been living in the same small studio apartment and working in the same position in the admissions office of the Upper West Side private school she attended decades earlier, must confront her own stasis in the face of the impending death of her 73-year-old father.
Emma Straub writes in what genre?
She is a staff writer for Rookie, and her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Vogue, Tin House, The New York Times, and The Paris Review Daily. Straub works in a bookstore and resides in Brooklyn with her spouse.
Are there any Ghost Stories on Netflix?
On January 1st, 2020, Netflix made it available. Ghost Stories is the third of three anthology movies by Johar, Banerjee, Akhtar, and Kashyap. Bombay Talkies and Lust Stories, both of which were released in 2013 and 2018 and are also available on Netflix, came before Ghost Stories.
