An Obsession with Death & Dying
Introduction to a two-volume collection of short fiction by Cornell Woolrich
Published by Renaissance Literary & Talent/Villa Romana Books, September 2018
September 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of one of America’s most celebrated and prolific crime fiction writers—Cornell Woolrich, who lived from December 4, 1903 to September 25, 1968. In a career that spanned more than four decades, he wrote over two dozen novels and over two hundred novellas and short stories that were published across an array of print platforms, most notably in the pulp magazines that dominated the first half of the 20th century (Argosy, Black Mask, Detective Fiction Weekly, Dime Detective and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, among others). He is best known for the way he used suspense and noir elements to create an atmosphere of psychological horror, usually at the expense of his intensely emotional or unstable characters. These characters’ stories are fraught with despair, paranoia, and the ever-present fear of death, all of which seem to bleed through the page into our own psyche. We are made to suffer alongside them as they navigate the dark and treacherous waters of humanity’s criminal underbelly—and therein lies the beauty of Woolrich’s work.
Woolrich himself was no stranger to suffering. According to his biographer, Francis Nevins, his relationship with death and the concept of his own demise began at the tender age of 12, when he looked up at the stars one night and realized he was but a speck of dust in the universe, destined to fade away into nothingness. This existential crisis became a state of mind that not only permeated his work but inspired the darkest, most dread-inducing aspects of it. In an article entitled ‘Writing in the Darkness: The World of Cornell Woolrich,’ Eddie Duggan suggests that “the fear expressed in Woolrich's fiction may be one of the ways in which he worked through his own psychological traumas.” A tortured soul to be sure, Woolrich was a veritable recluse who moved in with his mother after a failed screenwriting career. Throughout his adult life he dealt with alcoholism, diabetes and an extreme self-loathing that came with his closeted homosexuality. A gangrenous foot infection plagued him in his 20s, and it was during this time whilst confined to bed that he started writing. But in a cruel twist of fate reminiscent of Greek tragedy, that same infection came back to haunt him later in life. By 1968, Woolrich neglected his own health so completely that he let a new round of infection rage untreated to the point of gangrene. Doctors were forced to amputate his leg and he died shortly thereafter at the age of 64.
It’s clear from Woolrich’s work that he was fascinated by death, but more importantly by what it made people do. He used it as more than just a simple motif. In fact, death is often the centerpiece Woolrich makes his characters dance around, whether they’re trying to prevent it, cause it, cover it up or use it to their advantage. Sometimes death was so blatant, he put it in the title of the story. So, on the 50th anniversary of his death, we aim to bring his work back to life with a curated collection of short stories that incorporate the words “death” or “die” into their titles. Most of these tales have been out of print for decades, and until very recently a few have never lived outside the pages of the pulp magazines where they were first printed. We think Woolrich would agree that the 50th anniversary of his death is the perfect opportunity to dust off some of his most macabre work and spiral down into the psychological terror that is his world.
In An Obsession with Death and Dying, you will find 19 of Woolrich’s best death-related stories compiled into two volumes that are juxtaposed to one another. Volume One, “Death Lies in Wait,” is subtle. It features stories that transport us to another place, dazzle us with performances or bewitch us with some wild or supernatural force. They exude an almost dreamlike, escapist aura. Exotic settings and fantastical situations lure us and the characters into another world before unleashing the horror of death upon us. The glitter and gold can only hide death for so long—in a Woolrich story, death always lies in wait. Volume Two, “Death Waits No More,” on the other hand, is much more overt in how it deals with death. These stories don’t shy away from the grotesque. Dead bodies and body parts play key roles in the movement of the plot and are used and abused by desperate characters for their own twisted ends. But the bodies and parts never quite stay dead. Woolrich thrusts his characters into the ugly face of death to see what they will do with it, and more often than not, death ends up haunting them for it.
Although these stories are some of Woolrich’s most grisly, at their core they are masterful explorations of human nature and the lengths people will go to get what they want. We hope you enjoy both volumes of An Obsession with Death and Dying. As Francis Nevins tells it in his aptly titled biography on Woolrich, “First You Dream, Then You Die.”
