Did you know that this was John Sladek’s first novel?  (That would be the same John Sladek who wrote The Roderick books).  According to this very good biography of Disch, Sladek and Disch had similar senses of humour and became close buddies.  So much so that they travelled through Europe together.  In 1965, while sailing to Casablanca, they both wrote The House That Fear Built, which was published under the pen name Cassandra Knye (a favourite pseudonym of Disch’s) in 1966.

Now, The House That Fear Built isn’t a novel that you’re going find during your weekly stroll through the local bookshop.  The book was re-published, but that was in 1969… and since then it’s slowly faded out of existence, with only the most ardent Sladek and Disch fans tracking it down and purchasing it.  Fortunately, and due to the marvels of the interweb, it took me all of seven minutes to find a copy on abe.com and buy it.  (Cost me about $12 as well, with postage).

However, as great as the interweb is, it is lacking in reviews of the book.  In fact I couldn’t actually find one – other than a couple of people mentioning, after Disch had died, that the book was written by him (and Sladek).  But the lack of reviews should be no surprise.  Putting aside the fact that the book has been out of print for fourty years, the book isn’t science fiction.  Or fantasy.  Or crime.  Or Western.  It’s Gothic Romance.  And prior to this, the only Gothic Romance I’d ever read (and not finished) was Wuthering Heights.  (And no I haven’t read Dracula either… I know, I know, where’s the cred?).  Gothic Romance, according to Wikipedia, hit its peak around the turn of the last century (around the 1890s) and since then had been dying out.  In fact the genre was going through its last gasps when this book was published.

I know I’ve rambled without saying much about the actual book.  That’s because it’s a bit rubbish.  Disch – as we will come to see – was a fan of Victoriana, and so I suppose it would have tickled his fancy to have a crack at producing some Gothic romance.  I have no idea if Sladek was a fan, but hey they were sailing to Casablanca together and other than get drunk… why not write a novel about a forbidding Gothic castle in Mexico.

Yep, a forbidding Gothic castle in Mexico.  Built by Nazis.  Called Ixta Parque.  And in the shadow of Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatapetl.  In among all the Mexicans and Nazi’s there’s Nan Richmond, an innocent girl from Disch’s hometown of Minnesota, whose fallen in love with Hans.  Hans is half Mexican, half German and it’s his grandma (whom they go to visit) who owns and lives in Ixta Parque.  The grandma is a tough German woman with very strict ideals who takes an instant dislike to Nan.  She’s also hiding a secret and forbids Nan to visit the lower levels of the castle where someone or something is lurking.

I know, I know, it sounds awesome.  Not the case the though.  The writing style is very… um… melodramatic.  That said, the descriptions of life in the town of Amecameca are vibrant and lively, which should be no surprise as Disch had spent quite some time there before writing the book.  But other than that there’s not really much more to say about the novel.  It’s very po-faced.  Very clichéd.  And after the halfway mark becomes a bit of a slog to finish.  It’s very hard to find any of Disch in the book, other than some gorgeous descriptions of the setting itself and the odd joke (Jorge Luis Borges is referred to as famous Matador).  I doubt there’s much of Sladek in here either, but I haven’t read the Roderick books, so I can’t be sure.

In the end, it’s a curio.  A novel knocked out in between the cocktails and the sightseeing in Casablanca.