The Lamentable Obscurity of Eddie Angerhuber's Nocturnal Products
Sunday, October 24, 2010
There are obscure weird horror collections that will fetch a high price whenever they surface on the market. And then there are the collections that never surface at all. One such volume is Eddie M. Angerhuber's Nocturnal Products. Published as a paperback by Britain's Rainfall Books in 2002, it garnered some significant praise before vanishing into unwarranted obscurity. Nocturnal Products also exists as the prime English language preserve of Eddie Monika Angerhuber's fiction, a German grimscribe who has remained a highly underrated enigma since Rainfall published her work.
Angerhuber is a name that should jump start the memory nodes of longtime Thomas Ligotti readers. In fact, she set up a website lobbying for his dark prose in her native tongue, undoubtedly helping to usher German editions of his collections into existence. Her fascination with Ligotti's tales led her to produce her own fiction, culminating in Nocturnal Products, which features stories very much in the Ligottian style. Today, she rightly stands with authors like Mark Samuels, Matt Cardin, and Simon Strantzas as disciples of Thomas Ligotti, though unlike her male counterparts, her creative voice has been silent for several years now.
Unless Ms. Angerhuber opts to resume writing weird fiction (and adapting it to English), or an unlikely reprint of Nocturnal Products appears, we have only phantasmal traces of her fiction's content and character. An old review by Peggy Jo Shumate offers an extended breakdown of the stories inside this rare tome--and fine ones they are. Fortunately, her entire output will not be expunged from history if every scarce copy of Nocturnal Products meets a fiery demise. Two other tales, "The Blue Star" and "The Heart of Darkness," are preserved in online repositories that are still functional at the time of this posting. These brief samplings are fantastic and somewhat painful examples highlighting the philosophic depth and hauntingly dour obsessions she explores. Her German-English website about Thomas Ligotti remains online too, but in a virtually dormant state since 2007.
It is my sincere hope that Eddie Angerhuber will not be a vague footnote in the great encyclopedia of supernatural literature. Her stories have undeniable appeal, to Ligotti fans, and beyond. If she never writes another word, many horror readers may not realize what's missing from the field. But if the contents of Nocturnal Products stay perpetually unavailable, then a true literary massacre will have occurred for all but the luckiest weird fiction readers.
ADDENDUM: Thanks to tips from German language readers, it seems Eddie M. Angerhuber is not entirely silent in fiction after all. A new book, Die Darbenden Schatten, is reportedly on the way. Unfortunately, Nocturnal Products remains the only collection translated into English at this time.
-Grim Blogger
