De Kremer, Raymond Jean Marie 1887–1964

(John Flanders, Jean Ray)

PERSONAL: Born July 8, 1887, in Ghent, Belgium; died September 17, 1964, in Ghent, Belgium.

CAREER: Journalist and writer. Worked in a variety of clerical positions.

WRITINGS:

UNDER PSEUDONYM JEAN RAY

Les croisière des ombres: histories hantées de terre et de mer, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1932.

Malpertuis: histoire d'un maison fantastique (novel), Le Cri Éditions (Paris, France), 1943, translated into English by Iain White, Atlas 1998.

Ghouls in My Grave, Berkley (New York, NY), 1965.

Contes d'horreur et d'aventures, Union Générale d'Editions (Paris, France), 1972.

Les étoiles de la mort et autres aventures de Harry Dickson, Éditto-Service (Geneva, Switzerland), 1973.

Les cercles de l'épouvante, Librairie des Champs-Élysées (Paris, France), 1978.

Le livre des fantômes, Librairie des Champs-Élysées (Paris, France), 1979.

Visages et choses crépusculaires: nouvelles, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1982.

Les aventures de Harry Dickson: le Sherlock Holmes américain, Corps 9 Éditions (Laferté-Milon, France), 1983.

Harry Dickson: l'intégrale, Club Neo (Paris, France), 1984.

La malédiction de Machrood: roman fantastique; suivi de onze histories d'épouvante, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1984.

Trois aventures inconnues de Harry Dickson, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1984.

Visions nocturnes: contes fantastiques inédits, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1984.

Le carrousel des maléfices, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1985.

Les contes du whisky: suivis de la croisière des ombres, Neo (Paris, France), 1985.

Les dernier contes de Canterbury, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1985.

(With Gérard Dôle, Albert van Hageland, and Alfred Roloff) Terreur sur Londres, Corps 9 Éditions (Laferté-Milon, France), 1985.

Les contes noirs du golf, Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1986.

L'île noire (novel), Nouvelles Éditions Oswald (Paris, France), 1986.

Harry Dickson: Les étoiles de la mort, suivi de le studio rouge, Diffusion France et Étranger Flammarion (Paris, France), 1995.

Harry Dickson [le Sherlock Holmes américain]: les illustres fils du zodiaque, suivi de: le vampire qui chante, Flammarion (Paris, France), 1997.

UNDER PSEUDONYM JOHN FLANDERS

Bestiaire fantastique, Marabout (Verviers, Belgium), 1974.

La cité de l'indicible peur, Marabout (Verviers, Belgium), 1977.

Le trou dans le mur et autres contes, Musée Noir (Brussels, Belgium), 1984.

Le grand nocturne: les cercles de l'épouvante, nouvelle, Actes Sud/Labor (Brussels, Belgium), 1989.

Jack-de-Minuit, [Brussels, Belgium], 1991.

Les cahiers de la biloque, Éditions du Noyé (Brussels, Belgium), 1991.

Les histoires étrangers de la biloque, [Brussels, Belgium], 1996.

Contributor of short stories to Weird Tales. Member of editorial boards for several Flemish magazines.

OTHER

Author, under pseudonyms, of Terra d'aventures, La bataille d'Angleterre, La brume verte, La vallée du sommeil, Le croisière des ombres, Le gardiens du gouffre, La grebe noire: les meilleurs récits des maîtres de l'épouvante, Les aventures de Harry Dickson (une centaine de courts romans), Les contes du Fulmar, Les feux follets de Satan, Histoires noires et fantastiques, and Visions infernales.

ADAPTATIONS: Malpertuis was filmed in 1972 by Harry Kuemel. Another film, Le grande frousse, was based on Ray's writings.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer Jean Ray claimed to be a sailor, smuggler, tarantula tamer, Dakota Indian, lion tamer, American bootlegger, gangster, or adventurer. In actuality Ray was Belgian Raymond Jean Marie de Kremer, who wrote in French using the pen name Jean Ray, and in Flemish using the pen name John Flanders. He was a prolific writer, producing more than twenty novels and story collections, as well as a great deal of other work; several of his stories, under the Flanders pseudonym, appeared in the famed pulp magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. His first book, Terra d'aventures, was published in 1910, and his best-known and most highly regarded work is Malpertuis: histoire d'un maison fantastique, which is about Greek gods who are imprisoned and dying in an evil house.

Until age forty, Ray held various clerical positions, and he worked on the editorial boards of Flemish magazines. In 1927, when he was working in a stockbroker's office, money was found to be missing, and he was accused and sentenced to six years' imprisonment for embezzlement. After he was released, he found it impossible to find a job, so he turned to writing anything that would pay, including scenarios for comic strips, journalistic stories, and children's stories. During the 1930s he wrote over a hundred stories in a mystery series called "Adventures of Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes." In the Times Literary Supplement, Richard Davenport-Hines wrote, "Hammering at an aged typewriter, working without pause for twenty-four hours until he had completed the tale, he Gothicized the traditional style of shilling shockers."

During World War II, the publication of cheap "pulp" magazines featuring horror and fantasy fiction was disrupted by paper shortages, and Ray turned to writing novels and novellas in French, including such titles as La cité de l'indicible peur and Le livre des fantômes, as well as Malpertuis. Ray's stories and novels revel in "wide-open terror," according to Lawrence Greenberg in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, and emphasize people who are caught up in vast and horrible forces that are awakened when they encounter other people. For example, in his story "The Cemetery Watchman" three men are hired to guard a mausoleum, and one of them finds that the other watchmen are not the ordinary men they seem to be; in the end, he meets the vampire duchess whose grave they are guarding. In "Mr. Glass Changes Direction" a shopkeeper kills customers he dislikes, and then meets a man named Mr. Sheep, who is responsible for a series of similar murders. They chat about their murderous activities until Mr. Glass murders Mr. Sheep, and continues to murder randomly until several months later, when he is killed by someone else. Greenberg noted that Ray's stories have a "bite of black humour," which usually comes from Ray's combinations of the mundane and the horrific.

Ray worked on Malpertuis for more than twelve years. In this novel, a dying sea captain discovers the ancient Greek gods, captures them, and brings them back to his mansion, which is called Malpertuis. The house is filled with bizarre side passages that lead to other dimensions. There, the sea captain employs a taxidermist who inserts the personalities of the gods into the bodies of ordinary people. Strange events occur, such as a sailor wandering into the house and falling in love with a woman who looks beautiful but is actually the Gorgon, an evil creature who turns men to stone when they look at her. Other events involve the interaction of the gods with ordinary people. As Greenberg noted, "there is no definitive ending. In fact, there are three of them and all are inconclusive."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Linkhorn, Renee, editor, La Belgique telle qu'ell s'écrit: Perspectives sur les lettres belges de langue française, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1995.

Carion, Jacques, Jean Ray: Un livre: Le grand nocturne, Éditions Labor (Brussels, Belgium), 1986.

St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Presence Francophone, 1974, Christian Delcourt, "Thomas Owen et Jean Ray," p. 114.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall 1998, Gordon McAlpine, review of Malpertuis: histoire d'un maison fantastique, p. 253.

Times Literary Supplement, March 19, 1999, Richard Davenport-Hines, review of Malpertuis, p. 35.