Miskatonic Country

Changing from Clive Barker's Blood-and-Guts Horror - Books of Blood - to that unexplored country of Supernatural Horror mixed with Modern Psychology in John Saul's 1978, second novel Punish The Sinners has been relatively easy. Saul's novel is essentially a working psycho-analytical session that is told in narrative - allegorically speaking - with the reader visiting like a patient, following Saul's words like a pendulum-swinging chained-watch into hypnosis, guiding the reader with plot and character on a journey back to unearth childhood trauma in the psyche, and eventually confronting this adulthood "fear of the unknown."

I would argue for calling Punish The Sinners Supernatural Horror mixed with Modern Psychology as Saul's writing from the start draws upon literary elements iconographically associated with the story-telling of Lovecraft - without being counterfeit. However, Saul's Punish The Sinners pushes this secret doctrine of Lovecraftian fiction even beyond into an occult language. The novel is replete with its own subliminal connections, or meta-fictional commentaries, artfully incorporated into the dialogue:

"I guess most towns are like that," Margo agreed."You don't really get a feel for them from the downtown area. You have to see where the people live. And even then, it's not easy. People in small towns aren't as friendly as they're supposed to be. Unless you're a native, of course. If you're not, forget it. You're a newcomer for at least twenty years."

"I thought that only happened in New England," Peter laughed.

The gesture is familiar enough, without betraying too much of the authour's sleight of hand. With these occult words Saul invokes the weird spirit of Lovecraft's original Mythical Miskatonic Region--Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, Dunwich--which was based on New England:

It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre 'kick'. Here is material for a really profound study in group neuroticism; for certainly, none can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination.

[...] the true epicure of the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteem most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.