Psycho was a crazy piece of horror blazing, screeching, like the high-pitched shrieks of Bernard Hermann's infamous score, into our national consciousness. Psycho invaded our dreams, sent us peeking behind that shower curtain, white-knuckling our loofas, at the slightest thump in the corner. But what it also did was something I find quite interesting...it flipped what we considered "normalcy" upside-down. The lonely man with the big nervous eyes, twitch in his jaw, and secret in his fruit cellar represented a new kind of horror. Reinventing the genre so that the story of a paranoid mama's boy with much drama called Norman Bates, became MORE than a movie and MORE than a book--it became a symbol of everything dark and twisted that could lie beyond a cheap motel door. But what the 1959 novel by Robert Bloch pulls off compared to the Alfred Hitchcock film, is layers of additional (and shocking) character development!
What makes the book different is CONTEXT. In the movie, Norman is an angsty, gangly, sad-eyed protagonist, who we all consider to be one of the victims of Mother's murderous games. Book Norman is a fat, insecure, woman-hating loser who constantly calls women "bitches" including Mother's latest victim Mary Crane (renamed "Marion" in the Hitchcock film.) Norman is not the shy twenty-four year old with the shock of dark hair flopping on his Hollywood-attractive face, presented in the film. He is an unappealing forty plus year old whose never had a job or a girlfriend and tends to whine at his mother like a teenage brat. The mood is established immediately, with the clear, forceful writing by Robert Bloch. Norman has failed in nearly every important area of life. He's an outlier, he knows it, and it feeds and fuels his ugly mentality towards women and his child-like dependence on the vicious old shrew who emasculates him on a daily...weekly...yearly basis.
What the book also does differently from the film is give additional depth to the character and motivation of Mary Crane and her desperation to make a life with her lover, Sam Loomis. Within the pages, Mary is clearly a more tragic figure than Janet Leigh's portrayal--principally because of everything she's given up for the benefit and comfort of others, along with the happiness she will never experience. That's the saddest! Mary gave up college and went to work at seventeen to provide for her deathly ill mother after her stroke, and is now sacrificing a normal, happy relationship with the man she's fallen in love with, because of a load of financial troubles which include his late father's large debt and alimony he has to kick in for his ex-wife. Like the film, Mary/Marion makes the decision of financial theft to achieve the joy she's been dreaming of, despite the insane, outright ludicrous risks. Sam is a man juggling so many burdens that he's not even aware of his girlfriend's sudden disappearance. So enmired is he in his own miseries, it doesn't set off alarms in his head when Mary doesn't respond to his letters. When her baby sister, Lila, reaches out to him, a sharp detective named Arbogast trails her, setting off a series of events that hurtle at the reader like an out-of-control train. Sam Loomis is of course, of a decidedly secondary nature compared to the psychological horrors of Norman, or the tragic journey of Mary. But what is so phenomenal about Bloch's writing is that each line of dialogue, action, and aspect of personality become jigsaw pieces of a larger puzzle. Sam Loomis and the romance Mary has with him, is at once far from being the focal point of this story while at the same time, deciding the destinies for every single one of these characters. Mary, a humble secretary, has stolen a great deal of money, forty thousand dollars, which in today's society would be worth over a quarter of a million. Whew! The stakes are high and everyone is convinced that the crime begins and ends with the cash. Of course, who wouldn't think that? But what's so ironic about this story, is that other than being the initial cause of Mary, Sam, and Detective Arbogast's troubles, the forty grand is one of the least important details of the plot and is something Norman doesn't even know exists. However, without the romance and the desperation of Mary which fuels this shocking criminal act, the tightly-knit plot would fall apart at the seams. It is Mary and could only BE Mary who discovers and with her death, ultimately unveils the grotesque mask of Mother Bates.
Arbogast ends up following Mary's tracks back to the lonely motel and frightens Norman with his questioning, unwittingly sealing his own fate. There is a little more development of Norman's personality and fear, which is much more immediate, and Arbogast being at the business end of Mother dear's razor. In the film, Norman is laid-back and munching a bag of candy corn, easily putting on his own mask of normal young manhood, complete with a charming grin. His alarm bells are not set off until later in the dialogue with the detective. Book Norman is MUCH more on edge. He is in essence, a total basket case, struggling not to dissolve into screams of panic, unable to carry on a conversation with another adult that does not segue into childish bursts of impatience, frustration, and anxiety. The pleading, whining tendency that tends to run throughout Norman's dialogues with the other characters, really pushes through in his encounter with this "threat" to his and his mother's insulated, deranged little life. And as a big fan of Anthony Perkins' cooler interpretation as well as a reader who can appreciate the difference in how he's written, I can honestly say I have a hard time choosing which characterization I like best! I'd say both are perfectly suited for the medium they were presented in. The thing about book Norman that's so apparent is how UNLIKEABLE he is. Within ten minutes into the movie, 1960 audiences would've been snickering at pathetic Norman, the middle-aged child, rather than emotionally connecting, sympathizing, with the poor burdened kid who just wants to protect his insane mother. Hitchcock and Bloch were both brilliant in how they brought this man to life, expertly framing and pacing Norman's reactions to the random dangers suddenly popping up all around him. Because he's never really mentally grown up, that overgrown childishness being lost in translation to the silver screen in favor of a more youthful angst, Norman does not know how to handle things. He falls apart at the seams, burying his terror in the bottom of a bottle. And that is when "Mother" takes over!
What is interesting about Psycho the novel is that Norman Bates, if you can believe it, is presented as even more of a freakish character than the film version. What was probably not even going to be touched upon with 1960 audiences was illustrated in the book such as Norman's weird obsession with the occult and that his dark delusions are instrumental in his views towards Mother Bates' existence.
Altogether, this is a book where you can easily see how it became a classic. The characters vividly come to life, the violence that takes place in that dark little motel punch you in the gut with the disgustingness of it all but never teeters over the line into gory exploitation. Bloch was a captivating writer and "Norman Bates" was his chilling masterpiece.
I give it a solid five stars. Mother would want me to!
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