Remembering Thomas Tryon, the hunky gay writer of chilling queer horror
gay culture, the idea of dating your twin remains eerily relevant. Few authors, however, have taken up the challenge inherent in this queer trope.
Sure, there are creepy twins aplenty in horror films—the iconic duo in The Shining, the brothers in Dead Ringers, the sisters in Don’t Look Now—but in the realm of horror fiction, few novels succeed in transforming the inherent eerieness of queer twins into a catalyst for a satisfyingly horrific conclusion.
And then, there’s Thomas Tryon’s The Other. The Connecticut-born Tryon, who attended Yale and served a term in the Navy during World War II, started out life as an actor.
But after a handful of harrowing experiences in the screen trade—most famously on 1963’s The Cardinal, where he was verbally abused by director Otto Preminger—he turned his dramatic efforts toward fiction.
