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Your dear editor
herself knows little about the genre of horror fiction. I saw a part of a
Phantasm movie when I was six years old and, after the evil silver
ball jettisoned itself into the head of someone who reminded me of David Carradine
from Kung Fu, I decided then and there that I did not enjoy being horrified
at all. Especially when his head oozed yellow mustard. That was too much for
a six-year-old to take because I did like yellow mustard.
Which doesn't mean I have nothing
to say about horror fiction. To the contrary, I can say anything about anything.
And there you sit.
I was exposed to horror fiction
at some point in my early education through Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
which I could not finish because I did not, even as a child, have the patience
to make through the overgrown prairie of Victorian prose. But I did understand
the importance of the book. It was one of the first of its kind, a pioneer,
a book whose trick it was to bring you home by means of disgust, the inability
to understand bad motive and megalomania, and a great Fear of What Could Be
When Your Crazy Neighbor Has a Lab.
I was later exposed again to it
in college while studying not just authors but the era in which they wrote,
a tip of the hat to an historicism your editor still prescribes. In this
example I found a couple of my favorite authors caught up in the early
20th century ghost story phenomenon. I guess there would have been a demand
for Edith Wharton and Henry James to come up with some ghost stories,
too. Although she is my favorite I can only say that Edith did all right
at it, but her best work bitches about the living, not the dead. James,
though, had a fair shot with The Turn of the Screw. Though I wouldn't
put it up against Portrait of a Lady, that's for sure.
Franz
Kafka. The guy probably never wanted to be considered a writer of horror
fiction. Oh sure, he was a World War I Czech, and that means it's gonna be
bleak and scary; plus, he had some similarly bleak philosophical things to
say. Come to think of it, in addition to Austrian, he also wrote in a time
when the world's philosophical schools leaned toward the bleak, especially
in that area. So it makes sense. But the thing is, no matter how it's rationalized,
the guy was a weirdo and hence wrote some really weird stuff, the kind of
stuff that can easily make a reader wig out. Go for it, dude.
I would be remiss, even given
my limited experience, to fail to acknowledge the contributions of HP
Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, though I'm not a big fan of either. According
Wikipedia, Algernon
Blackwood's The Willows and Oliver Onion's The Beckoning Fair
One are considered the best ghost stories out there. But this would
be for you to decide, then let us all know, because I do not.
Which brings us to more contemporary
horror writing, about which your dear editor knows even less. But still some.
My understanding is that generally speaking, today's horror fiction is more
or less a collection of violent, gory scenes, blood and guts splattered across
three hundred pages. This, I think, is pretty useless. But if that's your
gig, okay by me. Be sure to tell us which of these are the most graphic, the
most disgusting and the most phlegmy so we know what to pick or what to avoid,
as the case may be.
My own close exposure to contemporary
horror writers is limited to Clive Barker, who I believe to be a wizard with
the language as well as the genre, and to Stephen King, whose work I've never
really been able to get into. I try when he publishes a short in the New
Yorker, but there's something about his voice that just turns me off.
He does sell a lot of books, though, so there must be something to it.
Barker, on the other hand, is
a page-turner, in my opinion. His Books of Blood, a series of short
stories, are of particular note. An admitted literature snob, I was still
very, very impressed and read them twice in succession.
You can also find horror where
you might not expect it. Plenty of overlap exists in science fiction and
mystery writing. Here I can mention Paul
Auster, the reknowned author of a more "literature quality" mystery.
They're not just mysteries, though. While showing the reader just how
a good writer writes, by god, the man will freak you out at the same time.
In this same range the mystery writer Phillip
K. Dick has stories that can likewise make you want to turn on all
the lights and avoid the basement for a while. Alas, in the background
currently someone's yelling "Dune!" at me, but I don't know about that
one. I do know, though, that everyone in that movie sweated a lot, and
that did in fact gross me out.
To conclude I feel as though I
already know more about the horror genre than when I started. I hope you do,
too, if you didn't before; or at least are not thinking me shabby for my ignorance.
By all means, add your own knowledge using the "Add Notes" form, whose link
you see on the lefthand side of this page. We need to know what we don't know,
and so does everyone else. -ed. |
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