I’ve been ruffling a few feathers again.
This Guardian article, “Horror: a genre doomed to literary hell?”, is exactly the sort of bunkum that gets written when literary types point their condescending noses at those horrible plebby “genres”. It’s a nonsense argument. Asking why horror isn’t more “literary” is like asking why Slayer don’t sound more like Coldplay. They’re different beasts, with different aims. Horror works best when it’s hitting the senses at a visceral level. Sometimes it’s raw and not very pretty, but that’s fine so long as it evokes the right response in the reader.
That’s about as much of a rebuttal as needs to be written and it wasn’t the article but the clip-clopping of comments beneath it that dragged me out from under my bridge. People offered up their lists of talented writers and argued this as evidence of horror fiction being in rude health.
I’m sorry, but this isn’t true.
It’s closed bubble thinking. It’s one of the perversities of modern technology. While the whole world is opened up to anyone with a keyboard, it’s easy to fall into little circles where shared thoughts and opinions are bounced around, amplified and magnified out of all proportion to their relevance to the rest of the world.
Step outside the bubble. Who’s reading? Who’s commenting? Who’s reviewing? Who’s recommending?
Who cares?
On my last visit to England I popped into my local branch of Waterstones. Next to several shelves full of Twilight clones was the horror section. The only books I saw by writers that hadn’t been fixtures on the horror shelves for at least two decades were Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and Adam Nevill’s Apartment 16.
This is not a sign of health.
Step outside of the usual writer’s haunts and go clip-clopping into the tangled jungle of the World Wide Web. Look for the places regular(ish) people hang out. Look at how much is written about films, music, TV shows, computer games, anime. Look at how little is written about books.
Even in The Guardian’s own book section. Take a look at this thread recommending horror books to read for Halloween. Spot a work that was written this century.
This is not a sign of health.
It’s not a mainstream thing either. I have a fairly esoteric taste in music, yet if I want to find the best new death metal and black metal albums released there are plenty of online resources I can use to help me discover brilliant new bands. Ditto for games and movies. For horror books the best I’ve been able to manage is to slum around articles like this and see what gets recommended in the comments section.
That’s not to say there aren’t online resources. Nick Cato and his team do a wonderful job with The Horror Fiction Review, there’s plenty of interesting stuff on the VanderMeer’s Weird Fiction Review, and there are also the websites of award givers like the HWA and BFS. The crucial difference is these horror fiction resources are (mostly) written by writers, for other writers, while the others are written by fans, for other fans. It’s crucial because the other media reviews don’t require me to disentangle the tainted web of who knows who to determine whether the recommendation/review/award is unbiased enough to be trustworthy.
This is not a sign of health.
We have a finite amount of leisure time and there are plenty of competing activities to devour it. If we want people to read horror fiction we have to give them a compelling reason do so, otherwise they’re going to spend that time watching TV, going to see films or blowing zombie’s heads off on their Playstation.
Talk of horror becoming more “literary” raises the hairs on the back of my hands. Trying to appease literary critics is a trap that has swallowed many a promising horror writer. For me, the problem with a lot of modern horror is the writers are trying to court a literary audience that will never like, appreciate or understand them. It’s like the hapless nerd of a teen movie trying to impress the prettiest, most popular girl in class when it’s obvious she’s a bitch and the right girl for him is the one hiding behind glasses and mousey hair.
This doesn’t mean horror fiction has to be shit, but first and foremost it needs to be aware of what it’s trying to do. It’s a rollercoaster. It’s a way for people to confront their fears from a position of safety. It’s a spike in the heart rate, a prickle on the back on the neck, a lurking miasma of dread, a bowl of ice in the pit of the stomach—all from the comfort of the reader’s armchair. The very good modern horror films and computer games know and provide this.
Horror fiction doesn’t need to become more literary, it needs to find and re-engage with an audience that, neglected, has turned to other genres and media for its thrills. It needs to burst out of the bubble clique, grab readers by the throat and shout “Read Me! Put down that remote and Read Me! Put down that controller and Read Me! Then go and tell all your friends to Read Me! Because I’m the scariest, spookiest, creepiest, eeriest, most spine-tingling muthafucka you’ll ever spend an evening with.”
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Mostly I would agree, but there is some interesting stuff being done by Edward Lee, and Bryan Smith, likewise George R.R. Martin did a very interesting vampire novel entitled, "Fevre Dream." In the older stack, but still deliciously wicked I love Brian McNaughton's books. In more of a teen novel category is Kendare Blake with, "Anna Dressed in Blood" and "Girl of Nightmares." Yes good NEW horror is hard to find, but it is out there.
ReplyDeleteI think that's the most frustrating part. The writers are there, but it's far harder to find them than it should be.
DeleteI take your point, but I'm not sure that the situation is as unhealthy as you fear. The Waterstones business says more about that bookchain's failings rather than the failings within the genre.
ReplyDeleteBut I do agree that horror needs to get out more, and the Guardian does cover the field rather a lot, so maybe this is a good sign.
The other problem is in definition. Hammer have published two 'horror' books this year, The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore and The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson and they could not be more different. The former is a quiet disconcerting ghost story, the latter a visceral tale of torture and bigotry. Perhaps what is needed is some way of alerting readers to the wide spread of the genre just as fantasy has successfully persuaded people that it's not all Tolkien clones.
I agree on the definition part, but wish you hadn't used Hammer as an example. I argued back when the news of Dunmore and Winterson writing for Hammer came out that it was a clear sign of ill health in the genre. If we're currently in a golden age of horror writing why did Hammer go to two already-established literary award winners? It's a horrible message to aspiring writers and very typical of the signal coming out of mainstream publishing - "If you aren't already known, don't bother."
DeleteFair point, though I read it more as an attempt to increase horror's reach by using 'respectable' authors to tempt in new authors. It certainly worked in that they were widely reported. The interest now lies in what Hammer does next.
DeleteIf they use it as a springboard to discover and launch a new Barker or Herbert it will be exactly what the genre needs.
DeleteI'd love to see you take on writing a truly terrifying supernatural horror novel. If it turned out like as competent as any of your other genre novels and shorts I won't be able to put it down.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand your opposition to horror becoming more 'literary', but perhaps that's because I don't understand what exactly the word connotes (except, perhaps, the style of the prose being particular good. Or something.) At the beginning of the Guardian article, for example, the author seems to equate 'becoming more literary' with 'upping the stakes in terms of complexity, moral resonance and style.' None of those things conflict with the task of horror fiction (as you define it in your post). In fact, I'm sure you agree that all those things can *enhance* the effectiveness of horror fiction.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to complain that this guy isn't aware of all the good horror fiction out there. Or similarly, it one's thing to challenge the author's premise that horror fiction *isn't* as literary as sci-fi and fantasy have become. But you seem to be suggesting that horror *shouldn't* try to be more literary, which is something I just don't understand.
My bad. I let too much of the inverse-snobbery leak out, which is equally as restrictive and unhelpful. I agree, a lot of literary elements can enhance a story. The important part is not losing sight of what the story is trying to do in the first place. I lost patience with a lot of horror anthologies because the writers seemed more concerned with showing off how clever they were rather than getting on with what they should have been doing, which is grabbing the reader by the throat and shaking them until their hairs stood on end.
DeleteI'm not suggesting that horror *shouldn't* be more literary, I'm trying to say it doesn't and shouldn't matter. Horror - and any other genre - should be judged on its own merits.
Another interesting thing about the article is that the writer seems to conflate literary with contemporary which is odd.
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