I just wrote about Booklist taking the opportunity to spotlight horror fiction this month. As part of their spotlight they also had a piece by Joyce Saricks, author of the Readers Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction, called “Reconsidering the Horror Genre“. I have heard so many negative and dismissive comments about the horror genre from librarians of my acquaintance that it was a fun surprise to find a librarian writing about horror who actually likes it and thinks about it. The only other prominent librarian I can think of who does so is Becky Siegel Spratford (note: we also have fantastic librarian reviewers).

I tend to agree with Saricks that straight horror fiction has really suffered with all the genre blending that goes on today- it’s why we find ourselves here at MonsterLibrarian.com reviewing paranormal romance, urban fantasy, thrillers, dark fantasy, science fiction… As I’ve written in the past, mainstream publishers (and the Wall Street Journal) will go to some lengths to avoid slapping the genre label of “horror” on a book (Mulholland Press, a new imprint from Little, Brown, seems to be an exception).

But I’m not sure that I agree with Saricks’ definition of horror fiction. She writes that what makes a book true horror is that “the nature of the menace cannot be explained rationally”. As soon as an explanation of what’s going on comes into play, she says, the book doesn’t qualify as horror anymore. A lot of zombie books posit a virus or scientific reason for the zombie plague- does that mean they’re not horror? I think there are a lot of authors out there who identify themselves as horror writers who would disagree.

Saricks writes that “the key to horror is the pleasure we take in experiencing fear generated by the unknown”. If a novel is predictable, does that mean it’s not horror? Because there is a lot of predictability in genre fiction of any kind, and if you’ve read enough of it, it’s not hard to tell what comes next. It’s actually been pointed out to me recently that sometimes it’s the “train wreck” nature of the plot that is the most horrifying- you see what’s coming, but there’s no way to stop it.

She continues by saying that horror fiction is defined in part by a foreboding atmosphere, that it deliberately keeps readers guessing, lost in the dark. I agree that atmosphere and setting can be important in horror fiction, and sometimes what you can’t see, what’s in the fog, makes for a truly terrifying tale (in fact, it’s a tradition of the Monster Librarian to watch the movie The Fog every Halloween), but the setting doesn’t have to be misty and dark. It can be a shopping mall, someplace bright and cheery with lots of unsuspecting innocents, or a girly slumber party. In fact, places and events that seem normal and even happy can make for some serious scares once evil is on the loose.

She wraps it up by saying that horror fiction should leave endings unresolved. I have to disagree with this as well. Some horror (and some fiction, generally) needs an unresolved ending, but sometimes it’s better to wrap it up, and sometimes the real horror of the story, the part that sticks with you, has nothing at all to do with the ending (that’s the case for me with Alexandra Sokoloff’s The Price I’ve been permanently spooked by that book).

This will seem like a digression, but I promise it’s related. When I took a class on Opera and Musical Comedy in college, the absurd and disturbing characters, events, and relationships that take place in opera made me shake my head in disbelief. My professor put it in perspective for me. He said, “In opera, you can do anything you can sing”. It’s the music, the raw emotion, the drama, the humanity and inhumanity that make opera a transcendent art form that has to be experienced live. Whether you understand the words is unimportant- the story carries you on the sheer power of life lived larger-than-life (trust me, The Tragedy of Carmen is just as powerful when the supertitles fail, ahem, Indianapolis Opera).

And this is also the truth of horror fiction. In horror fiction, a writer can do anything he or she can imagine, but it has to bring to the forefront that raw emotion, and bring the human experience of fear and dread and love and conflict alive.

Do you agree with Saricks? Do you agree with me, or think I’m nuts? Could be both, I guess. Have I convinced you to support your local opera company?

What do you think are the defining characteristics of horror fiction?