{"id":2171,"date":"2012-11-27T14:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T18:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2012-11-27T14:00:34","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T18:00:34","slug":"aaaaaaahhhh-horror-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/aaaaaaahhhh-horror-is-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"AAAAAAAHHHH! Horror is Dead!"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least, that’s what The Guardian<\/a> says. Apparently the cool literary types haven’t reached out to touch the horror genre in a way that matters, which, according to this author, apparently means it needs to be drenched in literary theory and contemporary economic and political issues:<\/p>\n

I’m convinced horror can raise its game. Our postmodern, capitalism-in-crisis, media-saturated world is ripe to describe it anew. Our very language seems to demand it. A mortgage, literally, is a death grip. Negative equity means being haunted by your own house. Corporations have legal personhood: they can be held responsible for criminal actions and claim “human” rights, but ironically they have no body. PR and political spin are referred to as “dark arts”. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

.<\/p>\n

To this, I can only say “Huh?” Look, if you really want to get down to the basics, great horror fiction crawls into your mind and moves in, or produces a physical, visceral response. It can be literary, but if it doesn’t do either of those things, it’s not horror. And you can call it whatever you want, but if a book does those things, you are reading a horror novel. Fear may nest in the great issues of our time, but horror is something experienced as intensely personal. <\/p>\n

Marketing has more to do with what people are calling that book than what it actually is. I wrote about this a while back<\/a>— “literary” books are seldom marketed as horror. Osama<\/em> by Lavie Tidhar won the World Fantasy Award, but it gave me nightmares, and rightfully so. Chris Bohjalian doesn’t call it a horror novel, but The Night Strangers<\/em>(reviewed here<\/a>)still makes me uneasy. And Kelly Link, mentioned in the Guardian’s article as a refreshing literary voice in fantasy fiction, slips between genres, identifying with horror as well as sf and fantasy(read our interview of her here<\/a>). And books published as horror, such as The Reapers are the Angels<\/em>, by Alden Bell, can certainly be literary. <\/p>\n

So, nope, horror isn’t dead. Can it be pulpy and commercial? Sure thing. Can it be predictable and badly written? Absolutely. Can it be original, unsettling, and downright terrifying? It better be. <\/p>\n

Horror doesn’t die, folks. Pitch in Rise of the Guardians<\/em>(which you should really see) makes that point effectively. You can banish the nightmares, but the bogeyman always rises again. <\/p>\n

(Thanks to Rose Fox<\/a> at Genreville for the link, and her spirited response). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least, that’s what The Guardian says. Apparently the cool literary types haven’t reached out to touch the horror genre in a way that matters, which, according to this author, apparently means it needs to be drenched in literary theory and contemporary economic and political issues: I’m convinced horror can raise its game. Our postmodern,<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1321,632,83,181,428,1320,199,1319,1322,635,648,208,633,741],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alden-bell","tag-chris-bohjalian","tag-horror-fiction","tag-horror-genre","tag-kelly-link","tag-lavie-tidhar","tag-literary-fiction","tag-osama","tag-rise-of-the-guardians","tag-rose-fox","tag-the-guardian","tag-the-h-word","tag-the-night-strangers","tag-the-reapers-are-the-angels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2177,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/2177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}