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Guest Post: Horror Lit 101, Part the Third

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Guest blogger Matthew Jackson continues his series of posts for the month of October on horror literature. Today’s post is part three of four. Make sure you’ve read up on the entire series by reading the first installment here and the second installment here.

Horror Lit 101, Part the Third: In which we contemplate America’s Boogeyman and other modern monsters.

The 20th century added four new, powerful delivery systems for horror stories: radio, the motion picture, the comic book and the television. As with every other genre, this resulted in a kind of cultural overload. Suddenly the number of influences for aspiring storytellers was through the roof, and for many of our finest authors of modern horror fiction, these new mediums were an abundant source of inspiration.

We’ve talked about the roots of great horror, and the most influential early writers in the genre. This week we’ll cover some of the biggest names in horror fiction in the 20th century. Again we’ll cover essential works in their respective canons, why they’re important, and what they contribute overall to the genre. We will begin, as you might have guessed, with the King…

Stephen King (1947-)

Love him or loathe him, it’s hard to overestimate the cultural impact Stephen King has had over the past 35 years or so. Since his first novel Carrie was published in 1974 King has sold over 500 million books, and a quick search of the Internet will tell you that more than 50 feature film adaptations have been produced to date of various stories and characters from his work. Fifty movies. From one guy. And that’s not counting all the television miniseries and episodes, comic books, short films and other things that bear his mark.

In the 1980s, during the height of his commercial success, pretty much everyone with eyes was reading a King novel at some point, and not much has changed since then. His name alone is enough to send a volume to the top of the bestseller lists, a feat particularly impressive for someone who has been largely “typed” as a horror writer since the mid 70s (a designation that is to some extent unfair, we must all admit). Short of singular instances of pop culture explosion like Harry Potter and Twilight, Stephen King is pretty much the most successful writer of popular fiction who’s ever lived.

King’s immense popular appeal has been a subject of debate for even the writer himself, but the consensus seems to be that he’s sold so many books because he’s found a way to tap into a set of universal fears. Poe wrote macabre but often farfetched horror scenarios, and Lovecraft wrote about the discovering of big scary monsters. Cool, but not exactly relatable.

King, on the other hand, even when he’s at the height of sensationalism, always ties his fiction back to something a little more universal. The Shining is on the surface a haunted house/hotel novel, but it’s really a book about how people are haunted, and how our own misdeeds can follow us and drive us mad. Pet Sematary is a fairly simple story of a forbidden resurrection, but more importantly it’s about a deeply tragic loss and how far over the edge we might go if we had a chance to bring someone back (King found this book so disturbing that he didn’t originally intend to publish it.).
These subtexts may seem simple if you’re not familiar with the individual works, but believe me when I tell you that King’s great talent is to wrap his characters in these concepts, to make it permeate the manuscript, but not so much that it’s the only thing the book’s about. You have to walk a fine line in horror fiction, especially when you’re trying to make it do more than just be icky, and there is no one better than King.

He’s gotten more thematically complex in his later years, as exhibited by books like Desperation and Lisey’s Story. He still has the same knack for generating terrifying conceptual work, but he’s also grown as a writer, and how often can we say that for producers of commercial fiction? Don’t believe the critics. Hail to the King.

Essential Reading: King’s best novel by far is The Stand, a massive apocalyptic book about how the world ends that was written in the midst of the 1970s energy crisis but still holds relevance today. Other brilliant things include his “ultimate horror” novel It, his fantastic short fiction collection Night Shift and his 7-part epic The Dark Tower (not always horror, but it definitely bears mentioning). As far as nonfiction, pick up his Danse Macabre if you want to learn more about the horror genre than little old me could ever tell you, and his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft if you want to read the most useful and entertaining book about writing fiction that I’ve ever encountered.

Clive Barker (1952-)

We will continue with the man Stephen King once, in so many words, declared his successor. The quote “I have seen the future or horror and its name is Clive Barker,” attributed to King, was pasted on the front of Barker’s first books in the mid-1980s, and I’m sure it went a long way to selling a good deal more of them than Barker ever expected.

The only English writer I’ll mention in this post, Barker began his career as a playwright and theatrical producer before breaking into popular fiction with his enormously influential Books of Blood series beginning in 1984. Six volumes of these horror stories were published between 1984 and 1987, and they contain everything from serial killers to secret societies to werewolves to comically mischievous spirits. Barker earned a lot of critical and commercial attention for his use of graphic violence and sexuality in all of his stories, and was dubbed the new splatterpunk wunderkind.

To say these tales are important just because they’re courageously gross is a huge mistake. Barker ushered in a new way of thinking for horror fiction. While everyone around him was introducing monsters and then killing them, Barker was dreaming of perverse and often enlightening ways in which monsters could be embraced, a theme that runs through numerous Books of Blood tales like “The Life of Death,” “Dread” and even “Skins of the Fathers” (Is that a badass title, or isn’t it?). Barker’s stories were less about abolishing the alien and more about exploring how the alien is actually a part of us, and as an added bonus you get to read about buckets of blood. It’s not an overstatement to call his work a revolution in the horror world.

Essential Reading: Books of Blood are on top of the list, of course, but his first novel The Damnation Game is important for its new usage of Faustian archetypes, and his novella The Hellbound Heart (the basis for the classic film Hellraiser, which Barker directed) is a modernized horror fairy tale.

Richard Matheson (1926-)

Going backward a bit, we look at the author without whom there would probably be no Stephen King, or George A. Romero, or Anne Rice. Matheson was the king before King. His work launched subgenres, created new fears for the 20th Century and still has tremendous influence (as the success of the recent adaptation of his novel I Am Legend shows). Matheson wrote novels beyond the scope of past horror writers (with the exception of Lovecraft, of course).

I Am Legend is among the first apocalyptic horror novels, documenting the adventures of a man who believes he is the last human after everyone else has been taken over by a vampire-like virus. This story has been echoed over and over since, in films like Dawn of the Dead and novels like Stephen King’s Cell and Justin Cronin’s The Passage, which we’ll cover next week. Likewise his novel Hell House is in many ways the ultimate haunted house story. There’s nothing particularly insightful on a human level about Matheson’s work, but on the level of pure fun there’s no one better. He wrote the novels he knew horror fans wanted, and that’s why he’s great.

Essential Reading: I Am Legend and Hell House, of course, but also check out things like A Stir of Echoes and The Incredible Shrinking Man, not to mention his long list of short fiction.

Joyce Carol Oates (1938-)

Yes, that’s the Joyce Carol Oates: National Book Award winner, Pulitzer nominee, literary legend and widely considered one of the great writers of our time. I’m not kidding. She’s a horror writer. No, seriously.

Anyone familiar with Oates’ work, even the really populist sort of stuff like We Were the Mulvaneys, knows that it’s perforated with very dark undertones. Many of her novels – My Sister, My Love, Black Water and Beasts, to name three – aren’t strictly horror, but they deal with horrific things in a very real and unpolished sense, and in that way they often become terrifying. She’s also a ridiculously adept practitioner of the Gothic tale, which isn’t horror but certainly specializes in the ominous.

Oates, like Cormac McCarthy, is among those wonderful writers of “serious” fiction who are far more concerned with their stories than with other people’s perception of their stories, therefore she’s a writer who uncompromisingly believes in the tale she’s telling, whether it’s scary or not. The result is a diverse body of work that includes numerous things that are either almost horror or just flat out horror. The world of popular speculative fiction got a little jolt in 1996 when Oates won the Bram Stoker Award (pretty much the highest prize you can get for a horror novel) for her book Zombie, a serial killer story based in large part on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Zombie is a first person narrative concerning a man who slowly gives over to his urges, drifting further and further away from a normal life as he begins taking young men back to his home and killing them, then making an attempt to turn them into his own private slaves by debilitating their brains (hence the title). It’s a horrifying idea made all the more horrifying by how deftly Oates gets into the head of this man, who goes nameless throughout the story. We always wonder how the guy next door becomes a killer, and countless pages of fiction have appeared trying to explain it. So far, only this one seems to come close.

Essential Reading: The aforementioned titles as well as her two anthologies of “Tales of the Grotesque,” Haunted and The Collector of Hearts.

Honorable Mentions (because I’ve rambled long enough.): Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, the entire body of work of Ramsey Campbell, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Dan Simmons’ The Terror and Carrion Comfort and of course the sublime and wonderful work of the great Harlan Ellison, including Deathbird Stories and the two legendary anthologies he edited: Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions.

Once again, I could go on, but I’ve gone on quite long enough for one week. Hit up Google for a list of Bram Stoker Award winners and you’ll be off to the races with even more terrifying reads.

Tune in next week when we conclude this adventure with a look at contemporary horror…and a glimpse into the future.

National Book Awards–Our Reactions

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With the announcements of this year’s National Book Award finalists, we thought we’d offer up our thoughts on this year’s picks, as well as what we were surprised didn’t make the cut.

Though I have only read two (One Crazy Summer & Mockingbird) out of the five nominations for Young People’s Literature, one thing that struck me was how the choices seemed to lean more toward Middle Grade than Young Adult Literature, which has seemed to dominate in years past. For example, the subject matters of Laini Taylor’s Lips Touch (2009), Judy Blundell’s What I Saw and How I Lied (2008) and even E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (2008) are much more mature than those of both One Crazy Summer and Mockingbird, which both feature an 11 year old protagonist.

It also seems like a rather bleak field, subject-matter-wise this year, with Ship Breaker detailing the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a hurricane, Dark Life taking on forest fires, Lockdown taking place in a bleak juvenile detention facility, One Crazy Summer bringing three young girls to visit the mother who had abandoned them years ago, and Mockingbird showing a girl with Asperger’s learning how to deal with her brother’s death. While I know that most award-winning books are bleak, this seems to be an especially heavy crop this year.

Again, while I can only speak for two of the books, I do firmly believe that both deserve their nomination. I adored Mockingbird, which was poignant and beautifully written. The characterization of Caitlyn was incredible, along with her evolving relationship with her father. While I did enjoy One Crazy Summer, I don’t think I loved it as much as many reviewers did. However, Williams-Garcia’s story vividly portrayed what it is like to feel abandoned and painted a striking picture of being a child in the Black Panther movement.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit to having only read one of the finalists for the Young People’s category this year, and that was Lock Down by Walter Dean Myers. I have had on my to-read list The Great House by Nicole Krauss, which is on the adult list this year.

I’m with Jen on thinking the field is quite bleak this year, but I’m not too surprised to see some of the titles on there, including Mockingbird and One Crazy Summer, both of which have generated quite a bit of buzz. I’m also surprised there’s not an “out of left field” title in there like last year’s Stitches; instead, they all seem pretty straightforward.

Perhaps what surprises me are some of the worthy titles not included this year, namely Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and titles like Steve Brezenoff’s Absolute Value of -1. For me, Lockdown just wasn’t a super strong novel, and given the buzz surrounding some of the other Young People’s titles, I’m a little surprised it’s up there (maybe it’s the WDM name that does it).

I am perhaps most struck by the fact that there is not a single non-fiction title in the youth crop. Last year, two non-fiction titles were selected; this year, despite there being two big name non-fiction authors dropping new titles (Russell Freedman and Susan Bartoletti), neither them nor other non-fiction writers are getting any love.

I made it a goal last year to read all of the titles in this category, and I’m going to try to do it again this year (it helps that a few are Cybils nominees). I’ve got a feeling from reviews and buzz alone that Mockingbird might come out on top this year. We’ll see what happens in a few weeks!

Guest Post: Erin Blakemore on The Ugliness of the Heroines

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Today’s guest blogger is Erin M. Blakemore, author of The Heroine’s Bookshelf, released on October 19th and now on shelves! As a huge fan of strong, plucky female characters (I count Anne Shirley as a kindred spirit), I can’t wait to read this book, which delves into the stories and qualities behind classic heroines and their female creators. Erin learned to drool over Darcy and cry over Little Women in suburban San Diego, California. These days, her inner heroine loves roller derby (yes, she’s a retired skater), running her own business (woman-powered, wonderfully independent), and hiking in her adopted hometown of Boulder, Colorado (seasons, sunshine, and plenty of laid-back fun).You can also find Erin at her blog.

The Ugliness of the Heroines

Let me be the first to break it to you: writing is ugly. I’m talking sitting in pajamas with holes in
them, popcorn shells all over your chest ugly. Bags under the eyes, woefully overdue haircut ugly. Unable to talk in coherent sentences ugly. I already knew this before I started writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf, at once my defense of rereading and an exploration of the real and fictitious lives of my favorite literary figures. But I never expected to find my own ugly truth reflected in the lives of women I was prepared to revere.

Like any good heroine, I got way more than I bargained for when I began researching and writing the book. I guess I figured the experience would be pretty routine. I would, I fantasized, learn that my favorite writers were incredible, inspiring women whose stories informed those of their literary creations; discover cool facts to add to my arsenal; get an excuse to re-read stories I loved; then move on.

But a strange thing happens when you’re writing about real people: they tend to fall off their pedestals. The women who brought us all tales of inspiration, light, and love were also cheating spouses, cranky and unrelentingly critical mothers, drug addicts, irritating drama queens, and hypochondriacs bent on making others suffer right along with them? (Take a look at my table of contents and assign these characteristics as you will!) Authors whose genius I felt was a given spent lifetimes putting down and hiding their own brilliant work (here’s looking at you, Margaret Mitchell). And here I thought I was writing a book about heroines.

Yeah. Not so much. Turns out my own heroines had plenty of their own ugly. Like Louisa May Alcott during an un-heroic moment in 1860:

I feel very moral to-day, having done a big wash alone, baked, swept the house, picked the hops, got dinner, and written a chapter…It is dreadfully dull, and I work so that I may not “brood….” If I think of my woes I fall into a vortex of debts, dish pans, and despondency awful to see….All very aggravating to a young woman with one dollar, no bonnet, half a gown, and a discontented mind.

Or Charlotte Brontë, the discontented governess:

But, alack-a-day! there is such a thing as seeing all beautiful around you and not having a free moment or a free thought left to enjoy them in. The children are constantly with me, and more riotous, perverse, unmanageable cubs never grew.

Cue countless other complaints, bitter laments, ridiculous rivalries, and tales of all-too-human frailty. In fact, I learned that the women I’d been taught to adore could range from annoying to downright wicked.

Okay…bubble burst. So did I lament my lack of material for the book?

No way. Instead, I breathed a sigh of relief. See, somewhere inside I’d worried that my own favorite authors were too untouchable to really enjoy. After all, where’s the fun in someone whose petticoats are unsoiled and unsullied by gossip, scandal, and lies? What’s to love about heroines who don’t have a trace of humanity?

If I’d learned that the women whose work I love so much were perfect to boot, I might have powered down my computer and put aside my pen for all time. For who can dare to create when perfection has already been attained?

Surprise! Like me, my literary heroines were not so heroic most of the time. My discovery came
just in time to help me meet my deadline, finish my book, and have a hell of a time writing it. Armed with my new knowledge, I pushed aside my uncut bangs for the fiftieth time, reached for another handful of popcorn, and got back to the business of meeting my heroines in all their ugly glory.

Texas Book Festival 2010

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This past weekend I traveled to Austin to attend the 15th annual Texas Book Festival, a two-day extravaganza in the capitol building and on the capitol lawns featuring a bevy of authors, illustrators, and readers. 

I can’t remember a time when the book festival was not a part of my life.  I always enjoy visiting the capitol building – my favorite building in the state of Texas and one of the few state capitols that actually looks impressive.  It was a beautiful weekend to be out in the sun, walking around the green capitol grounds and just relishing being among a huge throng of readers.

There were a couple changes this year that I wasn’t so wild about.  First, the House and Senate chambers are being renovated, so they were both closed and no events took place inside them (except the Senate chamber on Sunday for a few panels).  So instead of sitting at a desk and pretending to make Very Important Decisions, we were mostly in the capitol extension rooms downstairs.  That beautiful room off to the right is the House chamber, which I sadly did not get to see this year.  Unavoidable, but still disappointing.  

Second, for the first time in the history of the festival (at least that I can recall), security gates were installed at each entrance to the building.  Before this year, visitors could just walk right in with no pauses or lines, and no need to remove belts or watches or have their bags searched.  Not anymore.  That was probably the most disappointing part of the whole experience.  I’ve a feeling the gates are permanent, and I’d be lying if I said that fact didn’t diminish my love of the capitol more than a little.
But enough with the disappointments.  Overall, it was a terrific two days.  Here are some highlights.  Warning: this is a long post.  I just can’t help it.
Day One

Instead of battling the throngs of people packed into the Paramount to see Laura Bush, I elected to hear neuroscientist Simon LeVay talk about his book Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation.  LeVay was an excellent speaker: he described his research and fielded questions handily, managing to communicate his points clearly and without talking over the audience’s head (or talking down to the audience, either).  He’s conducting some really important research that has massive social implications.

Then I headed to the Paramount to see the Literary Death Match, an event where four authors paired up for a “read-off” and the winners were voted on by a panel of judges including Holly Black.  It was full of really cheesy and really raunchy humor, so definitely up my alley, although the first reading I could have done without.  Bob Shea, author of the picture book Dinosaur vs. the Potty, was the last author to read and he brought the house down with a reading of the aforementioned book, as well as with his presentation of his “work in progress”: Dinosaur vs. Writing Picture Books (I’m paraphrasing that – I can’t remember the exact title).  A few choice match-ups from that book include Dinosaur vs. explaining to your father what you do for a living (Dinosaur wins!), Dinosaur vs. obsessively googling your name (Dinosaur wins!), and Dinosaur vs. selling out (Selling out wins!).  Hilarious and the best part of Day One.

The last panel of Saturday that I attended was Vintage/Anchor books presentation of “Writers on Reading.”  I’ll be honest and say I only went because they hand out tote bags of free books each year, but I really could have skipped it.  None of the books I happened to receive really interested me, and the authors on the panel – J. Courtney Sullivan and Abraham Verghese – were merely mediocre.  I was particularly put off by both authors’ arguments that critical reviews of their books were unnecessary and if a reviewer couldn’t write a positive review, the reviewer should send it to someone who would.  Here at STACKED, we believe that each book has an audience (even if it’s a very small one), but we also believe in being honest.  Sullivan’s and Verghese’s line of thought didn’t sit well with me.

Next up was a quick walk through the tents and then it was time to head home for a brief rest before seeing Alton Brown at Central Market.  My family and I were lucky enough to score a few of the limited seats inside the venue, so we were treated to a solid half-hour of Alton Brown being his awesome self as he answered audience questions.  Afterward, he signed copies of his new book Good Eats 2: The Middle Years.  He was just as funny, energetic, and personable as his tv show indicates.

Day Two
First up on Day Two was a fantasy panel entitled “Portal to Imagined Worlds” featuring Cinda Williams Chima, Carolyn Cohagan, Ingrid Law, and Brian Yansky.  They were uniformly interesting and just a great way to start the day.  Fantasy was what made me a reader in the first place, and it’s still my greatest reading love.  I loved hearing about their path to being published and that not a single one of the four bothers to outline.  Every year at the Book Festival, I attend a panel that inspires me to write, and this one was it.

Next up was “English Language: Under the Hood” with Roy Peter Clark and Ben Yagoda.  I’m having trouble deciding what my favorite moment of this session was.  The first moment came when Yagoda shot down an audience member who stated that people nowadays (meaning young people, natch) neither read nor know how to use the English language properly.  His rebuttal was excellent and still makes me smile.  The second moment came when Clark launched into a few punny Tom Swifties, including “‘I dropped my toothpaste,’ he said, crestfallen.”  I’m glad I snagged a copy of Clark’s The Glamour of Grammar at TLA earlier this year.

The last event I attended was Tony DiTerlizzi, who introduced his new fully-illustrated (over 100 pages of color illustrations!) novel for middle graders The Search for WondLa.  He spoke about his influences (both literary and artistic) which include Alice in Wonderland, Peter and Wendy, and The Wizard of Oz.  The cover for the book in particular reminds me of W. W. Denslow’s illustrations.  The Wizard of Oz has long been near and dear to my heart (I practically learned to read on Baum’s books), and I was very impressed with both DiTerlizzi’s presentation, which was funny and interesting, as well as with his art, which is expressive and beautiful.  The whole book is a work of art, and I was very pleased to purchase it and have him sign it for me (He’s also a very nice man).  As I waited in line, I noticed several kids who just could not wait to start reading – their noses were in the book and didn’t leave it, even when they were next in line to meet the author.  That’s pretty awesome.

That’s my Texas Book Festival experience in a nutshell!  I can’t wait to go back again next year, where I might decide to skip the Vintage/Anchor books panel and where I’ll cross my fingers that the House and Senate chambers will be open again (pretty likely) and the metal detectors will have disappeared (not likely, I’m afraid).

Display This: The Beat of Teen Read Week

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Welcome to the first of what I hope will become a regular feature here at STACKED: Display This. We’ll pick a topic and throw together a list of books with a short description that you can use for book displays or for reading lists on a given topic. What better week to start with than Teen Read Week?

This year’s theme is Books with Beat. While the theme can go any number of ways, I wanted to offer up this display as an homage to books featuring music as a key element. Here we go:

Stringz by Michael Wenberg: A mixed-race guy with a rough life finds peace through his cello.

Rock Star Superstar by Blake Nelson: Should Pete’s band keep being independent or should they “sell out” to really make a name for themselves?

Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly: Drea loves to be a sound master when it comes to music, and that might be how she keeps her asberger’s in sync while finding a little love.

Vinyl Princess By Yvonne Printz: Alli’s got any teen music lover’s dream job — she’s a music seller at a local record joint.

Struts and Frets by Jon Skovron: Sammy’s in an indie band and when they win a Battle of the Bands competition, his dream to make it big might be a closer reality than he thought.

Somebody Everybody Listens To by Suzanne Supplee: Retta Lee Jones is a country singer striking out on her own in Nashville.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn: When night rolls around, Nick and Norah will have a musical adventure through the big city.

If I Stay by Gayle Foreman: Mia’s life revolved around her talents as a cellist before things changed in an instant.

Adios, Nirvana by Conrad Wesselhoeft: Johnathan’s musical genius might be what helps him overcome the loss of his twin brother. Expect some flaming guitar action in this one.

Lovestruck Summer by Melissa Walker: Quinn graduates high school and takes a chance at working at a music label in Austin, Texas, hoping to explore the truth behind its music capital reputation.

Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway: What happens when you’re the person a top radio hit is about and everybody knows it?

A Little Wanting Song by Cath Crowley: Charlie’s voice and knowledge of music will help her connect with people who she’s never been able to connect with before.

Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John: Can a deaf girl really manage a band and get them ready for a recording session with record executives?

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen: Music will be the guiding force for Anabelle to better understand weird boy Owen, her aching family, and herself.

Beige by Cecil Castellucci: Katy’s dad’s a punk rocker, and she’s forced to spend the summer with him. How will she survive when they are so different?

Friend is Not a Verb by Daniel Ehrenhaft: Henry’s skills as a bassist may not have been enough to keep his girlfriend but it may help him unravel the secrets of his runaway sister.

So Punk Rock (And Other Ways to Disappoint Your Mother) by Micol Ostow: Ari wants to be a punk rock hipster, but his true calling may be more along the lines of the hired band for local Bar Mitzvahs.

Will by Miranda Boyd: Would your life end if your punishment for doing wrong were to play a role in the high school musical?

This is just a sample of what I’d put on my display for this year’s Teen Read Week. What would you add? Share in the comments, along with a short annotation, and I’ll pop it up on this post for others to see!

Super Librarian offers up this handy .pdf file of rockin’ titles.

*Thanks to my friend Andrea V. for the fantastic graphic at the top for this feature.