A great essay about the fluidity of genre, though I find myself disagreeing with your presentation of the horror genre. For me, "horror" is more of a mood than a type of story.
Unfortunately, your essay is a bit vague about this particular genre, drawing more examples from film than from fiction. While I agree that film has a very tried and true paradigm for what constitutes a "horror story" (be it the dead teenager flick or monster movie or whatever), unfortunately the fiction is not quite so clear cut. I am, alas, having trouble seeing the "events that it allows and disallows".
Let me present some examples: I find horror equally expressed in Gary Braunbeck's Prodigal Blues, Poppy Brite's Exquisite Corpse, Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily", Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark, Joyce Carol Oates' Beasts, and Dan Simmons' Drood. I personally include these as horror stories, yet I do not see these books particularly united by event inclusions (or exclusions) . . .
Could you perhaps expand a bit upon your view of horror fiction?
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2009-03-13 06:22 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, your essay is a bit vague about this particular genre, drawing more examples from film than from fiction. While I agree that film has a very tried and true paradigm for what constitutes a "horror story" (be it the dead teenager flick or monster movie or whatever), unfortunately the fiction is not quite so clear cut. I am, alas, having trouble seeing the "events that it allows and disallows".
Let me present some examples: I find horror equally expressed in Gary Braunbeck's Prodigal Blues, Poppy Brite's Exquisite Corpse, Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily", Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark, Joyce Carol Oates' Beasts, and Dan Simmons' Drood. I personally include these as horror stories, yet I do not see these books particularly united by event inclusions (or exclusions) . . .
Could you perhaps expand a bit upon your view of horror fiction?