“It encourages madness of a certain kind”: David Cronenberg on the horror genre
“The very things that nurture you in the horror genre are also the things that can suppress an understanding of what you’re trying to do.”
Labyrinthine nightmares: “Treading the Maze” by Lisa Tuttle
Tuttle’s brand of quiet horror is at once a rejoinder to a genre that leans heavily on masculine aggression and a means to achieve effects more unsettling than an explicit presentation could ever be.
Stalking the self: “Consequences” by Willa Cather
Cather’s use of a close third-person narration lends her story an uncanny element of unease and creepiness.
“They are our collective nightmares”: Robin Wood on the 20th century American horror film
We can thank Wood for taking the horror film seriously, and for giving us a framework to understand many of our current cultural impasses.
The most wild, homely narrative: “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe
Poe’s 1843 tale is not only one of the greatest horror stories ever written; it is also a pristine example of internal integrity in the short form.
All horror is body horror: An introduction to a month of fear
The genre “specifically devoted to the arousal of bodily sensation” traffics in transgression and finds pleasure in the disreputable.
A book of blood: David Demchuk’s queer horror novel addresses real-life terrors
The Toronto author’s story provides a metaphorical response to a very real history of trauma and violence.
Scary stories: a single-volume anthology from the British Library provides a cogent and concise history of the literary horror genre
From 17th century Gothic novels to the modern-day zombie story, the horror novel continues to fascinate readers and evolve in the literary consciousness.
Not what they seem: P.J. Vernon and Carrie Jenkins deliver queer thrillers with very different tones and approaches
A breezy, plot-driven book and an abstruse, philosophically dense ontological mystery provide different pleasures for readers.
Tales of Transgression: Joris-Karl Huysmans’s demonic inferno, Là-Bas
Huysmans shared his protagonist’s disgust with humanity and longed to create a new kind of literature.