Nathan Ballingrud Guest Post–“Horror and the Small Press”
Horror is the unloved hound of literature. It’s hard to find it in bookstores, beyond the names that have been representing the form since the seventies and eighties: King, Rice, Koontz, and Barker. Forget about specifically designated shelves; those days are gone. It’s got a bad reputation. Some of that’s due to the lingering effects of the paperback horror boom of the eighties, which nearly choked the market to death, but in truth, it’s been on the wrong side of public opinion since way back. (You can thank horror comics for the Comics Code, that odious, self-imposed mark of shame that kept the medium shackled to its own adolescence for decades.) Most people find something distasteful about horror fiction. They’re quick to define it by its worst examples: it’s gratuitously violent; it’s misogynistic; it’s shallow and moralizing on one end of the spectrum, nihilistic and cheap on the other. No wonder the bookshelves aren’t exactly groaning under the weight of these books, right? Who reads this crap, anyway?
To all this I say: good. Keep misunderstanding. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Like any mongrel dog, horror fiction thrives on the outskirts.
When horror hits the mainstream, it begins to conform to mainstream expectations: it either becomes domesticated or it goes feral. One the one hand we have safe horror, which takes on the role of morality tales by punishing transgressors against the social code; on the other we have shock horror, which quickly exhausts itself in the indulgence of transgression, usually manifesting in misogyny and buckets of gore. The first can come off as paternalistic or pandering, while the second is simply juvenile and boring.
Horror thrives beyond the light of popular attention. At its best, horror is the literature of antagonism. It sets itself in opposition to the reader. It’s about undermining systems of belief, and unraveling preconceptions. It can also, sometimes, be about finding beauty in the midst of fear and tragedy. It can be about learning to love the monstrous. Because those, too, are subversions of our understanding of what is true or possible. They are best practiced away from the influence of mainstream sensibilities.
Despite the dismal condition of the bookstore shelves, horror is thriving. The advent of the small and specialty press has been a boon to literature across the board, but perhaps no branch has benefited quite as profoundly as horror has done. Thanks to The Swan River Press, we still have J. Sheridan LeFanu, Lucy M. Boston, and Mervyn Wall in print. Tartarus Press is publishing the full catalogue of Robert Aickman stories, several major works by Arthur Machen, and brilliant modern writers like Reggie Oliver, N.A. Sulway, Angela Slatter, and Mark Valentine. Centipede Press brought Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, Michael Shea, and so many others back into print. Add to this list Subterranean Press, Sarob Press, Lethe Press, PS Publishing, CZP, Dark Regions… the list goes on. Never has there been a wider spectrum of horror fiction available to us, both ancestral and modern, than there is today, thanks to the proliferation and accessibility of the small and specialty press.
Those writers and publishers exist well outside the awareness of the primary book-buying public. And though I do wish greater fortunes for the living writers listed here—as well as the many I haven’t named—I am pleased for the genre that they are working in these smaller venues. The small press is fundamental to the survival and the continued health of horror fiction; it’s here that it proves itself a vital literature, both energetic and incandescent. Let the trawlers of the box-store shelves hold onto their ill-informed assumptions. Horror is still ravenous here in the dark, outside their lighted homes, alive and running hard.
About the Author
Nathan Ballingrud is the author of North American Lake Monsters: Stories, from Small Beer Press; and The Visible Filth, a novella from This Is Horror. His work has appeared in numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and he has twice won the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives with his daughter in Asheville, NC.
Wonderfully said.
And as soon as there is a piece of horror that the public wants, they need to rename it to make it palatable.
And Asheville is quite simply one of the most wonderful places on earth.
Horror, as you said, is certainly defined by its worst examples, who often have been its most popular (see again, “King, Rice, Koontz, and Barker,” much in the way Barry Malzberg correctly stated Science Fiction is misjudged. Locus should print your “Guest Post,” so more retailers and distribution personnel can see it. I work in an independent new-and-used store in Nashville, where the manager refused to check Locusmag.com to reveiw what is forthcoming or well-reviewed in SF/F/Horror, and the owners haven’t kept up with the field much since about 1995. Only a few of the new bestsellers get stocked, except for a deep used section of SF’s distant past.
I’m in full agreement with a lot of what Ballingrud has to say here. Horror does indeed thrive on the outskirts. Much of mainstream publishing doesn’t know quite what to do with it these days, and even the broader SF/F community seems to look at it as the embarrassing, down-on-her-luck cousin who Doesn’t Know How to Behave.
I am, however, disappointed by his characterization of “shock horror” which “which quickly exhausts itself in the indulgence of transgression, usually manifesting in misogyny and buckets of gore.” I prefer to look at it this way: extreme horror is vehicle to address certain aspects of life that cannot be legitimately addressed any other way. Take trauma, for example. Trauma is, by definition, not subtle. So subtle/quiet horror is inherently ill-suited for a comprehensive treatment of trauma. (Note: I think a subtle/quiet approach might be able to somewhat, tangentially get at the long-term aftermath of trauma. But not the traumatic event itself or the immediate aftermath).
I was a bit disappointed, though, to read his characterization of “shock horror” which “which quickly exhausts itself in the indulgence of transgression, usually manifesting in misogyny and buckets of gore.”
I prefer to look at it this way…extreme horror is vehicle to address certain aspects of life that cannot be legitimately addressed any other way. Take trauma, for example. Trauma is, by definition, not subtle. So subtle/quiet horror is inherently ill-suited for a comprehensive treatment of trauma. (Note: I think a subtle/quiet approach might be able to somewhat, tangentially graze the long-term aftermath of trauma. But not the traumatic event or the immediate aftermath).
Alas…there seems to be no way to edit my comment to delete the last two (repetitive) paragraphs. Not an extremely horrific circumstance to find oneself in, mind you, but subtly vexing! 🙂