I’m grateful to Peter Leithart for the opportunity to join this conversation. When I first read Justin Lee several years ago (I believe it was on the site we used to call “Twitter”), I was struck by what an interesting mind he has; I also suspected that, given almost any topic at random, we would approach it from sharply different angles.
I have read a great deal of fiction over the decades (I’ll turn 76 in June), and I continue to do so even now. I’m not at all a heavy reader of horror; neither is the genre on my proscribed list. Just several weeks ago, something reminded me of Stephen King’s superb novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, and I read it again, for the fourth or fifth time. I’ve read a number of King’s novels over the years, though mostly not the full-blown HORROR ones that have enjoyed a vast readership. Among the first works of fiction that made a deep impression on me were the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
On the other hand, again going back to boyhood in the 1950s, I’ve always had a strong aversion to what might be called the “vibe” of horror in books and movies and such; the fandom; the self-conscious creepiness. (When I say “strong” I mean it, as in loathing.)
Of course, the place of horror in American culture today is much different from what it was in the ’50s, though Lee doesn’t have much to say about this. Read the coverage of fiction in a year’s worth of the New York Times Books Review; better yet, read the fiction-related reviews and author-interviews in Publishers Weekly. If you haven’t kept up, you will be surprised to discover just how fashionable “horror” is across the board in so-called “mainstream fiction.” A reader of Lee’s essay, unaided by such knowledge, will get a very misleading impression of horror’s place in today’s imaginative landscape.
But my greatest frustration with Lee’s essay is his repeated assertion, central to his argument, that horror as a genre is somehow more “incarnational” than any other form of “true art” because the genre’s “effects require a special fidelity to representing reality.” If I had been taking a swallow of coffee as I first read this assertion (as I could easily have been), I would have sprayed my printed-out copy of the essay with a mouthful of Italian Roast. Ridiculous–and of a piece, alas, with so many other appeals to “incarnational” as a trump card. There oughta be a law.
Nevertheless, and despite my frustrations with the essay (which I could go on and on about), I’m glad I read it, because I had somehow managed not to know (or perhaps failed to remember) that Lee is himself a writer of horror fiction! I plan to get one of his novels soon, and I won’t be at all surprised if I enjoy it.
John Wilson is a contributing editor for The Englewood Review of Books, and a senior editor at The Marginalia Review of Books.
I’m grateful to Peter Leithart for the opportunity to join this conversation. When I first read Justin Lee several years ago (I believe it was on the site we used to call “Twitter”), I was struck by what an interesting mind he has; I also suspected that, given almost any topic at random, we would approach it from sharply different angles.
I have read a great deal of fiction over the decades (I’ll turn 76 in June), and I continue to do so even now. I’m not at all a heavy reader of horror; neither is the genre on my proscribed list. Just several weeks ago, something reminded me of Stephen King’s superb novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, and I read it again, for the fourth or fifth time. I’ve read a number of King’s novels over the years, though mostly not the full-blown HORROR ones that have enjoyed a vast readership. Among the first works of fiction that made a deep impression on me were the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
On the other hand, again going back to boyhood in the 1950s, I’ve always had a strong aversion to what might be called the “vibe” of horror in books and movies and such; the fandom; the self-conscious creepiness. (When I say “strong” I mean it, as in loathing.)
Of course, the place of horror in American culture today is much different from what it was in the ’50s, though Lee doesn’t have much to say about this. Read the coverage of fiction in a year’s worth of the New York Times Books Review; better yet, read the fiction-related reviews and author-interviews in Publishers Weekly. If you haven’t kept up, you will be surprised to discover just how fashionable “horror” is across the board in so-called “mainstream fiction.” A reader of Lee’s essay, unaided by such knowledge, will get a very misleading impression of horror’s place in today’s imaginative landscape.
But my greatest frustration with Lee’s essay is his repeated assertion, central to his argument, that horror as a genre is somehow more “incarnational” than any other form of “true art” because the genre’s “effects require a special fidelity to representing reality.” If I had been taking a swallow of coffee as I first read this assertion (as I could easily have been), I would have sprayed my printed-out copy of the essay with a mouthful of Italian Roast. Ridiculous--and of a piece, alas, with so many other appeals to “incarnational” as a trump card. There oughta be a law.
Nevertheless, and despite my frustrations with the essay (which I could go on and on about), I’m glad I read it, because I had somehow managed not to know (or perhaps failed to remember) that Lee is himself a writer of horror fiction! I plan to get one of his novels soon, and I won’t be at all surprised if I enjoy it.
John Wilson is a contributing editor for The Englewood Review of Books, and a senior editor at The Marginalia Review of Books.
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