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Post by David A. Riley on Apr 16, 2008 13:36:40 GMT
I certainly don't regard my stuff as "brainy" horror or "quiet" - I would take the latter as negative criticism, in fact! As for gorey, where it fits, it fits. Anyone who gets a copy of Dave Sutton's Houses on the Borderland anthology from the BFS later this year will note that my novella in it is neither quiet nor lacking in gore - hell, it waddles in the damn stuff! Still, it might be a bit brainy too. Its main character is a sacked schoolteacher after all.
Having been raised on the likes of Robert Bloch and H. P. Lovecraft I don't really have a penchant for so-called quiet horror.
Mind you, although most of my literary output has been in the horror genre, I have done a couple of SF stories, a fantasy novel and I am now two thirds of the way through a crime novel (a first for me), while my own reading tastes are extremely widespread. I'm currently reading a biography of the young Stalin. Now there's real horror - and none of it quiet!
David
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Post by carolinec on Apr 16, 2008 16:08:44 GMT
Ha, ha! I've got you all going with this one, haven't I?! I've always found stuff like The Others or Haunted much more frightening than, say Friday 13th. Bookwise I'd rather go for pulp. That's an interesting point. The most frightening film is usually one without any gore. That's the point I'm trying to make too - but with me it's not just films which I find have that effect, but books/stories too. I don't object to gore if it's in the right place, but gore for the sake of it just does nothing for me at all. Maybe my labelling it "brainy horror" doesn't quite convey what I mean. I don't mean work which is "up it's own arse" as Dem puts it, and I certainly don't approve of writers who suggest that their work isn't "horror" because they look down on the genre. What I mean is, the kind of work that creeps up on you and smacks you in the face without any need to resort to graphic descriptions of violence, etc. I'm probably not making myself very clear, but I hope you know what I mean! ;D
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Post by pulphack on Apr 16, 2008 16:31:42 GMT
i've never understood why people get overheated about brainy and quiet versus gore... who gives a fuck? the point about horror is that it's supposed to frighten and scare. some subjects can be scary better with a quiet and understated treatment, some with a big in-your-face yell. surely the point of writing horror is to understand which treatment works best for the story you want to tell and then act accordingly? and as a reader, if you like gore more than quiet, or vice versa, then just don't read the stuff that doesn't do it for you. it's hardly rocket science to work that out, is it. there's no better or worse, just different.
as for this 'brainy' bollocks, surely that's more down to editors and critics having an inferiority complex because they work in a low culture area. as jb priestly once said, it takes a clever person to write even a very bad book. which sort of screws up the stupid/brainy divide. i'd go further: anyone can write a book if they apply themselves. and anyone can write a good story of the type they want if they can find their own voice. just like anyone can sing or play an instrument if they practise. doesn't mean they'll be shakespeare or mozart, but as that kind of natural gift happens once in a blue moon, the rest is down to what appeals to you, no more no less.
i'd say that - to take an obvious example - shaun hutson brings as much intelligence, skill and technique to achieve his effects with a maximum impact as mr james to achieve his. they just had different aims and views of achieving the same end: to scare.
lecture over. sorry...
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Post by sean on Apr 16, 2008 16:37:11 GMT
i've never understood why people get overheated about brainy and quiet versus gore... who gives a fuck? the point about horror is that it's supposed to frighten and scare. Amen to that.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 16, 2008 16:53:15 GMT
Ironically, an anthology I've plenty of time for is Chris Morgan's Dark Fantasies from 1989 which opens with a splenetic attack on what he refers to as "graphic horror novels", No Slime, No Chainsaws, which declares open season on the Hamlyn "nasties". Charles L. Grant, who coined the term "Quiet Horror" for his Shadows collections, was a closet Guy N. Smith fan although he also championed another of my heroes, Bernard Taylor, whose Sweetheart, Sweetheart and The Moorstone Sickness are two of the very few horror novels that actually scared me, and both of them gore-free zones. Oliver Onions' The Beckoning Fair One, Robert Hichens' How Love Came To Professor Guildea, the works of Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson and countless others are likewise devoid of gratuitous blood & guts and I can find it in me to love them, so it's not quite as easy as narrowing it down to gore good, cerebral bad. I'd no more be without the above than I would the true classics, The Slime Beast, The Torturer, An Odour Of Decay, The Hand Of Dracula. Ultimately, it only comes down to personal preference anyway.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 16, 2008 17:30:40 GMT
then perhaps it's more accurate to say that the problem lies not with quiet vs gore so much as those who start to feel uncomfortable about 'horror' as though it's something shameful, and seek to worm their way out what they perceive as a 'ghetto' by calling their work - or what they read - anything but what it really is, pseudo-intellectualising to make themselves seem 'better' than this shameful stuff.
in which case, sod 'em for the moral and intellectual cowards they are. it's their problem, so let them stew in it. i shall shelve mr james next to a hamlyn nasty, next to jane austen, next to richard allen, and be proud. different writers, different aims, different reasons for reading 'em.
btw, dem - oliver onions, now you're talking. i think i need to look over at gruesome cargoes much more often, as i used to have loads of those old pre-WWII mammoth anthologies, and picked up one such again a few weeks back. immediately. it took me back to all that lovely stuff by people now long forgotten... except on sites like this, of course.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 16, 2008 17:37:56 GMT
As far as I'm concerned horror can be any kind of sub-genre that it, its author, editor or publisher wants to call it. But if it's boring it's failed, and that goes for up-its-own-arse-confusing-'literary'-bollocks as much as it goes for badly-written-gore-for-the-sake-of-it-bollocks.
And of course the reason that I and we get so riled up about this is because we love this genre of ours so much and we know it has such potential that it's such a shame to see a good idea wasted, or have a story praised to the skies just because it's by a certain writer or part of a certain editor's anthology, when in actual fact it doesn't do the business. There isn't a subgenre of horror I don't like. I have read marvellous stories in their own way by everyone from Stephen King to Steve Rasnic Tem, Garry Kilworth to Guy N Smith, Robert Bloch to Richard Laymon. Poppy Z Brite to Peter Saxon. I don't think I write 'brainy' horror, or 'gory horror' but I'm very proud to say I write horror, and the most mortifying anyone could criticise me of would be of being boring or impenetrable.
Now don't all form a queue...
Rant over. Feel better. Time for tea (and crumpet)
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 16, 2008 17:38:36 GMT
i shall shelve mr james next to a hamlyn nasty, next to jane austen, next to richard allen, and be proud. different writers, different aims, different reasons for reading 'em. Exactly, my attitude, too. des
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Post by andydecker on Apr 16, 2008 17:51:17 GMT
I think there is a lot of truth in this. Not to mention that after the collapse of the horror market there must have been a lot of hard feelings where many writer´s must have seen themselves robbed of a lot of chances. To see that the gory horror must have outsold a lot of them can´t also made the brainy crowd happy.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 16, 2008 18:00:14 GMT
This thread was dead in the water from last halloween and now it's the most happening and, to my mind, best we've had in ages! I've really enjoyed reading your perspectives on this. Not for the first time, pulps and john in particular have articulated my own feelings far better than i can. pulphack, that Gruesome Cargoes board will maybe be incorporated into Vault at some future stage where at least it will have a fighting chance. My favourite horror era, the between the wars years.
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Post by carolinec on Apr 16, 2008 19:37:58 GMT
This thread was dead in the water from last halloween and now it's the most happening and, to my mind, best we've had in ages! I've really enjoyed reading your perspectives on this. Maybe I should introduce controversial issues more often! I think I've finally realised what I was trying to say. I'm definitely not saying "brainy horror" is good, gorey stuff isn't. If that's the way it came across, sorry! What I meant is, for me, I particularly like a story (whether the written word or on film) which enables me to use my imagination - I find it far scarier filling in the missing bits myself from my own imagination, than having them all spelled out for me. But as someone (sorry, can't remember who - and I'm too lazy to look back at it) said, it's all down to personal preference. And of the stories I've read so far from Mammoth BNH 18, they've done it for me even if they haven't for the rest of you! ;D
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 16, 2008 19:49:24 GMT
I haven't actually read BNH 18 - my comments were just on genre books in general. I know that at least one of the stories in it is splendid though as it's my good friend Mark Samuels' superbly disturbing 'Sentinels'
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Post by dem bones on Apr 16, 2008 20:09:38 GMT
I haven't actually read BNH 18 - my comments were just on genre books in general. I know that at least one of the stories in it is splendid though as it's my good friend Mark Samuels' superbly disturbing 'Sentinels' Likewise, the only three I've read are the stories by Mark, Chris Fowler and John Gordon. My comments are directed at the series overall (or, at least, the volumes I've seen). Hope you enjoyed your crumpets, John!
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 16, 2008 20:16:39 GMT
Oh I always enjoy a nice bit of crumpet Kev.
If you liked the John Gordon I can recommend the collection it ws taken from - 'Left in the Dark' by Medusa Press
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Post by eddempster on Apr 17, 2008 8:06:27 GMT
I read somewhere that Steve Jones picks most of these stories from Post Script Magazine - is that true? If not, does anybody know which other mags he gets them from, please?
Personally, when it comes to 'brainy' vs 'gory' horror, I prefer the type of horror that creeps into your psyche and bit by bit builds in intensity until you shudder, and it feels like ice water trickling down your spine.
I'm not keen on slasher stories that try to gross you out with descriptions of cruel tortures - I generally find they lack imagination. There are exceptions, of course. I don't mind a good mix of the two, either - that can be very effective.
I think the two provoke different sensations, though, and that's the reason why people have very different feelings about it. Gore provokes revulsion more than anything else, so if you've got a strong stomach, or are just plain used to it, it's not going to affect you much.
Psychological horror, I think, affects everybody. It's a primal fear, of the unknown thing that lurks in the dark, of the preditor that stalks us.
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