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Post by David A. Riley on Dec 27, 2010 19:42:49 GMT
"On the bright side, we don't see novels about human-munching crabs, praying mantises or rabid ferrets on the horror shelves any more. Nothing in the genre now is anywhere near as crude and illiterate as Guy N. Smith." You know, as much as I can enjoy a writer´s writer work which is read by a small minority, it is remarks like that which send me running into the anti-intellectual corner.  No crude and illiterate writer manages to write and sell (!) 80 plus novels. So this is just a dumb and snobish judgement. But if you want to describe Smith as crude etc, just for the sake of argument, it is downright uniformed to say that nothing in the genre is as crude anymore. Just take your average Paranormal Romance or Vampire novel which rehashes the same plot over and over again, writing the same book again and again, adding not one new idea to the canon, but doing it at thrice the lenght of a typical Smith. If there would be a writer like a Smith of our times with his success, the genre would be a overall better place then it is. Please note that I didn't write this. I was quoting Joel Lane. It's not something I would ever say.  |
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Post by jamesdoig on Dec 27, 2010 22:20:46 GMT
It's an old and interesting and ongoing debate isn't it - people were saying the same thing about weekly penny-part literature back in the mid-nineteenth century, which were known derisively as Penny Dreadfuls - they covered the full range of genres - horror, adventure, crime, romance. The masses read them and loved them - they sold in the millions and made some publishers very rich indeed. Like Richard Allen's Skinhead novels, the more astute hacks tapped into popular sensibility, eg The Wild Boys of London; or, Children of the Night, which appealed hugely to working class kids and attracted the attention of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Some of the hacks rose above the dreck, like Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and became almost acceptable. Some like James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Prest acquired considerable cachet years after they died, especially by collectors, and are now highly sought after - Christ, people even write serious articles about them in academic journals. The String of Pearls (aka Sweeney Todd) has even been made into a hit broadway and hollywood musical - will this be the fate of Night of the Crabs in years to come?
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Post by dem on Dec 28, 2010 7:50:36 GMT
You know, as much as I can enjoy a writer´s writer work which is read by a small minority, it is remarks like that which send me running into the anti-intellectual corner. i so agree. every time i read a comment like that, i want to kiss my Hamlyn nasties and tell them how much i love each and every one of them. I was going to take this opportunity to congratulate Joel Lane on finally writing something that made my flesh creep, but then I thought back to his increasingly desperate attempts at justifying a certain author's ban from participation in the 'Never Again' project and realised he'd managed it several times before. If there would be a writer like a Smith of our times with his success, the genre would be a overall better place then it is. that's the one certain among our genius horror authors never seem to grasp. much as they might despise "lowest common denominator horror fiction", a thriving no frills pulp horror market opens doors for the dark fantasy glitterati to break out of the small presses and into the mainstream - that is, if they wanted to. |
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 28, 2010 8:50:05 GMT
I think there is a lot of misunderstandings that have abounded about some of these debates alluded to here and elsewhere. Nobody is able to pontificate about the whole situtation because nobody knows the whole situation, it seems to me.
On the 'anti-intellectual' debate in isolation ... that Laird Barron (a great horror author that many do or would enjoy on the Vault, as I do) interview was my reason for exhuming this debate, because what he had to say, I feel, was interesting whether you agree with it or not.
It is Ok for people to decry things they don't like. Like being anti-Guy N Smith books, for example and being honest enough to say so. Equally, it is also OK for people to decry particular examples of so-called intellectual fiction, although 'intellectual' is probably the wrong word. So is 'literary', but you know what I mean. IMO.
It is RIGHT to be PRO things in general, the things you love in life whether it be Guy N Smith or The House of Leaves.
But I feel it is WRONG to be ANTI general things in Art (ie lumping many different things under a single label), like being anti-intellectual as much as being anti-unintellectual... whether you are or consider yourself to be intellectual, unintellectual or neither.
This thread, I feel, is about the views of those who are or consider themselves to be (or seem to be to others) anti-intellectual GENERALLY. And the contention is that the Horror genre is anti-intellectual. Discuss. (As I've said earlier I'm not sure I agree with this contention).
Myself? I'm PRO all sorts of Horror literature as I hope I've shown with my few years of Real-Time Reviewing.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 28, 2010 9:02:27 GMT
Here’s a topic that always gets my blood boiling. I’ve done my best to restrain myself from posting on this thread but…
I don’t think horror is that literary a genre, and more importantly I don’t think it should be. Most importantly I think if all the horror that was published was ‘literary horror’ then very soon there wouldn’t be any horror published at all. Because literary horror is a sideline, it’s a minority interest, it’s a luxury that more often than not caters to (pseudo)intellectuals who can chuckle to themselves about how clever they are for thinking they understand some impenetrable piece of prose that the ordinary fan in the street who likes ‘Night of the Crabs’ would never ever have the wherewithal to comprehend. The problem is that horror is a genre that, like science fiction, or crime, needs to be popular to survive and to be popular it needs to be entertaining.
The increasingly tedious argument that seems to come round again and again, one that is pretty much always put forward by the literary brigade (I think everyone else is having far too much fun reading those terrible ‘lowest common denominator horror novels’) is that literary horror = good, whereas ‘lowest common denominator horror’ (whatever that exactly means) = bad, whereas that simply isn’t so. It’s probably already clear from the above that I’m not a big fan of literary horror. That doesn’t mean I hate all the literature that might be classed as such, but there is a lot of bad stuff out there – horrible, pretentious, uninterpretable stuff that’s going to kill the genre stone dead faster than slugs or crabs or moody vampires.
Because what have Shaun Hutson, Guy N Smith and all the other authors who are so vilified by the literary brigade ever done other than help keep the horror genre alive? And they haven’t just done that – they’ve raised its profile and made it a huge, rip-roaring success. Why aren’t the more ‘literary’ inclined authors praising these people for getting far more people interested in horror than we could have dreamed possible? Because of all those people who pick up a horror bestseller, there may be a few new converts to the literary horror subgenre as well, so everybody wins. I’ll leave the (almost) final words to Laird Barron:
Unfortunately, gratuitous violence and pornography have become the public face of horror.
I remember reading something similar in a 1957 review of Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein and we all know how simply terrible that movie was for the genre.
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 28, 2010 9:12:22 GMT
I think John's post - albeit entertaining with grains of truth - is, for me, an example of lumping things together unduly that I mentioned in the post prior to his.
Still, I feel I've wandered into a very alien environment here, despite my interest in much of the work everyone is interested in here. But perhaps I'd better withdraw.
des
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Post by dem on Dec 28, 2010 9:17:32 GMT
I don't. I think he's hit the nail firmly on the head.
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Post by dem on Dec 28, 2010 9:21:03 GMT
But perhaps I'd better withdraw. des yeah, after all, you've got what you wanted now, haven't you, Des? |
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 28, 2010 9:22:31 GMT
Not sure what you mean, dem.
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 28, 2010 9:38:02 GMT
Not sure what you mean, dem. No answer? But mine is just to show where I'm coming from. Horror being a very broad church and not a religion. ========================= “But ya ought to thank me, before I die, For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye” A Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash |
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Post by noose on Dec 28, 2010 9:39:22 GMT
Nobody's mentioned jealousy. I think a large part of the sneering is in fact simple internal gnashing of the teeth that the cold truth is these 'literary' authors will just never see that kind of success that Smith, Herbert, Laymon etc had. I was looking at my bookcase just now - and picked five titles out at random with my eyes closed. They were Zoltan Hound of Dracula, Boot Boys, Inseminoid, Blight, Crossroads: A Warm Breeze (yup the one with Benny in it) - and it really makes me sad, while flicking through them to think that nobody would have these kind of books on their shelf. But then I thought, maybe they DO have them on their shelf, but they won't admit to having them...  |
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 28, 2010 9:45:32 GMT
I think a large part of the sneering One man's sneering is another man's giving an honest opinion. Just depends on your persepctive. And my honest opinion - as someone over the years with many books in my possession of all Horror colours - is that there is more sneering on this side of the fence. We Horror fans need to stick together, not argue. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 28, 2010 11:56:45 GMT
We Horror fans need to stick together, not argue. In that case I do think it's really rather a little bit naughty of you to start a thread like this that is bound to be shit-stirring, and then when everything has calmed down to bump it back into discussion, and then to top it ff with a comment like that!  |
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 28, 2010 12:02:08 GMT
We Horror fans need to stick together, not argue. In that case I do think it's really rather a little bit naughty of you to start a thread like this that is bound to be shit-stirring, and then when everything has calmed down to bump it back into discussion, and then to top it ff with a comment like that! I find that hurtful, John. Please read the thread again. For example, David Riley brought the Joel Lane quote out of context from a thread (of which he is not a participant) to this thread. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 28, 2010 12:36:45 GMT
In that case I do think it's really rather a little bit naughty of you to start a thread like this that is bound to be shit-stirring, and then when everything has calmed down to bump it back into discussion, and then to top it ff with a comment like that! I find that hurtful, John. Please read the thread again. For example, David Riley brought the Joel Lane quote out of context from a thread (of which he is not a participant) to this thread. Des I would not hesitate to apologise if such a comment causes personal distress, but surely in the cold light of day if you were to look through this thread again and think about it you should be able to see why I might say something like that? Johnny - I'm delighted to see you have a copy of Inseminoid, btw! |
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