Comments on Simon Strantzas: Repetition repetition

Me? A joke? Why the very thought...

2009-03-19T21:17:00.000-04:00

Me? A joke? Why the very thought...

Assuming that that is a joke, Simon, I'll go ahead...

2009-03-19T20:41:00.000-04:00

Assuming that that is a joke, Simon, I'll go ahead and say thanks to I.A.M. for posting Fry's remarks - even if he (Fry) does ask the question of whether horror can accomplish the things he describes and then does not answer it.

I disagree a bit with what he says, though. I think that many art forms can "provide us with new ways of understanding our changing selves" - sf, anyone? - and so that would not be enough to set horror apart as unique. But accomplishing it would be enough to justify horror's continued existence, and I have no doubt that a certain percentage of horror will accomplish this for the foreseeable future.

This is a "Gary Fry Free" zone. I'd appreciate it ...

2009-03-17T15:15:00.000-04:00

This is a "Gary Fry Free" zone. I'd appreciate it stay that way!

At the moment I'm in the middle of doing final typ...

2009-03-17T12:31:00.000-04:00

At the moment I'm in the middle of doing final typesetting and proofing of a book of interviews edited by James Cooper that will be published by the British Fantasy Society.

I just ran through the following section of Gary Fry's interview (he being the brains behind Gray Friar Press):

COOPER: Is there any such thing as ‘originality’ in horror fiction anymore? Where can it be best found?

FRY: You know what I think originality is? Seeing the ambiguous world in a wholly new way. That is to say that noteworthy artists or scientists or thinkers in general don’t invent anything. Instead, they elucidate the world in new ways. Now, whether originality in horror fiction is possible, or whether we’ve reached what the post-modernists might call ‘saturation point’, I don’t know. It depends what elements of fiction we’re referring to, I guess. The human heart is always up for a new examination — nobody has ever generated an indisputable theory about human psychology — but that’s something which can be applied to any genre of literature.

I suppose the question is, therefore: what is it that horror fiction alone adds to the field of literature, and can this element be adjudged to be original or otherwise? Well, plot‑wise I’m sure it’s all been done before; the tropes remain popular because they capture key aspects of experience. Ghosts are metaphors for our relationship with death, for example. Indeed, this metaphorical strand in horror fiction may be its best claim to originality. Can experience ultimately only be understood by metaphor, and is horror fiction best equipped to provide those metaphors? Take Jekyll and Hyde: everyone now uses those names because they capture the familiar duality of experience. Well, if modernity — as has been argued — is characterised by a multiplicity of experience — that is, not just feeling like a dual being, but a fractured, multiplicitous being — then can horror provide for the latter-day what Stevenson provided for the late nineteenth century? Can horror continue to provide us with new ways of understanding our changing selves? That would, in my view, be originality.

— In Conversation: A Writer’s Perspective; edited by James Cooper; probable pages 209–210; British Fantasy Society, 2009

Something to ponder when you need it.

I.A.M. makes a bunch of really good points. Thoug...

2009-03-10T12:16:00.000-04:00

I.A.M. makes a bunch of really good points. Though I do understand the angst about the point of it all; even if you are driven to write for reasons other than the best-seller list, you may want to know that you are making some sort of mark on someone, and not just providing them the same thing that already stuffs their shelves.

But you, Simon, are not writing cookie-cutter stuff. You do share certain themes and stylistic elements here and there with a small number of other writers. But even they are mostly contemporaries, not a long train of writers down through the decades. You are never just the hundred-and-twelfth guy writing that same old scary story.

This is where I.A.M.'s riff on how each artist rises out of others, and both reflects and differs from others, hits home. As a reader, I am never put off by noticing a similarity with something else, because that is inevitable within and across genres, but I do require that the writer's own voice and spin on it make it his or her own. Fear not, you accomplish this.

The idea that there is a limited number of stories to tell has been around a long time, at least back into the 19th century. And if it's true, then it was true before Homer set anything down. And yet, story telling and fiction writing and reading have never slowed up one iota because of this fact. That's because it is an academic fact, interesting on one level, but with little practical importance. Programming a player piano to play the same tune as an actual pianist will never allow it replace the pianist. In the same way, similar themes or plot elements are not anywhere near enough to make one story or author redundant with another.

Now, I fear you are correct that the market for intelligent horror is not huge, at the moment. Certain kinds can break out. But it's probably true that material as dark and troubling as yours is going to be too strong a draught for a lot of good readers to handle. And there will be lots of others who simply don't see the world in a similar enough way to get anything out of it. As for best-seller readers, a world in which folks who read largely for entertainment find that entertainment in Strantzas is a disturbing one, in my mind! This is true of masters whose work yours reminds me of, such as Ligotti and Campbell, and it is true of masters going way back, in every genre, and in every medium of art. So tens of millions are never going to be reading this blog. But that doesn't mean that those enthusiasts who appear to be so scarce can't be quite numerous, and can't be quite important. Maybe it's better to sell a copy to everyone in the world who gets it, who stands to really grow or change because they read your story, than it is to sell 100,000 copies to people who will say "What the hell is this, and what is wrong with that guy, anyway? Where's my James Patterson?"

Sorry to drone on, but that's my five or six cents.

There's an argument that there are only 5/7/9 actu...

2009-03-08T14:15:00.000-04:00

There's an argument that there are only 5/7/9 actual plots (choose a number) and that all fiction is merely variations of one or several of them. There's even a version of that argument that states there are only two original plots ("A Stranger Comes to Town" and "I Went on a Journey") but that seems to be a bit too simplistic, as the next logical step would be to say 'all stories come from the one original plot "Something I Just Made Up".

However...

There is a certain tendency of horror writers to create a plot derived from earlier writings of Great Authors, but it's not always something one can point to as being conscious effort to craft an homage to their hero(es). After one reads the works of others enough repeated times, the structure of the tales becomes a solid framework which is recognised as being valid: here's how you make a story work, lad… After a few successful stories, though, the framework which seemed so open and flexible is suddenly providing much in the way of variation and that's when you start getting Vampires with massive tentacles attacking the weird thing in the basement that eats everything within reach, while the clock ticking away marks the time remaining before everyone dies.

And then the child's ball bounces down the stairs in slow-motion as the toy piano plays…

I've noticed a couple of stories by different authors being damned close to one another, but am astute enough to realise that they are both emulating an earlier story by someone like Poe or Lovecraft or Welles. In a way, they are not actually stealing the plot, but are 're-telling it' either consciously or not. It is when the writer is lauded for their originality that there's a problem.

Although even then it doesn't have to be.

Listening to Elvis Presley was listening to a poor imitation of the un-known black musician of the time, but it meant that people were then open to hearing Chuck Berry later on. Likewise, Pat Boone singing "Tutti Fruity" prepared us for Little Richard's original recording (if anything could be said to prepare one for that). Motown gave us The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, which then gave us Michael Jackson and Prince. Pink Floyd gave us Allan Parsons, Yes, Jethro Tull, and eventually Arcade Fire. The Who suckled The Clash, The Jam, and Green Day.

Everything is influenced by everything else and nothing is pure. It can't be so.

Is the Horror genre more tainted than others? Possibly so, due in large part to the fact that, as you point out, the waters are shallower and therefore there's less cross-breeding which can take place.

Good? Bad? Keeping the race pure? Maintaining the strength of the Hæmophilia gene?

Well, yes. No. Neither, really, yet both.

I don't know, and I don't care, 'cause I don't wear no underwear!

If you write to satisfy a need, then the question of 'but what's the point of it?' is moot: you write for a purpose which is separate from a justification of large audience or mainstream glory.

So, in essence, shut up about the lack of fame and fortune and write some stories.