Horror's Mount Rushmore? No, Horror's Six Grandfathers

I’m a really big fan of Weird Horror, a magazine of short fiction and essays put out by Undertow Publications. The stuff they publish is excellent. Per their website:

Established in 2009, Undertow Publications is an independent press dedicated to publishing bold and unique fiction of exceptional literary merit in the weird fiction and horror genre. Our impeccably designed books have been nominated for many awards—including the World Fantasy Award—and have won the Shirley Jackson Award and the British Fantasy Award. Our goal is to keep narrative fiction alive and viable; to share great new contemporary writing; and to prove that modern genre writing is a vital mode of literature that displays great craft, is entertaining and provocative, and comments on society and the human condition in imaginative ways. We are endearingly weird, and proud of it.

You can naturally get a digital copy, but really, comrades: do yourself a favor and get a print version of their magazine. It’s a work of art.

Weird Horror, Issue 6, Spring 2023

I do have a bit of a beef with an essay I read in their latest issue, however, and I couldn’t help but respond.

In his recent essay “Horror’s Mount Rushmore” (Weird Horror, Issue 6, Spring 2023), Simon Strantzas opens with confidence:

“The three most important Horror writers are Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Thomas Ligotti...There are really two Horror genres: the American genre and the British genre. All writers who write Horror (by which I mean work explicitly marketed as Horror) are working within the outlook of one of these two distinct genres. If the writing does not adhere to one of these the work is not Horror.”

I worry however that this is somewhat dismissive of non -British or -American authors working in the genre. Further, if horror really were so easily categorized, then that oldest of unresolved debates would have been settled some time ago: what is horror?

But the debate is far from settled, and it may never be so.

I also dispute that “American Horror” and “British Horror” are genres in the way we typically understand them. These may better be classified as markets, regions with traditions and styles tailored toward English-speaking audiences with expectations of the stories they grew up with.

To not dismiss the idea without offering a supplement, I’ll briefly offer my own thoughts on the two classifications: there is ‘commercial’ horror, and there is ‘academic’ horror.

(Strantzas’ essay has examples of both.)

First, commercial horror: usually written for a different audience than the academic variety, and typically more commercially successful, as the name implies. These are the movies and books that have sequels upon prequels upon spinoffs upon adaptations: Halloween. Friday the 13th. IT. The Shining. The Exorcist. That they are often palatable to a wider audience is part of what makes them great: people from myriad backgrounds, ages, and walks of life can take something from them. (Anecdotally, I’ve read The Shining many times at different points in my life—as a son, as a father, as one recognizant of my own experience as a victim of child abuse—and each time I read it, I take something different away.)

Academic horror on the other hand is not principally targeted at broad appeal. As a result, it tends to fly under the radar of public consciousness. Sometimes a work isn’t even understood until much later, where it may develop a cult following: House of Leaves. The Girl Next Door. Witchfinder General. Now widely recognized and understood as influential, such was not the case upon publication. When someone describes a story as one written for other writers, they may be talking about this kind of horror.

And then of course, every so often a piece comes along that deftly falls into both categories: The Shining. The Exorcist. The Witch. Alien. We recognize these rare birds for the masterpieces they are, films and books (sometimes both, sometimes their novelization but not in their movie adaptation, and vice versa) alike.

There are also pieces that we understand as horror anyway, even though not expressly written or marketed as such. Much of Cormac McCarthy’s work falls within this category—Blood Meridian, for instance, or The Road. As Strantzas rightly points out:

“It may be “horror” (i.e., stories of the malignant unexpected invading the expected) but it is not “Horror” as we understand it.”

Regardless of how you define horror, to say that there are “really [only] two Horror genres: the American genre and the British genre” may be a myopic classification of the genre. Most will agree that King, Barker, and Ligotti were (are) deeply influential on the horror genre today, and many have tried to replicate their standing and success. Few authors can claim to have as many movie adaptations of their work as King, who is inarguably responsible for much of the horror revitalization in film and television in the last decade or two.

But while his influence looms large, King’s presence is part of a larger mosaic. (For a more thorough examination of that mosaic, look no further than Danse Macabre, penned by the man himself.) His success was made possible only because of those who came before him.

The far bolder claim that Strantzas makes is that it’s not Horror if it’s not American Horror or British Horror. My postscriptum not withstanding, to me that strikes as gatekeeping, or an example of the no true Scotsman fallacy. Why should it be that Japanese or Latin horror not qualify as ‘true’ Horror? Are stories featuring the wendigo—originating with the folklore of the Plains and Great Lakes Native Americans—not worthy of being classified as Horror? But if King writes about it, as he did in Pet Semetary, it can then be called true Horror? What about zombies, which originated with Haitian folklore? Are zombie stories only considered true Horror once they’ve been commercially popularized and then positioned as the invention of American or British authors (or, at least authors working in those styles/markets)?

There are many stories that can not trace their genesis to American or British minds, such as the chupacabra (Puerto Rico), werewolves (Mesopotamia), or La Llorona (Mexico). Strantzas anticipates this criticism of his analysis:

“Japan, for example, has a long history of ghosts and demons, but stories written about these myths don’t necessary adhere to the rules of Horror. Horror, as it stands now, is a decidedly Western phenomenon. One forged by the American and British traditions.”

But whose rules of Horror?

How is it that so many hundreds of years of non-American/British horror can be overlooked when stories from those cultures serve as the very foundations of so much of horror today? It may be that the relevance of a story can more readily be assessed by the metrics of modern commercial success, as measured by book sales or box office tickets. The easy availability of sales and dollar figures makes this a tempting mechanism. This is an unfortunate byproduct of our current economic systems, for what does that say about how we measure the value and importance of Horror? Are the capitalistic standards of success and popularity what we really want to grade Horror authors (or anyone else) by? How many compelling, challenging, emotionally engaging and thought-provoking stories and authors do we leave behind or overlook as a result?

Horror stories have roots both varied and deep, and while those stories and monsters have origins with certain cultures, to claim ownership of them is as bizarre as it is false. When we speak of colonialism of the English language, of the white, cis-male bias working as gatekeepers to how we access and understand horror today, this is as clear example as any.

Cultural heritage aside, Strantzas differentiates British from American Horror based upon tradition: “Paganism, witchcraft, religious wars” as being British, while American horror is “wholly ghettoized.” What does Strantzas make of paganism and witchcraft as rooted in the very identity of New England, I wonder? Quick experiment: when you read “witch trials,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Might it be those from a certain town in Massachusetts? I’ll bet so, though that may only be my American bias showing. This is not at all to say that these things originated with American colonies in the 17th century, but we should be careful not to assign ownership of paganism, witchcraft, and religious wars to British tradition.

Next to unpack is this short line:

“America’s primary mythology is one of cowboy exploration. Of heading west to meet the challenges of the New World.”

I’m not sure that “cowboy exploration” and “heroism” are the primary things that come to mind for Americans when we think of our own western expansion roots. In fact, terms like “genocide,” “slavery,” and “theft” may be more readily accessible to us as we continue to this day to wrestle with the history of our relations with Indigenous Peoples. And in that we share a commonality with our cousins across the pond; has there ever been a “greater” colonial power than England? I don’t know, but I’ll bet there are a lot of countries that were former colonies that would have something to say about that.

It is true that the influence that King, Barker, and Ligotti have had in popular horror is immense. Our literary landscape has been transformed by these authors. But to say that only American Horror or British Horror can be called as such is dismissive of Horror from other cultures, languages, perspectives, identities, and even purposes, from which people like King have borrowed and profited from immensely.

For me, Strantzas’ conclusion is somewhat of a mixed bag:

“Who will be the next important Horror writer? We probably won’t know until many years after they begin their career, but considering how the internet has deconstructed every monoculture we once had and has freed the individual from their gatekeepers, I suspect there won’t ever be another writer as important as these three were—no one else will be allowed the opportunity to be as transformative.”

What starts out as a fair assessment ends with a blind eye to his part in the very gatekeeping he laments. No, we probably won’t know until years later who the next important Horror writer is, but one thing is for sure: if the gatekeeping doesn’t end, if we continue to insist things like only true Horror comes from authors working in the American or British genres, then we’ll continue to deprive ourselves of the opportunity to find out.

Postscriptum

I asked Michael Kelly, Weird Horror’s Editor-in-chief, for his thoughts on my response before publishing this, and he made a great point that I want to take care to note:

For my part, in Simon's columns, he's been saying there is a difference between Horror, cap H, and horror. Here he's explicitly talking about Horror and the American boom.

I really do appreciate the points you made. But I think, foundationaly, you and Simon are coming at it at in different ways.

Fair as. I accept that Simon Strantzas is differentiating between “Horror” and “horror,” and I understand that he is referring to ‘Horror’ as specifically relating to American and British Horror. However, I remain in disagreement with his analysis for one simple, yet critical reason: “Horror” (American and British) does not exist in a vacuum, and its current standing and cultural impacts cannot be considered without a keen awareness of its antecedents. If modern authors are working in conversation with the likes of King, Ligotti, and Barker, as Strantzas says, then we must acknowledge that those authors are working in conversation with those that came before them. You can’t unbake that pie, so to speak.