Word: horror
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...Siberia is rougher around the edges. The precipitating horror--the narrator's grandfather hangs himself--creates a strangely shallow impression. But what the story lacks in polish, it makes up for in mood. Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting--all shafts of light and clear, palpable chill. The narrator and her brother Jesper grow up in this setting, on a farm in Denmark in the 1930s. Distant from their parents, they find happiness in each other, and as the narrator grows from tagalong sister to adolescent, Petterson gives their relationship a delicate physical dimension...
...biggest influences are probably Roald Dahl, The Simpsons and The Golden Girls. But I also read a lot of horror, like Stephen King, Richard Matheson, and Edgar Allen...
...critics and audiences regarding horror differently these days, or is it the writers themselves who are doing something more expansive? I think it's the latter. From [fantasy writers] John Crowley and Jonathan Carroll outwards, there have been these waves of people who wrote as through it were perfectly natural to use horror, or fantasy, or sci-fi approaches and themes in mainstream stories, or vice versa. It seems to me that you get the best of both worlds in that way. And in fact, the ultimate argument I would make is that there is essentially just one world...
...think non-horror writers still look down upon the genre? You still seem a little peeved at Shirley Hazzard for ragging on Stephen King at the 2003 National Book Awards. I thought that was egregious. It rankled a bit that she should have told off Steve, and in effect dismissed him when he had just given this really great talk and the [National Book Foundation] had just given him a really serious honor. It was small-minded of Shirley Hazzard to object to his content...
...write about the "new horror," but what's the "old horror" that you would recommend to readers? I would say Frankenstein and Dracula, those two should be read. They aren't anything at all alike. There's a great novella by Arthur Machen called "The Great God Pan." Knocked my socks off when I was thirteen. Anything by Shirley Jackson. The Haunting of Hill House or The Demon Lover, which is a fabulous story-very eerie, but completely realistic. It suggests that there's a realm that we are very close to, but cannot quite apprehend, a realm that...