Word: horror
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Author of such tales of the fantastic as Julia, Ghost Story, and In the Night Room, and editor of the Library of America's H.P. Lovecraft collections, Peter Straub is uniquely qualified to hold forth on what makes a good horror story. In the new anthology Poe's Children: The New Horror, Straub collects the best scary short stories out there. TIME talked to him about snobby writers, horror classics, and his next collaboration with Stephen King...
...seems like you're trying to make an argument with this anthology for what defines the "new horror." I thought I could make an interesting book around this thesis that the world of horror was being increasingly absorbed into mainstream writing and was absorbing mainstream writing into itself. There were all these writers, like Kelly Link, who seemed to swing back and forth, or who seemed to be in both places at the same time. This really delighted...
Many people, when they think of horror, think of ghosts and zombies and vampires and demons. You seem to be saying, though, that those can be only the most minor elements of a great horror story. That's true. But it all depends on your angle of vision. I have friends who really want to write stories with those elements, and do, and have an immensely good time. And that's all they're doing. I'm not interested in those stories. I like them as people, but that writing doesn't strike me as inherently interesting...
...Gist: There's something about film critics (or maybe all critics, or possibly just people who like things) that makes them susceptible to the lure of lists. Top Ten Films of All Time, Top 14 Movie Villains, Top 25 Serbian Horror Flicks-the combinations are endless. In his latest, Have You Seen...?, film critic and historian David Thomson, author of the singular The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, delivers a binding-busting list of one thousand flicks you need to check out. Not that he likes-or even respects-all of these movies. Rather, he writes, "This is a book...
...speak at the Harvard Book Store tonight, shared his feelings about categorization, fiction, and childlike wonder in an e-mail conversation with The Crimson.The Harvard Crimson: When you wrote “Voice of Our Shadow,” people “mistook” it for a horror novel. Later you were taken for a fantasy or science fiction writer. In past interviews you have said that you are trying to resist classification. What do you think about that?Jonathan Carroll: Critics and people who run bookstores like to classify things because it makes their jobs easier...