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Bio Addendum (Books)

1997 &1998

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace 06/02/97

The University, Bentley Little, 2/98

The Hellfire Club, Peter Straub, 2/98

The Mailman, Bentley Little, 2/98

Mucho Mojo, Joe R. Lansdale, 2/98

Savage Season, Joe R. Lansdale, 2/98

The Two Bear Mambo, Joe R. Lansdale, 2/98

Bad Chili, Joe R. Lansdale

The Totem, David Morrell

Midnight's Lair, Richard Laymon

Chaingang, Rex Miller

Jackals, Charles Grant

Stone Junction, Jim Dodge

I also started the horror "classic" Erebus by Shaun Hutson and just had to give it up. In fact, I should really do some reviews of these damn things but the horror field appears to have gotten in some sort of rape/castration fetish that it can't get out of (particularly castration by fellatio). As far as I can tell, some authors (Laymon and Little) power their work almost exclusively by these fears. I have a couple of problems with this, not least that it's exploitative. The whole castration/fellatio scenes tend to be powered by not so much men's recurring fear that a woman is going to bite it off then and there but by the writer's decision to get a bit of foreplay and sex writing in there before the deed. Likewise, many of the rape scenes that seem to occur not long after the victim has some sort of breathlessly described fantasy. We're not supposed to be horrified, we're supposed to be titillated, and the horror is just thrown in there to justify the sex. Although, because it pops up so much in Little's work, and he seems sincerely interested in writing large, ambitious horror novels, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that these thngs are true sources of horror and anxiety that he's interested in working in. This brings me to the next problem; it seems to miss the whole point of horror literature in general and, I would submit, the point of literature altogether. Literature is even more symbolic than I think the majority of its composers recognize, and I'll say off the cuff that the great majority of horror literature concerns itself metaphorically with the anxieties related to rape, castration, and, particularly, sexual disease as a result of violation. Check out the enduring archetypes of vampires and werewolves, wherein the victims must struggle with unwanted violation, fearful flashbacks, a feeling of alienation from others after (along with numerous comments from their friends that they're not the same), and actual transformation into the monster after the fact. (Is it any wonder that we readily accept that many rapists and sexual abusers were themselves raped and sexually abused after growing up with vampire and werewolf movies in which the tendencies of the attacker are transmitted to the attacked through attack?) If you want to deal with the complex psychological problems of identifying with the perpetrator of the violator and look at the empowerment through violation narcissist fantasy, you go with the vampire myth. If you want a furthering of the victim-as-unclean-and-forever-after-tainted self-loathing fantasy, you go with the werewolf myth. These are just two horror archetypes, and I think they deal with the issues and anxieties of rape and sexual disease much more succinctly and entertainingly than a rape episode in a horror novel; it's very rare for the raped or castrated character to survive the attack, for one thing, thus really missing a very important stage of the rape or castration anxiety; the aftereffects. Also, I maintain that literature works on these anxieties at a symbolic level to keep its audience. Direct works of literature about these things have a real rough path to trod as, unless there is an original approach or an overwhelming intelligence focussing on the subject, people find it too depressing to really continue and put it down saying, "Why do I want to read all this? I know all this stuff, already." Or as, years ago, my date said while restlessly squirming her way through the movie Dolores Claiborne, "yeah, yeah, life is horrible, blah, blah, blah. This is boring. Let's go." I chalked this up as just general insensitivity on her part until I realized, long after the fact, that such insenstivity was coming from the mouth of a survivor of long-term sexual abuse and incest. Anyway, so my point is that the rape/castration/disease anxieties being used as "spine-tinglers" in horror novels tend to miss the point and dead-end the novel, if not the whole genre, pretty quickly.

Brotherhood of the Rose, David Morrell 6/98

About A Boy, Nick Hornsby 6/98

All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By, John Farris, 6/98

Fiends, John Farris 7/98

The Regulators, Richard Bachman 7/98, followed right by

Desperation, Stephen King 7/98

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith 7/98

Ripley Underground, Patricia Highsmith 8/98

Ripley's Game, Patricia Highsmith 8/98

Vampire$, John Steakley 9/98

Brain Storm, Richard Dooling 10/98

Torso, Steven Nickel 10/98

The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang, 10/98

The Store, Bentley Little, 11/03/98

Rumble Tumble Joe R. Lansdale, 11/16/98

Voodoo in New Orleans, Robert Tallant, 11/28/98

The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks, 12/04/98