Author | Critic
My story “Choo-Choo” has been published in the new, horror-themed issue of Polar Borealis, a free online magazine devoted to Canadian speculative fiction.
Click here to read the whole issue (no payment or registration required).
Dark Screams: Volume Seven is one of those rare short story collections that provides not only a wide variety of styles, voices and plots, but also a clear thematic unity. To be sure, this book has been carefully and thoughtfully assembled. Released by premier horror press Cemetery Dance, it comes as no surprise that the names on the cover read almost like a “who’s who” of genre superstars. Consider the editors: Brian James Freeman’s work has been published by a number of presses, including Warner Books, Leisure, Borderlands Press, and Book-of-the-Month Club, and Richard Chizmar recently collaborated on the novella Gwendy’s Button Box with Stephen King. I cite these credentials as evidence for a reason: Freeman and Chizmar work at the vital center of contemporary mainstream American genre fiction.
My story “Sabbatical,” about a dissertation-writing reprieve gone horrifically awry, is now available in Dark Moon Digest #28.
Issue synopsis: In the twenty-eighth issue of Dark Moon Digest: a hardware store offers a rewards program you can’t refuse; an Internet meme goes viral in more ways than one; a little girl gets a new pet; a woman loses her sense of identity; a man and woman reluctantly do their job; a starlet gets more than she bargains for; a father gives his son a special 18th birthday present; and two college students isolate themselves in a cabin in the woods to finish their dissertations. Fiction by Tom W. Miller, Patrick Lacey, Phillip A. Myers, Shannon Lawrence, E. M. Hurst, Robert Dean, Ryan C. Bradley, and Mike Thorn. Columns by Jay Wilburn and George Lea, and reviews of Entropy in Bloom by Jeremy Robert Johnson and Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King.
The issue is available to order here.
Anya: I went into the novel at age 14, but I was already aware of Pennywise the Clown, having peeked around the corner as my parents were watching the miniseries on tape, when I was far too young to watch such things. Tim Curry’s vicious performance was the source of many nightmares I had as a child. The clown, I believe, taps into our collective fear of the uncanny, a trepidation of the vaguely familiar. What was your first encounter with Pennywise, and what is it that makes him such a resonant horror icon, in your opinion?
Mike: I think I read Stephen King’s novel and saw Tommy Lee Wallace’s miniseries right around the same time, when I was 12 or 13. I can’t remember which one came first, the book or the adaptation, but they were both major presences in my adolescent and early teenage years. They’ve both stuck with me ever since, especially the book, which I’ve re-read several times. I keep coming back to the miniseries, too.
To answer the second part of your question: I think you’ve summarized what makes Pennywise such a memorable figure – he perfectly represents Sigmund Freud’s object of “the uncanny.” Sometimes, I wish that the popular narrative surrounding It wasn’t defined so prominently by the figure of Pennywise, since he/it’s only one of many conduits and expressions for fear. At the same time, I can’t deny that King’s child-killing, sewer-dwelling clown is such an eerily distinct character.
It would be just as reasonable to label James Newman’s Odd Man Out “realist” fiction as it would be to call it “horror fiction.” These kinds of category-based distinctions too often and too easily slip into banal generalities about “merit,” but I raise the issue partially in order to identify this novella’s profound, vital, and distinct modus operandi. I do think Newman is very conscious of the horror genre here—not only of what it is, but more importantly of what it can be, what it can do. It starts with affect, but it doesn’t end there.
I’m fascinated by this book’s recurring tensions, between sensitive, humanist character dynamics and that which absolutely and totally exceeds the human. Certainly, this tension arises often from the kind of mysticism described in the author’s bio (consider “Hurricane Sandrine,” “Mystic Tryst,” and “Music of the Spheres,” which is the collection’s strongest piece by far).
Halloween Carnival Volume 1, edited by Brian James Freeman, provides a handful of efficiently written variations on its title theme. Its overall effect is pleasant, if not especially demanding. One gets the sense that this might be what Freeman wants: an assortment of easy and digestible Halloween-set tales. The collection’s structure is interesting, in that it begins with three relatively brisk pieces before concluding with a long story and a novelette. This layout seems to suggest a process of easing into or building up to the main event(s), but I think the book peaks with its second entry—Kevin Lucia’s genuinely powerful “The Rage of Achilles, or When Mockingbirds Sing.”
Nicole Cushing’s novella The Sadist’s Bible delves into the ideological, philosophical, and theological problems of binary thinking. I know… at the outset, this might sound like some highfalutin literary project, but Cushing commits totally to horror, and to the ways in which this genre can bring both insights and physical affects to her ideas.
In April, A.M. Novak and Mike Thorn discussed The Exorcist film series in detail. FOX recently announced a second season for Jeremy Slater’s television adaptation, so Novak and Thorn discussed the news at the request of a “Devious Dialogues” reader.
Mike: The first thing that struck me about this series is that its narrative approach is opposite to the prequels (Exorcist: The Beginning [2004] and Dominion [2005]). Whereas those films took different approaches with Father Merrin’s backstory (and, to my mind, equally unsuccessful), creator Jeremy Slater moves forward here to further explore the MacNeil family. In doing so, he reimagines a lot of what was presumably resolved at the end of William Peter Blatty’s novel and William Friedkin’s adaptation. As someone who admires both, I couldn’t stifle the cognitive dissonance — Slater’s MacNeils don’t at all resemble my recollection/perception of Blatty’s original characters. What do you make of Slater’s decision to create a story that builds off the original novel?
Anya: I did notice a disparity between the dynamic of Reagan and her mother in both the novel and the 1973 film, and that of their relationship in the show. There was a definite choice on the writers’ part to create conflict between the now-grown Reagan and her mother Chris MacNeil, due to Chris’ callous exploitation of her daughter’s ordeal after the events in Georgetown. However, in both the novel and the original, there is nothing but the deepest unconditional love between the duo. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most of the people watching FOX’s The Exorcist have at least seen the 1973 film, and remember the strong familial bond, myself included. This bond is the source of so much empathy for the characters involved that, for me, their relationship in the new series feels like an unwelcome change that undermined that very empathy. That said, I appreciate the angle that Slater takes by exploring the entire MacNeil family, and found that the emotional ties amongst the other family members (sisters Casey and Kat, and father Henry) provides an adequate substitute for what was lost on Reagan and Chris.
Mike Thorn 