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| Robert Dunbar Author of the Pines, The Shore and Martyrs and Monsters |
Robert Dunbar is the author of The Shore, The Pines and a recent collection of short stores entitled Martyrs and Monsters. His short fiction has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. He has been a film, theater, dance and literary critic and his plays have been produced in a variety of venues.
Robert has been called "a true craftsman – a master of the genre" by Brian Keene and Tom Piccirilli states "his writing is rich with style and substance."
Horror Bound is pleased to present Author Robert Dunbar's thoughts on the art and discipline of writing and the state of horror fiction today. Can some horror fiction truly be considered literature?
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By Robert Dunbar
Horror Bound Featured Author
July 7, 2009
Make it hurt. If it isn’t painful, you’re not doing it right.
Without that exultant agony, why bother?
Sorry, but people are always asking me if I have advice for writers, so I thought I’d just get it out of the way. Not that it is. Out of the way, I mean. Inevitably, I’ll keep coming back to it.
I used to teach a class called “Passion and Discipline.” No, it wasn’t a sex clinic (whatever you may have heard). It was about writing, and damn few people ever got the point, which seemed simple enough really, at least to me. You need to love the process. And I don’t mean love it the way you love asparagus. The work must provide ecstasy. It needs to make you hard. Make you wet. You’ve got to be totally focused. Absolutely committed. To live this life? Bricked up alive with a ream of blank paper?
Please. Trappist monks get out more.
Not that there aren’t rewards, but your compensation can’t be about ego or royalties. The work is everything.
Well, almost everything. Real writers are just as ardent about reading. Next time you hear a couple of authors talking, just listen. If you’re at all like me (gods forbid), you’ll notice something disturbing. The same motifs come up over and over. We all blather on so wistfully about the classics, always striking that same plaintive note.
Doesn’t it make you want to scream? At exactly what point did serious writing become a suitable subject for nostalgia? Shouldn’t literature be a breathing, pulsing thing?
No. Let’s not go there, no. I promised myself I’d stay positive here. Oh hell.
From where we started, how did we ever wind up here? I’m talking about horror in general now. Just look at what’s being shoveled at readers these days, almost as though the moron market had been developed to the exclusion of all others. (Oh. Wait. That is what happened. Never mind.) I so resent the genre I love being forced to pander to the tastes of people I wouldn’t sit next to on a bus. See all those people in the tinfoil hats? Why do I suspect they’re not hurrying home to read Henry James and Shirley Jackson?
Possibly it’s not as bad as all that. Not quite.
A few writers out there still fight the good fight, as though on a (doomed?) commando mission to restore taste and intelligence to the genre.
I like to think I’m one of them. Certainly, I catch enough flack because of it. In any other genre, a call to uphold standards would be lauded. Only in horror circles is the word “literary” considered a pejorative term.
Interviewers are forever asking me, “Why is there a stigma attached to the genre?”
I notice no one ever asks if such a stigma exists. Of course, the literary mainstream feels contempt for us. We’ve earned every bit of that contempt. Think about it. Most of what’s touted as the best the genre has to offer appears to be written on a YA level. What message does that send? Reflect on the writers who established the traditions of the genre. Suddenly, it’s tragic, right? Mary Shelley was not exactly grinding them out like sausages. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Algernon Blackwood could hardly be called hacks. The same applies to Oliver Onions and M. R. James. These were accomplished wordsmiths. Stylists. Geniuses. From that pinnacle of artistry we’ve plunged to … what? Vampire bodice rippers? Torture porn? Zombie sitcoms?
Understand, there’s nothing wrong with trash. Good trash. Smart trash. In the right mood, I can enjoy that sort of thing. There’s room for every kind of writing, or there should be. But that’s the real problem, isn’t it? Culturally evolved people tend to appreciate diversity. But at the other end of the spectrum?
Not so much.
In horror, mandated drivel has just about driven good writing to the brink of extinction. If the genre – any genre – sets its sites on the gutter, where do you think it will wind up? And who benefits? Certainly not the intelligent reader. Of course, as I mentioned, a few real writers still lurk about like literary espionage agents, conspiring to improve the system from within. (Good luck.) Others have withdrawn into private cadres to plot dubious revolutions. And some are guerilla fighters.
Here. Have a grenade.
Ignore the market trends. Naturally, what sells is what’s for sale. Hello? What does that prove? (Aside from the fact that the deck is stacked?) I’ve always believed that readers will choose quality fiction if that option is made available (though this assertion admittedly remains largely theoretical). We need to reach out to new readers, some of whom don’t even begin to suspect that horror can be well written. Not yet anyway. Others may have thought so once … but deserted the genre in disgust years ago. Lure them back. This is the audience we need to attract. It won’t be easy, and don’t expect any help. Quite the contrary. But it’s necessary if we’re to survive.
I know. We shouldn’t have to deal with this. Isn’t life hard enough? Isn’t art? So many good writers have already jumped ship.
But some remain devoted.
We have our reasons. There’s poetry in the darkness, and passion, even obsession, because you never really get over your first love. Certain passages, some images, even moods stay with you, become part of the fabric of your soul. Remember that haunting voice that drifted through the trees in The Wendigo? “Oh, my burning feet of fire.” That’s one. There are others, so many, like that terrible moment when they discover the corpse in The Beckoning Fair One, or that point in Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife where – pulled from the sea – she tells him, “You were one minute too late.” (That last frightened me up out of my chair. I’ll never forget it.) But poor Eleanor’s mental disintegration throughout The Haunting of Hill House may have been even more deeply unsettling.
These books all qualify as great works of literature. Brilliant. Complex. Cathartic and transformative. Existential considerations – crafted at extraordinary levels of psychological and stylistic sophistication. In short, they possess all the qualities that make art an essential component of civilized life. Can you imagine Henry James having to contend with bloggers who post complaints about his work being confusing?
(Were the ghosts real or weren’t they? This book is so stupid I can’t even understand it!)
Not that I’m in the same class as James, but I encounter that level of response all the time, especially where THE PINES is concerned. And it pleases me very much. How could it not? Of course, THE PINES has its champions too. Even after all these years – and what? five editions? – the degree of partisan enthusiasm that novel inspires still amazes me. People are always comparing me to the old masters, and I’m so proud that my advocates tend to be among the best and brightest in the genre.
Better still, it goads the moron contingent into gibbering outrage. How wonderful is that? Nothing thrills me more than all those “Dunbar shouldn’t be allowed to write books like this” diatribes. Nothing makes me feel more validated. Nothing.
If I can provoke the enemy to this extent, I know I’m doing something right.
THE PINES. Dear gods. Talk about the book that ate my life. Hundreds of television shows and radio shows and magazine and newspaper articles, all the plays and all the poetry and stories … and this is still what everyone identifies me with. The pine barrens. The Jersey Devil. Who knew this book would make such an impact?
Folklore is intense stuff. Over the years, I’ve immersed myself in research, but it’s proved impossible to even find a consistent definition. Experts ramble about customs and traditions, about figures from obliterated older religions that somehow bleed into our collective psyches. Pan may be gone, but the green man lingers … and not just in books. Pagan mythology seeps through everywhere. In art and architecture and music. Into our minds and hearts. And writers are left trying to make sense of it all, because that’s what we do, because something speaks to us in the lore, speaks to all of us. There are psychological realities in those stories that do not correspondingly exist in objective reality. Who will explore these depths if not us?
Of course, there will always be those who prefer literal interpretations, fanatically embracing the notion of real monsters and ghosts and demons. Ever been interviewed by a Sasquatch obsessive? (Deliver us from paranormal talk radio.) Still, I can’t help but feel a little sympathy. So many such folks pick up my books for precisely the wrong reasons. Let’s face it, everything in the contemporary genre conditions them to expect THE PINES to be about some creature that eats people in the woods. Encountering instead a somewhat more evolved literary work, they feel confused, even betrayed. I know – poor souls sound very limited. But it’s not just them. Not hardly. Ever been to a convention for horror writers? What’s with all the tarot cards and crystal balls? Why must all the “writers” also be psychics? Please. Does this happen in other genres? Are science fiction writers living out pathological fantasies in which they’re in league with space aliens? Do mystery writers jump every time the phone rings, convinced it’s bound to be Scotland Yard?
Having just come out in paperback for the first time, THE SHORE is already inciting equally intense reactions from both poles. Wild enthusiasm. Abject loathing. The first review to appear called it “the best book to come out of the horror genre in years.” But the very next day, some erudite pedant advised the public that “Nobody should buy this book because Dunbar doesn’t even know what horror is supposed to be like.”
What else have I been up to? My, you are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you? (See me after class.) Well, so far only a few brave critics have had guts enough to go anywhere near MARTYRS & MONSTERS, but those reviews have been full of praise. This has been very gratifying, especially considering the battles I fought just to get that book into print. Not only was it “too literary” and “too cerebral” but also “too erotic,” apparently a triple threat. Can you even imagine what the critical response to my new novel will be like? WILLY takes the form of the diary of an emotionally disturbed teenager. The work is dark and intense but also subtle, and it’s all about language, the story seeping through almost entirely between the lines. Challenging enough? Writing it just about killed me.
Of course, there are other new works as well. A play of mine, a comedy about a horror movie diva, will shortly be released in book form, and I’m putting the finishing touches on a collection of essays about the roots of dark fantasy. Plus I’m trying to complete a new novel and have begun two others simultaneously, apparently with the intention of driving myself completely insane. It’s important to have realistic goals, don’t you think?
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