Why Horror--or Genre Fiction At All?

Today's New York Times had a book review by Terrence Rafferty. He prefaced his review of five horror novels with a discourse on the whole genre of horror.

Rafferty's premise is that "[M]ost right-thinking — i.e., literate, educated, professional-type — people consider horror fiction repulsive, juvenile or plain stupid . . . The emotion horror stories strive to evoke — fear — is one that civilized folks are inclined to think of as low, primitive, animal."

He goes on to say, horror is "pretty determinedly nonaspirational, which is perhaps why it appeals so strongly to teenagers, slackers and fatalists, and hardly at all to normal, functioning adults, who are busy keeping the more pressing everyday anxieties — disease, financial ruin, loss of love — at bay and who may fail to see the benefit of adding vampires and zombies and poltergeists to the list."

I've read and enjoyed horror novels since I discovered my first Edgar Allen Poe story when I was about eleven. I overheard my mother and father talking about movies that had scared them, and they mentioned "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Poe. Of course, I was at the library the very next day looking for the book.

Since reading Rafferty's review, I've spent some minutes wondering why I like horror fiction so much. I've concluded that, when I was a child, it was a standard by which to measure what I could stand. My home could be a scary place when I was young. Horror fiction actually represented an escape--a place where I could wallow in fear without it actually being able to harm me. Each time I tolerated a scary book or movie without flinching, I felt better equipped to handle the scary things in my own life. Horror fiction provided a constructive outlet for me. Nowadays, of course, I'm like an adrenaline junkie. I've spent so many years reading the stuff, I need a periodic fix.

Having said that, I wonder whether the same thing applies to all genre fiction. I mean, when you pick up a romance novel, you can usually count on a HEA--happily ever after--ending. So, by extension, a romance novel--no matter what challenges the heroine faces--leaves you feeling optimistic about the outcome and, perhaps, about the world in general.

As for sci-fi, there aren't any guarantees. Sci-fi deals with possibilities, and the outcomes are never certain. You might say it appeals to the uncertainty in our lives, a generalized anxiety, which sometimes--but not always--progresses to out-and-out fear.

In addition, since there frequently is a "hidden truth" or "secret knowledge" possessed by a select few insiders in sci-fic, perhaps the genre also appeals to the conspiracy theorists (read here: the paranoid) among us.

By extension, mysteries appeal to control freaks (including me). Mysteries offer the promise that--with enough information--you can make sense of your world and neatly solve all the problems facing you. When finished, if you figured the mystery out before its end, you can lay the book down and walk away feeling empowered and proud of yourself.

Since I'm on a roll, let's tackle literary fiction next. Using the same rationale I've based the rest of this post on, literary fiction is an emotional grab bag. You never know what emotions a literary novel will evoke: sadness, inspiration, grief, joy. It's a literary crapshoot.

So maybe, instead of thinking of those who read literary fiction as intellectuals, we need to begin thinking of them as more emotionally adventurous, more willing to take chances on a novel that may not satisfy their immediate emotional needs.

Just musing . . .