Define horror, many "horror" stories do not even supernatural elements.Originally Posted by Kyriakos
Well it is a ghost story, again marginally since that is by no means the center of the plot, and it only happens in the very end, but this is a list of horror stories, which it definately is not
There isn't a whole lot of good horror stuff out there, IMO. I like scary books, but the vast majority of it is just about gross-out and blood and gore. That's not scary, to me - it's just repulsive.
I doubt we can define a good horror text by its capacity to scary people. It is more the capacity to create moody and atmosphere. For example, Red Hidding Hood and Blue-beard are cleary scary stories. That is their objective. Maupassant has a very good re-telling of Red Hidding Hood, but modernized (to his time) as a normal crime.
Many horror writers - Le Fanu and Irving for example, have stories that are more mockering of horror, as if they tried to mock the people who get scared around the bonfire with the stories.
Poe, lacks "boo", in a sense he works leaving people upset and does not end it. That is probally the best trait of a short story, around the proverbial bonfire you create tension and when the audience is distracted you go for the "boo", ending the narration. If we look well, Macbeth and Hamlet are in the sense great horror stories.
I would say that horror stories either have some cosmic element that causes horror, or some psychological one. In the case of the Overcoat, it is a story with humour, on the other hand very tragic, but it cannot make you fearfull of anything in it. The cause of Akaky's destruction is simple, even mundane: he is in a way like an insect that is crushed under the foot of the indifference of his contemporary society towards people like him.
Even when he becomes a ghost, and does indeed frighten some people in the narrative, he is still presented in a comedic way (for example i recall his enlarging mustache! ).
The Overcoat is one of my favourite stories. I have read it many times, and not even in the first one did i feel scared, or uneasy, or at least noted that other people might find it horrifying. Thus i do not see it at all as a horror story.
But then, you can not define something universal (the genre horror) with your personal experiences, right? I never got scared by reading any of those stories for example.
Horror does not really scare, take Sleeping Hollow: it is actually a comedy. Icaabod is scared, but the reader laugh of him. In other hand, people may get scared from Kafka Process and the upsetting destiny of K.
rYou can counter saying Dickens 3 ghosts are not horror story or maybe they are. I would say, Gogol is a new kind of horror, a urban form, which predates Stevenson, Kafka and Borges who could do all this with or without cosmic elements and where we are like Poe, impressed by the size of the universe.
Last edited by JCamilo; 01-04-2011 at 05:21 PM.
Sturgeon's Law-90% of everything is crud
I see your point. I do not agree though that it is less eccentric than my own definition, to claim (like you did) that stories which can be defined utterly as belonging to other genres (such as magic realism, or realism) are in reality horror, no matter that they do not go out of their way to horrify.
Interesting that when i first read The Trial i thought it was very funny. Granted back then i knew nothing about Kafka's diaries, and later on i came to be of the view that the Trial was intended to be utterly tragic.
Gogol was known for his humour, but also for his ability to paint a tragic image.
This co-existence of tragedy with comedy in his work probably is even more striking in the short story "Diary of a madman", but exists in the Overcoat as well.
If one was to take your reasoning a bit further, then what is there to stop one from claiming that stories such as (Gogol's) The Nose are also horror, since they present some gruesome event? (the nose of someone being cut-off).
No, of course not, isnt the nose the forefather of those tales where people is haunted by themselves (hands, feet?). Some classify the Nose as a doppleganger story, theme of Stevenson and Poe?
Borges, magical realist, wrote a Cthutulu story, mostly because he is very influenced by English gothic stories.
It is in my view as well a Doppelganger tale, since effectively the nose becomes an antagonist, and lives the life the protagonist wanted to live
But that story is sunk in comedic elements, even from the beginning.
Also there are many stories that have dark elements, which are not horror (in my mind). For example Tanizaki wrote a large work about some japanese warlords, and one in particular who developed a perversion out of looking at severed heads of enemy soldiers being washed by attractive women. He wanted to be one of those heads. This is quite dark, but the story itself is not horror, but realism, and relies mostly on psychological elements (on the surface as well, since below the surface every story relies obviously on such elements).
I think that for a story to be horror the writer has at least to be trying to present something that frightens. Now most adult readers will not feel really scared by a story, but they can realise the intent being existant to cause such an emotion.
Private Memoirs and Confessions By a Justified Sinner by James Hogg could qualify as an early horror story.
It's somewhat like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde except it's actually interesting and fun to read (funny because it's actually older) and the characters are a lot more well developed.
The fiendish Gil-Martin is one of my favorite antagonists of all time.
I give it the utmost recommendation.
I"m reading I Am Legend right now and I'm finding it a page-turner.
Baudelaire.
J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage.
- Rimbaud
Oh, right - I'd forgotten he said that.But he was right.
It really goes for all forms of media. Its the 10% that we stick around for.Oh, right - I'd forgotten he said that.
Sorry if I'm repeating myself but I am finding that I'm really enjoying Richard Mathesons short stories. There are a few duds but its worth it to stick around for the gems like Mad House and Dance of the Dead.
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