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I write scary stuff. And I'm not much of an apologist for it. I love horror fiction, and fiction that contains the spark of the horrific.

Many people over the years have asked my why I write horror fiction. So I'll confess a secret: I do it because it keeps me enthralled.

Now, because of the horror movies of recent years, people who haven't picked up much horror fiction may believe that all you need for a horror novel is a bit of blood, an overdose of violent images, and a lot of weirdness.

To some extent, this may be true.

But what I find in horror fiction that keeps me enthralled is none of these things: I find an accurate emotional portrayal of the internal struggles that all human beings must go through, and a spiritual quest for the unknowable. Oh, and entertainment, as well.

A bit about my history with horror fiction:

I wrote my first horror story when I was about nine, and yes, it was full of Technicolor violence. My reading to that point had been the Bible, Poe (poetry only), Ray Bradbury, Beverly Cleary, P.L. Travers, and Hugh Lofting.

A smattering, basically, of what was available to kids who read at that time.

By the time I was 14, I'd moved on in my reading, but it was truly the discovery of William Styron's novel, Set This House On Fire, that made me realize that the great themes of literature were not necessarily nice ones. In Styron's novel, emotional and psychic violence whirls about the narrative, and finally, a horrifying moment lives within the calm of that cyclone. The tale is not supernatural, but in some ways, it is intensely spiritual.

And very, very dark.

I had to sneak my mother's copy of The Exorcist out of her dresser. It was considered too shocking in the early 1970s when it came out. At the time, I also was picking up Thomas Tryon's bestsellers, The Other, and Harvest Home, and equally enjoyed those novels.

Although there was horror -- sometimes even over-the-top-shocking horror -- in these books, the centers of those novels had more to do with the truths of family (and the emotional damage done within them through secrets and lies), than it had to do with the moment of "boo!"

I consider the moment of "boo!" to be essential to great and small horror fiction, by the way. A reader reads for many reasons, but one of the finer ones is to get a little shock while reading.

I graduated from Tryon and Styron to King and Straub and Koontz as I got older, and I knew in my soul that I could not write horror fiction, because I wanted to write that hopeful kind of fiction and not the dark kind.

So I began writing what I thought was a love story of memory and regret, and it turned horrifying and dark fairly quickly -- like one of those summer afternoons when the air is still and the world seems at peace, and then a storm, out of nowhere, races down, Zeus on a rampage from some Greek legend. I found that no matter what I wrote, it turned toward horror -- but I also found that at the same time, the story was a love story, and a mystery, and a thriller. That's one great thing about horror fiction: it can encompass other genres within it, and create a large canvas.

I learned most about horror fiction from college, however.

I went to Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia -- which, at the time, was an all-male production, so to speak -- and in that environment, studied English Literature, which meant, primarily, Literature Solely from England, with some side trips into Russian, Scandinavian, German, and American literature.

Between Chaucer and Shakespeare and Dinesen (probably my favorite of all the writers I've ever read), I learned that literature is primarily a vision and a language, wrapped within an entertainment. A great work of literature must also have its entertainment value, and almost all of the ones I've enjoyed and read have this. From Matthew Lewis's The Monk, through Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Melville's Moby Dick, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, right up until Toni Morrison's Beloved, which is both a horror story and a literary novel all at once. And an entertainment.

So, as a writer, I had to discover what my vision was, and my vision, for better or worse, has to do with the spiritual, the nightmarish, the beautiful, the redemptive, and the imaginative. Within that vision, I had to find an entertaining way of expressing it. My recent paperback, Naomi, has all those elements, and to me, it's as much a fantasy and a love story as it is a horror story.

It all comes through when I write, and I just let it out, like the final hopes from Pandora's box of wonders. I'm not sure you can write horror without having some kind of spiritual sense, because at the heart of all horror fiction is the question: What is out there? And the discovery of this question is the journey of the horror novel.

I wrote my first trade hardcover, The Infinite, as both an entertainment and as a spiritual quest. It is as much influenced by the works of Charles Dickens and John Irving as it is by Peter Straub or Bram Stoker. The title alone refers to a sense of the "what's out there," for The Infinite, is about the vastness of the unknowable. The story itself, purportedly about a haunted house, is truly about haunted lives -- a handful of people who have been touched in some way by the infinite, by some Ability X, that gives them either insight or a paranormal moment. And it gets shocking, fast.

True to form for the haunted house oeuvre, the characters are gathered to a house called Harrow, which sits along the Hudson Valley of New York...a house of infinite possibilities of haunting, for it was built by its creator to be a haunt. What the people in The Infinite discover, of course, is that they are the ones who are haunting the house, and not the other way around. They are, in fact, the kindling for its power.

The scares arrive thereafter.

But that's enough about my book. I want to suggest a list of novels of horror that transcend genre boundaries:

Magic Terror by Peter Straub
The novella "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff" is alone worth the price of this amazing collection from the horror novelist, who I believe is writing about the internal life of America through the convention of the horror story. Magic Terror is Straub's best collection, and I urge anyone who believes that horror fiction cannot be great literature to read at least "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff" before making that decision -- it is horrifying and chillingly funny and beautiful all at once.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
I could not even embark on a career writing horror stories without having first loved Shirley Jackson and her stories. The Haunting of Hill House is more terrifying than anything I've ever read, yet it's a very quiet book. She got to the heart of character in this one, and she understood more than most novelists that story is supreme. Even her final, fragment of a novel, Come Along With Me, is a page-turning and enlightening story -- without an ending. And somehow, it carries its own chill because of that.

Set This House On Fire by William Styron
This novel has had more influence on me as a writer than nearly anything else I've read. From Styron's narrative drive, to his depiction of human and personal evil, right through this tale that feels nearly gothic in some indefinable way, I found this novel enthralling. Even the rhythm of the title is hypnotic, and this made me run out and read everything by Styron the moment I finished it. Is it horror? Yes. All of Styron's novels have horror at their center, but his novels are also about the wideness of the world and the personal histories of a few people as they traverse the distance.

Them by Joyce Carol Oates
All right, you can probably tell I'm stretching the boundaries of what horror fiction is, but this novel -- which I first read in high school as an assignment from an English teacher -- is absolutely terrifying in its depiction of a family living on the edge of Detroit in the 1960s. What's more powerful to all of us than family? And within power, there is usually terror, as well. If you've only read We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, you need to discover the entire catalogue of Joyce Carol Oates' fiction.

Misery by Stephen King
Sure, Stephen King has, in many ways, created a major and continuing commercial presence for horror fiction in our world. But he's an amazing writer besides, and Misery is one of his best: the horror, the dark comedy, the reader being held as much a captive as is Paul, the hapless victim of Annie's dark love and attention -- because she's his No. 1 fan. This is one of King's best, but then, he has many bests. He's willing to go over the top with horror, and still bring it back to humanity -- and great writing. I could recommend a dozen of his novels, but I think Misery fits in well with this group.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare
You knew I had to throw this in here! Who can forget the witches, or social-climbing Lady Macbeth, or Macbeth himself and the blood he's steeped in, the dagger he sees before him, Banquo's ghost, etc?

Throw into this pile any number of great fictions, dramas, and poems. The Lady of Shalott by Tennyson: is it a love story or a horror story? The Bible -- full of horrors, as well as hope; Dante's Inferno, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Medea....

Literature is full of horrors, and to not embrace them -- fictionally -- is to deny great literature as well as to forget that the truth of life can sometimes best be found in the shadows.

The Infinite

Read an excerpt from The Infinite

Look for Douglas Clegg's books on BookSense.com.

Douglas Clegg was born in Virginia, but grew up all over the place. Like many other horror writers, is a nice guy, which is probably why he felt he should write this essay! His first novel, Goat Dance, came out in 1989. In the year 2000, his collection, The Nightmare Chronicles, won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He created the Internet's first publisher-sponsored e-serial in 1999. His recent paperback fiction includes You Come When I Call You, Mischief, Naomi, and, in September 2001, his first trade hardcover, The Infinite.

Further Reading

John Irving
Connie Willis
Lewis Shiner
In Your Face: E-books
Brian Selznick
Jeffrey Ford
Ray Bradbury interview coming next week!

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