On Genre...(continued)

"May we open this celebration of the work in your hand by defining two kinds of fantastic fiction? One, the kind most often seen in horror novels and movies, offers up a reality that resembles our own, then postulates a second invading reality, which has to be accommodated or exiled by the status quo is it attempting to overtake. Sometimes, as in any exorcism movie - and most horror movies are that, by other names - the alien thorn is successfully removed from the suppurating flank of the veal. On other occasions the visitor becomes part of the fabric of 'everyday' life. Superman is, after all, an alien life form. He's simply the acceptable face of invading realities. The second kind of fantastique is far more delirious. In these narratives, the whole world is haunted and mysterious. There is no solid status quo, only a series of relative realities, personal to each of the characters, any or all of which are frail, and subject to eruptions from other states and conditions. One of the finest writers in this second mode is Edgar Allan Poe, in whose fevered stories landscape, character - even architecture - become a function of the tormented, sexual, anxious psyche of the author; in which anything is possible because the tales occur within the teller's skull." Introduction By Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman's Sandman : The Doll's House, 3rd April 1990 "Sex is very important to everybody, anybody, and I don't think that it 's treated particularly well in imaginative fiction; I'm not talking about horror, but also about science fiction and fantasy. By and large the imaginative genre tends to be a little bit behind everybody else in their sexual politics, I their view of the richness of human sexuality. You know, you can pick up a lot of Sword and Sorcery books and their attitude to women would not have been out of place in the 1940's. I think there is a fear of sexuality, especially of female sexuality, but generally of any sexuality that is a little away from the white, straight male's point of view. Most fantasy is written by white, straight males. You see it a bit now, what with women science fiction and fantasy writers coming along, gay writers coming along, but not to a large extent. I think that the white, straight male's kind of imaginative fiction will do anything it can to diminish the power that sexuality has, particularly female sexuality. One of the things I've written about often is the power of women, the power of the goddess. Imajica is a novel devoted to that idea, to the rise of the Goddess; The Great And Secret Show and Everville contain very strong female characters; my new novel Galilee also has a very powerful female character; Sacrament has a gay male who is very comfortable with his gay sexuality. I think that as an Outsider - and I do feel like an Outsider - it's very important to be putting very different points of view in front of readers, that it isn't just playing into the same old prejudices. "There is a conventional kind of horror fiction which very much deals with happy endings, deals with wrapping things up… I don't favour those because I think they are a lie! I don't think life is like that. The truer moment of catharsis is in the moment of embracing, when you say, "You know, this ambivalence simply describes my life, there's no use trying to destroy it. It is a description of a protean human being who is aging, who is changing, who is falling in love, who is falling in lust, who has a bad stomach and a headache. That's who I am, so what the hell is the use in trying to run away from that?" In my case, horror fiction is a way for characters with whom audiences can hopefully identify to go and confront these things, to say, "Oh, I see, the issue is not about destroying these things but about recognising them and accepting them for what they are." I think a happy ending is where you are honest and there is a terrible dishonesty in the idea that you control the demon out. The demon is you; it's am expression of your fears and your hopes, your excesses, your decadences. Maybe I'm more in love with my monsters than other authors are." Addicted To Creativity (Part 1) By Bill Babouris, Samhain, No 70, November 1998 "I think that one of the problems that is studied and explored in horror fiction is the problem of the paradox of the body. The body is a source of delight to us, from childhood onwards, satisfying our appetites, whether they be sexual or for food or even for sleep. Sensual satisfactions are directly related to our bodies, our nerve endings. Those same nerve endings are, under different circumstances, a source of great agony to us. You can stub your toe, you can cut yourself, there are any number of ways that the body can be damaged, from the minor all the way up to the fatal. We have all got this physical machine that our consciousness occupies, the vulnerability of which is in direct proportion to how much of a source of pleasure it can be. The pain/pleasure principal, as any exponent of sado-masochism will be the first to argue, is about defining the barrier between the two. I've always found this fascinating. However, for the most part it has been subdued in the movies, with the exception of directors like Cronenberg." Hellraiser By David J Howe, Starburst, No 110, October 1987 "I think a lot of people like to label things and in turn a lot of people are turned off by labels, and that bothers me, that disappoints me. Anything that demands a sense of wonder to embrace - I want very much for the people who read this kind of fiction, who see these kinds of movies to go and understand how pervasive the fantastique is…The imaginative life is part of us all as children and…our dreams are still full of that as adults. It's not like the people in these stories are so distant from us, because our lives are full of a sort of 'casual surrealism'." Weird Tales Talks with Clive Barker By Robert Morris, Weird Tales, No 292, Fall 1988 "I think we should cancel the word genre, I think we should throw the word genre out. We are not a genre, which suggests a small or perhaps even somewhat besieged condition - we are a continent and, actually most of the smaller things which came along afterwards like naturalism, realism, these things are a mere 200 years old, to pick up Ramsey’s word, they are striplings. How long has naturalistic fiction been around – maybe 300 years? "We are in a tradition which began, we may assume, around campfires as stories were told and gods were made and goddesses were worshipped and the fundamentals, the primal concerns of human beings, were laid out. Fuck genre – this isn’t about genre, this is about the fact that we are writing and painting and making in film form expressions of the profoundest issues of the human heart!" Guest Of Honour Speech Impromptu speech by Barker at the FantasyCon banquet, Nottingham, 24 September 2006 (note - full text here) ...other comments Ramsey Campbell : "If any contemporary writer can lead the genre into new territory, he can - indeed, already has. Stephen King has characterized the horror genre as essentially reactionary and normative; so far as I'm concerned as a writer, he's wrong, and Barker clearly disagrees too. Barker is a writer who's prepared to go all the way, wherever the logic of his imagination may lead him. He seems to me to be the first true voice of of the next generation of horror writers, and I greet the news of his first novel The Damnation Game with cheers and eagerness. I'm proud to have introduced him. the genre needs him." Campbell's Column By Ramsey Campbell, Halls Of Horror, Issue 29, Vol.3 No.5, [October] 1984 Del Howison : "Clive is like David Bowie. He constantly reinvents himself - I think that's almost for sanity reasons... When you've accomplished something, why would you want to repeat yourself? Clive constantly has broken new ground, whether it's his artwork, writing or filmmaking. "Cocteau didn't limit himself to one thing, and Clive hasn't done that, either." 'Freakz' Alive, Clive! By Rob Lowman, Los Angeles Daily News, 14 October 1998 Jane Johnson (Editor, HarperCollins) : "Clive and I often feel we are fighting in the same corner, against the easy prejudices of an industry in which sameness is prized, and anything with a touch of imagination to it is regarded as weird and outré... "He's a writer who makes no concessions to external influences - to the marketplace, to readers, to his publishers. He writes what he wants to write when he wants to write it, and is in that way alone one of the most genuine and honest writers I know.... When you enter Clive's novels, you are entering a world in which literally anything may happen in front of your eyes, and that is both a terrifying and a thrilling prospect." The Relaunch of Clive Barker By Jeff Zaleski, Publishers Weekly, 24 September 2001 The World According To... Index | Home page This page has been created for information and entertainment purposes only. All quotes remain the copyright of the original owners.