Stephen King and the Bologna of Fear by Michael Picco

{Singing}: “It’s the most “spook-tac-u-lar” time of the year!

With black cats and witches, and spider-filled niches — yes! So much to fear!

It’s the most frightening time of the year!”

(with apologies to Andy Williams)

 

“Spooky season is finally upon us!” I hear my fellow horror writers chant as we don our dark and dour apparel (“fahlahla-fahlahla lahlahlah!!”). October is the one month out of the year where we horror writers can really let our freak flag fly. You might even glimpse us as we shamble from our writing lairs, drawn and pale from our spring and summer labors.

For October is the time that we reap the dark harvests we have sown.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited for Halloween. The arrival of October always makes me feel a bit like Jack Skellington, The Pumpkin King. Oh, if only I was as nimble on my feet! These days, my old bones are far more suited to the Boogyman Shuffle than to gyrations of the The Thriller. But, I digress…

“Gasp! You sound genuinely happy, Michael! Even upbeat! Aren’t you horror writers supposed to be habitually gloomy?” you ask.

Humph.

You know… we horror writers generally get a bad rap!

I recently had someone genuflect toward me when I told them that I wrote horror. That stung (but not for the reasons that you might think). Occasionally, even my own readers will reach out to me, asking: “What the h*ll is WRONG with you?” And it’s a valid reaction, I suppose. You can’t traffic in the sorts of things that we do day in and day out without some of it rubbing off on you. That residue can spook you “normals,” I get it. Still, I find that writing in the genre to be very cathartic. Most horror writers who I know are lovely people by and large, discounting their often halting and disjointed dance moves. Still, whenever I tell someone that I write horror, I usually get one of two responses: either they find an excuse to get away from me or we’ll have a conversation about what scares them.

And, you’d be amazed by the things people tell you!

Intimate things… unsettling things. Honestly, things they probably should talk to a priest or a doctor about. People love to talk about what scares them. I think people generally like a little scare every now and then. It sharpens your awareness. Being scared really gets the blood pumping, right?

Admittedly, I am whatcha might call “jaded” — what scares you probably doesn’t even register to me. I often find myself giggling, if not all-out laughing, during most horror movies — much to the alarm and dismay of other audience members. It’s rare for me to find something that genuinely scares me. I classify most of the horror movies out there as “torture porn” as they lack any real story arc or plot beyond surviving the masked murderer or demon-possessed puppet. The same is largely true for most commercially available horror books, too. There’s a lot of horror-flavored pablum out there.

The bologna of horror, I call it: tasteless, widely available, not all that nutritious, but relatively easy to choke down.

Now, full disclosure: I used to LOVE bologna. In fact, as a kid, I rarely ate anything but bologna (or its cousin, tubular bologna, AKA, the hot dog). I used to think that bologna in all its forms was the ultimate in culinary delights. Give me a bologna sandwich with just a little ketchup, and I would be happy as a clam. And I continued to enjoy bologna that is, right up until the day that I sunk my chops into a meaty rib eye steak.

I don’t even think about eating bologna anymore. In fact, I will go on the record here and just say that bologna is nothing more than coagulated meat slurry. A conglomeration of the lesser cuts of meat: tails, earlobes, snouts… the occasional warty appendage. That sort of thing.

But, hey… sweet, delicious and juicy red meat isn’t for everyone — I get it: it’s a matter of taste. The same is true for what scares you. It was abundance of this variety of horror that’s behind why I started writing in the genre in the first place: I just wasn’t finding anything that frightened me — I mean stories that really shook me up and left me sleepless. I wasn’t finding the sorts of stories that people confessed to me in hushed and frightened tones.

Horror is a tough genre to write.

Writing something “scary” can quickly descend into the cliché or the absurd. Writing a piece that is genuinely disturbing — something that resonates and unsettles someone — can be a “hard sell” to a broad general audience. It can be easy to phone in — see the endless variations of Friday the 13th, or the even more absurd Chucky franchise. Like tasteless, homogenous bologna, banality in horror sells. A slasher chasing a nubile co-ed through the underbrush is always going to sell over a nuanced and post-modern analysis of vampirism and ritualistic bloodletting. And let me tell you: coming to this realization has not been easy. It’s taken me time to arrive at this understanding: some people just prefer bologna over steak. AND THAT’S JUST FINE… but, you can have my bologna sammich.

There are so many different aspects of what we consider to be fear, and varying degrees of responses, too. I’ve found that fear affects each of us differently and can change over the course of our lives. Sure, we respond to it in common ways (i.e. a scream, a flinch, a gasp), but fear itself is as variable and diverse as those who experience it, as well as how and when they experience it. But, ultimately, it’s the same argument about eating bologna or eating steak. It’s all in what you prefer and what your stomach can tolerate.

In his essay on fear, The Horror Writer and the 10 Bears, Stephen King says: “{when writing horror} A good assumption to begin with is that what scares you will scare someone else.” Because that’s one thing I’ve learned: Fear translates in writing. You can’t write intimately about something that doesn’t resonate with you, and horror doesn’t leave any room for error. If you’re scared writing it, readers are going to be afraid when they read it.

You can even make a bologna sandwich unsettling and “scary” if you really try. Would you like more coagulated meat slurry? No?

In his essay, King outlines the ten things that “really scare him” (well… or so he says. I think that this list is a little prosaic and probably not an entirely genuine list of fears for Sai King. But then, who can honestly expect the Master to reveal the true elements of his particular alchemy?) I remember reading this list in high school and thinking to myself: only a few of these things sound particularly scary. Let’s take a look at his ‘Ten Bears’ (what King refers to as his go-to thematic elements) list:

1. Fear of the dark.
2. Fear of squishy things.
3. Fear of deformity.
4. Fear of snakes.
5. Fear of rats.
6. Fear of closed-in spaces.
7. Fear of insects (especially spiders, flies, and beetles).
8. Fear of death.
9. Fear of others (paranoia).
10. Fear for somebody else.

The problem is that the majority of items on his list are phobias — not true fears at all. Phobias or anxieties are “lesser” fears.  They are, in my opinion, the lesser cuts of meat, in the context of my earlier analogy. While these phobias may make you anxious or even uncomfortable, they don’t really get to the real root of fear.

King’s list is not terrifying — it’s a list of triggers. While I am a great admirer of King’s writing and commentaries, I found that this list was not a great representation of what really scared me —  but then, I would humbly submit that he is wildly popular because he’s an excellent storyteller, not because he’s particularly scary. In other words, King is a storyteller first and a horror writer second. And I tend to think that writing in any genre would benefit from this perspective. I tend to think of King’s Scary Bear List as “honey bears” — less dangerous or controversial varieties of bears, easier to tame and present to a prospective audience.

But, I’ve always wanted something that has teeth… and is not at all above mauling the hell out of you.

Good horror is nuanced and subtle.

It’s very subjective. It’s very intimate, too. Writing good horror is about making narratives that wind their way into the soft folds of your brain and lay their eggs there. You remember those stories because you can’t forget them. King is a wonderful writer. I admire his work greatly and don’t mean to “throw shade” at the undisputed master of the genre. His work just doesn’t scare me. It used to. Then I started reading Lovecraft, Curran and Barron. And, now, when I think “scary” I don’t even think about King… except when asked to write an essay like this one, that is. These days, when discussing horror, I prefer what Clive Barker says of the genre: “Horror fiction has traditionally dealt in taboo. It speaks of death, madness and transgression of moral and physical boundaries. It raises the dead to life and slaughters infants in their cribs; it makes monsters of household pets and begs our affection for psychos. It shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.” Barker’s definition is much more bleak, certainly, but it adds depth to the conversation. It stabs through the veneer of phobias and gets into the juicy red meat of the matter.

It’s steak instead of bologna.