Robert Dunbar's Blog - Posts Tagged "dark-fiction"
WEIRD RELATIONSHIPS
A writer, any writer, has a weird relationship with the critics. No matter how often we insist that we write for ourselves alone, we’re all of us constantly compelled (however surreptitiously) to find out whether the press has validated our talents or not. I’ve never known a writer this wasn’t true of … never known a writer who couldn’t be plunged into the blackest despair by a bad review or who wouldn’t feel elated over a good one. I don’t care how healthy the person’s ego, how centered he or she appears to be. It never fails. Reviews are the mirrors in which we constantly check ourselves. And the Internet only ramps these inclinations up a notch. Make that several notches. Years ago, a writer only heard from the public if someone at a cocktail party happened to recognize you from a television interview. Now everyone – and I mean everyone – has a platform from which to declaim their opinions.
Sometimes this can be a bit daunting.
But I’ve been lucky. Often, the comments from readers have been just as gratifying as the professional critiques, and even the negative remarks have proved oddly satisfying. (I still want “this book is so stupid I can’t even understand it” on a t-shirt.) For instance, the reviews for my novel WILLY have been tremendously stirring. But it’s the reader comments, often quite profound and insightful, that have elicited the strongest emotional responses from me. [Check out the ones at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10... or at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/WILLY-Robert-Du....] In a world where artists perpetually struggle against terrible odds – almost always for so little in the way of reward – knowing that readers appreciate your work can be all that keeps a writer going.
Luckily, with reviews for WILLY still showing up, the new edition of MARTYRS & MONSTERS is already creating an impact of its own. Not that the collection didn’t do well in its earlier edition – it did, and in spades, with critics apparently vying to outdo each other in the use of superlatives. (Any writer who claims not to love hearing "masterpiece" and "genius" over and over is lying.) But new reviews continue to surface, all of them incredibly positive, and – again – the comments from readers have also been quite moving, often in the most unexpected ways. Take a moment to peruse these – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66... – and I think you’ll see what I mean. This new edition of MARTYRS & MONSTERS from Uninvited Books restores some mangled text, corrects various copyediting and proofreading errors and adds some new material.
Yes, I’ve been fortunate. And the best relationships are always at least a little weird …
Sometimes this can be a bit daunting.
But I’ve been lucky. Often, the comments from readers have been just as gratifying as the professional critiques, and even the negative remarks have proved oddly satisfying. (I still want “this book is so stupid I can’t even understand it” on a t-shirt.) For instance, the reviews for my novel WILLY have been tremendously stirring. But it’s the reader comments, often quite profound and insightful, that have elicited the strongest emotional responses from me. [Check out the ones at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10... or at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/WILLY-Robert-Du....] In a world where artists perpetually struggle against terrible odds – almost always for so little in the way of reward – knowing that readers appreciate your work can be all that keeps a writer going.
Luckily, with reviews for WILLY still showing up, the new edition of MARTYRS & MONSTERS is already creating an impact of its own. Not that the collection didn’t do well in its earlier edition – it did, and in spades, with critics apparently vying to outdo each other in the use of superlatives. (Any writer who claims not to love hearing "masterpiece" and "genius" over and over is lying.) But new reviews continue to surface, all of them incredibly positive, and – again – the comments from readers have also been quite moving, often in the most unexpected ways. Take a moment to peruse these – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66... – and I think you’ll see what I mean. This new edition of MARTYRS & MONSTERS from Uninvited Books restores some mangled text, corrects various copyediting and proofreading errors and adds some new material.
Yes, I’ve been fortunate. And the best relationships are always at least a little weird …
THE SWAMP STOMP / Part Two
or “Up to My Neck at the Shore”
Something pale shimmered in the swells. He squinted. Even on such an overcast day, the bay glittered. The object bobbed between two of the boats. Stooping, he strained to make it out. Some sort of fish, belly up among the pilings? Squid-like, the thing wavered down, now visible, now gone. He crouched at the edge of the rotting dock.
The surface stirred as a swell approached, sloughing sideways like an aquatic serpent. He bent to prod the object with his cane, to bring it closer, but with the perversity of things in water, it twisted the other way, and he shivered, leaning further.
Something watched him from the water.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
“This book is so stupid I can’t even understand it.”
Zen-like in its purity, that’s still my all-time favorite “reader” comment for one of my books on Amazon. And what’s to be made of this statement (also from Amazon)?
“I hate all that prose and literary stuff. I just wants me some horror.”
So disheartening. I’ve often wondered what a novel should be if not literary. Musical? Athletic? Also I get sick of reading that “Dunbar obviously doesn’t even know what horror is supposed to be.”
Let me guess. Is it "supposed" to be stupid?
“Who does this Dunbar think he is?”
(Sorry. Can't help you there.)
So many years had passed between books: I had to wonder whether I could pick up the thread. And the initial responses to this sequel to The Pines were not encouraging. If anything my anti-fans had grown more incensed with the passage of time, because by now my work had also been stigmatized as “difficult.” One woman on Amazon railed at length about my books being too complicated to read in front of the television. Clearly, she felt betrayed by this, as though Horror itself had let her down. I began to wonder if a readership for adult horror like The Shore even existed.
Good reviews seemed only to fan the flames of outrage.
“A classic. Dunbar is a master.” ~ Nights & Weekends
Message boards and horror sites now sported warnings that no one should buy my books (because I was ‘perverting’ the genre), while others publicly insisted that all my good reviews were evidence of a conspiracy. For weeks, one gentleman on Shocklines, a popular genre community board, kept calling me “deformed and retarded,” really working himself up into quite a state. I never understood what the poor soul was on about, but the level of discourse spoke volumes.
Again, the genre presses rather heroically stepped in.
“This is the way great horror should be written.” ~ HellNotes
“Fresh and fascinating.” ~ Famous Monsters of Filmland
“This intense and wholly original novel is one of the best to come out of the horror genre in years.” ~ Dark Scribe
Art should provoke, and I choose to believe that such angry responses mean I’m doing something right. What’s the Churchill quote? Words to the effect that having enemies proves you stand for something...
Never mind. I hate being so combative all the time. It's really not my nature. Maybe it’s just that I got off on the wrong foot with people. (I excel at this.) For every critic who raved that my books were "much better than the average horror" novel – not the most tactful of compliments – scores of aficionados of the genre vented their resentment at the very notion. Who does Dunbar think he is?
But is it really so objectionable a concept that Horror should also be literature?
Extraordinary talents have flourished in the darkness, artists of the caliber and diversity of Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury and Algernon Blackwood and Robert Aickman. Consider the works of Franz Kafka or Gustav Meyrink. What are they if not literary horror? Yet the L word is still routinely applied in a pejorative sense. One flouts this mandated mediocrity at one’s own peril.
Still… there’s a reason I stay.
Years ago, I began to hear from readers who told me that they had “just about given up” finding dark fiction intended for intelligent adults. These folks kept me going, because their responses to my work could be passionately appreciative. What else does a writer live for?
Perhaps I am combative after all, and – yes – it’s worth the battle. Over the years, I’ve so often been moved by the praise of readers, my feelings only enhanced by the fact that the individuals making such comments tend to be articulate and insightful – exactly the readership I’ve always sought.
Sought? Summoned.
Conjured.
Believed in as an article of faith.
These are the readers I envision when I sit down to write. Whenever one of them declares some novel of mine to be among the finest books they’ve read, it constitutes validation on a profound level… if only because there’s not a vanilla character to be found anywhere in my work.
This gives me hope. Perhaps the genre isn’t as reactionary as it seems. Perhaps culturally we are at last emerging from a dark time, like some noble monster groping toward the light.
Something pale shimmered in the swells. He squinted. Even on such an overcast day, the bay glittered. The object bobbed between two of the boats. Stooping, he strained to make it out. Some sort of fish, belly up among the pilings? Squid-like, the thing wavered down, now visible, now gone. He crouched at the edge of the rotting dock.
The surface stirred as a swell approached, sloughing sideways like an aquatic serpent. He bent to prod the object with his cane, to bring it closer, but with the perversity of things in water, it twisted the other way, and he shivered, leaning further.
Something watched him from the water.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
“This book is so stupid I can’t even understand it.”
Zen-like in its purity, that’s still my all-time favorite “reader” comment for one of my books on Amazon. And what’s to be made of this statement (also from Amazon)?
“I hate all that prose and literary stuff. I just wants me some horror.”
So disheartening. I’ve often wondered what a novel should be if not literary. Musical? Athletic? Also I get sick of reading that “Dunbar obviously doesn’t even know what horror is supposed to be.”
Let me guess. Is it "supposed" to be stupid?
“Who does this Dunbar think he is?”
(Sorry. Can't help you there.)
So many years had passed between books: I had to wonder whether I could pick up the thread. And the initial responses to this sequel to The Pines were not encouraging. If anything my anti-fans had grown more incensed with the passage of time, because by now my work had also been stigmatized as “difficult.” One woman on Amazon railed at length about my books being too complicated to read in front of the television. Clearly, she felt betrayed by this, as though Horror itself had let her down. I began to wonder if a readership for adult horror like The Shore even existed.
Good reviews seemed only to fan the flames of outrage.
“A classic. Dunbar is a master.” ~ Nights & Weekends
Message boards and horror sites now sported warnings that no one should buy my books (because I was ‘perverting’ the genre), while others publicly insisted that all my good reviews were evidence of a conspiracy. For weeks, one gentleman on Shocklines, a popular genre community board, kept calling me “deformed and retarded,” really working himself up into quite a state. I never understood what the poor soul was on about, but the level of discourse spoke volumes.
Again, the genre presses rather heroically stepped in.
“This is the way great horror should be written.” ~ HellNotes
“Fresh and fascinating.” ~ Famous Monsters of Filmland
“This intense and wholly original novel is one of the best to come out of the horror genre in years.” ~ Dark Scribe
Art should provoke, and I choose to believe that such angry responses mean I’m doing something right. What’s the Churchill quote? Words to the effect that having enemies proves you stand for something...
Never mind. I hate being so combative all the time. It's really not my nature. Maybe it’s just that I got off on the wrong foot with people. (I excel at this.) For every critic who raved that my books were "much better than the average horror" novel – not the most tactful of compliments – scores of aficionados of the genre vented their resentment at the very notion. Who does Dunbar think he is?
But is it really so objectionable a concept that Horror should also be literature?
Extraordinary talents have flourished in the darkness, artists of the caliber and diversity of Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury and Algernon Blackwood and Robert Aickman. Consider the works of Franz Kafka or Gustav Meyrink. What are they if not literary horror? Yet the L word is still routinely applied in a pejorative sense. One flouts this mandated mediocrity at one’s own peril.
Still… there’s a reason I stay.
Years ago, I began to hear from readers who told me that they had “just about given up” finding dark fiction intended for intelligent adults. These folks kept me going, because their responses to my work could be passionately appreciative. What else does a writer live for?
Perhaps I am combative after all, and – yes – it’s worth the battle. Over the years, I’ve so often been moved by the praise of readers, my feelings only enhanced by the fact that the individuals making such comments tend to be articulate and insightful – exactly the readership I’ve always sought.
Sought? Summoned.
Conjured.
Believed in as an article of faith.
These are the readers I envision when I sit down to write. Whenever one of them declares some novel of mine to be among the finest books they’ve read, it constitutes validation on a profound level… if only because there’s not a vanilla character to be found anywhere in my work.
This gives me hope. Perhaps the genre isn’t as reactionary as it seems. Perhaps culturally we are at last emerging from a dark time, like some noble monster groping toward the light.
THE SWAMP STOMP / Part Three
or “Taking it to the Streets”
Legends linger in the dark places of this earth...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pines-Rober...
After more than twenty years, The Pines continues to attract new devotees… and new detractors, many of whom still sputter in outrage.
It also still garners sensational reviews. Go figure.
Weird, isn’t it? There’s been a gold-embossed leather-bound volume, a limited-edition hardbound collectors’ edition, mass-market paperback editions, and now “rebranded” paperbacks and ebooks from 47North. (This publisher is also talking about audio books and translations and, since they’re a subsidiary of Amazon, presumably have the resources to make such things happen.) Early on, I created a trailer. If you're curious, you can check it out at http://youtu.be/qjchi9VScG4.
Happily, the bad old days are over. For so many years, I had to advise readers NOT to purchase these books, since no royalties were being paid to authors. (Have I mentioned how much fun it was to work with Leisure Books?) Finally, I can recommend both The Pines and its sequel, The Shore.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
There’s also a trailer for The Shore here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIJsF...
THE PINES centers on Athena Lee Monroe, a displaced person eking out a marginal existence in the New Jersey pine barrens. It also introduces her son Matthew, a boy with a strange affinity for the forest. There’s a presence in those woods, an influence. This remains a key theme, and those elements (and some of the characters) resurface in The Shore, with the setting moved to a desolate beach town on the edge of the woods.
If I feel connected to a specific tradition, it’s that of all those writers who told tales of the ancient, sentient forest. Something lurks in those shadows, something that destroys … or seduces.
I wanted THE SHORE to continue the storyline while staying as far from the tone of the first book as possible. I mean, THE PINES seethes. It’s all steamy summer nights. The emotions are scalding and miserable, and the (frequent) sexual encounters are tawdry. Everyone drips with sweat, and the air roils with insects. Despite the meanness of their situations, some of the characters possess a sort of innate nobility, which has nothing to do with conventional morality. (It’s not the heat, it’s the lucidity.) They redeem themselves. They make sacrifices for love. They grow. And die (some of them). If THE PINES seems to be occurring in an equatorial jungle, THE SHORE may as well take place on a polar icecap. A winter storm menaces a beach town. The people barely speak. They huddle and harbor secrets. And die (some of them).
No vanilla “heroes” here. My people are always more likely to be minorities or outlaws of one type or another. These are the people closest to my heart, my soul, and I believe this continues to cause a substantial amount of the provocation experienced by so many “fans” of the genre. Some people will resist the very notion of diversity with their last breaths.
And so the battle rages on. The novel I’m working on now, the final section of the trilogy – THE STREETS – finds characters from both earlier books struggling in a very urban environment. They won’t give up without a fight either.
Legends linger in the dark places of this earth...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pines-Rober...
After more than twenty years, The Pines continues to attract new devotees… and new detractors, many of whom still sputter in outrage.
It also still garners sensational reviews. Go figure.
Weird, isn’t it? There’s been a gold-embossed leather-bound volume, a limited-edition hardbound collectors’ edition, mass-market paperback editions, and now “rebranded” paperbacks and ebooks from 47North. (This publisher is also talking about audio books and translations and, since they’re a subsidiary of Amazon, presumably have the resources to make such things happen.) Early on, I created a trailer. If you're curious, you can check it out at http://youtu.be/qjchi9VScG4.
Happily, the bad old days are over. For so many years, I had to advise readers NOT to purchase these books, since no royalties were being paid to authors. (Have I mentioned how much fun it was to work with Leisure Books?) Finally, I can recommend both The Pines and its sequel, The Shore.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
There’s also a trailer for The Shore here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIJsF...
THE PINES centers on Athena Lee Monroe, a displaced person eking out a marginal existence in the New Jersey pine barrens. It also introduces her son Matthew, a boy with a strange affinity for the forest. There’s a presence in those woods, an influence. This remains a key theme, and those elements (and some of the characters) resurface in The Shore, with the setting moved to a desolate beach town on the edge of the woods.
If I feel connected to a specific tradition, it’s that of all those writers who told tales of the ancient, sentient forest. Something lurks in those shadows, something that destroys … or seduces.
I wanted THE SHORE to continue the storyline while staying as far from the tone of the first book as possible. I mean, THE PINES seethes. It’s all steamy summer nights. The emotions are scalding and miserable, and the (frequent) sexual encounters are tawdry. Everyone drips with sweat, and the air roils with insects. Despite the meanness of their situations, some of the characters possess a sort of innate nobility, which has nothing to do with conventional morality. (It’s not the heat, it’s the lucidity.) They redeem themselves. They make sacrifices for love. They grow. And die (some of them). If THE PINES seems to be occurring in an equatorial jungle, THE SHORE may as well take place on a polar icecap. A winter storm menaces a beach town. The people barely speak. They huddle and harbor secrets. And die (some of them).
No vanilla “heroes” here. My people are always more likely to be minorities or outlaws of one type or another. These are the people closest to my heart, my soul, and I believe this continues to cause a substantial amount of the provocation experienced by so many “fans” of the genre. Some people will resist the very notion of diversity with their last breaths.
And so the battle rages on. The novel I’m working on now, the final section of the trilogy – THE STREETS – finds characters from both earlier books struggling in a very urban environment. They won’t give up without a fight either.
