The State of Where
by Robert R. McCammon
First things first. I want to thank you for your interest in my
writing. If a writer had no readers, he or she would be a voice
speaking in an empty room. I am very, very grateful to find my
room full of appreciative ears, and I can't tell you how much
that means to me.
I presume that if you were not interested in me, you wouldn't be
reading this issue of Lights Out! Hunter Goatley has done
a magnificent job in putting together this newsletter, and I'm
proud to call Hunter my friend. The task of doing something
like this is often thankless, usually a major pain, and a test of
the nerves when the editing and printing deadlines roll around.
So: thank you Hunter, you're doing a spectacular job.
Well, I guess that since this is my newsletter it's also kind of
a forum for my voice. I feel strange about this whole thing,
really. When I began writing professionally, in 1978, I never
intended to become a celebrity or "star." I still don't intend
to. I am first and foremost a writer, and I am blessed beyond all
blessings because I have readers and my books are selling. Which,
of course, is the bottom line for the publisher. I have a
different bottom line; I've always thought that the success of a
previous book means I can write another one. I live from book to
book. From child to child, if you please. Each one, I hope,
gets a little better. Different, yes. But better, I hope.
You may be wondering about the title I've chosen for this
article. It's exactly as it says. I want to tell you where I am,
and where I'm going.
I've just finished my new book, Boy's Life, which will be out either
in July or August of 1991. I'm starting the next book in the middle
of January, and hope to be finished with it by the end of May.
Under the Fang, the anthology Martin Greenberg and I edited for
the Horror Writers of America, will be published by Pocket Books in
the summer of '91, and the paperback edition of MINE will be
out, I believe, in May. I just signed a contract for all my books to
be published in Japan, and there are all sorts of great things
happening in other countries for me. Sometimes—well, very often,
actually—I can't believe all this is going on. It seems like a
dream, and that someone else is at the wheel and I'm just along for
the ride. I am living a life I never could have imagined, when I was
ten years old and pounding out my ghost stories on a Royal typewriter
my grandparents bought me from a junkshop.
Now, I have to tell you this: I probably won't be writing any
more supernatural horror novels, and I want to explain why this
is so.
The field of horror writing has changed dramatically since the mid- to
late-'70s. At that time, horror writing was still influenced by the
classics of the literature. I don't find that to be true anymore. It
seems to me that horror writing—all writing, no matter what
genre—needs to be about people, first and foremost. It needs to
speak to the pain and isolation we all feel, about the disappointments
we have all faced and about the bravery people summon in order to get
through what is sometimes a crushing day-to-day existence. Again, I
don't find that to be generally true of the horror field as we enter
the '90s. Something of rubber stamping and cookie cutters has gotten
into this field, and it's an unfortunate fact that even the best
writing is judged not by its own merit, but by what the general public
understands to be "real horror"—namely, the brutal and
brainless garbage that Hollywood throws out as
"entertainment" for the "lowest common
denominator."
And, my friends, it's killing us.
A sense of wonder and beauty has been drained from our field. It
has happened slowly, over a period of years. Without wonder and
beauty, our writing and our dreams are lifeless. Without humanity
in our work, we are left with senseless rage and violence. Such
things are all too common in our world: are we here to try to
make things better, or to try to compete with the heavy darkness
that is bludgeoning people's minds into Silly Putty? I, for one,
want no part in layering more darkness onto that weight, and
calling it a "fun entertainment."
It's just not right.
I understand the benefits of entertainment and escapism to the
society. Such things sell. But it seems to me that the balance
is way out of whack now. Horror writing has lost its grace and
character, in favor of dumbness influenced by movies. A new
generation of writers and readers is advancing. They will think
that violence and gore, brutality and meanness sell, and that's
what they will write and read. Publishing companies encourage
what has worked before, to the detriment of the future. Readers
come to expect less and to like it. Writers pocket their cash
and outline the next book, which must be like the last because
the publishers say this is what people expect and like.
Does this cycle really, truly, help anybody?
No. Not the writers, because if we write by formula we turn off our
imaginations and we limit our scope of ideas. Not the publishers,
because even though they might make a ton of money in the present,
they're impoverishing their futures by advocating a rubber stamp
mentality that cripples talent. And certainly not the readers, who
may get hooked on the "scare" element of horror fiction but
whose very literacy is threatened by the cookie cutter approach to
writing. If writers stop taking chances and risks in favor of the
"sure thing," writing itself becomes dry and predictable,
all the life and fire sucked right out of it. We are left, then, with
mindless slavery to money, with selling not works from the heart and
soul, but works that are dictated by the marketplace. And that, my
friends, is death.
Oh, you can get rich doing it that way. Sure you can. You'll never
be poor selling escapism, but Jesus Christ, there is so much more to
life than that! There are questions that need to be asked, and people
and worlds explored, and life to be affirmed and death to be examined
head-on without the need for shapes in sheets and haunted houses.
That's what I think. Today's escapist horror fiction has become
irrelevant in our tortured society. So where do we go from here?
I hear, as you probably do, a lot about "the cutting edge."
This means, it appears to me, experimental fiction. That's great. We
need more experimental fiction. But why is it that "the cutting
edge" means more and more graphic violence, more
brutality—particularly against women—and fiction that seethes with
rage and meanness? It's a mirror of our society, of course. But as
writers, we need to be leaders too. We have voices that touch a lot
of people not only in this country but all around the world. Why is
it that we don't use those voices to help people instead of simply
painting the social mirror darker and darker?
I am weary of celebrating death and evil. I just don't want to do it
anymore. If my readers want only a celebration of evil, darkness, and
death, then I am a miserable failure.
I'm asked this question occasionally: "What scares you?" I
always give this answer: "Confinement." Most times the
questioner looks at me as if he or she thinks I'm talking about being
locked up in a dark closet or chained in a basement by a slavering
madman. No, that's not what I mean. My fear is of confinement of the
mind, of being told I must write this way or that way about this
subject and that I have no choice but to do as I'm directed. I find
being a "horror writer" has become a confinement. I sense
walls closing in on my choices, because of what I've written in the
past.
Well, my way of doing things is to start busting down walls.
I don't want to be a "horror writer." I don't want to be a
"psychological suspense writer," or a "mystery
writer," or a "dark fantasy writer." As far as I am
able, I want to destroy those walls of category that try to define
what a person is and make him controllable. I don't want to be
controllable. I want to be free, and by God I am going to be.
I am not shutting down, you see. By turning away from the strictly
supernatural novel, I am walking into the real world. I will always
have my own distinct voice and my own way of looking at things. I
will always be a kid at heart and I will probably never be as good a
writer as I would like to be, but I must walk my own path. I have to.
Where I'm going to go I'm not sure, but I do know this: it's going to
be one hell of a terrific trip. Because look at all those roads that
lead out of the graveyard and into the realm of life. There are so
many of them, and so many choices! And that sun is so bright, and
those hills are so green! And there are things to be seen and learned,
and stories to be written there, away from the shadows of the
tombstones.
That's where I'm headed now. I hope you'll go with me. If not, not.
I understand. But I have to put the demons, ghosts, and vampires away
in their boxes and I have to go somewhere else. It sure is a big
world, beyond the door of the house on haunted hill. That's where I
have to go.
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