Fiction Addiction: The Wish to Un-read

A lot of fiction is cranked out to pay the rent. I understand and I admire the skills. I can type, but I found it easier to pack lumber and shovel concrete and dig splinters out of carpenters than to learn to write for a living. 

But I was - am - addicted. First to comic books, then to speculative fiction. I am used to the regret of reading fiction that is a waste of time, short stories that lack personal insight and grand novels that show us no better way forward.

But what I really regret are books with disturbing imagery that I wish I could un-read or just forget. Zelazny's "Creatures of Light and Darkness", Chabon's "Adventures of Kavalier and Klay", and Larry Niven's later Ringworld books with ghouls are a few examples. 

And there are authors that I have learned to just stay away from: Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Jim Grant writing as Lee Child. And there are movie makers that I feel the same way about, with Tim Burton at the top of the list.

So why would I read a novel by someone who called her cat "Beetlejuice"? Well, I did read Dana Schwartz's "The White Man's Guide to the White Male Writers of the Western Canon", which deconstructs part of the 20th century fine arts literary industry. It felt hollow in some way that I couldn't define, but it was certainly worthwhile.

So when I saw one of Schwartz's novels at a neighbourhood free mini-library, I picked it up for bedtime reading. Disturbed by the opening that featured a beheading, I still felt stupidly obliged to see if Dana had anything enlightening to say, so I jumped ahead and speed-read the last fifty pages. 

I'm not naturally squeamish - I can put a severed finger in a bag and take it to the hospital with the patient - but I really regretted reading page after page that set up a couple of peak horror moments. Ick. I was totally unable to fall asleep. I was angry at myself for choosing so unwisely and angry at the fantasy industrial complex that feeds on American society's fetishism of elitism and violence and horror.

And I felt guilty that I felt angry at Schwartz. She's just someone making a living, like the people in China who design and paint and package horrific Halloween decorations. So at two in the morning I took a look at her popular podcast and before I could back out of the website I found myself listening to the warmup to another beheading. Ick. 

But there was worse: Schwartz's site just had to offer me pins featuring the bodyless heads and the headless bodies of British queens. Yep, a full 9 out of 10 on the Dunning-Kruger emotional stupidity scale.

I eventually got three hours of nightmarish sleep and woke up still angry enough to dig into my files and finally post my own very short story on the topic of dead queens, "Alexandra." 

My wife Joan, more insightful than myself, took one look at "Immortality" and said, "Did you ever read "Wuthering Heights"? It's full of weird shit and some guy digging up a grave." Hmm. So I did a little research and found Dana Schwartz teaching horror writing workshops.

 So beyond the emotional manipulation, beyond the ick factor, I intensely dislike the horror genre for its relentless drive to make people less aware, less insightful, less compassionate. It's almost as if they were recruiting worshippers for temples and mythological dramas inspired by "Hollywood's Dark Prince" and his disciples.

Again, ick.