Why I Love Horror by Becky Siegel Spratford
Why I Love Horror is a collection of essays by horror writers about what the genre means to them. The introduction is written by Sadie “Mother Horror” Hartmann, a well-known figure in my local Seattle horror community.
Honestly, I wish I had read more of these authors. I’ve consumed at least one book by six of ’em, including Hartmann. The others are Grady Hendrix, Rachel Harrison, Stephen Graham Jones, Tananarive Due, and Clay McLeod Chapman. The collection is organized and edited by Becky Siegel Spratford, a librarian and prominent horror literature reviewer from Illinois.
There are recurring themes throughout most of the essays. A huge percentage of the authors have been fascinated with horror since childhood. This is something that lots of readers, including myself, can relate to.
Many writers share how horror has helped them grapple with past and present trauma, an intriguing and seemingly counterintuitive subject that I covered in my Why is Horror Popular During Tough Times post.
These two topics are tackled repeatedly throughout Why I Love Horror, and that’s the book’s sole flaw. You can only read essentially the same essay so many times before it becomes redundant. 18 essays (19 if you count Hartmann’s introduction and 20 if you also throw in Spratford’s opening chapter) are too many.
This book would have been better off with around a dozen. Still, I can understand why so many were included. My paperback copy runs just 255 pages long (including several pages of acknowledgements at the end). Reducing the number to my suggested amount would have made this thing super thin. The commercial prospects for a tiny novella-sized essay collection are probably limited.
There are four essays that stand out. One of the best aspects of Why I Love Horror is that it’s introduced me, and I’m sure many other readers, to new authors for us to explore. Here are my highlights:
Hailey Piper – “The Giant Footprint of Horror”
I’ve never read her work, but I enjoyed Piper’s essay on her childhood fascination with monsters, especially the big ol’ green guy himself, Godzilla!
Horror is healing, she says. It helps her feel less lonely. She writes about feeling like an outsider, not just because of her fascination with horror (a genre that has always had a certain stigma, even if it is more respected today) but also because she is a queer woman.
Piper writes about how people who feel outside the realm of what society deems “normal” often have deep affection for monsters, because they’re outsiders, too. I had never thought about it that way, but it makes sense to me. This is an insightful and good humored essay.
Grady Hendrix – “Why I Love Horror”
Although he uses a generic title, Hendrix’s contribution is easily the most unique in the book. He relates a bizarre and probably fictitious story about finding a child’s severed arm inside his dad’s freezer.
A teenage Hendrix and a female friend are searching for sardines when they stumble upon this grotesque discovery. Hendrix writes his contribution in exactly the same style as his novels. His zany imagination and wacky humor are on full display.
Later in the essay, Hendrix admits that he tends to dodge the question of why he loves horror (“it’s just what I do” he says) and hints that the story he’s telling is at least partially false. In any case, it’s a funny and entertaining slice of classic Hendrix fare.
Cynthia Pelayo – “My Mother Was Margaret White”
Pelayo, whom I have not read before, includes a deeply personal essay about several severe traumatic events that have affected her life. As you can guess from the title, Pelayo did not have a good relationship with her mom growing up. She was an extremely abusive religious fanatic who tormented Pelayo both physically and emotionally.
She writes lovingly about her dad, who tried to protect her, but tells about how devastated she was when he passed away. Her mother thought that her love for horror would lead Cynthia to the Devil, but her father supported her interest and watched horror movies with her.
Carrie and A Nightmare Elm Street were among the first horror works to have a major impact on her. Writing horror stories helps her feel safe. She relates to protagonists like Carrie White and finds inspiration in the fact that it’s possible to fight back against monsters.
I admire Pelayo’s blunt and direct language. She has the guts to be open about her past, including three attempts to take her own life.
Stephen Graham Jones – “Why Horror”
Jones is the last author in the collection, and it’s no surprise that he finishes it off strong. Unlike some of the other contributors, SGJ actually answers the question directly. Writing in his usual conversational and vivid style, he gives several reasons for why he loves horror.
Some are offbeat (“because I like to eat ketchup”), others are funny (“because when you get tired of a character, you can cut their head off”), and some are deeply insightful (“because it makes us human”).
Here’s another reason he gives, and this is not something that most people would associate with horror: hope. It takes negative experiences to appreciate positive ones. “To me, that’s what horror is about: the trying, the fighting, the hope.”
Jones could probably write an entire book about why he loves horror, and it might be better than this one. He describes himself as “the big evil chicken with a pen in his beak” which is certainly the most colorful way that any horror writer has portrayed themselves.
Rating
Although it’s repetitive at times due to many of the writers covering the same themes, Why I Love Horror is an interesting and enlightening take on the enduring appeal of the horror genre.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 8.5
