OCCUPY DARKNESS - Ramsey Campbell
What do the words “literary horror” mean to you?
They remind me that horror fiction came out of literature, or more correctly was a lively element of it, before it was hived off as a category. I still remember with pleasure how I liked to browse the shelves in the local public library in the 1950s in search of books in the fields I loved (the fantastic in all its forms). I often came upon the work of authors I wouldn’t otherwise have encountered; Villy Sørensen’s “Child’s Play” disturbed me deeply at the age of ten. To widen the point, many mainstream writers, particularly of short stories, are remembered (as Robert Aickman pointed out) solely for their tales of terror or the supernatural. I’d add that very few such mainstream writers never wrote within our field, and quite a few of its greatest tales were originally published in the mainstream. In a way I’m glad that horror tends to be published these days without being labeled as such, if that helps it to be accepted afresh.
