Walk Hand IN Hand Into Extinction : Stories Inspired By True Detective by Christoph Paul

Author:Christoph Paul [Paul, Christoph]
Language: eng
Format: epub

“Fiction is a fabrication that reveals reality.”

I waited for the applause to die down before continuing.

My third novel, Widows of the Gyre had met with modest-at-best sales, but I hardly cared about the tastes of the mainstream book-buying public. They were too busy drowning themselves in the banality of Jane Austen-meets-zombies pop-art mash-ups and jumbo-sized shock tabloids trying to pass themselves off as ‘true crime novels’ to delve into the caustic nightmares of legitimate literary horror. Those who knew something about the genre knew my work and appreciated it, so much so that Widows of the Gyre was in contention for several “Book of the Year” awards.

So it was that I was asked to appear as the guest of honor at New Orleans’ Weird Menace Con. I even had my own Q&A panel: “A Mirror Darkly: Horror as Human Reflection, with Quint Megan.”

As the claps subsided, I finished my thought.

“Storytellers use lies to tell the truth. The best horror fiction, real horror fiction, isn’t just a mélange of gory descriptions and supernatural implausibility. By nature, horror and weird fiction are symbolic genres. No other genre has the gall to use symbolism as a scalpel to cut away the layers of self-deception we sift through every day as much as horror. Some people think of horror as escapist entertainment, but it’s just the opposite. Truth is ugly, and horror is ugly. Thus, horror is the truest of all genres of fiction.”

More applause. More cheers. I took a sip from the water bottle that had been left for me.

“Okay,” the moderator beside me said, “let’s open it up for questions.”

An overweight man stood up, hand raised over his head. The moderator pointed to him. He mumbled something about “influences” which I took to be the same question I’d heard a thousand times before, and began reciting my stock answer.

“I’m influenced by everything, and I don’t just mean everything I’ve read, I mean everything. Daily life, the news. The genesis of Widows of the Gyre was the persecution of Muslims in America that continues even today. Having said that, I’m most attracted to the bleak worldviews of classic weird and dark fantasy storytellers like Lovecraft, Blackwood and Machen. Thomas Ligotti is probably the best living writer working in the field today.

“If I had to point to one writer as a major influence, though, it’d have to be Robert W. Chambers. I’m a rabid collector of his work, completely obsessed. I actually spent the first advance from Widows on a rare German edition of The King in Yellow stories. For those unfamiliar, Chambers was mid-19th century author whose masterpiece was a collection of short stories, The King in Yellow.

The King in Yellow is also the title of a fictional play, featuring a pallid-masked mystery man in yellow robes. The play is a device that links many of Chambers’ stories together, and both it and the masked man act as harbingers of madness and misfortune. Chambers’ stories are about peeking behind the mask, literally, and finding something monstrous there.

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