Horror: The 100 Best Books by Kim Newman, Stephen Jones Page B
Authors: Kim Newman, Stephen Jones
Ads: Link
robots and ghosts -- appear in The Piazza Tales (coll. 1966).
***
The Confidence Man is not generally regarded as a novel of horror or fantasy, but I say without hesitation that it is the most fundamentally unsettling, powerful, and influential book I have ever opened. Melville's narrative was born of a cynicism so profound and twisted his storytelling makes Kafka seem a bliss ninny in comparison. The book -- what is in it and what I was taught by it -- became then, and remains, the catechism of my irreligion. Perhaps, if I'd never read the book, I'd have become a writer anyway -- but by no means would I be the same writer. I still find it astonishing how many crucial lessons The Confidence Man taught me. The instruction was bleak but invaluable. First, I realized that the most potentially dangerous and subversive of fictional characters is the narrator who speaks in a confiding, authoritative, and supposedly neutral third-person voice. It is unsettling enough to read a book written in first-person, where we come to mistrust the truth, the motives, and the candour of the narrator. But what happens when the anonymous third-person narrator of a novel is untrustworthy? It seemed to me, reading in awe, that not Melville, but the God of Lies himself had written the book. A narrator, I understood then, was every bit as much a creation of the writer as were the characters whose stories the narrator told us. This lesson I took to heart. Now I find myself frequently asked how it is possible I write books that seem totally different from one another: Southern Gothic Horror, Historical Thriller, Boy-Girl Romantic Adventure, Gay Detective Novels, Right-Wing Men's Adventure. I'm told it appears as if wholly different people had composed and told stories in the various genres. That is essentially correct -- I don't so much create characters and a story as create a particular narrator who creates characters and a story. My narrators are variously cold, close, indulgent, condescending, admiring, jolly, warm-hearted, caustic, and clinical. The Confidence Man bears a sub-title: His Masquerade -- but no one in the story wears so many costumes as he who tells the story. The second lesson I got from Melville's book is contained in the three chapters with disconcertingly circular titles: [Ch. 14: "Worth the consideration of those to whom it may prove worth considering"; Ch.33: "Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth"; and Ch. 44: "In which the last three words of the last chapter are made the text of the discourse, which will be sure of receiving more or less attention from those readers who do not skip it"]. These ironic discourses -- ironically dedicated to readers -- are coded messages with meaning only to other writers. I write and I work by the observations contained in these cold yet scalding passages. One single dictum propels my typing fingers: ". . . in books of fiction, [readers] look not only for more entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality, than real life itself can show." If there were ever harsher, crueler, more demanding, but finally more comforting words for a novelist, I have never read them. Finally, what The Confidence Man gave me was a straight-walled definition for what I had always felt about life and existence. It is my philosophy today, and I mean this in a straightforward plebeian manner -- it is the basis on which I speak, and act, and feel. According to Melville (and now according to me, too), the universe and existence are only a joke but dimly discerned. The punchline is garbled and all we know, while the cosmos' laughter clamours in our fevered brains, is that we are the butt of that joke. The Confidence Man is a book about deception, lies, obscure jests, undeserved misery, gratuitous fortune, connivance, philistine victories, and off-the-cuff evil. I felt after reading it that the lids of my eyes had been ripped away. Thereafter I saw existence and humanity and my own life with a galling
***
The Confidence Man is not generally regarded as a novel of horror or fantasy, but I say without hesitation that it is the most fundamentally unsettling, powerful, and influential book I have ever opened. Melville's narrative was born of a cynicism so profound and twisted his storytelling makes Kafka seem a bliss ninny in comparison. The book -- what is in it and what I was taught by it -- became then, and remains, the catechism of my irreligion. Perhaps, if I'd never read the book, I'd have become a writer anyway -- but by no means would I be the same writer. I still find it astonishing how many crucial lessons The Confidence Man taught me. The instruction was bleak but invaluable. First, I realized that the most potentially dangerous and subversive of fictional characters is the narrator who speaks in a confiding, authoritative, and supposedly neutral third-person voice. It is unsettling enough to read a book written in first-person, where we come to mistrust the truth, the motives, and the candour of the narrator. But what happens when the anonymous third-person narrator of a novel is untrustworthy? It seemed to me, reading in awe, that not Melville, but the God of Lies himself had written the book. A narrator, I understood then, was every bit as much a creation of the writer as were the characters whose stories the narrator told us. This lesson I took to heart. Now I find myself frequently asked how it is possible I write books that seem totally different from one another: Southern Gothic Horror, Historical Thriller, Boy-Girl Romantic Adventure, Gay Detective Novels, Right-Wing Men's Adventure. I'm told it appears as if wholly different people had composed and told stories in the various genres. That is essentially correct -- I don't so much create characters and a story as create a particular narrator who creates characters and a story. My narrators are variously cold, close, indulgent, condescending, admiring, jolly, warm-hearted, caustic, and clinical. The Confidence Man bears a sub-title: His Masquerade -- but no one in the story wears so many costumes as he who tells the story. The second lesson I got from Melville's book is contained in the three chapters with disconcertingly circular titles: [Ch. 14: "Worth the consideration of those to whom it may prove worth considering"; Ch.33: "Which may pass for whatever it may prove to be worth"; and Ch. 44: "In which the last three words of the last chapter are made the text of the discourse, which will be sure of receiving more or less attention from those readers who do not skip it"]. These ironic discourses -- ironically dedicated to readers -- are coded messages with meaning only to other writers. I write and I work by the observations contained in these cold yet scalding passages. One single dictum propels my typing fingers: ". . . in books of fiction, [readers] look not only for more entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality, than real life itself can show." If there were ever harsher, crueler, more demanding, but finally more comforting words for a novelist, I have never read them. Finally, what The Confidence Man gave me was a straight-walled definition for what I had always felt about life and existence. It is my philosophy today, and I mean this in a straightforward plebeian manner -- it is the basis on which I speak, and act, and feel. According to Melville (and now according to me, too), the universe and existence are only a joke but dimly discerned. The punchline is garbled and all we know, while the cosmos' laughter clamours in our fevered brains, is that we are the butt of that joke. The Confidence Man is a book about deception, lies, obscure jests, undeserved misery, gratuitous fortune, connivance, philistine victories, and off-the-cuff evil. I felt after reading it that the lids of my eyes had been ripped away. Thereafter I saw existence and humanity and my own life with a galling
Similar Books
