This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/22/james-herbert-nightmare-good-storytelling-nightmares

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
As James Herbert knew, good storytelling is the stuff of nightmares As James Herbert knew, good storytelling is the stuff of nightmares
(6 months later)
Interviews with the horror novelist James Herbert – and, after his death on Wednesday, obituaries – revealed two crucial autobiographical details: that he was prone to shockingly vivid dreams, and was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Herbert's acknowledgement of nightmares as a contribution to stories that sold 54m copies is striking because any tally of the profits made from popular entertainment over the last two centuries suggests a clear link between the most enduring forms of storytelling and the most frequent features of the nocturnal picturehouse of our subconscious.Interviews with the horror novelist James Herbert – and, after his death on Wednesday, obituaries – revealed two crucial autobiographical details: that he was prone to shockingly vivid dreams, and was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Herbert's acknowledgement of nightmares as a contribution to stories that sold 54m copies is striking because any tally of the profits made from popular entertainment over the last two centuries suggests a clear link between the most enduring forms of storytelling and the most frequent features of the nocturnal picturehouse of our subconscious.
If the images created in the heads of sleepers were downloaded, it's likely that the majority of narratives would be: sexual/romantic fulfilment, comic misunderstanding or humiliation, horrifying pursuit and capture, and the continued presence of our beloved dead. And these scenarios best fill the cinema and literature industry tills when solidified into the genres of romance, pornography, ghost story, farce and – with Herbert as one of the exemplars – horror. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was famously inspired by a bad dream. The exception to the rule – that what we see when asleep is what we pay to entertain us during the day – is science-fiction, but that form can be viewed as a projection of the long human daydream of escape from the planet that contains us.If the images created in the heads of sleepers were downloaded, it's likely that the majority of narratives would be: sexual/romantic fulfilment, comic misunderstanding or humiliation, horrifying pursuit and capture, and the continued presence of our beloved dead. And these scenarios best fill the cinema and literature industry tills when solidified into the genres of romance, pornography, ghost story, farce and – with Herbert as one of the exemplars – horror. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was famously inspired by a bad dream. The exception to the rule – that what we see when asleep is what we pay to entertain us during the day – is science-fiction, but that form can be viewed as a projection of the long human daydream of escape from the planet that contains us.
Herbert, a canny man with a background in advertising, combined two of the most lucrative ways of hauling in audiences: teenagers queasy about mutants and zombies read him anyway for the extended and detailed sex scene he routinely introduced amid the mayhem. This compelling combination of scenes from the best wet dreams and the worst pillow-sweating nightmares made him the No 1 novelist for adolescent males in the 1970s and 1980s.Herbert, a canny man with a background in advertising, combined two of the most lucrative ways of hauling in audiences: teenagers queasy about mutants and zombies read him anyway for the extended and detailed sex scene he routinely introduced amid the mayhem. This compelling combination of scenes from the best wet dreams and the worst pillow-sweating nightmares made him the No 1 novelist for adolescent males in the 1970s and 1980s.
But he was also as much a Catholic novelist as Graham Greene and Muriel Spark. Given that the central promise of Christian faith concerns what happens to the body after death, it is perhaps unsurprising that the most successful members of the horror gang have often been raised religiously and remained interested in doctrine. Alfred Hitchcock – a tourist in the genre but creator of one of its great cathedrals in Psycho – was a Catholic, as is Abel Ferrara, whose notorious The Driller Killer (1979) begins in a Catholic church. Stephen King and Clive Barker, two more recent lords of the form, have also spoken of belief, while the leading critical supporter of cinema horror, Mark Kermode, is a churchgoer.But he was also as much a Catholic novelist as Graham Greene and Muriel Spark. Given that the central promise of Christian faith concerns what happens to the body after death, it is perhaps unsurprising that the most successful members of the horror gang have often been raised religiously and remained interested in doctrine. Alfred Hitchcock – a tourist in the genre but creator of one of its great cathedrals in Psycho – was a Catholic, as is Abel Ferrara, whose notorious The Driller Killer (1979) begins in a Catholic church. Stephen King and Clive Barker, two more recent lords of the form, have also spoken of belief, while the leading critical supporter of cinema horror, Mark Kermode, is a churchgoer.
That fact startles some of his secularist admirers but should not. Christianity has as natural a relationship with the genre of horror as do nightmares. Both Herbert and Ferrara have spoken of looking up as children at statues of the pierced, bleeding body of Christ, and it can be seen how an imaginative child might be marked by immersion in a church that teaches of the brutal murder of its founder and whose dead body later walked the Earth again as part of a promise of saving his followers from a writhing, screaming pit of fire.That fact startles some of his secularist admirers but should not. Christianity has as natural a relationship with the genre of horror as do nightmares. Both Herbert and Ferrara have spoken of looking up as children at statues of the pierced, bleeding body of Christ, and it can be seen how an imaginative child might be marked by immersion in a church that teaches of the brutal murder of its founder and whose dead body later walked the Earth again as part of a promise of saving his followers from a writhing, screaming pit of fire.
A murder scene in Ferrara's Driller Killer parodies the crucifixion, while Hitchcock's Psycho and the books Shrine and Pet Sematary by Herbert and King respectively all contain sequences involving unburied or grisly risen bodies that can be seen as subversions of the doctrine of bodily resurrection.A murder scene in Ferrara's Driller Killer parodies the crucifixion, while Hitchcock's Psycho and the books Shrine and Pet Sematary by Herbert and King respectively all contain sequences involving unburied or grisly risen bodies that can be seen as subversions of the doctrine of bodily resurrection.
We don't have the demographic research to show to what extent the audience for horror books and novels consists of religious believers and uneasy sleepers. But the fact that so many of us enjoy being frightened – although, anecdotes and sales figures indicate, greatly more men than women – is surely due to the way in which such stories give expression to our deepest fears of aggression and death, and also often shape them into a cathartic resolution – or at least did until the recent "horror porn" genre of Saw and other films.We don't have the demographic research to show to what extent the audience for horror books and novels consists of religious believers and uneasy sleepers. But the fact that so many of us enjoy being frightened – although, anecdotes and sales figures indicate, greatly more men than women – is surely due to the way in which such stories give expression to our deepest fears of aggression and death, and also often shape them into a cathartic resolution – or at least did until the recent "horror porn" genre of Saw and other films.
"Don't have nightmares!," Nick Ross used to say at the end of Crimewatch UK. But if we didn't have nightmares – of crime, violence and extinction – we wouldn't have horror fiction. It seems more than the usual platitude to hope that James Herbert now rests in peace."Don't have nightmares!," Nick Ross used to say at the end of Crimewatch UK. But if we didn't have nightmares – of crime, violence and extinction – we wouldn't have horror fiction. It seems more than the usual platitude to hope that James Herbert now rests in peace.
Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.