Mark Z. Danielewski on Fear and Genre -- an Interview

"Danielewski also doesn't like the traps of genre labelling. He says he doesn't consider himself a horror novelist. Although he says that anybody who deals with big questions could be described as a horror writer.Hhe listed a range of writers, from Emily Dickinson to Nietzsche who approach the bigger questions and "ultimately unveil something that's terrifying." He had one woman come up to him in a bookstore and say to him, "you know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story." And she was right. He says that genre labelling is just a marketing tool.

He talked in an interview about the way he finds the genre of 'smart horror' encouraging, on a cultural level. This is because smart horror goes after the deeper origins of fear, so that it provokes thought rather than a simple adrenalin rush. Whereas, films in the 80's were all about action, and namely, anger. And this is what he feels strongly about. because in the eighties, there was no close examination of that anger. But anger is always a result of fear. If you're angry, you're afraid in some way, of losing something, of the world being too different from what you want. It covers multiple types of fear, but it is still fear nonetheless. So the reason he is encouraged is because it means there is a newfound desire to get past the anger response and deal with the more courageous questions of what am i afraid of and why?"

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