| It makes sense that “Two Houses” has a Bradbury...

26th May 2015

It makes sense that “Two Houses” has a Bradbury connection. There’s a quiet expansiveness to it that reminded me of my favorite Bradbury book, Something Wicked This Way Comes: a sort of circular wave silently and rapidly expanding at the heart of a lake, the source of the commotion not (yet) visible. Trouble! I also like the leaving in of dialogue and descriptions that don’t necessarily smooth the reader’s path — yes, they’re placeholders, but for a reader they can also be seen as elements that build a story’s logic. Lending bits of stories to other stories and having to make up new bits (something I find myself doing, too) makes me think that once the trouble in a story revs up it doesn’t ever really wind down.

Now I’d like to know what, in your opinion, is the difference between a love story and a horror story?

So how it works is that I immediately begin to think of the similarities, rather than the differences. The idea of falling, that vertiginous feeling, the idea of being seen and known; a kind of attention to the body — attentiveness to the being, the presence, the whole of oneself or of the other; being seen and known, absolutely; absorption. The extension of oneself into the unknown. I think of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

I suppose that was a bit of a trick question because I, too, see more similarities than differences there and it’s a perspective I’ve recognized reading your stories. The Haunting of Hill House is full of scares, but one of the biggest for me was the realization that it’s a love story. Though maybe the love story bit falls under conceptual shock. I do believe there must be a difference between love stories and horror stories though, that it’s more than just labeling; the difference may be subtle and may often dissolve, but it’s a pet project of mine to find or tell a story or two that knows what this difference is …

“Shock” seems like the right word for that place where we aren’t quite sure what emotion we’re experiencing: intensity in the moment that swamps meaning. Let’s posit that a love story can be sustained longer than a horror story. (“Love bears all things.”) Perhaps a love story is also a more capable container? Horror and love are also maybe modes of interpretation/reading.