Spooks, psychology, 1955, and Stephen King’s new favourite writer: Nat Cassidy names the perfect entry point into horror fiction
As a young, less well-read/barely literate juvenile, one day on the school football yard, a friend informed me that he was reading a book last night so terrifying that he had to put it down and turn to the relative tranquillity of Playboy just to get to sleep that night.
The book he had been reading was Stephen King’s IT. I couldn’t comprehend how mere words on a page could force a teenager into such a state of fright that they had to recalibrate their psyche before bed with, well, something else entirely on a page instead. Yet, in the intervening years, I have come to realise that visceral reaction embodies the magic of well-written fiction.
Books can neurologically activate the same regions of the brain associated with genuine experiences. For instance, MRI studies published in the National Library of Medicine in the US found that fiction can leave the brain in a state closer to having lived something than simply being told it. I think my friend found that Playboy doesn’t quite have the same vicarious engrossment.
Horror, however, is particularly effective at this. It creates a heightened sense of arousal that can intensify narrative immersion. So, if, like scores of others, you want to kick the apps and turn a few more pages, it is not a bad genre to arrest your focus and kickstart a healthy reading habit.
Thus, in an apt assignment, we turned to Stephen King’s favourite new horror writer, Nat Cassidy, and asked him to pick out the perfect entry point into the genre (and no, it’s not the Nat Cassidy from EastEnders and occasional Chatabix guest). Cassidy’s own new short stories collection, I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours, was hailed by King with the simple indictment of: “These stories are f*cking great. They rule. So read them”.
That’s a simple enough selling point to hold more than a grain of truth when it comes to fiction. Humans inherently love great stories, and it seems we need them now more than ever to bring quiet contentment to our feverish modern minds. Horror fiction is scientifically a great tool for that, but it is a genre that perhaps requires a bit of coaxing for the uninitiated. So, we simply asked Cassidy for the perfect starting point, and he explains his choices below.
Nat Cassidy on the perfect entry point into horror fiction:
Nat Cassidy recommends: “I’m gonna be on my best behaviour here. You have no idea how hard it is for me, when asked for a good starter horror title for the non-horror reader, to not recommend Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.
Those who’ve read that book will likely gasp and/or giggle at its inappropriateness, even as a hypothetical. Giving that book to a first-time horror reader is a bit like giving some Icelandic death metal to someone curious about rock ’n’ roll. It’s bleak, it’s terrifying, it’s nihilistic and cruel. Worst of all, it’s also written with King’s characteristic readability, so it’s impossible to put down. It carries the reader through a harrowingly personal journey, past several worst-case scenarios, over numerous unimaginable thresholds, only to finally plop you on your own, wondering what to do with all the dread you now recognise as your birthright as a mortal creature.
That sounds heavy, and it is, but that’s also its appeal! Seasoned horror readers love it when we encounter a story that isn’t afraid to shake us up, to make us look at the world with some existential clarity, brutal though it may be. In fact, Pet Sematary was the first Stephen King book I ever read, at the tender age of nine, and it immediately set me on a path from which I never wanted to deviate, as a reader and writer. I knew I wanted to traffic in stories equally as readable, equally as unafraid as King’s. I fell in love with horror right then and there, recognising it as a genre that told the truth, that dared me to make friends with my anxiety, that assured me I wasn’t stupid for thinking sometimes bad things do happen, and for trying to find a little comfort in the fact that there’s always more to the story if you dare to keep reading.
But, like I said, best behaviour! I’m not recommending a title to the seasoned horror reader! I need to be more strategic; I don’t want to scare anybody away (a much different sentiment than scaring them). The horror genre means too much to me, and I want you to be able to work up to Pet Sematary, so you’ll be prepared to recognise its brilliance once you get there.
Instead, then, I’m going to recommend a different kind of horror book, equally as brilliant, but a little less overtly bloodthirsty. This book is written by an author you’ll likely already be familiar with, an author immensely important to me and to Stephen King, though you might associate him with a different genre than horror: Ray Bradbury.
The specific title I’m going to recommend is The October Country. It’s a short story collection, first published in 1955, and it contains 19 stories running the gamut from whimsically gothic to subtly transgressive to chill-inducingly eerie, but all written with Bradbury’s typical lyricism. It’s nowhere near as bleak or brutal as Pet Sematary, but it’s just as unshakeable. Horror’s a big tent, you see.
The October Country is an ideal first dip into the genre’s vast and varied ocean. It will teach you that a love of scary stories begins with looking at the world around you and simply asking, ‘What if?’ What if the wind could have a personal vendetta? What if my skeleton wanted out of my body? What if a baby wanted to kill? What if the crowd that gathers around car accidents is the same one every time?
Because each story is so perfectly bite-sized, too, you’ll develop that hunger for more. More questions. More scenarios. More twists on the kaleidoscope, refracting the mundane, showing you there’s more to this existence than you ever dreamed, that a worst-case scenario doesn’t mean the story has to end, sometimes that’s where it begins…
That’s the job of the horror writer, after all. To promise to take you one step further. To say, I know you’re scared, I know it’s dark, but if you hold my hand, I’ll take you where you never thought you’d be brave enough to visit. To a Pet Sematary. To The October Country. To all the places where you’ll learn that courage is a muscle and there’s nothing you can’t face.
And would you look at that: I’ve also got my own short story collection, appropriately titled I Know a Place, which runs its own gamut from Bradburyan magic to Stephen King shockers to all sorts of other surprises in between.
You should check it out, if you’re feeling brave enough.”
And even if you bravely take the plunge and find yourself temporarily too spooked to continue, as my high school friend found out, there’s always lighter reading materials to temper your journey into the dark.
But one things for certain, you should bloody read something. It’s good for you.
