Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
In
the middle of a pandemic, most of us might not care to read stories
involving plagues and pandemics. However, horror fiction appeals to
masochistic readers as well as to others and, if the truth were to be
told, there is, in most, if not all, of us, a bit of the masochist.
Fear is disturbing. It is stressful. It is unpleasant. Paradoxically,
however, it is also quite pleasurable to many of us. If it were not,
there would be no profit in making horror movies or in writing horror
novels or short stories.
Critics
and psychologists suggest that the reason that we enjoy horror dramas
and narratives is that we know that, despite what happens on the
sound stage or on the page, we ourselves, as spectators or readers,
are safe. What happens to the victims in the story cannot happen to
us. We enjoy the invincibility of the secret voyeur. We watch,
untouched and untouchable. That is our power. We survive the
slaughter because it cannot do to us what it does to the characters
in the movie or the book. (Only, in the case of the coronavirus, we
may not be quite as invincible as we
might imagine!)
So,
for the masochistic supermen and superwomen among us, Chillers and
Thrillers suggests a pair of horrific tales by the father of modern
horror himself, Edgar Allan Poe. One of the two tales caused Robert
Louis Stevenson to opine that “he who could write [this story] had
ceased to be a human being.” Which story occasioned this assessment
of its author, “The
Masque of the Red Death” or “King
Pest”? Chillers and Thrillers will leave the answer to this
question to you
to decide!
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