(A response to Douglas E. Winter's essay "The Pathos of Genre") by Adam Golaski

1. What is Genre, and What Good is It?
Douglas E. Winter’s essay, “The Pathos of Genre,” first a speech presented at the 1998 Bram Stoker Awards Banquet, is frequently cited as an essential document for readers of horror fiction.1 This essay was built on another of Winter’s essays, his introduction to Prime Evil: New Stories by the Masters of Modern Horror, an anthology he edited in 1988. The most notable passage of the Prime Evil introduction is:
Horror is not a genre, like the mystery or science fiction or the western. It is not a kind of fiction, meant to be confined to the ghetto of a special shelf in libraries and bookstores. Horror is an emotion.

This similar passage appears in “The Pathos of Genre”:
…this fiction [horror] is not easily confined to a category—it exists, thrives, lingers and occasionally triumphs because, unlike any other supposed kind of fiction, horror invokes an emotion. I’ve said it before, and unfortunately, I’m probably going to have to say it again. And again. But horror, my friends, is not a genre.

Winter proceeds to offer a definition of horror: “It is a progressive form of fiction, one that evolves to meet the fears and anxieties of its time.”
I disagree with Winter’s premise that horror isn’t a genre. That such a statement—“horror is not a genre… horror is an emotion”—has appealed as much as it has points to a problem every horror enthusiast has to deal with: the horror genre has a bad reputation. Winter’s response, to deny horror its literary status as a genre, is counter-productive. Worse, “The Pathos of Genre” presents a haphazard, sometimes illogical argument, meant to convince readers that horror fiction is beyond genre or perhaps even above genre.
I’m not going to define horror as it relates to literature, but I will define horror: horror is a word used to describe a range of emotions, including fear. Winter writes, in his Prime Evil introduction, that “fear is fun.” I beg to differ. Real fear is profound and profoundly unpleasant: a painful feeling people experience when confronted by the unknown, when witness to something revolting, or when one’s life is threatened. As we grow we learn that much fear is unfounded: the booster shot turns out not to be so bad as we imagined, nor the test (because we prepared!), nor the party full of important strangers. Some fear isn’t unfounded: the fear that the mother bear is going to maul you because you stepped between her and her cubs, the fear of torture, of government abuse, of environmental catastrophe. Fear is with all people most of the time, sometimes all of the time. We try to keep it at bay; those who cannot become paralyzed—unable, for example, to merge into highway traffic. So, horror is an emotion. Or, rather, horror is a word used to describe a complex of emotions.
That horror is an emotion in no way invalidates the idea that horror is a word used to characterize a body of literature—that horror is a genre. Horror is shorthand for horror fiction, horror movies, etc. Horror is an adjective that describes a kind of fiction, movie, etc. Genre means kind—a kind of book, movie; what kind of story is that? If it’s a story that deals with fear, it might be a horror story.
The word science was attached to fiction in order to describe a literary genre; science still means knowledge and the systemization of knowledge. The same can be said for words such as western or romance, mystery or thriller. The first definition I encountered (Webster’s Eleventh Collegiate) for romance was that romance is a literary form—the medieval tale of love, adventure and—interestingly—the supernatural. The third definition is that romance is an emotion. Western is a direction and mystery is a religious truth that cannot be fully understood. Romance, western, mystery and horror are also all literary genres. Ah, language. How flexible you are.
Why is the notion of horror being a genre so worrisome?
We use genre to categorize. Categorization is a way for people to examine something too large to be examined as a whole. Horror is sometimes categorically dismissed. The response to such dismissal should be education: present what is worthy about horror, and do so with intelligence. Make it impossible to dismiss the horror genre.
Genre identifies parameters. Why would any author ever wish to work within parameters?
A sonnet is a form. There are a number of sonnet types; the most famous is probably the Elizabethan sonnet, the kind of sonnet Shakespeare wrote. An Elizabethan sonnet is made of language combined thus: three quatrains and a terminal couplet, in iambic pentameter, with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg. Why create such a form? One reason is obvious: games are entertaining. Sometimes it’s fun to play Candyland, sometimes it’s fun to play chess. Creating a poetic form is a way to play with language. Another reason to create a form—and this one’s especially important—is as a tool for generating poems. The Elizabethan sonnet helps to organize an author’s thoughts by limiting the author’s choices.
I think of the horror genre as a form. If I set out to write a horror story, I know certain things are expected of me and I draw inspiration from a rich tradition. Genre is generative.
That, Winter says, is a problem. He writes in “The Pathos of Genre”: “horror has come not only to define, but also to dictate, a kind of fiction.” He goes on to say that “Genre is the bastard child of expectation… anticipation,” and adds “we love anticipation.”
Winter’s point may be that reading should be exciting, and that if something is predictable, how can it be enjoyable? Of course, many people seem to prefer predictability, but for those of us who don’t, why read fiction written within certain parameters?  The answer is fairly simple: a good writer uses parameters and readers’ expectations to surprise. Horror fiction is unpredictable in the hands of good writers. Yes, there are hacks among us, but we needn’t read their work.
As an aside, let me modify the declaration that “we love anticipation.” Fear thrives on anticipation. The anticipation “we love” is the expectation that something good is about to happen. Good can be exciting (I’m going parasailing for the first time ever!); good can be pleasant (I’m looking forward to a long bath). The other kind of anticipation—the doctor’s waiting room anticipation—is a kind of anticipation we don’t love. There’s a lot of that kind of anticipation in our lives. Sometimes it’s called anxiety. And we do not love anxiety.
I seek out horror fiction. The first few times I encountered horror fiction were by circumstance. Dad read a horror story to me and I liked it; a book cover caught my eye in a way that another didn’t; a story in a collection stood out in a way the others didn’t. Gradually, I became aware that there was a kind of literature that dealt with the macabre, that visited certain motifs, that gave me a certain thrill. That realization led to my trying to identify which books were going to satisfy my taste.
Anthologies, such as Prime Evil, were a great help. These anthologies collected works by authors who wrote—perhaps not exclusively—horror fiction. In those cases, an editor did the work I had been doing. An editor located stories that were alike in a certain way—stories that were part of a genre. Specifically, the horror genre. As someone who knew he had a taste for horror fiction, I found this very helpful. These anthologies (Shadows, The Dark Descent, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Best New Horror, etc.) introduced me to authors—some of whom I liked, some I disliked. The authors I liked, I pursued. Once I became a little more sophisticated, I also discovered that some editors were better than others. Anthologies play a major role in creating a genre.
I don’t read horror stories expecting to experience real fear. Sometimes I experience the thrill my own imagination generates; mostly, when I read horror stories, I expect to enjoy a kind of story that tends to produce images and ideas that I find stimulating—stories that set my thoughts moving in a living, exuberant way.