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There is, on the Internet, a message board dedicated to people who read and write horror fiction. It is an enthusiastic, lively and passionate online community, and I tend to read it occasionally. Many of the conversations – slash debates – slash anarchic flame-wars that take place there are about Horror, with a capital H. When will Horror come back? Why did it go away? Is there a Horror renaissance? What is Horror? Do you care about Horror as much as I do? No you don’t. Yes I do. No you don’t. Yeah? Yeah! You wanna take it outside? Let’s go!

And there is much about the assertion of identity – “I am a Horror writer,” or, “I am a Horror reader,” — that I think is worth talking about, just a little.

Horror, as a commercial genre, has a long history and, like all commercial publishing trends, had come and gone like the tide, receding past the shoreline only to rise again with the full moon. In collecting terms, it is no worse or better than collecting railway manuals, first editions of Booker Prize winners, or books about bullfighting. Collectors are amazingly democratic, even that collector of crime first editions in one of Simon Brett’s novels who shows his extensive library to the detective, the drunken, often-out-of-work actor Charles Paris, only to remark, with a slight upwards turn of the nose, “Of course, I don’t read them.”

But what I think is worth thinking about – just a little, perhaps – is that assertion above, that singular self-definition that seems, from my occasional visitor perspective, to dominate the online discussions: “I am a Horror writer. I am a Horror reader.”

Shaggy Ink Cap Mushroom

The best comparison I can think of is of a mushroom-fancier. “I only gather closed-cup mushrooms,” he says, and can cite numerous references to classic closed-cup mushroom studies, famous monographs on the subject and vital statistics related to the closed-cup mushroom. He might have a collection of closed-cup mushrooms-related paintings or photos hanging in his studies. He might go on trips overseas to the famous hunting-grounds of the closed-cup mushroom, where closed-cup mushroom recipes are swapped and closed-cup mushroom calendars are available to buy, with Miss December being a particularly large and juicy closed-cup mushroom. “I am a closed-cup mushroom collector,” he says, and looks at you with a defiant, half-challenging expression on his face.

But what about porcini? Chanterelle? Oyster mushrooms? Truffles? Shitake? Magic mushrooms?

“No,” he says. “I like closed-cup mushrooms.”

An unvaried diet need not be a bad one. But who wouldn’t want to taste some other foods sometimes? What about pasta marinara, pan-au-chocolat, steamed watermelon, falafel, borscht, or pad thai?

“Do they have closed-cup mushrooms in them?”

I like a bit of horror. I also like science fiction, fantasy, weird westerns, biblio-mysteries, thrillers, crime in all its variations, all and every kind of non-fiction, and the books that get tagged as merely ‘fiction’, or sometimes, to distinguish them from the barbarian hordes of genre, ‘literary fiction’. I like poetry, history, adventure, children’s books, picture books, dirty books, memoirs, the occasional chick-lit, diaries, and nearly everything else with the exception, I admit, of travel books. I have a blind-spot there, but that’s due to the fact I like to travel and prefer gathering (somewhat like mushrooms) my own experiences rather than read those of others. I had a lecturer at university who was tremendously passionate about travel books. Did her PhD on them. It takes, as the English say, all sorts to make a world.

As a reader, I read everything. I have my preferences, as we all do, but although I’ am happy to describe myself as a science fiction fan, for instance (and I have been known to go into Fan Mode on occasion, an uncontrollable and generally mortifying experience), I am equally happy to describe myself as a fan of a number of other types of books. As a collector, I collected signed science fiction first editions. I collected

my favourite crime writers. I collected books about the explorer and missionary, David Livingstone (on which more in a subsequent column). I collected Strange Books – a book on steam engines, a book on electric shock therapy from the nineteenth century (highly popular at the time), a book with odd

David Livingstone

people’s names (Thomas Crapper et al), and various others. I collected books about collecting. I collectedbooks about writing. I collected Israeli children’s books, and twentieth century English poetry, and books by or about Lewis Carroll, and old atlases, and books about witchcraft and UFOs and Atlantis, and books about astrophysics, and books of lists, and cookery books, and and, and, and… at some point I even collected encyclopaedias.

“The horror! The horror!” Kurtz says at the end of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and dies. For me, the real horror – the real Horror – would be to limit myself, as reader or writer, to one thing. To eat, in other words, just the one kind of mushroom. There are so many flavours out there, and I want to taste them all.

The room is full of seated people. Many smoke nervously. There are cups of strong black coffee everywhere. I stand up. “My name is Lavie,” I say, and everyone murmurs, “Hello.” A woman in the circle flashes me a quick smile. Her eyes are compassionate. You can do it, she seems to say.

I gather my courage and continue.

“My name is Lavie,” I say again, and it feels good to finally say it out loud. “And I am a book junkie.”

END

Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. This is his web site. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie’s website is http://www.lavietidhar.co.uk/.

In 2007, Apex Publications released a collection of Jewish adventure stories titled HebrewPunk from Lavie Tidhar. This book is available as a direct order from the Apex Store and from the Apex aStore.