Now NYRB Classics has republished another memorable example of literary horror. Henry James and Shirley Jackson successfully crossed the line, substituting psychological acuity for gore, nuance for cheap thrills, but they are outliers in the field. It doesn’t help that some of the genre’s best-known practitioners (*cough* Stephen King) are not exactly celebrated for their style or subtlety. Horror, as writer Stuart Kelly noted in a recent piece in the Guardian, is a genre that still struggles for respectability, even as others are taken into its literary fold.
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