#stephen graham jones
*blows a kiss through the spinning blades of the ceiling fan* for the elk headed woman
can’t stop thinking about Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians since I read it over new year’s. Just full to the brimwith gorgeous horror/slasher imagery that I can’t get out of my head, so this piece is probably the first of several. :D
To anyone who saw this and loved it and ended up reading the book, It’s the release day for Stephen Graham Jones’ next novel, My Heart is a Chainsaw! It is a dense, chaotic love letter to slashers, and to obsessively nerdy teenagers who both areandaren’tthe hero of their own story, and I loved every minute of it. I was lucky enough to get an ARC from Jones, but you KNOW I’m gonna buy a proper hardcopy for myself now that it’s out proper. :D
An absolutely fantasticinterview with SGJ in GQ this week: https://www.gq.com/story/stephen-graham-jones-my-heart-is-a-chainsaw-interview
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can’t stop thinking about Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians since I read it over new year’s. Just full to the brimwith gorgeous horror/slasher imagery that I can’t get out of my head, so this piece is probably the first of several. :D
Post link
Finished The Only Good Indians (Stephen Graham Jones); brutal, but an intriguing and memorable read! Reading it back to back with Mexican Gothic made for an interesting experience, too, in terms of sort of absentmindedly comparing the themes of the cyclical violence of colonialism and the way each book communicates horror. Not feeling articulate enough to properly explain this, but: Mexican Gothic is lush in its depictions and in describing the intense emotional reactions of the protagonist to the strange things she encountered. In this way, mundane things that are not inherently horrifying — mushrooms, houses, wallpaper — are made to seem disturbing. The Only Good Indians, in contrast, has a more minimal writing style, and even gore and violence — horrifying things — are often presented in a very matter-of-fact and emotionally distanced sort of way, as though breaking a person’s jaw open to pull their teeth out were something absolutely mundane.
Not sure I’m making sense here, but I think what I’m trying to posit is: horror in general can often be derived from dissonance, from wrongness, a mismatch between how a thing should be and how it is. Both of these writing styles, while different, are effective in disturbing the reader partly because of the dissonance between what is being described and how it is or is not reflected in the emotion of the characters and narration.
Not sure if other readers of these books would agree or if it would hold up on closer analysis, so forgive me for rambling out half-baked thoughts. Next book up is… Hm. Either Entangled Life or Piranesi, depending on whether I’m feeling fic or nonfic, I guess. We’ll see!
“Horror’s not a symptom, it’s a love affair!”
I finished Stephen Graham Jones’ novel, “My Heart is a Chainsaw” about a week ago and I still have a lot of feelings about it. I like horror but I’ve never really enjoyed slashers and to read a slasher instead of watching one I think is what made this book so captivating. It’s dark, and beautiful, and heartbreaking. the main character, Jade, is one of a handful of main characters I’ve ever loved unapologetically in my life. Hot damn, Stephen Graham Jones just understood what it’s like to be weird, neurodivergent teen goth in a small town.
