Ramsey Campbell Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ramsey Campbell

Critical Essay by Ramsey Campbell

SOURCE: An introduction to Waking Nightmares, Tom Doherty Associates, 1991, pp. 1-6.

In the following essay, which was written in 1990, Campbell discusses the intent and sources of inspiration for the stories collected in Waking Nightmares.

Horror fiction can be many things. The field includes the ghost stories of Sheridan Le Fanu and M. R. James, not to mention the best tales of Russell Kirk. It ranges from the psychological terrors of John Franklin Bardin to the philosophical terrors of Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable and Not I. It embraces both the supernatural visions of Algernon Blackwood at his best—"The Willows," 'The Wendigo"—and the relentless violence of Joe Lansdale's The Nightrunners, the last horror novel I found genuinely frightening. Horror fiction can work as humor, as metaphor, as political allegory, as the imagination's reveille. I won't presume to claim that [Waking Nightmares] has such scope, but I'm inclined to be pleased...
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