SOURCE: Epel, Naomi. “Clive Barker.” In Writers Dreaming, pp. 31-42. New York: Carol Southern Books, 1993.

In the following essay, Epel presents Barker's thoughts on dreams and their importance to the artistic process.

When I asked a friend to characterize the work of Clive Barker he replied, “Sympathy for the devil.” He went on to explain that in Barker's works of “imaginative fiction” it is the monsters who are the good guys and the protagonists who are often dead.

Born in Liverpool, England, in 1952, Clive Barker grew up loving monsters. His initial ambition to be a painter was superseded by an attraction to the theater, where he created plays such as Frankenstein in Love, The History of the Devil and The Secret Life of Cartoons. Eager to portray things that could not be done on a stage, Barker switched to writing fiction. In 1984 he published six volumes of short...