The horror “novel” was relatively rare up until about the 1970s. For most of the history of horror the field has been the province of short story writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft, Oliver Onions, Ambrose Bierce, and many others. But some longer works were around, and after the publication of Stephen King’s Carrie in 1974 the novel became the dominant mode for horror fiction. Can you match the horror authors below with their classic books below that? The answers are at the bottom but I’ll know if you cheat. Zero to five correct could mean that horror is not for you. Six to ten correct is...well, horrible in the best sense of the word. More than ten correct and you’ll have people wondering what kind of childhood YOU had.
1. Bram Stoker
2. Anne Rice
3. Dean Koontz
4. Ramsey Campbell
5. William Peter Blatty
6. Thomas Harris
7. Mary Shelley
8. Robert Louis Stevenson
9. Peter Straub
10. William Hope Hodgson
11. Shirley Jackson
12. James Herbert
13. Ira Levin
14. Anne Rivers Siddons
15. Peter Benchley
a. The Rats
b. The Exorcist
c. The Silence of the Lambs
d. The House on the Borderland
e. Ghost Story
f. Dracula
g. The Doll Who Ate His Mother
h. Rosemary’s Baby
i. The House Next Door
j. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
k. Interview with the Vampire
l. Jaws
m. Frankenstein
n. The Haunting of Hill House
o. Phantoms
Answers: 1. Dracula, 2. Interview with the Vampire, 3. Phantoms, 4. Doll Who Ate His Mother, 5. The Exorcist, 6. Silence of the Lambs, 7. Frankenstein, 8. Jekyll and Hyde, 9. Ghost Story, 10. House on the Borderland, 11. Haunting of Hill House, 12. The Rats, 13. Rosemary’s Baby, 14. House Next Door, 15. Jaws.
"Don't lie, Clarice, I'll know if you lie."
ReplyDeleteHere's mine w/out looking - I arrived at the Herbert title by process of elimination. I haven't read the Siddons novel and I had a little trouble with it. King talks about it in Danse Macabre doesn't he?
1. Bram Stoker - f.
2. Anne Rice – k.
3. Dean Koontz - o
4. Ramsey Campbell – g.
5. William Peter Blatty – b.
6. Thomas Harris - c.
7. Mary Shelley – m.
8. Robert Louis Stevenson – j.
9. Peter Straub – e.
10. William Hope Hodgson - d.
11. Shirley Jackson – n.
12. James Herbert – a.
13. Ira Levin – h.
14. Anne Rivers Siddons - i.
15. Peter Benchley - l
Perfect, Sid. The Siddons novel is pretty good. "Rats" has some gory moments, although I like Herbert's "The Dark" better
ReplyDeleteHorror novels certainly came into their own in the seventies, but don't you think that until then they were sort of shunted off to the side? Of course, that seems to be happening again today. Barnes and Noble has removed their Horror section, shoving horror back into Science Fiction and Fantasy or back into drama or general fiction.
ReplyDeleteI got a dozen, and a couple reding suggestions too. Great quiz.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me that horror's waiting for its next landmark work. The 80s and early 90s were flooded with tales of middle-aged-writers-battling things-from-other-dimensions-who-ate-the-family-dog. I think the genre's still reeling from that.
A lot of good work that might have been marketed as horror ten or fifteen years ago now seems to sell as SF/F, thrillers, etc.
Well, I'm a librarian some of the time, so that's not fair. Still, I haven't read: The Rats, The Silence of the Lambs, The House on the Borderland, The Doll Who Ate His Mother (great title), The House Next Door, or Phantoms. I don't want to read Silence after seeing the movie, but if I had to go for one of the others, which would you recommend? Good post!
ReplyDeleteI agree Stewart. Some horror novels existed but weren't marketed that way.
ReplyDeleteSteve, that's why I usually refer to "Cold in the Light" as more of a thriller than a horror novel. Despite that I didn't have any luck selling it to a big publisher.
Erik, "The Doll Who Ate his Mother" is pretty hard core horror. I'd recommend "Phantoms" by Koontz, one of my favorites by him. "The House Next Door" is pretty good too.
Although I don't read much in the horror genre (it's too scary!), I have read most of these books and was able to get 13 out of the 15 correct. (I guessed at the ones I hadn't read, but got the answers for Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert crossed.) Some of these I consider to be among the finest novels I've ever read of any genre, for their character development and atmosphere: THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, THE EXORCIST, and most of all, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and RED DRAGON, both by Thomas Harris, are wonderfully-written books with amazing insight into both the protagonists and the antagonists. I did not feel that way about HANNIBAL, Harris' follow-up to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. I haven't read the most recent, HANNIBAL RISING.
ReplyDeleteI got 7, I stood in awe of Ann Rice for a while and druled in my brain over Lestat...LOVE IT....
ReplyDeletethis was a very fun post...whoohoo:)
15 outta 15, baby!
ReplyDeleteOf course, I've owned 13 of the 15, and read 10 of them.
Hmm...guess that kinda screws up my bragging rights.
P.S. Phantoms was a guilty pleasure. I groaned aloud at the cliched characters all the while furiously turning the pages to see what happened next.
ReplyDelete"Phantom" certainly was a page turner, even though the characters wern't great.
ReplyDelete