How Nick Cutter blends the horror genre into literary writing
The Canadian writer, also known as Craig Davidson, talks about his new novel, The Queen
When Craig Davidson did a creative writing master's program years ago, the option to write genre fiction for a literary degree was unheard of. His first love was always the eerie world of horror novels – he never could have imagined he'd get the chance to write them, let alone garner the acclaim in the genre he has today.
Now, he's better known as his alter ego and pen name, Nick Cutter, and his latest novel, The Queen, is sure to send bone-chilling tingles down the spines of its readers.
The Queen is a horror mystery novel that follows lifelong friends Margaret and Charity. Charity Atwater has been missing for more than a month and is presumed dead when Margaret discovers an iPhone on her doorstep containing a text message from her best friend. Set over the course of one impossible day, Margaret must unravel the real story of what happened. As tragedy and disaster follow her pursuit of the truth, secrets are revealed that paint Charity in a whole new light and show Margaret that she never really knew her best friend after all.
Davidson writes horror under the pen name Nick Cutter. He has written several novels, including Cataract City, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2013, Rust and Bone, which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated feature film, The Fighter and Sarah Court. His memoir Precious Cargo was defended by Greg Johnson on Canada Reads 2018.
Davidson spoke with Antonio Michael Downing on The Next Chapter about his affinity for the horror genre both past and present.
You've had a lot of success in the horror genre, but you're actually a bonafide literary fiction guy. What have you learned on that journey from your first book in horror to now? What are the key takeaways for you?
I grew up reading in the 80s. Kickstarted by Stephen King's career, [this] was one of the greatest iconic moments for horror. And it wasn't just King, there were just people who came along at the same general time like Dean Koontz, John Saul, Anne Rice, Clive Barker … so there was just an enormous amount of great writing coming out at the time. It now feels like there's a great amount of writing also coming out but the truth is, horror has never really been unpopular.
It's probably gone through epochs where it has because of either cultural cycles or things that are going on externally in society. It manages to hone in on those things and address them in a really interesting way that only horror can.
I now live in the shadow of this horrific pen name that I've created.- Nick Cutter
I would say it's my first love, it's not my only love, but it's certainly my first love.
Ultimately, I came up with this idea, I wrote it in a fever, basically. I think it was like five, six weeks that I finished it and sent it to my agent expecting a call along the lines of like, "Our relationship is now severed, lose my number."
But thankfully he saw some merit in it and it's given me this second life and career. The only real challenge to it, I suppose on a psychological emotional level is that my pen name has kind of eclipsed me. I now live in the shadow of this horrific pen name that I've created but that said, because it was my first love, I'm happy to live in Nick Cutter's shadow.
Do you feel being a literary fiction writer, how do you feel that's helped your horror career?
I think one thing is that there might have been this perception that horror readers are not as literate as literary readers which I think couldn't be further away from the truth. If anything, I've discovered that horror readers can have quite high standards. There's the notion now of elevated horror, which I think has always been around, you certainly couldn't call Shirley Jackson unelevated horror. Nathaniel Hawthorne or Poe or Lovecraft – although in their day they were seen as more pulp meisters – they've always been working from a high literary register and with big ideas. It's not that I have a Nick Cutter hat that I squash over my head though I think my aesthetic with the Nick Cutter books probably does bend more towards the pulp, but that's what I grew up reading and loving and embracing. But there's so many writers out there now in the horror sphere who write really wonderful, literate horror. So to me the division is illusory and I think a lot of it comes from elitism, frankly.
At its core, this is a gory body horror book. There's a lot there to balance, how do you navigate that?
I've been working on an analogy because I do get this a lot. Especially in terms of what are people's thresholds [for] horror, specifically? There is almost no other genre such as horror. Every genre has its subsets and its elemental processions almost but with horror if you want a gothic ghost story or like a Victorian chiller, you can have that if that suits your aesthetic.
But if you want a slasher or you want a body horror or you want zombies or a monster creature feature sort of a thing, those are all on offing and also depending on the author, have different levels of, I would say spiciness in terms of the heat quotient that you're looking for.
The analogy I've come to is horror is like this big street full of chicken wing stalls and you'll go from one to the other. Most of us will go to the classics that we hear about. We'll get some Edgar Allan Poe here and now. Okay, it's dusty, a little old and that's some Lovecraft and that's a little eldritch. Now, here's Stephen King over here and I've heard a million things about him and I could eat a hundred of these. There is a certain type of reader and I was this reader in my teens, especially, where you're like, "This is all good, but like, I want something really spicy."
And even uttering that word you sort of see this alley off to the side that's dark and a bad smell is coming out of it and there's a trickle of green water going down the middle. And you can see shapes skulking around in there. And if you're me you stride down there very brazenly and stick your chest out. In fact, the first couple of stalls you come to, you're like, "Are you kidding me? You dare call yourself a disreputable horror purveyor. I've had baby pablum that's been spicier than this."
But then you get a little further in and the lights go off almost immediately and then the real troublesome ones come out. The Marquis de Sade shows up and stuffs a chicken wing in your mouth and goes, "What do you think of this?" My God, that is way too spicy for me!
When I hear that my work is pretty rough, I get it. But I still tell those people to use me as a litmus test.- Nick Cutter
So for me, when I hear that my work is pretty rough, I get it. But I still tell those people to use me as a litmus test. I am still on the sunny side of the street and if you go beyond me, there's stuff that's going to turn your hair bone white so stop with me if you think that's far enough.
And if not, believe me, there are tastes further down that are going to scare you.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
