 SOMETHING HAS FALLEN AWAY. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma’s award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject – Julia Kristeva’s theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille’s societal equivalent – with visceral stories of modern unease. As we become ever-more isolated by social media bubbles, or the demands for social distancing, our moral gag-reflex is increasingly sensitised, and our ability to tolerate difference, or ‘the other’, atrophies. Like all good horror writing, these stories remind us that exposure to what unsettles us, even in small doses, is always better than pretending it doesn’t exist. After all, we can never be wholly free of that which belongs to us. Featuring Alan Beard, Bernardine Bishop, Ramsey Campbell, David Constantine, Margaret Drabble, Karen Featherstone, Saleem Haddad, Mark Haddon, Meave Haughey, Gaia Holmes, Matthew Holness, Adam Marek, Lucie McKnight Hardy, Mike Nelson, Christine Poulson, Sarah Schofield, Paul Theroux, Lara Williams & Gerard Woodward The New Abject is released by Comma Press on 29th October, and to mark its launch Ginger Nuts of Horror is honoured to welcome some of the authors featured in the anthology to chat about their stories and some of the ideas behind the concept of Abject Theory. Today we welcome Christine Poulson and Lara Williams to the site  Christine Poulson had a career as an art historian before she turned to crime. She has written three novels set in Cambridge, featuring academic turned amateur detective, Cassandra James, the most recent being Footfall. She has also written widely on nineteenth century art and literature and is a research fellow in the Department of Nineteenth Century Studies at the University of Sheffield. Her most recent novel is Invisible, a standalone suspense novel. Before I started writing fiction, I was an art historian, writing about and teaching nineteenth and twentieth century art and I drew on that in the first story of mine that Comma Press published. It was set in the Guggenheim in Venice and centred around a surrealist painting by Max Ernst. So when Ra approached me about this anthology and mentioned one of my favourite Surrealist objects, The Fur Breakfast by Méret Oppenheim, as an example of the Abject, that immediately got me thinking. Oppenheim's sculpture consists of a fur-covered cup, saucer and spoon. Its power lies in the mismatch between texture and function and the sensation that's evoked when you imagine raising that cup to your lips. That visceral sense of wrongness, even repulsion, was what I wanted to create in my story. The challenge for me in writing for the anthology was not really to avoid accusations of insensitivity, it was more the opposite. Could I push my story far enough? My background is in crime fiction with only the occasional foray into other genres. As a reader I've always loved the ghost story end of the horror spectrum, but previously I'd only written one story that could be classed as out and out horror. In crime fiction there must - usually - be a rational explanation, but horror need have only its internal logic. So in the end have I written something truly scary? That's for others to decide, but I certainly succeeded in scaring myself! And that experience is something I am planning to carry over to the novel I am currently working on, which will still be crime but with a far stronger supernatural element than I had originally intended.  Lara Williams is the author of the short story collection Treats, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Edinburgh First Book Award and the Saboteur Awards and longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her debut novel Supper Club has been translated into five languages, won the Guardian 'Not the Booker' Prize and was listed as a Book of the Year 2019 by TIME, Vogue and other publications. Lara Williams lives in Manchester and is a contributor to the Guardian, Independent, Times Literary Supplement, Vice, Dazed and others. The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations. What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions? I think horror gets the same negative connotations as all genre fiction; it's seen as formulaic, prescriptive, cynically commercial. Horror seems to be having a moment in cinema, with the rise of the 'elevated' horror film - but even that suggests there's something fundamentally crass or simplistic about the genre in the first place. I do however think there are a raft of new authors, particularly female short story authors, such as Carmen Maria Machado, Kristen Roupenian, Daisy Johnson, who are proudly characterising their, often quite formally experimental, work as horror, which is perhaps changing those perceptions. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? I remember reading about a study that found people predisposed to anxiety are attracted to the horror genre because it allows you to experience anxiety in a safe, controlled way. Like how the Steven Soderbergh film Contagion became one of the most streamed films early on in the pandemic (I watched it again around that time too). We were living those exact same horrors on a daily basis, but there was something strangely comforting about seeing it in a fictionalised context. What were your firsts thoughts on being asked to write a story based on Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject? I was very excited! Powers Of Horror is an essay I periodically come back to, and an element of abjection features in most of my writing. Did writing about this subject matter make you look at your own writing in a new light? This was the first time I consciously engaged with the idea of writing about abjection, usually it just creeps in. Check out Ramsey Campbell's interview here Checkout Saleem Haddad's Interview here Check out Sarah Schofield's interview here The New Abject is published by Comma Press on 29th October as part of their Modern Horror series. Pre-order the book here and join Comma for the online launch event here.   Comments are closed.
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