 “For me it was about showing realistic people in a horror story, a genre where sometimes the characters have no life whatsoever. Essentially characters in horror stories can be like fresh meat you buy from the store—their entire purpose is to be slaughtered. They are utterly enslaved by the narrative” Utterly enslaved by the narrative – Kyle Muntz on The Pain Eater By Jay Slayton-Joslin I usually meet Kyle Muntz just outside of a metro station. Every couple of weeks we meet for dinner to catch up, talk about books and express the small quirks that come with being two foreigners living in China. Kyle gives thoughtful answers to most things he is asked. When you tell him something, or give an opinion, he absorbs the information like osmosis, taking it in and considering it thoughtfully. His background is in experimental fiction and literary fiction, but his latest novel has a much darker element: “The weird thing about The Pain Eater is that I planned to write a completely different book beforehand. I had this elaborate idea about these people who were living with this non-human creature, they were even going to have sex with it – until I realised that was just insane. So, I took this previous idea and I kept making it smaller and smaller until there was this weird stuff that was hidden beneath the surface… It’s a family drama on one level and one of my favourite things is that it’s not just about the weird stuff. I do think the novel could go through to the end being just about the family and it could work.” In his new novel, The Pain Eater, he explores a family that encounter a demonic cat that can take people’s pain away. The opportunity for escapism sends the characters on a downward spiral. “I had never owned a cat or had much contact with them, but what had happened was my father had been taking care of cats,” Kyle says, when I asked him why he chose the internet’s favourite animal as the catalyst for the horror elements for the book. “I found it so striking that a person who I’d known all my life as such a stern figure had become awakened in some ways by this little animal.” Despite serving as the spark for the horror to take place, Muntz quickly clarifies that the fractured family in the novel is far from the real one he has back in America, “my brother is my best friend.” His best friend is thousands of miles away and the distance of China to America seems to be in his work as well as geographically: “It’s weird to live so far away from home and then write about a character who is going home. I don’t think I would have written the book how I did if I hadn’t come to the other side of the planet.” We sat in a Korean bar and music videos flicker in the corner of my eye. For Kyle, this isn’t a distraction, as he is talking about his favourite thing: character development. “Real people and character development are my great obsession. For me, I’m obsessed with the idea that the characters themselves should be alive, rather than being these sort of puppets who are carried along by the writers’ understanding of the world – or their ideology. The writer gives good qualities to the hero and bad ones to the villains and the whole novel is about the ideas that they think are valuable.” Kyle admits that this has ruined other forms of entertainment for him in the past, finding things either illogical, unbelievable or uninteresting in its failure to illustrate human nature: ”I think this is a game that art has played on human beings that fundamentally lies about the human world.” The obsession with character may explain the focus on it in The Pain Eater, a novel that doesn’t rely on its unique twist but instead uses it as a probe to explore the outer reaches of character. It’s definitely a conscious effort, with Muntz saying: “With The Pain Eater I’m really fixated on real people and what they think about and care about.” It’s a problem with art in general, but perhaps in horror it is more common than we think. “For me it was about showing realistic people in a horror story, a genre where sometimes the characters have no life whatsoever. Essentially characters in horror stories can be like fresh meat you buy from the store—their entire purpose is to be slaughtered. They are utterly enslaved by the narrative” None of this comes from a place of dissatisfaction though, instead a love for art and creating. Something that is reflected in his own desires to create and write different kinds of books. “I like all kinds of stories. A few months ago I finished my first completely realistic manuscript. Now I’m working on a science fiction novel. Genre fiction is one of my great obsessions,” he says, before taking a sip of his beer and smiling, “but maybe if people like The Pain Eater I’ll just write horror novels for the rest of my life.” THE PAIN EATER BY KYLE MUNTZ Some wounds are too deep to ever heal.Two brothers from Michigan are reunited after the death of their father. They’ve never been close, but now they have to live together—and it gets more difficult when one discovers a strange creature, vomited from the body of a dead cat. A creature that eats human pain. It feels good: too good. Soon he wants to hurt himself more, just so the pain can be taken away. But the more the creature becomes a part of his life, the more he damages everything around him. PRAISE FOR KYLE MUNTZ “Playful and painful and surreally real, and great fun to read.” —Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World “There’s a melodic beat to Muntz’s writing, terse descriptions of events interspersed with sudden bursts of graphic visuals, often macabre in its evocations. It’s a delicate balance, but one he masterfully navigates.” —Peter Tieryas, author of Mecha Samurai Empire “Here is prose of a high poetic intensity working in the service of a dark and cool vision… disturbing and enthralling in equal parts.” —Rhys Hughes, author of A Universal History of Infamy “One of the strangest, most original things I’ve read this summer… a work of radical, subversive innocence.” —James Pate, author of The Fassbender Diaries OFFICIAL RELEASE JULY 2022 KYLE MUNTZ KYLE MUNTZ IS THE AUTHOR OF SCARY PEOPLE (ERASERHEAD PRESS), AND WINNER OF THE SPARKS PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION. IN 2016 HE RECEIVED AN MFA IN FICTION FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME. CURRENTLY HE TEACHES LITERATURE AND WRITING AT THE GUANGDONG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES IN GUANGZHOU, CHINA. Jay Slayton-Joslin Jay Slayton-Joslin is the author of Sequelland (CLASH), a book that interviews horror sequel directors, and Kicking Prose (KUBOA). He was born in England and lives in China. You can follow him on twitter here (https://twitter.com/Jaythecool). CHECK OUT TODAY'S OTHER ARTICLES BELOW
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