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Weird Fiction: A Genre Study
Weird Fiction: A Genre Study presents a comprehensive, contemporary analysis of the genre of weird fiction by identifying the concepts that influence and produce it. Focusing on the sources of narrative content―how the content is produced and what makes something weird―Michael Cisco engages with theories from Deleuze and Guattari to explain how genres work and to understand the relationship between identity and the ordinary. Cisco also uses these theories to examine the supernatural not merely as a horde of tropes, but as a recognition of the infinity of experience in defiance of limiting norms. The book also traces the sociopolitical implications of weird fiction, studying the differentiation of major and minor literatures. Through an articulated theoretical model and close textual analysis, readers will learn not only what weird fiction is, but how and why it is produced.
335 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2022
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232 people want to read
About the author
Michael Cisco
91 books479 followersMichael Cisco is an American weird fiction writer, Deleuzian academic and a teacher, currently living in New York City. He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999.
He is interested in confusion.
He is interested in confusion.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 4, 2022
Cisco updates the weird for our age’s sensitivity to issues of race, sex, and politics and yet moves beyond these to explore both the roots and the possible future of the (sub) genre as well. As he suggests,
“Weird fiction walks a line with a conservative idea of a transcendent moral order as an important instrument for maintaining a political status quo on one side, and, on the other side, a radical idea of a cosmos that is inherently inimical to any status quo. It would be stupid, though, to miss the utility of the chaotic cosmos for a conservative status quo, or of the idea of a transcendent moral order for the radical side. Radicals call on eternal verities all the time, as Dr. King did, and conservatives have pointed to cosmic chaos to validate the importance of invented stability, as Lovecraft did. So the line weird fiction walks divides two tendencies in thought, but each tendency is itself able to go in two directions.”
Cisco’s book moves through a focus on the Supernatural, Bizarre, Destiny, and various Case studies to help further a more expansive notion of the Weird as a genre. Ultimately, he contends that a “weird tale involves a bizarre encounter, which is the self-difference of the ordinary, that marks a character with a destiny, which is change, in order to produce the supernatural, understood here to mean a sense of the infinity of experience involving the limits of reality, for the reader. In a way, this supernatural production amounts to the mark of destiny being found on the reader as well. The weird tale can unfold in a major or minor way. In the major mode, it will develop into a judgement against those who do not maintain and desire the standards of the everyday, while in the minor mode, the tale issues a warning: do not cling to identity, all experience is infinite, and so you will no longer be who you now are.”
“Weird fiction walks a line with a conservative idea of a transcendent moral order as an important instrument for maintaining a political status quo on one side, and, on the other side, a radical idea of a cosmos that is inherently inimical to any status quo. It would be stupid, though, to miss the utility of the chaotic cosmos for a conservative status quo, or of the idea of a transcendent moral order for the radical side. Radicals call on eternal verities all the time, as Dr. King did, and conservatives have pointed to cosmic chaos to validate the importance of invented stability, as Lovecraft did. So the line weird fiction walks divides two tendencies in thought, but each tendency is itself able to go in two directions.”
Cisco’s book moves through a focus on the Supernatural, Bizarre, Destiny, and various Case studies to help further a more expansive notion of the Weird as a genre. Ultimately, he contends that a “weird tale involves a bizarre encounter, which is the self-difference of the ordinary, that marks a character with a destiny, which is change, in order to produce the supernatural, understood here to mean a sense of the infinity of experience involving the limits of reality, for the reader. In a way, this supernatural production amounts to the mark of destiny being found on the reader as well. The weird tale can unfold in a major or minor way. In the major mode, it will develop into a judgement against those who do not maintain and desire the standards of the everyday, while in the minor mode, the tale issues a warning: do not cling to identity, all experience is infinite, and so you will no longer be who you now are.”
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