Popular Fiction Discussion Notes

Popular Fiction Trends and Online Engagement

Popular fiction trends now differ from those covered in lectures due to online consumption.
Online platforms, like BookTok, influence reading choices.

Book tours emerged in the late 20th century (1995-2005).
The concept of the celebrity author dates back to the 1800s, with fan mail and parasocial relationships developing.
Movie adaptations contribute to the engagement with books.
Fanfiction gained prominence in the late 1990s, with platforms like Archive of Our Own (AO3) appearing in the mid-2000s.

Reading often occurs in small pockets of time, such as during commutes.
Physical books are favored to reduce screen time.
The purpose of reading varies: enjoyment, community participation, or information gathering.
Reading materials can range from poorly written articles for gossip to well-written analyses for deeper understanding.
There's a tension between writers who cover interesting topics and the need to appeal to a broader audience.

Clive Barker is a British author from Liverpool known for dark fantasy and horror.
His early work includes "Books of Blood," a collection of short stories with gruesome themes.
Barker's writing features worlds tucked away in corners, puzzle boxes, and gruesome imagery.
Common themes include bargains, the corporeality of the body, queer plots/subplots, and political undertones.
He has also written children's books, such as "The Abarat Quartet" and "Thief of Always."
Barker started as a playwright and also paints and writes poetry.

"The Damnation Game" (mid-1980s) was Barker's first novel and is a retelling of Faust.
In the 1980s, American horror writers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz dominated the genre.
Common themes included world-ending pandemics, vampires, contagions, and reanimated corpses.
British horror at the time leaned towards classical Gothic and destroying London.

Barker's "The Damnation Game" draws from Christopher Marlowe's version of Faust, where Faust is dragged into hell.
Marlowe's Faust prays and begs, but God remains silent, contrasting with Goethe's Faust, who is eventually forgiven.
The novel follows Marty Straus, a gambler who works for the mysterious Mr. Whitehead, who is Faust.
The story explores themes of fate, chance, and the conflict between Whitehead and a liminal figure named Mamoulian.
The ending involves a small apocalypse affecting the characters, while the rest of London remains unaffected.

Stephen King's endorsement, "I have seen the future of horror, and its name is Clive Barker," significantly boosted the book's popularity.

Robin Jarvis is an author from Liverpool who writes young adult literature and, previously, children's literature.
His works, now considered young adult, were initially marketed to children aged 10-13.
Jarvis's stories often feature fate, pirate victories, historical settings (London, Whitby, Glastonbury), and messy characters.
He challenges traditional moralistic children's literature with complex, sometimes unlikable characters.

Recurring themes include anthropomorphic animals, historical settings, and messy characters.
His work contains problematic elements and questionable coding of animal characters.

The Deptford Mice trilogy is a dark fantasy series set in a house above the sewers, featuring a rat god named Jupiter (who turns out to be a cat).
The series is known for its violence and high character death count.
Ghosts from plague pits are summoned, contributing to the dark atmosphere.

Jarvis's work relates to authors like Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper.
American authors like Diana Gray also contributed to children's fantasy during this period.
While his books may seem unusual now, they were part of a broader trend in children's fantasy at the time.