“[…] town that doesn’t keep showing up in books”: Genre Reflexivity in Post-Millennial Metafictional Horror
Dominic Thompson
Publication: Volume 3 Issue 4
Abstract
Metafiction and horror can be traced back as far as classical antiquity and even the early ages of oral storytelling, but it is their relationship within a post-millennial readership with which this paper is concerned. Metafictional horror—as it appears towards the end of the twentieth century and, more specifically, the beginning of the twenty-first century—is written against a backdrop of unavoidable, mass-mediated horrors within the realm of the real. In the face of worldwide threats—which included, but were not limited to, pandemics, terrorism, extreme weather events, and economic crises—this essay asks what metafictional horror looks like in the shadow of such events which preceded and superseded the millennium, and what this post-millennial metafictional horror is trying to say about the horror genre itself. Deconstructing the terms horror, metafiction, and metahorror along etymological, historical, and cultural lines, this paper uses David Wong’s John Dies at the End as a case study, which stylistically deploys genre reflexivity. Wong’s text will form the basis of a horror genre analysis to show that his metahorror allows for the text to provide a nuanced discourse on horror fiction’s traditional consumption across multiple mediums, notably in literature, film, and video-gaming.
Keywords: Metafiction, Horror, Metahorror, Millenium, Parody, David Wong
Dominic Thompson (domthompson96@icloud.com) is a twice alumnus of Lancaster University, England, with a BA (Hons) in English Literature and an MA in English Language and Literary Studies. Having developed an astute interest and specialism in metafiction throughout his academic career, he is fascinated by the self-aware text and is forever interested in the commentaries raised by the meta-style of artistic expression. Dominic is keen to continue contributing to the expanding field of metafiction as its popularity surges within both fictional and scholarly writings.