Guest Post: "Why Write The Grotesque?" by Caleb J Ross

This is a guest post by Caleb J Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. His goal is to post at a different blog every few days beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011, to the release of his second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, please contact him. He would love to compromise your integrity for a day. To be a groupie and follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed.

Why write the grotesque?

There must be something to the grotesque that pulls in writers like Matt Bell, Brian Evenson, and occasionally, me (that’s the last time I will sully a comma’d series like the preceding with my name, I promise). While I cannot speak for Bell or Evenson, I can speak in generalities that I think work to inform the power of the grotesque as a means for entertaining, enlightening, and discomforting the reader.

The conventional understanding of grotesque implies something simply disgusting or gross. While these elements do factor into the artistic understanding of the word, grotesque actually leverages these elements for a more specific goal. The literary grotesque refers to something that is distorted, misshapen, and generally unnatural in appearance. Images as simple as a wooden leg or a model with a destroyed face, given supporting context, can be grotesque. Conversely, something as devastating and unsettling as post-apocalyptic survival might not be grotesque. For something to be truly grotesque, it must distort an understood object for the sake of better understanding of that original object. A wooden leg makes us question the aesthetic necessity of two legs. A broken-faced fashion model makes us question the idea of physical beauty.

So why write the grotesque?

The process of writing must be engaging for the writer. The product must be engaging for the reader. Writing the grotesque satisfies both ends. As a writer, I am interested in the aesthetics of language. I love creating images with words. No paint. No photography. No sketches, diagrams, or charts. Generally speaking, the writer has only the reader’s mind for a canvas. The words are just the tools used to create that image. No other artform (if I can be so douchey as to call what I do an art) depends on this approach. Music could be argued as an exception, but even there you have lyrics and sound to create the image; not to mention that visual performance is often integrated into the concept of a piece of music.

By definition, the literary grotesque relies on visually contrasting elements to produce a visceral reaction. The idea that written words can be affecting, in a gut-punch way is infinitely amazing to me. This is the same reason I respect horror movies and spicy food so much. Horror movies are only images and sounds on a screen, but they can make you scream, can make your pulse throb. Spicy food is just food, but it can make you cry, can make you sweat (and give you fiery diarrhea). That’s amazing to me.

As a writer, getting from plot-point A to plot-point B is important, but is not necessarily fun. The fun part is creating the images and sculpting the concepts between the plot-points. For me, nothing makes me smile more than when my own words make me cringe.