Thursday, October 23, 2014

Blast from the Past: They Hazy Mists of Nostalgia

After reading Fear Street: Party Games, I started thinking back to my own young adulthood, and the books I regularly devoured. This was back before YA books were gigantic epics.  This was back when ghostwritten series like Sweet Valley High ruled the YA section of the book store.  In my mind, in the YA horror world of the 90's there were only two authors that mattered.  Obviously R.L. Stine, but also Christopher Pike, who wrote some of my favorite books of all time.

Now, any discussion of these authors will be cloaked in the hazy mist that is nostalgia.  Were the books really as good as I remember them? Most likely... no, but when I was 12 years old, and hungry for a good book, these were the guys I turned to.

There could not be two more different authors out there.  R.L. Stine had a formula, and a fairly safe one at that.  His Fear Street books were filled with wholesome teens who, at worst, shared a few stolen kisses, or MAYBE drank a beer (but only if they were the bad influences). They never swore, they never even really thought about sex.  They were the idealized teen from the 50's stuck in 90's clothes, and placed in a PG-13 thriller.

His stories were filled with fake outs, and limited violence. Sure, characters died, but more often then not the "deaths" were fake outs.  A chapter would end with the main character screaming in terror, then the next would reveal the perceived death as a prank, or just a misunderstanding.  His later books got more violent, with some of the last books turning into out right blood baths, but this was to keep up with a market that was becoming more and more saturated with extreme violence (take a look at the Curse of Camp Crystal Lake books, or series like Terror Academy). Stine, at his core, liked telling goofy ghost stories, or campy mysteries.  It is no surprise that he originally started as a comedy writer.  The darker side of horror was just not his thing, and that was okay.

It's also not surprising to find out at that some of the more violent Fear Street books were not actually written by Stine, but by a stable of ghost writers (one of which went on to some very big success, writing books like Election, Little Children and The Leftovers, which was turned into an HBO series staring Liv Tyler). Stine didn't write one single Fear Street Sagas book, outside of the original trilogy. (Now, you have to remember that ghost writers were VERY common in the YA market back in the 90's.  One author would create a series, maybe do some outlines or write the first few books, and then the publisher would turn to their stable of ghost writers to keep pumping out books on a regular schedule.)

Christopher Pike was the exact opposite.

His stories were dark and mature.  They dealt with topics like drugs and sex.  Characters died, and sometimes in very nasty ways (Die Softly features a killer forcing someone to inhale cocaine laced with Strychnine).   His characters were not perfect, far from it, and sometimes they didn't come to happy endings.  Pike's books, while not exactly a mirror into the lives of teens in the 90's, crept just a little closer to real life.

His books also didn't always set out to scare.  Books like Road to Nowhere, The Midnight Club and the original Chain Letter were more focused on talking about characters who were suffering from depression or disease (Chain Letter 2: Ancient Evil did a complete 180 from the first book and turned into a pretty violent, nasty supernatural horror novel. Not bad, but VERY different from the first book).  I'm not going to lie. All three of those books made me cry when I read them.  The twist in Chain Letter is so heart breaking that even thinking about it now gets me a little choked up. Even the Remember Me trilogy mixed honest emotion with its supernatural thrills.

His characters were also more diverse. They weren't all white (although most his protagonists were), and they weren't always straight.  They were also far from perfect. They had issues.  Some of his books dealt with very dark material (The Wicked Heart features a very sick twist).  Even Pike's early books, like Slumber Party didn't pull punches when it came to bumping off characters.

Now, Pike started going off the rails a bit towards the end of the 90's, with The Grave and Magic Fire turning out to be truly bizarre, and at times near unreadable. His more recent return to YA fiction has shown that he has returned to his original form, but towards the end of the 90's YA boom, it was obvious his love for the genre was waining.

Both authors have ventured into books for adult audiences, with varying degrees of success.  Pike made a more smooth transition, with some of his books being truly creepy and disturbing (I'm looking at you The Cold One).  Stine... well, Stine basically takes his YA books, ages his characters, throws in some sex scenes, and expands the page count (but there are still plenty of fake outs!.  Some of his early attempts at adult fiction were truly atrocious, with The Sitter and Eye Candy being two of the worst books I have ever read in my life. (They commit my ultimate sin. They are BORING!)

It is nice to see both authors back on in the market, bring readers books that perfectly reflect their heritage. Sure, the page counts may be a little longer, but Stine is still churning out safe, but fun teen chillers with his patented fake outs and chapter ending cliffhangers, while Pike still finds a way to interject more adult themes into his newer works.  The YA market has changed so much since I was the target audience, and I can honestly say it has changed for the better, but still, sometimes, for nostalgia's sake, it feels good to look back at the books that I devoured as a child.

No comments:

Post a Comment