Whisper House Press

Book: American Scary 

Author: Jeremy Dauber

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024

Capone’s Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ of 5⭐

American Scary is a chronological and somewhat topically arranged analysis of the horror genre in American history—from the time of European stories about natives capturing their members to the tropes in 1980s horror movies derived from that same fear of the other represented by indigenous culture and people… and onward to Erika Wurth’s White Horse and Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians. Treated are Lovecraft’s misogyny and xenophobia and Matt Ruff’s repurposing of that author’s descendent ideas in Lovecraft Country, the origins of gothic trappings, sci-fi parody (technical and comic), and the postmodern humor of Cabin in the Woods. Considered, too, are positive and negative representations of Black culture, with appropriate care taken.

About a hundred pages in, I realized I needed my pen for margin notes, and from there through to the end some 310 pages later, I felt compelled to track names of books, identifications of concepts and throughlines, and contemporary authors whose work I want to follow. The work of American Scary is recognizably one of popular cultural history, accessible but well-researched. Dauber works effectively at something that feels exhaustive, though literally exhaustive histories would be many volumes long and much less useful (what’s that said about the most precise map also being the least useful?). As a public historian, publisher and writer of horror, and horror film fanboy, this is a book I’m glad I didn’t miss. And it was nominated this past week by the Horror Writers Association for “Superior Achievement in Long Nonfiction,” a collection of highly regarded work I use to build my own reading list.

Because I can’t not mention a few drawbacks with this book, I’ll note them in a short sequence, since they should be least important in this review. The book design had some challenges, including absent chapter titles for end notes. The editing left me wanting, where the message in the writing was left opaque in places where it would have been easy to clean up. And—surely a matter of taste and not of quality—the meandering tone, which is reminiscent of John Keegan’s Intelligence in War and other tomes lacking tight arrangement in the face of an author’s vast knowledge of the subject, hinders the clarity of the writing.

All in all, I highly recommend Dauber’s American Scary as required reading for the reader, writer, publisher, or viewer of horror, along with anyone interested in understanding American popular culture. Four stars.