Interview with horror writer Nicole Cushing

 

Nicole Cushing's novel A Sick Gray Laugh has hit me with the force of a revelation. Recipient of the prestigious Bram Stoker award, Cushing transgresses the boundaries of the horror genre, moving seamlessly between history, philosophy, satire, and nightmarish grotesquery. The novel is thought-provoking and emotionally dizzying. Written in a funny, lighthearted tone, A Sick Gray Laugh has a gloomy, eerie undertone that, coupled with the creepy, outlandish visuals, will haunt the reader long after finishing. The author was kind enough to take the time and answer some of the main questions I have about her novel, but before we get to that I'll offer a brief outline. Noelle Cashman, the main character, decides to write a book about "the overwhelming Grayness that's slathered over everything like a thick coat of snot." Grayness is a soul-crushing disease that affects many small towns, and Noelle is able to establish that the source of the infection is the town of Naumpton, Indiana. Digging into its history, Noelle discovers two utopian cults that settled in the area but were ultimately crushed by civilization. The leader of the first cult was known as The New Moses and preached a synthesis between Christian principles and those of industrial capitalism. Basically, The New Moses claimed that if infused with the divine spirit of moral joy, factory workers and their employers would live in perfect harmony. One necessary step toward achieving this state of bliss was that all members of the cult were to cover their faces with black veils, symbolizing ego death, and their absolute submission to God. The second cult was The Brides of the Holy Ghost who, under the influence of local Evelyn Wilson aka The Great Prophetess, come to believe that sordid Naumpton is the place of birth of the Antichrist and, hating both men and sex, were able to temporarily turn the struggling town into a matriarchy. Studying these two cults, Noelle deduces some of the principles of fighting Grayness. Grayness means order and civilization and should be countered with chaos and madness. Grayness is conformity and coagulation and should be countered with rebellion and separation. Animated by the aggressive weirdness of the two pioneering cults Noelle decides to form her own cult of misfits, built around female supremacy, chaos, and the Principle of Separation.     

Axl: Stephen King famously said, "I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud." "A Sick Gray Laugh" doesn't fit neatly into the mold of mainstream horror; there are no monsters (human or inhuman) and almost no gore. How would you describe your brand of horror in relation to King's dictum and more established subgenres like body horror, cosmic horror, psychological horror and so on?

Nicole: You're correct when you point out that my characters don't struggle against traditional antagonists. They struggle against the menacing, palpable atmosphere around them. They struggle against reality. Each realizes they’re a part of a vast, hideous machine, and they struggle against that machine. Often, they struggle against their own brains. Therefore, I don't think King's taxonomy is all that helpful when applied to my work. Instead, I would describe my work as a variety of weird fiction, because weird fiction often depicts an alienated individual’s struggle against their surroundings, or against reality.

However, even that label may confuse the issue. So often, when someone says “weird fiction” they really mean “cosmic horror” or “Lovecraftian fiction” or “Ligottian fiction”.  They use “weird fiction” to refer exclusively to the Anglo-American tradition of cosmic horror, as articulated in short stories. I feel a stronger connection to the Continental European tradition of the weird, and to a couple of weird works from the Middle East and North Africa. Moreover, I feel connected to the tradition of the weird novel. Right now, I’m not interested in short stories.

Don’t get me wrong, I continue to respect and admire the work of Thomas Ligotti. But if you study his work and read his interviews, you soon realize he’s influenced not only by Anglo-American Lovecraftian fiction, but also by the global weird tradition. Upon exploring the international influences mentioned in his interviews I got hooked on them, myself! Therefore, Ligotti has been my “gateway drug” to the global weird tradition (and translated fiction, in general). For me, Ligotti’s work isn’t the final destination of the weird. It’s not a destination at all, but rather a door. And doors are meant to be walked through.

That’s how literature advances. We stand on the shoulders of giants, yes. But we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants so we can look down at the giants. We stand on the shoulders of giants so we can better reach the next frontier.

My work follows in the tradition of novels like The Tenant by Roland Topor and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I’m also influenced by novellas like The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani, The Great Shadow by Mário de Sá-Carneiro, and The Seven Who Were Hanged and The Red Laugh by Leonid Andreyev. Most recently, I’ve been influenced by the novels of Witold Gombrowicz. His work exerted a strong influence on A Sick Gray Laugh.

Lest I seem unpatriotic, I should mention that I feel a kinship with some American weird novelists, too. Shirley Jackson and Caitlin Kiernan, in particular. But neither Ms. Jackson nor Ms. Kiernan weave absurdity into their work. You couldn’t call either of them “playful”. I, on the other hand, revel in gallows humor, and I see writing as a combination of self-discipline and play.

Axl: "A Sick Gray Laugh" features elements of both postmodernism and existentialism. Metanaration and irony are blended with more sombre reflections about the human condition, mental illness, and existential dread. What are your thoughts on mixing these two traditions?

Nicole: I don’t want to quibble too much with your question, but I’m not sure “existentialism” is quite the right label. For me, the phrase “existentialist fiction” conjures up images of Sartre and Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. It implies fiction that advocates for existentialist values. Didactic fiction. That’s not what I’m about. I’m not cheerleading for any particular system of thought.

But I get the gist of what you’re asking, and I can only say that the use of metanarrative and irony to address serious literary subjects is a very old trick. In the 1930s, Gombrowicz pulled it off in his novel Ferdydurke. Kundera’s novels do something similar, although his irony is more muted than that of Gombrowicz. It’s less nightmarishly absurd. One could argue that it goes back much further. Kundera, for example, claims Cervantes and Rabelais as influences. When it comes to matters of style and tone, my work isn’t really experimental. Or perhaps it is experimental, but only in the sense that I’m replicating an experiment that’s been performed many times before. Perhaps my only stylistic innovation is carrying that tradition forward into the realm of twenty-first century weird fiction, spiking it with a shot glass of transgression, and imposing it on a cast of working-class characters scrabbling together lives in the American Midwest. 

 Axl: Noelle Cashman, the hero (or anti-hero) of the novel, is a self-professed nihilist, fan of the work of Thomas Liggotti. She claims all beliefs are ridiculous and warns us against Moronic Hope. And yet, she's very determined to fight Grayness. What's the point of that fight? What is she trying to defend? Wouldn't a pessimist like Liggotti say that the whole world is Gray; that there's no exit? That maybe even Colors are Gray? Doesn't her ambition to destroy Grayness turn Noelle into an optimist? And doesn't her commitment to things Colorful and The Principle of Separation betray the fact she's still a victim of grandiose narratives and Moronic Hope?

Nicole: It’s been a while since my brain was fully marinated in A Sick Gray Laugh. (It’s now fully marinated in my work-in-progress.) But, if I recall correctly, Noelle’s quest is a quest for psychological comfort, above all else. That’s what she’s trying to defend (or, at least, obtain). She’s suffocated, in a psychological sense, and she wants to breathe.

 The fact that she makes an effort to breathe doesn’t really indicate that she’s an optimist. At least, not a capital-O, philosophical Optimist. She’s merely succumbing to the same reflex any suffocated individual feels: the reflex to fight for air.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that you’re correct: she’s an optimist, of sorts. If this is the case, she’s a terrifying optimist, a sadistic optimist, the kind of optimist who is a walking advertisement for pessimism!  

But shouldn’t I be bothered that Noelle contradicts herself? I don’t believe this is a problem because Noelle admits as much. She tells the reader, directly, that she finds it impossible to stay committed to any belief. Her mind is hideously mutable. Her brain is like a kaleidoscope, with one important difference. Instead of constantly changing into various neat and tidy geometrical patterns, it changes into a series of monstrous, foul, asymmetrical blobs.

Axl: Early on, Noelle discovers that The New Moses and his utopian cult use black veils to cover their faces upon their arrival in the New World. To them, face-covering is a means of erasing the ego and ushering in the Utopia of selfless moral joy. Later in the story, Noelle realizes that when wearing her balaclava she has the power to part the Gray Sea just as the original Moses parted the Red Sea. Does this power have to do with suppressing the ego like in the case of the New Moses? And, more generally, what is the role of Noelle's ego in her fight against Grayness. As a wannabe cult leader, she must be prideful and arrogant, which is also what separates her from the conformity of Grayness? Yet, at the same time, her ego must be deemed fluid and illusory by her commitment to nihilism and the unreality of everything. What are your thoughts on this dilemma?

Nicole: There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s take the questions one at a time.

Does Noelle’s power to part the Gray Sea derive from suppressing her ego? No. It stems from her “re-enactment” (for lack of a better word) of something Colorful. 

What’s the role of Noelle’s ego in her fight against Grayness? Noelle’s sense of self is unstable, bordering on nonexistent. However, her suffering is a very idiosyncratic sort of suffering, the type of suffering that separates her from the rest of humanity (who don’t notice, or at least don’t obsess over Grayness). Her suffering seems distinctly her own. Thus, her suffering seems to confirm her selfhood. If Noelle herself were here to speak to you, she might paraphrase Descartes and say “I suffer, therefore I am”.

Is this a dilemma? I’m not one hundred percent sure. I would call it a complication or a paradox. I try to honestly depict life, and the experience of consciousness in particular. There’s no way to take on those subjects without encountering paradoxes. In many ways, the paradox is the point. I’m not giving the reader a puzzle to solve, or a philosophy to evaluate. I’m giving the reader an experience to be felt and an aesthetic to appreciate. 

Axl: Do you think Satan, as depicted let's say in Milton's Paradise Lost, as the rebel and opposer, would be an agent of Color and Chaos on Noelle's view. Can her outlook be described as essentially Satanic?

Nicole: I’ve not yet read Paradise Lost (though the Norton critical edition is in my to-be-read pile). That caveat aside, I think that even rebellion can be Gray, if it allows itself to become too predictably rebellious. Kneejerk rebelliousness can quickly turn into a dull, tiresome affectation. Only a thin line separates an opposer from a poser.

So I don’t think her outlook can be seen as Satanic. A static Satan is a Gray Satan. For Satan to truly be Colorful, he would need to rebel against himself from time to time. 

You can find a good deal on A Sick Gray Laugh and other horrors at https://bit.ly/3mLLIm2
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