On Love and Sex and Death (oh my)

"Flesh is the fundamental problem into which we are born . It's the first paradox we are aware of, long before we know what the word paradox means. The very same nerve endings that present us with pleasure if stroked the right way are the same that give us pain…We're paradox real early…We also learn at a young age that certain pleasures we can induce for ourselves are forbidden, secret, taboo. One of the reasons horror fiction falls shy of being considered serious writing is that there's a general belief these kinds of stories have sexuality as their subtext, and by bringing that subtext into the more prominent position of text, you somehow call the bluff of the machine that made the thing work in the first place. You've pulled the hood off, so to speak, and people feared that in showing the workings, the magic wouldn't work any longer. I don't think that's true at all - it doesn't stop me, certainly. Any genre that requires the willful disregard of certain facts that we all know to make it work is moribund by definition." Barker's Searching For A Higher Plane By Bob Strauss, The Fresno Bee, 25 October 1987

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