The Wasp Factory

The Wasp Factory is an insightful, instructive example of the increasingly transgressive horror movement that characterized the 1980s. Given its unsparing look at sadistic animal torture, the murder of children, and the bizarre darkness of its narrator’s mind, it was a controversial novel, particularly for its time. Interestingly, The Wasp Factory was not the first novel Iain Banks wrote, although it was the first that he had published. After receiving rejections for several science fiction novels, he wrote The Wasp Factory in an attempt to lure publishers with what he hoped would be its greater commercial appeal. Stephen King’s novel Pet Cemetery had emerged one year prior, and its grim tale, which included a child who murders his mother after returning from the dead, was a commercial success despite its horrors.

The Wasp Factory was published in 1984, the same year as the majority of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood series, a collection characterized by grotesque characters, visceral body horror, and repugnant and increasingly specific depictions of violence. Two years later would see the release of Stephen King’s novel It. It contained a disturbed character named Patrick Hockstetter, who has much in common with Frank Cauldhame, including a delight in harming animals. It also featured explicit scenes of violence against children. 1986 also saw the release of Clive Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart, which would inspire a lengthy series of Hellraiser feature films, which reveled in body horror, torture, and emphasized that one person’s pain could be someone else’s pleasure.

Horror—along with vividly gory and cruel, unflinching horror—was becoming more marketable. Dan Simmons’s Song of Kali, set in India, featured the shocking sacrifice of a baby as well as the potent xenophobia that runs throughout Frank’s internal monologues in The Wasp Factory. Stephen King continued to publish throughout the decade, along with his contemporary, the novelist Peter Straub. In the world of film, the 1980s were the decade of slasher movies, whether they were played for their campiness or as works meant to frighten and disturb. In the world of literature, however, authors managed to find ways to treat violence with increasing seriousness, pushing the boundaries that would eventually evolve into the ultra-gory movements of sub-genres such as Splatterpunk.

The end of the 1980s ushered in what many consider to be the 1990s doldrums for horror books. However, 1991 saw the release of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, American Psycho, which received enormous condemnation. The narrator, Patrick Bateman, relates his crimes against women, children, and animals in sadistic, cold, affectless detail, with no remorse or emotion. Patrick Bateman’s descriptions of his sadistic acts amplify the grotesque cruelties of The Wasp Factory by a shocking degree. And yet, American Psycho sold well, was adapted into a popular feature film starring Christian Bale, and Ellis continued to publish to commercial and critical acclaim. Currently, the horror industry is experiencing a resurgence, with many of the most popular films of the year appearing in the horror genre. It is hard to overlook the contribution that novels like The Wasp Factory made in terms of expanding what is possible to market as entertainment and art.