Charles Baxter: What We Talk about When We Talk about Horror (July 2018)

In certain stories, plays, and novels, an x factor occurs so that a metaphorical door closes, whether in the mind or in the physical universe, and subsequently reality becomes destabilized and nightmarish–becomes a “Wonderland.” Both reader and character have trouble distinguishing what is ‘real’ from what mysterious x factor is disrupting the mental or physical landscape. Baxter explores “wonderlands” in Macbeth, Daphne DuMaurier’s “Don’t Look Now” and “The Birds,” and other texts.