“…Grey and Cold and Full of Long Shadows”: city, neoliberalism and alienation in the 1970–80s American horror literature

This paper investigates American urban horror novels from the 1970s to 80s with a specific focus on the theme of alienation. While analysing the specific theme, the paper tracks the nuanced manifestations of neoliberalism-induced greed and exploitation and brings forward a portrait of the evolving urban landscape. Based on the treatment of urban themes in the selected texts, we have divided the paper into two sections: the redemptive arc of the 70s and the city-beyond-redemption in the 80s. The first section–focused on the exploitation of the socio-economic minority by the urban upper class–talks about a ‘hopeful’ climax of resistance. The second section concentrates on the ‘city-beyond-redemption’: a hopeless, dystopic and indifferent space in the grip of neoliberal greed and deprivation that drives the citizens into a self-destructive impulse. Our paper tracks this thematic evolution through a wide spectrum of canonical American horror literature, from classics by Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty and Jay to the ‘Splatterpunk’ and Cosmic Horror/New Weird genre popularised by John Skipp, Craig Spector and Kathe Koja, etc. We argue that the city-themed American horror literature of the 1970–80s reflects a detailed and variegated impact of the neoliberal era on American society, acting as an important marker of the evolution of urbanity, social struggle and human existence in general.