[Book Review]: Stephen Graham Jones’ I Was a Teenage Slasher
On slashers, destiny, and breaking cycles.
Strong storytelling has its origins in oral transmission. To share a story is a communal experience, and we have developed the desire for it so deep it’s a need tied to our survival. Funny, then, that we should get so much enjoyment from being scared by a method meant to help us stay alive. The best slashers are structured as campfire tales, after all.
One of the strongest elements of Friday the 13th’s lasting legacy is its continued hint of a frame story through which Jason is continually mythologized. To tell these stories this way not only ensures their continued life, but lends them an equal air of humanity and monstrosity alike. Humanity’s tendency toward over-exaggeration lends itself to building these legends into larger-than-life entities, and yet we also want to be able to identify with the characters in the stories we consume, and so more often than not there is something added to make us empathize — at least a bit — with the slashers out for vengeance against a world that did them wrong — or so they think.
Recently there have been efforts to turn our typical interpretations of and ideas about slashers on their head. Most recently, in the film world, you have movies like In A Violent Nature, in which the perspective is dominated by the killer rather than the victims, with no skimping on the brutality. On the literary side of things, meanwhile, slasher lover extraordinaire Stephen Graham Jones is entering the arena in the way only he can. With his newest novel, I Was a Teenage Slasher, we’re presented with a rather unique approach on both genre and characters.
Tolly Driver, our narrator, is begrudgingly a slasher villain. Following a near-death experience at a house party, bodies start to fall, and Tolly’s memory can’t fill in the blanks. With the help of his best friend, he begins to piece together the startling truth that he might be the one responsible for all the bloodshed around town lately. He enters a constant battle of resistance between grappling with his identity as a creature of revenge and maintaining a grasp on his sanity in the daylight, all while also reckoning with the recent death of his father.
Told in the conversational tone we have come to affectionately associate with Jones at his best, Teenage Slasher feels almost tailor made to be read out loud, individually or with a group around your favorite summer campfire. It is also yet another tender examination of humanity. Where the Indian Lake Trilogy gave us a Final Girl to root for, Teenage Slasher gives us a man-made monster continually at odds with his own monstrosity. Both deal heavily in the business of breaking toxic cycles, but where Jade was able to take ownership of her title, Tolly is constantly trying to prove himself stronger than the one unwillingly thrust upon him. He would rather spare and save the ones he loves than leave them a bloodied pulp for their mistakes.
The more familiar Tolly gets with the story structure his life is now blood-and-ink-bound to follow, the more he resists. The more he resists, the deeper into the meaty heart of what makes a great slasher we go.
Horror fans so often want the monster to win. We want to see the tormentors get what’s coming, because so often in the real world this justice is not possible. Yet with Tolly Driver, Stephen Graham Jones gives us a new angle to cheer for — things beyond his control made Tolly into the blood and gore-soaked masked monster he becomes. But his active, continuous choice to break the cycle of violence and center those he loves instead are what make him worth celebrating, remembering, and telling.
SGJ’s insistence of not just damning patterns of toxic masculinity but making space for genuine introspection and emotional development for as many of his characters as possible is part of what makes him one of the best in the business. The best, most impactful work — horror and otherwise — centers finding lights in the darkness and holding on to the best parts of what makes us human, even when it seems like all else may be lost. Jones just happens to prefer to shine this light in some of the more overlooked areas of culture and media. And we are all the better for it every time.
Tolly Driver is the campfire tale for lovers, friends, and family who believe there’s a path worth carving out beyond any we may feel predestined to follow.
I Was a Teenage Slasher is available now wherever books are sold, from Saga Press.
