[TW: extreme gore] Aron Beauregard’s shock horror is straight up just bad (an opinion from someone who loves shock horror)

I am, buy and large, very much am the type of person who should be thoroughly in Aron Beauregard’s target audience. I am someone who approaches all pieces of media and art from the standpoint that all creative expression, barring those that require a direct act of harm to produce, deserve to exist and have *some* merit (even if some have way less than others.) Therefore, I’m sorry, I feel like it’s a testimate to his failure as an author that not only do I not like his work, but he’s one of the few authors I’ve went so far as to return two of this books to get my audible credits back— I was that disappointed in the quality of his work.

Because the content of his novels pushes extremes of graphic violance and gets such a polarizing response, it’s very easy to mistake this for a testament to his subversive boundary pushing. This has more or less acted like a criticism-proof shield for the guy. That’s a real shame, to be frank. I see a lot of promise in the creativity of a lot of his gore, and though I don’t think his prose are anything exeptional, his economical writing style does work well as a means to deliver the extreme violance. He knows what his readers are there for, and it’s smart on his part to not try and glut his writing with prose that add too many bells and whistles to distract from the main course— so to speak.

Reading/listening a few of his novels (or, I suppose, novellas) trying to give him all the chances, I’m under the impressing one of his big inspirations potentially is Chuck Palahniuk, who happens to be one of my biggest writing inspirations aswell. I’d not be entirely surprised however if the only novel of Palahniuk’s he actually read from over to cover was *Haunted*. And frankly, somehow even less surprised if he, in fact, has only actually truely properly committed Chuck’s short story *Guts* (featured in *Haunted*) to memory. Obviously I don’t know for sure, I can’t read Beauregard’s mind, but he seems to have fundamentally missed what exactly makes Palahniuk and *Guts* in particular such a master work in shock horror. Reading Beauregard’s work is kind of like listening to someone try to tell a joke when all they remember is the punchline. There’s an art to properly disturbing your readers, and it takes a lot more than setting up interesting vignettes of bodily destruction.

Though Beauregard does to some degree take the time to set up his characters . . . Kind of. Like many people my first introduction to his work was *The Slob.* Perhaps because Beauregard was worried his readers might complain if he didn’t get to any kind of disturbing content fast enough, that book in particular is notable for having the protagonist get sidetracked into a prolonged explanation of her family’s disturbing backstory. This barely has anything to do with the rest of the novel and really should have been cut all together, but in isolation is frankly the closest Beauregard gets to writing a small little piece if disturbing fiction with some competence. It almost just about captures what makes Palahniuk such a captivating writer, what makes *Guts* such an infamously horrific short story, in the manner it takes a nugget of relatable mundane familiar conflict and explores how it could escalate into a nightmare. *Guts* begins it’s narrative from such a private, relatably humiliating set up and progresses into probably farther than the reader could have imagined would be possible while still remaining within the suspension of disbelief. Something this one little portion of *The Slob* proves Beauregard is at least somewhat capable of and consistently just . . . Doesn’t.

In almost every other instance, his characters simply just meander from disturbing scene to disturbing scene like they’re video game characters triggering cut scenes. There’s typically very little set up to the actual gory scenes commencing, and even worse, his characters consistently just walk it all off after it’s over. Absolutely bizarre how adverse these novels consistently are to expressions of suffering all things considered. And, look, they want to be gross gory cheese? Fine. *Life of Mai Chan* is nothing but a flurry of depravity with very little else to offer and I like it. It works. *Mai Chan* doesn’t waist time pussifooting around with establishing plot, characters, stakes, anything. It’s entirely self aware with how violent to the point of irreverent absurdity and owns it.

Aron Beauregard’s work sucks not because it’s so over the top violent, or disgusting, or depraved— it sucks because it’s poorly constructed shock horror. Some elements of his work show promise when detached from their wholes (ha) but are in active conflict with each other when put together.

I’m someone who grew up thoroughly corrupted by early 2000s internet showing me real world violance and introducing me to extreme cinema way, WAY too young. Good honest gore is hard for me to come by since I’m so thoroughly detached from it, yet my brain craves it like a fix all the same. Mr. Beauregard, on the off chance you’re reading this, I want to give you my money. I like your funny words magic man. Some of your ideas conceptually are pretty cool. Just put them in some properly structured narratives, and my dollars are your’s. I’m literally the exact type of person you should be writing for. Please my guy.

by ThisDudeisNotWell