Trigger warnings for “Peach”

murder, suicide, bestiality, revenge, alcoholism, abuse, necrophilia, rape, stalking,

sexual situations

            My collection of short stories, “Peach” (Nightmare Press, 2025) can be described as “transgressive fiction” or “dark, speculative fiction.” I retired from college teaching, primarily literature and writing, before “trigger warnings” became popular and students could opt out of material which might shock or disturb them, so I suppose that I’ve never been clear as to the necessity of these warnings.

            I’ve spent my life reading literature – famous and infamous, mundane and much vaunted, looking always to be stopped in my tracks, somehow changed, forced to consider and reconsider lives and situations not my own – so it’s difficult to understand why anyone would read only to avoid that experience.

            The warnings, especially those mandated for films and television shows, are not a complete waste of time.  I use them to decide what to watch, what might be the most verisimilar. The more salacious the list, the more I’m apt to select the program, although the warning about “smoking” seems trivial.

            My experience with most of the great stories and novels I’ve read is that any “trigger warning” designed to spare a reader trauma or discomfort is akin to the warning we’ve come to put on coffee lids: “CAUTION – Contents may be hot.” My response is “It better damn well be.” This is much my answer to trigger warnings.  If the story or novel isn’t in some way foreign to my view of the world, why would I bother with it.

            I realize that this idea can make all great stories “transgressive.” God knows I’ve slogged through many contemporary “literary” stories little more than sketches which successfully avoid the representation of life and being of much interest at all.

            I include these trigger warning for “Peach” on the off chance that there are readers out there still looking for narration that might shock, that might be of interest, stories, in short, not for the squeamish.