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A review by jpeavler
Danse Macabre by Stephen King
3.0
I am torn on just what to say about this book. I found much of it boring and hard to read, but at the same time strangely fascinated by some of his thoughts about the subject of horror. I grew up reading Stephen King. My first adult novel that I read, when I was only in third grade, was Cujo. My mother saw a dog on the cover and thought it was a story about a St. Bernard. Pretty harmless stuff, in her eyes. So, needless to say, after reading it, I was hooked and have been a fan ever since. So seeing what has influenced one of my favorite writers is fascinating, but there were places where his analysis of his influences seemed over long and tiring to read. A part me is also a bit perturbed that he mentions some of these books and peaks my interest in reading them for myself, but then he proceeds to give a synopsis of the plot as he is analyzing what makes the horror work in that story. I should have known better. Obviously if you are writing about something, you have to give some of the story away in order to show why it works as horror, but I felt frustrated at times. I guess I don't really need to read Ghost Story by Peter Straub now, because I have a pretty good idea what happens. (I'll probably still read it, just because)
This book is dated -- published in 1981 (when I was but a we lad of one year old) -- and it speaks of books long out of print and some movies that I doubt you'd be able to find on DVD. As I began to read it, he speaks of the original Alien movie, and speaks of it as the newest in a long and storied history of horror films. When I read "New" in regards to Alien, the historian in me knew that I had to approach this as a type of source material book. I had to remind myself over and over that it is thirty years old.
His thesis is still strong and right on all these years later (though I am highly curious to read his thoughts on the past thirty years of horror . . . I can only imagine what he thinks about books like Twilight and shows like True Blood). There are four basic types of horror, according to Mr. King: That Which is Unnamed (Frankenstein), The Werewolf story, ie the evil within ourselves (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), the Vampire story, and the Ghost story. Each story has two sides to it, a theory he names Dionysian Horror.
While I found the context of his theories sound, and his explanations of why we seek scares in our books and at the movies interesting, I found his writing about the movies he loves and the books he reveres to be long winded and boring. I did not want an over analysis of the Something Wicked This Way Comes or the Body Snatchers. I wanted more theory and explanation as to what scares people and why we like to be scared. I loved it when he was talking broadly about the fine line that filmmakers take between scary and comedy and how more times than not horror movies tend to stumble into the comedy realm.
I wanted to like this a lot more than I actually found myself liking it. I enjoyed the first half, as he explains scares and frights, but the latter half was a seemingly never ending analysis of books, television, and film that I could have done without. It obviously a personal preference on my part, and not a knock against Stephen King as an author. The narrative is vintage King -- friendly and homey, only in a Non-Fiction setting. I just felt it was an example of where less could have been more.
This book is dated -- published in 1981 (when I was but a we lad of one year old) -- and it speaks of books long out of print and some movies that I doubt you'd be able to find on DVD. As I began to read it, he speaks of the original Alien movie, and speaks of it as the newest in a long and storied history of horror films. When I read "New" in regards to Alien, the historian in me knew that I had to approach this as a type of source material book. I had to remind myself over and over that it is thirty years old.
His thesis is still strong and right on all these years later (though I am highly curious to read his thoughts on the past thirty years of horror . . . I can only imagine what he thinks about books like Twilight and shows like True Blood). There are four basic types of horror, according to Mr. King: That Which is Unnamed (Frankenstein), The Werewolf story, ie the evil within ourselves (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), the Vampire story, and the Ghost story. Each story has two sides to it, a theory he names Dionysian Horror.
While I found the context of his theories sound, and his explanations of why we seek scares in our books and at the movies interesting, I found his writing about the movies he loves and the books he reveres to be long winded and boring. I did not want an over analysis of the Something Wicked This Way Comes or the Body Snatchers. I wanted more theory and explanation as to what scares people and why we like to be scared. I loved it when he was talking broadly about the fine line that filmmakers take between scary and comedy and how more times than not horror movies tend to stumble into the comedy realm.
I wanted to like this a lot more than I actually found myself liking it. I enjoyed the first half, as he explains scares and frights, but the latter half was a seemingly never ending analysis of books, television, and film that I could have done without. It obviously a personal preference on my part, and not a knock against Stephen King as an author. The narrative is vintage King -- friendly and homey, only in a Non-Fiction setting. I just felt it was an example of where less could have been more.