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h4wke 's review for:
Danse Macabre
by Stephen King
Hmm, this was a slightly disappointing entry from Stephen King, only the second subpar experience I've had with his works (Roadwork being the other).
There's a lot of interesting ideas, and fun anecdotes to be sure. The book is made with passion, and it's particularly neat seeing horror dissected by one of its masters. Unfortunately the book hasn't aged very well.
I watch old movies and TV shows all the time, but a lot of them simply aren't the best examples (after forty more years of media) for what he's trying to talk about. The points he makes are repeated too often, with synopsis after synopsis of plots and specific scenes padding out a hearty portion of the book. It's written for an audience that doesn't have all that material on-hand, and a lot of it was tedious for me to read. He is self-aware that it's indulgent, and though I appreciated this fact, it didn't make it more enjoyable.
Now, it's unfair to blame the book for aging poorly in my eyes, and silly to blame King for not being aptly technologically prescient, so I don't detract from the overall score too harshly for how dated it seems.
The book does provide a snapshot of how horror was viewed at the time, and I have to assume it gives a great deal of insight into his future works—perhaps after I read those this will improve in my eyes.
I was looking for a unique perspective on the horror genre, and there were definitely snippets of it amongst plot summaries and personal stories (the latter being written quite well). It just wasn't what I was looking for overall.
There's a lot of interesting ideas, and fun anecdotes to be sure. The book is made with passion, and it's particularly neat seeing horror dissected by one of its masters. Unfortunately the book hasn't aged very well.
I watch old movies and TV shows all the time, but a lot of them simply aren't the best examples (after forty more years of media) for what he's trying to talk about. The points he makes are repeated too often, with synopsis after synopsis of plots and specific scenes padding out a hearty portion of the book. It's written for an audience that doesn't have all that material on-hand, and a lot of it was tedious for me to read. He is self-aware that it's indulgent, and though I appreciated this fact, it didn't make it more enjoyable.
Now, it's unfair to blame the book for aging poorly in my eyes, and silly to blame King for not being aptly technologically prescient, so I don't detract from the overall score too harshly for how dated it seems.
The book does provide a snapshot of how horror was viewed at the time, and I have to assume it gives a great deal of insight into his future works—perhaps after I read those this will improve in my eyes.
I was looking for a unique perspective on the horror genre, and there were definitely snippets of it amongst plot summaries and personal stories (the latter being written quite well). It just wasn't what I was looking for overall.