Danse Macabre

This is a reread for me - after a little over twenty years. It's interesting to see how the first reading of this book influenced some of my later reading - [[Shirley Jackson]], [[Jack Finney]], [[Richard Matheson]], etc. But I went into this reading intent upon a closer inspection of the literary references in horror and science fiction. So, armed with pad and pen, I embarked. At the end, I had almost 30 pages of notes, a nine-page listing of books and authors, and a feeling I'd just taken a graduate class in horror literature.

There are quite a few chapters on film and television that were interesting, especially from a perspective of how they helped to shape and foster these realms. Some folks coming to the book now will not have the show more cultural context to connect with these chapters, but I found them fascinating.

The best bits of the book, though, are the passages where Uncle Stevie waxes on about his influences, what he read, and how it shaped his own work. There's a deep comparison of [Dracula] and ['Salem's Lot], including a passage where he describes his own real life childhood incursion into the actual Marsten House. There's also a long recollection about how he begun writing [The Stand], a Patty Hearst story, and who is the real life inspiration for Randall Flagg. Additionally, King lays out what horror does for readers, what function it serves - this book is the origins of one of his famous quotes, "We make up horrors to cope with the real ones."

On that note, I thought it appropriate to include a quotation from the book here - not a King quote, but his transcription of a [[Harlan Ellison]] passage from a letter, to identify how well this book holds up some 40+ years later:

"The man has become the most important public figure of our times. In short, he has manipulated reality simply by being bold. In this madman we have an example of one who understands, even subcutaneously, that the real world is manipulable. He has dreamed, and forced the rest of the word to live in his dream."

You probably think you know who that quote references, but you'd be wrong because you're forgetting the part about how this book is 40+ years old - the quote references Ayatollah Khomeini - an indication about the cycles of history and hate and horror.

The book ends with, essentially a Coda from King about writing, and reading, horror fiction. It's fashioned from an interview he did with a reporter who asked him how he could live with himself writing things that played on people's fears. He then narrates the rest of the interview, peppering in vignettes about real life awful violent crimes, essentially bringing home the point that horror fiction accentuates real life horror to help cope that real life horror.

If you're a horror or science fiction or King fan - you really have to read this book. If you're a writer yourself, you should read this book. Oh, heck, just read the damn book.

Highly recommended!!!!!
5 bones!!!!! show less

This is an overview of horror movies, t.v. series, and books from roughly 1950 to 1980. King’s knowledge of the subject is both wide and deep, naturally.
Since King is two years older than I, much of the book was s great nostalgia trip for me. He’s very engaging here; reading this is like having a conversation with close but garrulous old friend.
Oddly, the largest part of the book is devoted to movies. There are some redundancies, some over-writing, some bs. But at its heart this is a fun book that doesn’t take its subject too seriously, but doesn’t treat it as trash, either.
Recommended if you’re a fan of the horror genre in any form, a fan of King, or interested in the era.

what an overview of horror movies, tv, and books (not enough about books, if you ask me) and why we read/write/watch them in the first place. he finds redeeming qualities to many movies that i'm sure i couldn't find anything positive in, but i still found his analysis interesting, even if i didn't always agree with it. i was most interested in (and ultimately surprised by) what he considers "horror," because i've never felt he was mainly a horror writer, and many of the writers he cites i also wouldn't call horror writers.

i am re/reading all of his books (except the dark tower series) in order of publication and even this early on it's clear to me in his fiction that he's a man who believes in equality. many, many of his characters in show more his books do not, and he writes them so well that i recall questioning his personal belief in the past. so i especially appreciated his identification of sexism in the film alien in a scene that "Enabl[es] the males in the audience, of course, to relax, roll their eyes at each other, and say either aloud or telepathically, 'Isn't that just like a woman?' It is a plot twist which depends upon a sexist idea for its believability, and we might well answer the question asked above by asking in turn, 'Isn't that just like a male chauvinist pig of a Hollywood scriptwriter?'"

this is a man who knows so much, not just about his genre, and i enjoyed seeing that on display here. this felt a bit like a dissertation that went out of control, but it will serve as a great reference for the future, and as always, i so like his voice and his tone. and he put some anecdotes and explanations of his own work and life in here, making me very much look forward to reading his on writing.

"We take refuge in make-believe terrors so the real ones don't overwhelm us, freezing us in place and making it impossible to function in our day-to-day lives."

"...I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud."

"...the primary duty of literature - to tell us the truth about ourselves by telling us lies about people who never existed."

while he gives a lot of credence to what seem to be pretty bad movies, he's not as forgiving with other writers. what a great insult:

"No Saul Bellow, no Bernard Malamud, but at least not down there in steerage with people like Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon, who apparently wouldn't know the difference between a balanced line of prose and a shit-and-anchovy pizza."

"What powers the rockets is Popular Mechanics stuff. The province of the writer is what powers the people."

"My stories all speak of courage and ethic and friendship and toughness. Sometimes they do it with love, sometimes with violence, sometimes with pain or sorrow or joy. But they all present the same message: the more you know, the more you can do."

"The novelist is, after all, God's liar, and if he does his job well, keeps his head and his courage, he can sometimes find the truth that lives at the center of the lie." show less

The last time I read this was when the hardcover was published, more than forty years ago, so it was very current then.

Now, he's talking about horror stuff from almost 45 years ago...to almost 75 years ago. As someone else said, it would be great to let King have a second Danse...or maybe even a third.

That said, this is far from perfect. King gives a lot of insight, but he also does belabor a couple of points right into the ground. He also wears his favourites on his sleeve, giving a ton of page count to a couple of his obvious inspirations, Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson...and maybe these two are owed, because reading early King really does show his love of both of these authors. However, you can also see he was buddies with show more Peter Straub, as he gives far too much space to Straub's first mainstream bestseller, that likely could have been better served on some more seasoned and better authors.

But, through his journey through radio, television, movies, comics, and novels, and King's inevitable digressions that are often more fun than the main point, he does cover a lot of ground, and he made me think. A lot.

Always a good thing. show less

I've read the book and this time, I listened to the audio version. I definitely recommend the audio, although the narrator's voice was a bit grating to me at first. Quickly though, I adapted to his sound and lost myself in the memories of a lifetime. Many spoilers throughout and a lot might be meaningless if you are not familiar with the books and movies covered. I recommend looking at the bibliography and watching and reading as much of the material Stephen discusses before you read this book.

This is one of my most favorite SK writings because I enjoy his non-fiction almost more than his fiction. Definitely one of these books that might be appreciated more by readers closer to Stephen's age, I think younger people could enjoy it too show more as a movie and book guide for a real history lesson of horror. The roots and templates for today's scares, these B flicks and their campy promotions were the best. You can see for yourself where the movies and books of today drew heavily on the ideas and creativity of yesteryear. And, although there aren't the special effects and buckets o'blood like in today's movies and books, in some cases, they are scarier and more disturbing in what they don't show. I have seen or read almost every single thing Stephen discusses here, so this was a nostalgic look back at my childhood and young adulthood.

I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates the horror genre and its place in pop culture. I love a good scary story because, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks. show less

Yes, it's a little dated now, but the observations are just as relevant, the wit just as sharp. The difference this time around is, with very few exceptions, I've actually managed to read the bulk of the novels and view the bulk of the movies King discusses here.

The last time I read it, I remember feeling like I was a pretty well-educated horror aficionado...until I realized I wasn't familiar with most of the stuff King had discussed. This time around, I've found the intervening 35 years have remedied that.

A great dissertation--with a lot of Uncle Stevie's wit--on the world of horror. With side trips into fantasy and SF and thrillers.

I find myself wishing he'd do follow up to this, covering the next 30 years.

Interesting read. It was fascinating to read this after having read 2000's [b:On Writing|10569|On Writing|Stephen King|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348431774s/10569.jpg|150292]. King's voice is different here, as in 1983 he was a rocket-hot best-selling author still in his thirties, rather than an established best-selling author in his fifties. Here he writes like a man with something to prove, to himself as well as you. Also, this book was clearly written before King openly recognized he was an alcoholic, as he rather gleefully mentions multiple instances of getting shitfaced.

The book itself is meandering and discursive, and it reads more like a set of informal lectures than a "proper" work of literary criticism. King touches on show more thirty years of horror in the form of films, television shows, and books, taking a few examples of each medium and discussing them at length. In keeping with King's utter inability to write about anything other than himself (that sounds snide, but it's a wonderful quality and I mean it as a compliment), he discusses many of these pieces in terms of how they shaped him as a person and a writer.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay this book is that it made me wish I were more familiar with the material discussed. It made me want to become a Roger Corman completist, a Twilight Zone completist, reread [b:Frankenstein|18490|Frankenstein|Mary Shelley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311647465s/18490.jpg|4836639] with a kinder eye, and then come back and read this book again.

King also takes aim at the notion that violent or horrific media cause violent and horrific acts. In an reasoned yet impassioned essay, he argues that if anything, horror fiction serves as a release valve rather than a focus for violent feelings. It's one of the best parts of the book.

I enjoyed this book, not quite as much as On Writing, but well worth the read, as a glimpse both into the horror genre, and King's own development as an author. show less