Danse Macabre
by Stephen King
- Used
- near fine
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Near Fine/very good
- ISBN 10
- 0896960765
- ISBN 13
- 9780896960763
- Seller
-
Gridley, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Everest House, 1981. Second Printing. Hardcover. Near Fine/very good. Near fine second printing copy in burgundy quarter cloth and red boards, gold-stamped title on spine. Not price-clipped. Very good dust jacket shows chips and wear at corners and edges, two tiny tears. Dust jacket now protected in a clear, removable, archival cover. Binding is sturdy. 450 pp. with index and bibliography compiled by King. Octavo, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches tall. An informal overview of where the horror genre has been over the last thirty years"--by its most financially successful practitioner. And when King says "informal," he really means it. Mixing autobiography with literary/film criticism with sheer horror-freak gush, he rambles through dozens of titles, subgenres, and theories of horror-esthetics--in a sloppy, repetitive, sometimes funny, rarely original ghoulash. . . which often descends to the level of a jivey, junior-high-school bull session. "Is horror art?" King says it is--when it hits those "phobic pressure points" as well as working on the "gross-out" level. And he traces most of the formulas back to the big three: Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (In a typically woozy lapse, King says Frankenstein "is the best written of the three," and a few pages later says that Jekyll and Hyde is "undoubtedly the best written.") Then come childhood memories of Creature from the Black Lagoon and of radio chills--followed by: roundups of horror movies with "political-social-cultural" terrors; top honors to "mythic" horror movies (e.g. Dawn of the Dead); favorite good moments from rotten horror movies; and a brief overview of horror on TV, with highest marks to Outer Limits but most fulsome attention to Twilight Zone and Rod Serling ("television ate him up"). Finally, then, King turns to horror fiction itself with long discussions of ten representative books (classics by Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury, as well as Anne Rivers Siddons' The House Next Door--included, perhaps, for its clear connections to the King oeuvre). Throughout, there are the familiar horror-analysis themes--psychological, social, sexual ("the sex in Dracula can be seen as the ultimate zipless fuck")--dispensed in pop style; plus defenses of the genre as essentially moral and conservative. And the resulting mishmash of rap and trivia should be an orgy of fun for horror/fantasy buffs--if not for the full measure of the King-fiction readership." --- Kirkus reviews
Synopsis
Danse Macabre is a non-fiction book by the popular horror author, Stephen King. The 1981 publication is about horror fiction in print, TV, radio, film and comics, and the influence of contemporary societal fears and anxieties on the genre.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Uncommon Works (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 1293
- Title
- Danse Macabre
- Author
- Stephen King
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- very good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Second Printing
- ISBN 10
- 0896960765
- ISBN 13
- 9780896960763
- Publisher
- Everest House
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1981
- Keywords
- King, horror, fiction
Terms of Sale
Uncommon Works
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Please note: Large, heavy and multi-volume sets billed at actual postage.
About the Seller
Uncommon Works
Biblio member since 2014
Gridley, California
About Uncommon Works
Not your ordinary book store! Uncommon Works specializes in rare, odd, unique, and handmade books, with a focus on the Maya, Latin America, Native America, and the Spanish Conquest. You'll find rare, first editions and first or early printings. You'll even find a few first printings of living authors for sale. We provide services and referrals for book mending, repair, restoration, and binding.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- A.N.
- The book is pristine and free of any defects, in the same condition as ...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...