Stephen King

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Having endured an initially frigid critcal reception, personal struggles with addiction, and a mid-life accident that nearly killed him, Stephen King continues to reign as perhaps the most popular and prolific writer in America. This new edition of the critical companion includes an expanded biography and critical treatments of King's eight most recent works of fiction.

nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;One of the very first books to take Stephen King seriously, Landscape of Fear (originally published in 1988) reveals the source of King's horror in the sociopolitical anxieties of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era. In this groundbreaking study, Tony Magistrale shows how King's fiction transcends the escapism typical of its genre to tap into our deepest cultural fears: "that the government we have installed through the democratic process is not only corrupt but actively pursuing our destruction, that our technologies have progressed to the point at which the individual has now become expendable, and that our fundamental social institutions-school, marriage, workplace, and the church-have, beneath their veneers of respectability, evolved into perverse manifestations of narcissism, greed, and violence." nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Tracing King's moralist vision to the likes of Twain, Hawthorne, and Melville, Landscape of Fear establishes the place of this popular writer within the grand tradition of American literature. Like his literary forbears, King gives us characters that have the capacity to make ethical choices in an imperfect, often evil world. Yet he inscribes that conflict within unmistakably modern settings. From the industrial nightmare of "Graveyard Shift" to the breakdown of the domestic sphere in The Shining, from the techno-horrors of The Stand to the religious fanaticism and adolescent cruelty depicted in Carrie, Magistrale charts the contours of King's fictional landscape in its first decade.

Stephen King’s popularity lies in his ability to reinterpret the standard Gothic tale in new and exciting ways. Through his eyes, the conventional becomes unconventional and wonderful. King thus creates his own Gothic world and then interprets it for us. This book analyzes King’s interpretations and his mastery of popular literature. The essays discuss adolescent revolt, the artist as survivor, the vampire in popular literature, and much more.

The writers of Gothic literature reflect in their works the concerns and fears of the times in which they were created, not only making these tales cultural artifacts of a previous time, but also showing how some sources of dread remain constant over the passage of centuries. This book examines how H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King have used science and technology in their modern Gothic works to destabilize the reader; that is, to create the sense of fear and dread at the heart of the Gothic genre. In doing so, these works force readers to ask disturbing questions about the society around them and to challenge long accepted notions and belief systems.

Novels and films record and codify the cultural experiences of their people. This book explores the relationship between contemporary literature and film of the past fifty years and the ancient myths of Judeo-Christian, Greek, Celtic, and Eastern origin. Following a detailed description and explanation of both literary and film devices, stories that conform to a mythic tradition are analyzed to identify what they reveal about modern culture. This work explores such diverse subjects as heroism, coming of age, and morality. This approach to literature and film explores how contemporary fiction and film fulfill a continuum in our never-ending search to understand how life ought to be lived.

Unlike many classic works of fiction, literature of the fantastic enjoys mass popularity. Because the fantastic is so much a part of popular culture, fantasy literature can represent or address the racial attitudes of its audience. Representations of race in the fantastic provide a measure of the concern the culture has for racial matters. If a work is racist, whether consciously or not, it may perpetuate racist attitudes unless it is carefully examined. At the same time, literature of the fantastic is able to present possible worlds rather than real ones. It is thus a literature of possibility, in which racial matters may be addressed and exposed, so that readers may become more conscious of the evils of racist attitudes. This volume explores the significance of race and color in the works of a wide range of authors, including Octavia Butler, Robert Heinlein, Stephen King, and Robert Silverberg.

From Friday the 13th movies to pro wrestling, from Stephen King novels to heavy metal music videos--violent imagery saturates our popular culture, reaping enormous profits for its creators, provoking outrage in its critics, and drawing squeals of delight from its consumers. Why do these entertainments find such huge audiences? Seeking to understand the phenomenon, rather than to condemn or defend it, James B. Twitchell offers a lively look at some modern "fables of aggression" and their historical precursors. Twitchell begins the story in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the "cheap thrills" available to mass audiences included bull-baiting and other blood sports, Punch-and-Judy shows, penny dreadfuls, and the illustrations of William Hogarth. In our own century, he finds the equivalents of these diversions in everything from the infamous EC comic books of the 1950s to recent television programs like The A Team and Masters of the Universe and the latest generation of video games. Twitchell examines a number of key examples in depth and suggests some intriguing reasons for their appeal. Stressing the outrageousness of the violence depicted (it is usually too ridiculous to be taken seriously) and its ritualistic nature (it thrives on repetition), he argues that it serves an important socializing function for its audience of mostly adolescent males. As he notes, adolescence is a stage in life fraught with sexual confusion and anxiety, which often surface as a craving for violent resolutions. The stylized violence of popular entertainments prepares the teenager, he says, "for the anxieties of competition and then of reproduction." Although these violent scenarios might seem to be incitive--and are in a few cases--they serve, for the most part, as cautionary tales. "Boundaries are only known once crossed," Twitchell writes. "Preposterous violence shows what is over the boundary. 'Enough! or Too Much.'" While the mass media that provide these "fables" are usually blamed for creating stress, for showing "too much," they are, in Twitchell's view, simply fulfilling the wishes of a ready-made audience, and they have been doing so ever since such audiences could afford such diversions. The mass media translate anxieties rather than generate them, he says. "We may not want to acknowledge it," he concludes, "but these myths of preposterous violence are still with us because there is still so much of us unacknowledged in them."

Classic Cult Fiction is a history, analysis, and reference guide to books that have become "bibles" to generations of Europeans and Americans over the past 200 years--books like The Catcher in the Rye. Fearlessly taking on "canon formation," Whissen identifies the top 50 classic cult books, first presenting an informed and witty interpretation of the phenomenon and its characteristics with examples from different cultures and periods. The individual works are each discussed relative to time and place, impact, and audience psychology and analyzed in terms of common cult attributes. A chronological listing of cult fiction adds a number of titles not chosen for the top 50.