Danse Macabre (Audio)

by Stephen King

read by William Dufris

(Grand Haven: Brilliance Audio, 2010)

MP3 Audiobook, 498.1 MB, 18.1 Hours, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9781441831071, US$24.99

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

From the Cover: From the author of dozens of number-one New York Times best sellers and the creator of many unforgettable movies comes a vivid, intelligent, and nostalgic journey through three decades of horror as experienced through the eyes of the most popular writer in the genre. In 1981, years before he sat down to tackle On Writing, Stephen King decided to address the topic of what makes horror horrifying and what makes terror terrifying. Here, in 10 brilliant chapters, King delivers one colorful observation after another about the great stories, books, and films that comprise the horror genre—from Frankenstein and Dracula to The Exorcist, The Twilight Zone, and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. With the insight and good humor his fans appreciated in On Writing, Danse Macabre is an enjoyable entertaining tour through Stephen King’s beloved world of horror.

My Reveiw: I am getting ready to start researching and writing my Masters Thesis this coming summer and fall—it’s going to be on the intersections of sex, violence, gender and race in contemporary horror (specifically horror written in the 1970s) and how those books and themes reflect the social changes that were occurring at that time—and given that topic, I felt that it was necessary to do a little bit of preliminary research. I won’t say that Stephen King’s Danse Macabre is perfect for such research, but it is definitely a good place to start.

Danse Macabre is King’s attempt to come to terms with 30 years of horror (from roughly 1950 to 1980) and while he does a good job of it, I found his tone to be somewhat condescending (especially towards academics) but all things considered, his overview of the genre is very comprehensive and is certainly useful to both the newbie to the genre and the old hat in the genre. What I like most about Danse Macabre, though, is learning about little known gems in the horror genre—Harlan Ellison’s Strange Wine, or Thomas Tessier’s The Nightwalker or Ramsey Campbell’s The Doll Who Ate His Mother—along side of such genre luminaries as Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives or Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes or Robert Bloch’s Psycho, and King’s discussion of Dracula, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is not to be missed.

This is a very useful book both in print and in audio format, especially for someone like me, who is researching and writing on the genre (and the updated Forenote in this 2010 edition is not to be missed as King discusses the state of horror in the years since first publishing this book), but my one complaint in this audiobook edition is that this is the kind of book that it would have been more effective had King himself read the book, rather than having William Dufris do the job. Not that I minded Dufris’ reading, he does a wonderful job of portraying King’s intimate and confessional tone … but had King read the audio edition himself, it would have been that much more effective.