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Title: Stephen King's Danse Macabre
ISBN: 0425104338
Author:
Stephen King
Publicate Date: 1987-02-15
Publish: 1987-02-15
List Price: $7.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $0.99
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1: A fast and loose, quick and dirty (and not very complete) survey of the horror genre
Although I wasn't quite as disgusted as El Kabong with this book, it truly is nothing more than Stephen King riffing sloppily (as hell) about the "horror genre." There is no pretense of scholarship, and it has a folky tone which makes it quite easy to imagine what it must have been like back in the day when King got a twelve pack of beer in him, had smoked a joint, and done enough lines of coke to get him on a never ending jag about "the deal" with the genre: to put it bluntly, its about as tight as "the blob," its rambling, and its also somewhat amusing. It's admittedly fun to hear his take on horror, and he occasionally makes a good point, but truly, no-one but a diehard King fan will want to read this, or possibly a horror fanatic. By no means remotely close to a definitive survey of the genre, there are gaping shocking holes: he doesn't say so much as a lick about Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliff, Charles Robert Maturin, Matthew Lewis, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, Oliver Onions, H.G. Wells, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, William Hope Hodgson, amongst others- namely, the most important writers in the history of horror. And let's not forget that the book is now out of date- a lot has happened since the late 70's. A far superior book, an indispensible book in my opinion, which consists of a series of wonderful essays by writers discussing their favorite "horror" books, is "Horror 100 Best Books" edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, and its sequel "Horror Another 100 Best Books." Final word- fun, not terribly informative but somewhat, for King fans only, a guilty pleasure for people that love horror, like getting stoned with King and having him talk at you for about five or six hours- a not unpleasant reading experience.
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2: One of my Classics
I give this four stars because the book is dated. What was a discussion of where horror/scifi was at that point, and how it got there, is now a point of history.
But I like Stephen King's voice best when he is just being Stephen King. I like Danse Macabre and On Writing more than many of his novels, because he comes off as someone it would be enriching to know.
Mr. King has knowledge of writing and knowledge of his chosen primary genre(s) and it's interesting when he holds court.
When I first read DM I was a kid -- early teens, and I went on to read it in whole or in part many times, which is quite interesting since I have no shared love of 50s schlockers. I was interested in how they molded his man though. And quite interested in his insights about Dracula, Frankenstein, Ira Levin, etc.
This book is not for everybody. Younger folks might not like it unless they're a fan of the man and can appreciate discussion of fiction and some discussion that might have been dated by the time they were even born.
However, I think people who like analysis of fiction in book and movie form, told in a conversational tone could do a whole lot worse than to pick up a copy.
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3: Fun read but...
So far, one of the more entertaining reads from King, providing you know that this is not a fiction. It has some good insights who did know something about this field of work. What I like is how personal the writing is and how it make you feel like you are talking with a slightly mad excitable uncle on a camp fire at late night. I like King in his casual mode as much. And the texture and density of details, like his best works, are still here.
Having said all that, there are a couple of things that should be mentioned. The book is outdated. An updated edition is seriously needed. The said casual tone sometimes bordering on sloppy, even if it's never reach the point of incoherent.
It can also function as a very good guide for the genre. Again, the recommended list needs some updates, but as it is, it shall took a couple of months at least to get yourself familiar with all the works mentioned.
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4: Dead rats in Lucite
"Danse Macabre" should have been subtitled "Horror Fiction in Cinema, TV, and Books: 1950 - 1979" so that Stephen King's fiction fans wouldn't accidentally pick it up and start reading it. They might be horribly disappointed.
At what is supposed to be the climax of this nonfiction book, at the sentence in which the author is summing up everything he has been trying to teach us for 397 pages, there is a riotous typo:
"...When the creator of horror is finally stripped all the way to his or her core of being we find not an agent of the norm but a friend--a capering, gleeful, red-eyed agent of chaos..."
Maybe the author does have a few red-eyed and capering friends (and readers), considering his written output. As he says about his own horror fiction: "I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out."
I sure felt like cutting a few capers while reading "Danse Macabre." King was able to draw me into a sometimes vociferous argument about his thesis and choices for great horror. It was like sitting at the bar, drinking beer and arguing with an occasionally gross friend.
Unfortunately like that slightly inebriated friend, this author tends to ramble tediously off-subject: the war in Vietnam; Patty Hearst; the fate of MGM; many not-so-hilarious anecdotes about Harlan Ellison (no, Mr. King you haven't written the longest footnote in history--see "Rats, Lice, and History" by Hans Zinsser); dismissive critiques of certain pulp authors (well, I guess that's what I'm doing now, but who is going to read this?); a rant about grammar; and a whole chapter entitled, "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause."
(Actually, some of the side-essays are minor gems if you're in the right mood, but they do bulk up King's discourse on horror.)
"Danse Macabre" is both purposefully funny (see the movie review of "Robot Monster") and inadvertently hysterical (the typos). If you are a baby boomer and have seen at least some of the 'B' movies and TV shows that Stephen King has seen, or have read a few of the horror novels he reviews, this is a humorous, thought-provoking book--a 421 page in-joke.
This book is about us, dear Boomers.
If you're not the right age, "Danse Macabre" will probably bore you with its ravings on vanished TV shows, decayed celluloid flicks, and out-of-print horror stories. King warns us in his two forenotes that he is going to concentrate on horror produced between the late fifties and early eighties. If you weren't able to read, watch TV or go to the movies back then, this book might not appeal to you.
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5: Not That Good... At All
Okay, maybe there are some okay bits and pieces here worth reading, but still I have to say that El Kabong's review really hits the nail on the head regarding Stephen King's writing and this book in particular. When Danse Macabre first came out I was in the middle of a "Stepehen King Period," of sorts, having taken it upon myself to finally read the books of this author whom so many people had raved about for a few years. Time and again, like a gullible rube, I picked up one of King's horror books, giving him chance after chance to grab a hold of me and give me these great scares everyone was talking about. Time and again, however, I found that what was supposed to have been a time bomb of fear was actually a dud. King, after the release of Kurbrick's film version of The Shining, was fond of saying that he'd "handed Stanley Kubrick a grenade and he heroically threw his body over it," or words to that effect, as if the book of The Shining was a seering work of heart-stopping, nightmare inducing horror and in comparrison the film was a pale shadow of the potential greatness there. Sure, there were a few little scenes here and there, but for the most part is was yet another dud. Say what you want about Kurbrick's film, but it was not a watering down of a fear filled novel. If anything, Kubrick tired too hard to turn [...] into gold and perhaps he failed. Nevertheless, there remain in the film version of the book just as many bits and pieces with some effect as the book itself.
Granted, I'm not calling King a hack as I'm well aware of the fact that I'm no great writer myself. Sure, he's achieved some success, he's been somewhat important to the evolution of the horror genre in popular culture. And this brings us to this book. At the time it was released, I actually found myself somewhat inspired by Danse Macabre, but I was young then and even more muddled than I am now. Still, this book did awaken in me a more serious interest in horror than I'd had previously. Various bits and pieces of Danse Macabre have stuck in my mind over the years, but only in the most basic sense, such as King's description of the EC horror comics of the fifties, and I recently found myself tracking down a used copy due to a renewed interest in horror. "Of course," I thought to myself, "Danse Macabre will be essential in my quest to uncover the heart of horror." To virtually no surprise at all, I found that every one of El Kabong's criticism's of this book, and King's writing as a whole, was true. And that was before I read Kabong's comments, which I did so only in prelude to making my own.
So, what, specifically, is wrong with this book? Well, like I said, I am no writer (as evidenced by this review), but it is shot through with King's typical style - a very poor impression of an everyman who simply loves horror like some record collecting junkie loves rock & roll - and this style is, quite simply, a drag (a word that King probably uses himself). You have to sort through several paragraphs to get to one decent point, and that point is generally quite mundane and un-insightful. My writing may not be as "good" (for what little that is worth) but I have abolutely no doubt that I could manage just as many, and probably more, useful insights into the nature of horror as King does here. King is not only far too wordy for his own good (like myself and all other sloppy writers out there) but his insights are horribly pedestrian. He comes off as yet one more of those "meaning deniers" who seem to equazte being "real" and "honest" and "truthful" and "accurate" with being as superficial as possible and denying any attempt to find more than the most superficial and common meanings in things. Just because his mind is too dull to make any real insight into matters does not mean that those who are up to this task are simply blowing hot air. King verges dangerously close to horror's version of one of those lunk-headed Fox news personalities.
Granted, King wrote this book in, I guess, the late seventies, very early eighties, and while most of the true classic of the horror genre had been created by then, there is a certain lack of freshness here that cannot be explained away by mere datedness. With such blase, run-of-the-mill insights into horror - his chosen field - it's no wonder that Stepehen King is such an unremarkable writer and his popularity it due mainly to the great number of like-minded individual's out there who are equally as unremarkable. To King and the majority of his fans, this reads as a mark of "realness" in some way. To me - and I'm not saying I'm superior, just not so easily impressed or so ready to dismiss what I don't understand at first - this seems more like some form of forced medicocrity. I mean, WHAT IS KING AFRAID OF?
Much of King's insights into the horror products of popular culture emanate from the same two-bit, superficial, dull-witted realm as many of the film and literary critics he dismisses, not to mention the ones he praises as well. I can't remember what, if anything, he had to say about Leonrad Maltin, but that is pretty much the level of critique that you'll find here. In one paragraph he will praise something for its junk-foodiness when he sees this as being solid and common, in the next paragraph he dismisses something for the same reason. Stephen King's writing exists at a level no greater than, for example, I Married A Monster From Outer Space exists as a film, yet King's writing lacks any of that film's charm. This is merely one example here.
Then again, I also have to give King some credit. He (at least when he wrote this) was clearly a true horror fan and had/has a wide knowledge of many aspects of the genre. While the quality of his mind is a mere half-step higher than that of the run-of-the-mill comic book nerd who holds forth on how Frank Frazetta is a great artist who's paintings should hang in the Louvre (not that he's a bad artist, Frazetta is very good, and not that such work does not belong in museums, it does, but mainly as an example of commercial illustration), he is, in many ways, a real professional, albeit a professioal in the same way as the guy who fixed my sink was. The sink held for a few months and worked great, but in the end I had to go to the hardware store and buy some supplies so I could fix it myself (and it still leaks, but at least I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg).
Frankly, I'm not sure how to express the deflated reaction I had to this book on second reading. Stepehen King is simply a dull, dull-witted man with flashes of unremarkable insight that leave one (well, this "one," anyway) cold and bored. His writing reads like someone with an irritating speech impediment sounds. Or, as I used to put it years ago, after my Stepehen King experiment had ended and I judged him lacking: Stephen King is an ex-high school English teacher who writes like an ex-high school English teacher.
I'm not even sure if he did teach high school English, but that's what I recall. I also feel compelled to state that Harlan Ellison - another professional writer with some measure of accomplishment in life, and one whom King gives great praise to in this Danse Macabre - is to a large extent a trite and predictable storyteller. The fact that Stepehen King can rave so strongly about Ellison proves that his sense of proportion is way off and his insights simply cannot be trusted or are simply too mediocre to really add much to the discussion.
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