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by Jack Fritscher (Author)
In a thoughtful, well-informed study exploring fiction from throughout Stephen King's immense oeuvre, Heidi Strengell shows how this popular writer enriches his unique brand of horror by building on the traditions of his literary heritage. Tapping into the wellsprings of the gothic to reveal contemporary phobias, King invokes the abnormal and repressed sexuality of the vampire, the hubris of Frankenstein, the split identity of the werewolf, the domestic melodrama of the ghost tale. Drawing on myths and fairy tales, he creates characters who, like the heroic Roland the Gunslinger and the villainous Randall Flagg, may either reinforce or subvert the reader's childlike faith in society. And, in the manner of the naturalist tradition, he reinforces a tension between the free will of the individual and the daunting hand of fate.
Author Biography
Jack Fritscher is the author of fifteen books and hundreds of articles on American popular culture. He was ordained an exorcist in 1963 by the Catholic Church, which later excommunicated him for his memoir, What They Did to the Kid: Confessions of an Altar Boy. He is the founding San Francisco editor of the legendary Drummer magazine, and he has written the pop-culture memoir-novel Some Dance to Remember and the biography, Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera.
