Good evening, everyone! Welcome to the Nightmare Factory Lecture Series! Please take a seat, as our lesson is about to begin. We were all thrilled to have Robert Bloch join us last month to discuss plagiarism in the Cthulhu mythos, and we couldn’t be more excited for Norman Mailer’s address on contemporary intoxication in letters next month, but, on Tuesday, January 21 at 8PM, we are delighted to present Stephen King‘s comprehensive overview of the entire genre in the form of his seminal dissertation on horror Danse Macabre! While this modern master may be a tad self-indulgent at times, and his digressions may be the stuff of legend, recognize that every ounce of his famous pomposity has been earned by backbreaking labor, constant ingenuity, and thriving with a brain so full of gibbering madness that it would drive you or I to an asylum. With this in mind, sit down, get out a pen, and try to subdue your inescapable cries of existential revulsion. Class is about to begin.
In his debut work of nonfiction, Stephen King splays open the putrid guts of the horror genre for the world to see. Investigated from the perspective of one of America’s most notorious perpetrators of terror, Danse Macabre dissects every facet of horror in popular (and less-than-popular) culture to examine the question of what is scary and why. Far from clinical and detached, this treatise chews its way like a Xenomorph out from the belly of its subject to not only analyze but also revel in the chaos it has wrought.
Join the Nightmare Factory Book Club in the haunted classroom of the BookPeople cafe tomorrow at 8PM for a critical inquiry into what makes a thing frightening and why that effect is so fleeting and commoditized in modern society. Join us at 8:05PM when the discussion inevitably devolves into a debate over which Hellraiser movie was the worst (answer: the one that takes place on the internet). The Nightmare Factory Book Club meets on the third Tuesday of every month to critique creepies and crawlies. This month’s flight of fancy is Danse Macabre by Stephen King. Remember to bring your scarf because you’re guaranteed to leave this powwow with a case of the chills! 10% off Danse Macabre to those who purchase the book for the purposes of attending the book club.
BookPeople 