Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 242
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9¼
978-1-4422-4490-0 • Hardback • November 2014 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-4422-4491-7 • eBook • November 2014 • $105.50 • (£82.00)
Philip L. Simpson serves as the provost of the Titusville campus of Eastern Florida State College. He is the author ofPsycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contemporary American Film and Fiction (2000) and Making Murder: The Fiction of Thomas Harris (2010).
Patrick McAleer teaches English at Inver Hills Community College in Minnesota and is cochair of the Stephen King Area of the Popular Culture Association’s annual national conference. He is the author of Inside the Dark Tower Series (2009) and The Writing Family of Stephen King (2011).
Introduction
Section I: Contemporary “Classics”
Chapter 1 “‘Ordinary Miracles: Stephen King’s Writing (and Painting) a ‘Way Back to Life’
in Duma Key”
Hayley Mitchell Haugen
Chapter 2 “Narrative Structure in Under the Dome”
Jennifer Miller
Chapter 3 “‘There’s No Place Like Dome’: An Assessment of the Adaptation of Stephen
King’s Under the Dome into a Primetime Drama”
Tamara Watkins
Chapter 4 “Reading Joyland and Dr. Sleep as Complementary Stories”
Clotilde Landais
Section II: Modern Horrors
Chapter 5 “Failure Is Indeed an Option: Pride, Prophecy, and Roland Deschain’s Perpetual
Quest for the Dark Tower”
Patrick McAleer
Chapter 6 “Trisha McFarland and the Tough Tootsie: Coping with Fear in The Girl Who
Loved Tom Gordon”
Matt Holman
Chapter 7 “‘Morality’: Stephen King’s Most Disturbing Story?”
Philip L. Simpson
Chapter 8 “In Search for the Lost Object in a Bad Place: Stephen King’s Contemporary
Gothic”
Alexandra Reuber
Chapter 9 “A Different Breed: Serial Killers in the Works of Stephen King”
Rebecca Frost
Section III: Stephen King and Writing
Chapter 10 “How to Draw a King: Duma Key, a Blues Aesthetic, and the American Artist”
Michael Perry
Chapter 11 “It Lurks Beneath the Fold: Stephen King, Adaptation, and the Pop-up Text of
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon”
Carl H. Sederholm
Chapter 12 “Bachman’s ‘Found’ Novels: The Regulators, Blaze, and Author Identity”
Kimberly Beal
Chapter 13 “King’s Toolbox—for Writing and for Life?”
Mika Elovaara
Chapter 14 “The Blue Diamond”
Steph Post
Bibliography
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
Rowman & Littlefield has . . . released an extraordinary hardcover tome that delves deeply into several of King’s lesser known works particularly from 2009 – 2013. It’s called…deep breath…Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics: Reflections on the Modern Master of Horror. It is a collection of essays written by various authors and examines books such as Dr. Sleep, Duma Key, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Joyland, Under the Dome and others. The essays are scholarly and thought provoking. Each author takes on the project with a great deal of passion which comes through in their writing. . . .The book will surely be of interest to fans of King, especially hardcore fans. . . . [It] will interest people who like to tear a story apart and see how and why it works. . . .If you must own all things King then you must add this hardcover book to your collection. I dare say even Mr. King will be astonished when he sees how his stories have been inspected, dissected and examined. Who knows, he may even learn a bit about himself and what must be going on inside his mind! All kidding aside this is an insightful set of essays to read and discuss with your fellow King fans. Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics will get you thinking.
— Scared Stiff Reviews
The volume is a welcome addition. As the editors note in the introduction, academic criticism of Stephen King’s work tends to focus on his early works. The editors here capture scholarship on King’s newer works that tends to show up at conferences but often wouldn’t find purchase in the more durable academic record. In that light, much of the material in this collection is best thought of as a first foray into new territory.
— Science Fiction Research Association Review