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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 305 из 359The polish of his writing and his mannered turns of phrase and image make him seem something like the genre's Joyce Carol Oates (and like Oates, he is prolific, turning out good short stories, novels, and essays at an amazing clip), and there is also something Oatesian in the way his characters view the world- as when one is journeying on mild LSD, there is something chilly and faintly schizophrenic in the way his characters see things . . . and in the things they see. These are the perceptions of Rose as she shops in a Liverpool department store in The Parasite : A group of toddlers watched her pass, their eyes painted into their sockets. On the ground floor, red and pink and yellow hands on stalks reached for her from the glove counter. Blind mauve faces craned on necks as long as arms; wigs roosted on their heads . . . . The bald man was still staring at her. His head, which looked perched on top of a bookcase, shone like plastic beneath the fluorescent lights. His eyes were bright, flat, expressionless as glass; she thought of a display head stripped of its wig. When a fat pink tongue squeezed out between his lips, it was as if a plastic head had come to life.
Good stuff. But strange; so uniquely Campbell that it might as well be trademarked. Good horror novels are not a dime a dozen-by no means-but there never seems to be any serious shortage of good ones, either. And by that I mean that you seem to be able to count on a really good novel of horror and/or the supernatural ( or at least a really interesting one) every year or so-and much the same could be said for the horror films. A vintage year may produce as many as three amid the paperback-original dreck about hateful, paranormal children and presidential candidates from hell and the too-large collection of hardcover boners, such as the recent Virgin , by James Petersen. But, maybe paradoxically, maybe not, good horror writers are quite rare . . . and Campbell is better than just good.
That's one reason fans of the genre will greet The Parasite with such pleasure and relief; it is even better than his first novel, of which I want to treat briefly here. Campbell has been turning out his own patented brand of short horror tale for some years now ( like Bradbury and Robert Bloch, Arkham House published Ramsey Campbell's first book, The Inhabitant of the Lake , which was a Lovecraft clone). Several collections of his stories are available, the best of them probably being The Height of the Scream .
Good stuff. But strange; so uniquely Campbell that it might as well be trademarked. Good horror novels are not a dime a dozen-by no means-but there never seems to be any serious shortage of good ones, either. And by that I mean that you seem to be able to count on a really good novel of horror and/or the supernatural ( or at least a really interesting one) every year or so-and much the same could be said for the horror films. A vintage year may produce as many as three amid the paperback-original dreck about hateful, paranormal children and presidential candidates from hell and the too-large collection of hardcover boners, such as the recent Virgin , by James Petersen. But, maybe paradoxically, maybe not, good horror writers are quite rare . . . and Campbell is better than just good.
That's one reason fans of the genre will greet The Parasite with such pleasure and relief; it is even better than his first novel, of which I want to treat briefly here. Campbell has been turning out his own patented brand of short horror tale for some years now ( like Bradbury and Robert Bloch, Arkham House published Ramsey Campbell's first book, The Inhabitant of the Lake , which was a Lovecraft clone). Several collections of his stories are available, the best of them probably being The Height of the Scream .