We need to talk about Stephen - a review of Horror: 100 Best Books, ed. Stephen Jones and Kim Newman
I've stopped reading Stephen King. But it was still striking to read such a master of the horror genre as Graham Masterton take King to task in a way that put my own feelings so eloquently. Consider the following: The horror novels one reads these days are so often written in King-lish: which amounts to reams of unedited stream-of-word-processorese - pompous, self-regarding and profane. Masterton is reviewing The Lurker at the Threshold , a story drafted by HP Lovecraft and finished by his acolyte August Derleth. Contrasting said King-lish with the Lovecraft/Derleth style, Masterton continues: Here, there is no concern for what the reader thinks of the writers: only an out-and-out devotion to being scary, expressed with a professionalism and a half-mocking eloquence that today's horror writers would do well to study. As you might see from the quality of the prose, Horror: 100 Best Books is no uber-listicle. It is a collection of short reviews by 100 horror novelists, each pr...