A Dark Night's Dreaming opens by defining the shape of horror fiction today, illuminating the genre's narrative themes, psychological and social contexts, and historical development. The core of the volume focuses on the lives and major works of the six who have dramatically shaped the genre: William Peter Blatty, Thomas Harris, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, and Whitley Strieber. A final chapter analyzes the complex relationship between horror fiction and its adaptation to film. Looking beyond the tormented maidens, madmen, monsters, and other archetypes of the genre, these critics...

Describing W.S. Merwin as a moral poet, H.L. Hix identifies the characteristics that have set Merwin's voice apart and suggests that an underlying vision of human interconnectedness and affinity with nature permeates his poetry. Hix surveys Merwin's oeuvre to show that despite a reputation for difficulty and obscurity, his verse is clear and direct.

Since the publication in 1964 of his novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, which arguably achieved the status of a cult classic, Hubert Selby, Jr., has held a place as one of the foremost exponents of American underground literature. His work has yet to receive extensive critical attention, in part because of its deliberately shocking subject matter and its resistance to precise classification. In Understanding Hubert Selby, Jr., James R. Giles examines the writer's four novels and one collection of short stories to make the case that the full complexity of his fiction has not previously been...

A study of the fiction of Jane Smiley. It provides close readings and presents an account of the connections between Smiley's life and her work. It also examines her intellectual interests, her social and philosophical concerns, and her penchant for taking up different creative challenges.

Understanding Gloria Naylor introduces readers to the literal and mythical places, recurring characters, and rich literary allusions that distinguish Naylor's award-winning fiction. Margaret Earley Whitt offers an introduction to Naylor's first five novels, underscoring the passion with which Naylor writes about women living on the margins of their communities. Whitt discloses how Naylor tells the stories of these women and how she helps readers see that all heroines live a life of significance.

Suggesting that Naylor's work provides an inherently southern perspective -- despite her being...

In addition to being celebrated as a prose miniaturist for such works as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, Nicholson Baker is widely viewed as a best-selling highbrow eroticist for Vox and The Fermata. In Understanding Nicholson Baker, Arthur Saltzman engages these provocative fictions as well as Baker's renowned nonfiction to show how his seemingly disparate works derive from and demonstrate an unremitting zeal for explicit detail, along with descriptive obsessiveness and linguistic virtuosity.

Through close readings of Baker's work -- including his 1998 novel, The Everlasting Story of...

Understanding Jill McCorkle introduces readers to the novels and short story collections of Jill McCorkle's growing canon. Since 1984 McCorkle has written five novels and two books of short stories, entering the publishing world, as one reviewer noted, with the literary equivalent of a rebel yell. Filling the gap of critical study on McCorkle, Barbara Bennett analyzes the widely read and admired output of this prolific southern woman writer. Bennett identifies and discusses the diverse characters, thematic concerns and keen sense of language that distinguish McCorkle's work.

Understanding Fred Chappell introduces readers to a writer of poems, novels, and short stories whose accolades include France's prestigious Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize. John Lang critiques more than twenty volumes of poetry and fiction of Chappell's work, which was published during a literary career that has spanned nearly four decades. Lang evaluates Chappell's tetralogy of novels that begins with I Am One of You Forever; Midquest, the first five volumes of poetry, the different books of poems published between Castle Tzingal and...

Exploring the work of six notable authors, Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature reveals characteristic themes, images, and stylistic devices that make contemporary Chicana writing a vibrant and innovative part of a burgeoning Latina creativity. Describing Chicana literature as a quest for self-definition, Deborah L. Madsen provides close readings of the poetry, prose, novels, and short fiction of Bernice Zamora, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Denise Chavez, Alma Luz Villaneuva, and Lorna Dee Cervantes. Madsen identifies the historical, social, and feminist ties among these writers...

Understanding Bobbie Ann Mason explores the literary accomplishments of a writer whose works straddle the line between highbrow literature and popular culture, an author whose writings are studied in academia and loved by general readers. Best known for her short story collections and her novels Feather Crowns, Spence + Lila, and In Country -- the last of which is also a motion picture -- Mason writes about smalltown life in contemporary western Kentucky. In this comprehensive analysis, Joanna Price offers an introduction to Mason's nonfiction prose, short stories, and novels, and sheds light...