Landscape of Fear: Stephen King's American Gothic

by Tony Magistrale

One of the very first books to take Stephen King seriously, Landscape of Fear (originally published in 1988) reveals the source of King's horror in the sociopolitical anxieties of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era. In this groundbreaking study, Tony Magistrale shows how King's fiction transcends the escapism typical of its genre to tap into our deepest cultural fears: "that the government we have installed through the democratic process is not only corrupt but actively pursuing our destruction, that our technologies have progressed to the point at which the individual has now become expendable, and that our fundamental social institutions-school, marriage, workplace, and the church-have, beneath their veneers of respectability, evolved into perverse manifestations of narcissism, greed, and violence."

Tracing King's moralist vision to the likes of Twain, Hawthorne, and Melville, Landscape of Fear establishes the place of this popular writer within the grand tradition of American literature. Like his literary forbears, King gives us characters that have the capacity to make ethical choices in an imperfect, often evil world. Yet he inscribes that conflict within unmistakably modern settings. From the industrial nightmare of "Graveyard Shift" to the breakdown of the domestic sphere in The Shining, from the techno-horrors of The Stand to the religious fanaticism and adolescent cruelty depicted in Carrie, Magistrale charts the contours of King's fictional landscape in its first decade.

Genres: Nonfiction

140 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 1988

About the author

Tony Magistrale is the author of three books of poetry: What She Says About Love, winner of the 2007 Bordighera Poetry Prize, which was published as a bilingual edition in 2008; The Last Soldiers of Love (Literary Laundry Press, 2012); and Entanglements (Fomite Press, 2013). His poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Over the past two decades, Magistrale's twenty-plus books and many articles have covered a broad area of interests. He has published on the writing process, international study abroad, and his own poetry. But the majority of his books and articles have centered on defining and tracing Anglo-American Gothicism, from its origins in eighteenth-century romanticism to its contemporary manifestations in popular culture, particularly in the work of Stephen King. He has published three separate interviews with Stephen King, and from 2005-09 Magistrale served as a research assistant to Mr. King. Accordingly, a dozen of his scholarly books and many published journal articles have illuminated the genre's narrative themes, psychological and social contexts, and historical development.

Reviews

[Aurle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am rounding up to 4 stars instead of down to 3 because my reason for picking up book involved a hope that I might learn what makes a haunted house. I think I got something of that out of this book.

This is an older book, but written after most of what I think of as Stephen King's best stories. I would be interested in reading a later book by this author.

What I like most about this book is how accessible it is. I could see a teacher giving this book to any group of students old/literate enough to be reading Stephen King & having a nice discussion, one that includes not only King and the other authors this book mentions (the author sometimes compares or contrasts King with Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville) but also, from there, other authors that came to mind.

My issue with this book has to do with depth. King's stories (at least the ones I have read) lack the quality I value most highly: more enjoyable/new revelations and insights on subsequent/repeat readings, and that makes me feel like he's sort of stretching, somehow.

Maybe I'm wrong: this book emphasizes (intentionally or not) how much King's stories reveal the concerns/anxieties of the baby boom, and also their beliefs, assumptions, and solutions. History is full of generations rejecting the preoccupations of the generation before them, and maybe I'm no exception to that. (Also, I stopped reading Stephen King after watching the movie "Pet Semetary"...right after moving with my spouse & young'uns to a lonely house with only a single neighbor, right on a state highway frequented only by speeding trucks....)

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book by Magistrale. He nicely maps a number of major themes that run throughout King's body of work. He claims that these themes can be also found in the works of authors such as Twain, Faulkner, Melville, and Wordsworth. Here, Magistrale convincingly makes the case that King's work should be taking serious as an American writer. Considering that Magistrale wrote his book in the late 1980s, I think that has changed.