Stephen King’s popularity lies in his ability to reinterpret the standard Gothic tale in new and exciting ways. Through his eyes, the conventional becomes unconventional and wonderful. King thus creates his own Gothic world and then interprets it for us. This book analyzes King’s interpretations and his mastery of popular literature. The essays discuss adolescent revolt, the artist as survivor, the vampire in popular literature, and much more.

• Contents 
• Introduction: 
• The Horror of It All: Stephen King and the Landscape of the American Nightmare
• Hoppenstand, Gary
• Browne, Ray B.
• Blood, Eroticism, and the Vampire in Twentieth-Century Popular Literature
• Senf, Carol A.
• Of Mad Dogs and Firestarters—The Incomparable Stephen King
• Roberts, Garyn G.
• Reading Between the Lines: Stephen King and Allegory
• Gallagher, Bernard J.
• A Blind Date with Disaster: Adolescent Revolt in the Fiction of Stephen King
• Newhouse, Tom
• Freaks: The Grotesque as Metaphor in the Works of Stephen King
• Hyles, Vernon
• Viewing “The Body”: King's Portrait of the Artist as Survivor
• Heldreth, Leonard G.
• Stephen King's Creation of Horror in ’Salem's Lot: A Prolegomenon Towards a New Hermeneutic of the Gothic Novel
• Hicks, James E.
• Love and Death in the American Car: Stephen King's Auto-Erotic Horror
• Badley, Linda C.
• The Dark Tower: Stephen King's Gothic Western
• Egan, James
• Taking Stephen King Seriously: Reflections on a Decade of Best-Sellers
• Schuman, Samuel
• A Dream of New Life: Stephen King's Pet Sematary as a Variant of Frankenstein
• Pharr, Mary Ferguson
• Stephen King's Pet Sematary: Hawthorne's Woods Revisited
• Magistrate, Tony
• “Oz the Gweat and Tewwible” and “The Other Side”: The Theme of Death in Pet Sematary and Jitterbug Perfume
• Schroeder, Natalie
• Contributors