Rating: 
Summary: A Constant Companion For This Lover Of All Things Horror
Review: I have probably read "Danse Macabre" more times than I have any other book. Most rereads occur when there is nothing else to do, since the book seems to always just be lying around...anyway, that's of no help to you, the prospective buyer Since you are even reading this review, you're probably in the frame of mind necessary to appreciate "Danse Macabre". The book is written in an extremely casual style, full of many asides and non-sequiturs, which only makes it more engaging and extremely entertaining. The one minor squabble I have with King over the book is that he has not updated it yet (in mass-market paperback, anyway), even though it was written over twenty years ago. It would be very cool to see him continue to modify and reprint it, as Walt Whitman did with "Leaves Of Grass". That's really splitting hairs, though; it's a fantastic read and a great reference guide, not to mention the best view into Stephen King's psyche that you will probably ever find. Just buy the book and be happy.
Rating:
Summary: Best Guide To Horror Fiction From a Single Author
Review: I have read many books of criticism and opinion on the subject of horror fiction. However, no single author has been able to cover the field of modern horror better than Stephen King. In Danse Macabre King makes the field of horror accessible to the general reader. There are books which explain the Freudian overtones of Dracula or the anti-establishment message of Night of the Living Dead which is, for all practical purposes, useless. English and Cinema majors may find it useful, but the general reader has no time or concern for these trifles. King, while at times veering off topic, gives the reader a road map for the field of horror. He introduces and discusses writers which the general reader of fiction may never have heard of, like James Herbert and Harlan Ellison. And never does the book become boring. King's love for the genre shows in this work. It is like attending an Einstein lecture on Physics; it may get a bit complicated at times, but you know that old Al will bring an energy and enthusiasm to the subject which no one else could ever hope to copy. Other Books Recommended: Stephen Jones and Kim Newman's Horror 100 Best Books (Unusual, Unorthodox, Unbelievable, The Single best book on horror by one than more author)
Rating:
Summary: Honestly, One Of The Best
Review: I'M A SLOW and FINICKY READER, BUT I LOVE TO READ JUST THE SAME. MANY BOOKS DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TO KEEP MY ATTENTION, & WHEN I FIRST PICKED-UP "DANSE MACBRE" IN HIGH SCHOOL (years ago), I COUNLDN'T SIT THROUGH IT. HOWEVER, JUST FOUR MONTHS AGO (6 YEARS LATER), I DECIDED TO TRY MY HAND AT IT ONCE MORE. I'VE READ KING OFF AND ON FOR YEARS. IN FACT (from what I hear), I'VE REALLY ENJOYED HIS "NOT-SO-POPULAR" TITLES. SO MAYBE THIS ISN'T GOING TO CONVINCE TOO MANY OF YOU TO CHECK IT OUT ;). OH...WELL... YOU'D BE MISSING A WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY...
Rating: 
Summary: SK I hope you will forgive me - I can't just can't do it
Review: I've read everything published that Stephen King has written. I've dug up stuff that wasn't published that he's written and read that. I've read reviews, followed newsgroups, chatted online and surfed and/or researched Stephen King until I thought my eyes would pop out of my head and run screaming down the road on their stems.. but this book, I just can't get it down. I've owned it for nearly as long as it's been in print and I have tried to read it with serious intent on no less than six different occassions. I have yet to ever make it through successfully. It patently bores the crap of me. I have never made it more than halfway through. I do not recommend this book to even the most avid SK fan. I just ain't worth it folks. You'd have to be a Xenobyte to find reading this enjoyable
Rating: 
Summary: The Master of Horror submits his Dissertation (1981)
Review: In a perfect world Stephen King would revise "Danse Macabre" and offer us an updated edition of his look at the world of horror in literature and films. After all, it has been two decades since "Danse Macabre" was first published and horror is bigger business than ever. Since then King has published several dozen books, including his magnum opus "It," while several notable authors in the field, such as Clive Barker and Laurell K. Hamilton, have emerged. Certainly it would be fascinating to see where King places Pinhead and Anita Blake in the rich tapestry of horror. King professes that this analysis of horror is "a moving, rhythmic search" for "The place where we live at our most primitive level." But "Danse Macabre" is not just an academic colloquium because there are large measures of autobiography and criticism thrown into the mix as well. For King everything is fair game and he is as likely to talk about "Tourist Trap," a personal favorite film that the rest of us have never heard about, as he is "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby." This is a book where you can pick it up and start reading at any point and find it interesting. After all, this has clearly been the man's life. I have been reading through "Danse Macabre" again, looking for ideas for a reading list for a class on Modern Fantasy in which Horror literature is a large component. However, in addition to commenting on or at least mentioning dozens of horror novels and short stories, King also sets up a basic schema for considering such works. In his chapters on "Tales of the Hook" and "Tales of the Tarot," he lays out what are basically genres, focusing on archetypes that are revealed by "Frankenstein," "Dracula" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (although I think he could have overlooked the liabilities of "The Turn of the Screw" or found a better alternative so he could include the ghost story in his tarot). Consequently, if it were more up to date I would seriously consider having this as the "textbook" for a class on horror. Certainly King will provoke students of horror into some sort of a response, and if you were to use the book as it now stands you might even be able to get the cherubs to extend King's analysis or fill in the gaps given the past twenty years of horror in film, literature and television.
Rating: 
Summary: Get to the point
Review: Mr. King introduces several chapters in this book with apologies, along the lines of, "I hate to do this to you, but now I'm going to explain ..." or "I normally hate definitions of fantasy, but here's mine...." If you think it's boring and dull, why are you boring us with it? There are some good nuggets of insight here, as you would expect from someone who's generally regarded as a talented writer of popular fiction. On the other hand, it's all pretty disorganized and rambling (as others have pointed out), with an odd and undue emphasis on fantasy/sci-fi movies and books.
Rating:
Summary: Get to the point
Review: Mr. King introduces several chapters in this book with apologies, along the lines of, "I hate to do this to you, but now I'm going to explain ..." or "I normally hate definitions of fantasy, but here's mine...." If you think it's boring and dull, why are you boring us with it? There are some good nuggets of insight here, as you would expect from someone who's generally regarded as a talented writer of popular fiction. On the other hand, it's all pretty disorganized and rambling (as others have pointed out), with an odd and undue emphasis on fantasy/sci-fi movies and books.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful for the Warned
Review: Not enough people read and appreciate this book. It is NON-FICTION. Do not get this book if you are looking for a good story, but if you appreciate the intros Stephen King has written in the past, or you are in interested in horror as a genre, or you want a few lists of what to read or see, this is excellent. King's theories are very interesting, but I was more swept up in his personal tales. Again, as long as you know what you're getting into, this is an excellent read.
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Summary: King's "Danse" never fails to please, even after 18 years
Review: Of all the Stephen King books that I've read ("The Shining" continues to be my favorite), Danse Macabre is the one that I've reread the most times. In fact, I've lost count of the number of times I've pulled this book off my shelf with the intent of reading a chapter or two and ended up rereading the entire book. Let me first say that Mr. King's memory is not the greatest. He gets many details wrong in this book, and even the updated version that King released in the mid-80's did not catch all the mistakes. This, however, can be forgiven, because King wrote a very readable and enjoyable (if brief and sketchy) history of horror in literature, the movies, radio, and TV. This is by no means a definitive book on the genre, but it is arguably the most fun you may ever have reading about the subject. Even with the errors (most involve plots of movies that King does not remember correctly), and even though this is a non-fiction work, Danse Macabre sets a defi! nite mood that many writers of horror fiction have tried, but failed, to create. King's frame of reference in writing this book is based on his own early experience with the genre. He talks of listening to the classic radio program "Lights Out" with his aging grandfather, of the movie theatre manager who stopped the film "Earth vs the Flying Saucers" to announce the launching of the Russian satellite Sputnik, of an incident that his mother told him about horrifying experience he had as a child, an incident so terrible that he does not remember it to this day. This book, by necessity, is rooted in King's childhood, the place where the ghosts and the goblins and all the other unnamable terrors are usually born in children. If you love the horror genre and would like King's unique insight on the definitive books, television shows and movies of the genre, this book is highly recommended.
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Summary: King At His Worst
Review: Recently decided to revisit some early Stephen King books after a hiatus of 20-odd years: NIGHT SHIFT, THE DEAD ZONE and this book. Though fully cognizant that this is going to result in at least a couple dozen "NOT helpful!" votes, I have to begin by saying King - the world's richest, most-read and best-loved author - has not aged well to this reader. His stories and novels have not gotten better, just longer (interminably so, in some cases), and it was actually a pleasant surprise to rediscover how lean and fat-free his early work was. I thought NIGHT SHIFT was a great collection 25 years ago and damned if it still isn't. But DANSE MACABRE, his book-length essay on horror in pop culture, is like the seed-bed of everything I later came to dislike about King: a rambling conversational style, half Aesthete and half Reg'lar Folks and inauthentic as either; shameless name-dropping and boosterism; and a relentlessly middlebrow worldview powering the vehicle. (This book must've emerged during a major Harlan Ellison jag for King; not only does he rave about him continually throughout DANSE MACABRE, but his prose here often reads like someone doing a bad Ellison impression. Ellison himself, at least, does this sort of thing with much more elan.)
I don't quibble with this factual error, or that questionable judgment; my main problem with DANSE MACABRE is that its tone - a blowhard holding court with tiresome anecdotes and self-important pronouncements, and falling in love with the sound of his own voice besides - began insinuating itself into his later work with depressing regularity. The tightly-written, flint-hard 12 and 15-page stories in NIGHT SHIFT inevitably turned into 80-page stories, if not 150-page novellas or 1000-page novels, packed so full of lard, fillers and extenders that more often than not they collapsed under their own obesity.
Lazy, jokey and even bad writing fills DANSE MACABRE from stem to stern, King trying to be both hip and square on every page; a completely unsatisfying compromise that reads as awkwardly now as office-workers must've looked in their tie-and-jeans ensembles on the first Casual Fridays. There are apocryphal anecdotes and trivia (a lot of King's sidebars include the phrase "if it isn't true, it oughta be"...never a good sign); many putdowns of critics (perhaps a pre-emptive strike); and suspiciously fulsome praise for his friends. Additionally, the longest chapter here, "Horror Fiction" - King's analyses of ten seminal horror-themed books - is dreadful. Underneath the slangy, informal prose, this chapter is full of the sort of middlebrow obviousness and said-bookism you might find in a junior-college term paper. Hilariously, somewhere along the way King dismisses Pauline Kael as one of those stodgy critics more in love with her syntax than her content: he'd have done well to study her long-form essays a bit harder before attempting a book full of them himself. Even more hilariously, he brandishes Strunk and White's famous edict "omit needless words" as the one rule of style he lives by. No, seriously: Stephen King, the man who wrote IT, actually says this in DANSE MACABRE. Amazing.
On the other hand, NIGHT SHIFT, a King book written when he really did live by that rule, still holds up beautifully as one of the best single-author collections in or out of the genre; neither does THE DEAD ZONE overstay its welcome. He abandoned that relative restraint when he metamorphosed - permanently? - into Uncle Stevie (TM) in DANSE MACABRE. King has had a few genuine high-points, and a whole lot of middling-at-best efforts, in the two decades-plus since this book first appeared, but he can at least rest easy in the knowledge that he'll never write anything worse.
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