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American Exorcist
Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty
Edited by Benjamin Szumskyj

ISBN 978-0-7864-3597-5
notes, bibliographies, index
204pp. softcover 2008

Description
William Peter Blatty is best known for his novel The Exorcist, a work widely credited with sparking the explosion of the horror genre in the 1980s. While the cultural impact of the novel is undeniable, analysis of Blatty’s work from a critical and literary perspective has until now been lacking. These 13 essays examining The Exorcist and Blatty’s other novels mark the first attempt to chart his growth from an author of mediocre comic novels to one of the premier authors of novels about the supernatural. The volume analyzes not only his craft, but also the many layers of psychological, philosophical, literary, historical, theological and autobiographical elements fueling and expressed by the imagination behind a half a century of work.

About the Author
Benjamin Szumskyj, a private high school teacher and qualified library technician, has edited anthologies and essay collections on such authors as Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Thomas Harris and William Peter Blatty. He is also the editor of Studies in Fantasy Literature and Studies in Australian Weird Fiction. He lives in Melville, Western Australia.

Other Book(s) by Benjamin Szumskyj Available from McFarland:

Fritz Leiber

Dissecting Hannibal Lecter

The Man Who Collected Psychos



Table of Contents & Excerpts

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