[ManInKhakiExorcist]

American Exorcist: Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty

Edited by Benjamin Szumskyj

ISBN 978-0-7864-3597-5

softcover; 2008; $35; Not Yet Published, Available Fall/Winter 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 Blatty’s seminal novel is undeniable, analysis of his work from a critical and literary perspective has until now been lacking. These 13 essays examining The Exorcist and other novels by Blatty 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 the Studies in Fantasty Literature and Australian Weird Fiction. He lives in Melville, Western Australia.

---

By the way, gang… Free avatar, given to you only in passing:

Hey, it’s relevant, yeah? 😛

M.I.K.E.

[Blizzi]

Congrats, and yes, that avatar is fitting.

[Author]

Posts