Kindle Price: $14.99

Save $5.00 (25%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
  • In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

S. T. Joshi
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Modern Weird Tale Kindle Edition

by S.T. Joshi (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
See all formats and editions

This is a critical study of many of the leading writers of horror and supernatural fiction since World War II. The primary purpose is to establish a canon of weird literature, and to distinguish the genuinely meritorious writers of the past fifty years from those who have obtained merely transient popular renown. Accordingly, the author regards the complex, subtle work of Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Aickman, T.E.D. Klein, and Thomas Ligotti as considerably superior to the best-sellers of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, and Anne Rice. Other writers such as William Peter Blatty, Thomas Tryon, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Harris are also discussed. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a pioneering attempt to chart the development of weird fiction over the past half-century.

Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0786409860
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    McFarland
  4. Publication date
    November 16, 2015
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    646 KB
  7. See all details
Next page

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Joshi (Lovecraft: A Life), an accomplished critic and independent scholar, follows up his earlier The Weird Tale (1990) with this provocative examination of more recent exemplars of the genre. Again he adopts the concept of "weird fiction" as championed by H.P. Lovecraft in the latter's capacity as a critic, namely horror that upsets the reader's assumptions about the nature of reality itself. This usually involves the supernatural, though some psychotic killer fiction (Thomas Harris, Bret Easton Ellis) can also fit the bill. Here Joshi conducts a sort of comparative study of those late 20th-century authors he deems best (Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti) with those whose books sell best (William Peter Blatty, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Anne Rice, Clive Barker). Though he never suffers gladly the pandering that can prevail among the big commercial names, he leaps to give credit where due, even declaring that "no praise can be too high" for King's Richard Bachman novel, The Running Man. As always, Joshi eschews pretentious academic jargon and fatuous theoretical constructions. The lack of an index or coverage of fiction published after 1993, however, is regrettable. In addition, Joshi delights in saying that certain authors aren't as good as they think they are, to scant evidence or relevance, while occasional political asides only remind us that he's a literary commentator and not a political one for good reason. But throughout, this volume shouts brilliance and diligence and belongs on the bookshelf of every thinking horror reader. (Dec.)Forecast: Despite the high price, the lack of publicity and promotion, the datedness (it evidently took Joshi years to find a legitimate press willing to accept such an iconoclastic work), the somewhat arbitrary selection of authors for inclusion (for treatments of Dennis Etchison, Les Daniels and David J. Schow one must turn to the two-volume, unabridged German edition), and the absence of a firm editorial hand, this study rivals in importance Lovecraft's classic survey of the genre, Supernatural Horror in Literature. It will be read long after many of the authors Joshi discusses have been forgotten. For now expect paltry sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

“excellent...a lively, opinionated study...recommended”―Choice; “provocative...shouts brilliance and diligence...belongs on the bookshelf of every thinking horror reader”―Publishers Weekly; “recommended”―Interzone; “useful”―Science Fiction Studies; “essential for fans (and writers) of weird fiction…may bring about a lively debate within the horror community”―The Third Alternative.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0087GKLDA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ McFarland (November 16, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 16, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 646 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 289 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 16 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
S. T. Joshi

S. T. Joshi

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

S. T. Joshi (Seattle, WA) is a freelance writer, scholar, and editor whose previous books include Documents of American Prejudice; In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice against Women; God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong; Atheism: A Reader; H. L. Mencken on Religion; The Agnostic Reader; and What Is Man? And Other Irreverent Essays by Mark Twain.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
16 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Joe Pawlowski
4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and Informative Overview
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is one of the most entertaining overviews of weird fiction I have read since Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature." It has a narrower focus than that book and Joshi's criticism is sometimes a tad scathing. Also, you have to get past his hero worship of Lovecraft and his puzzling bias against Stephen King, but he offers some genuine insights into weird fiction and some of its most skillful practitioners, and he holds your interest throughout. I would love to see a Kindle version of his earlier book on weird tales.
Helpful
 Report
KC Redding-Gonzalez
5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Look at Literary Criticism and the Horror Genre
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is exactly the book for those who want to explore the Literary Criticism of the Horror/Weird genre, its speculations and concerns. With the genre just beginning to emerge on the radar of Literary Criticism, it is a work that will rattle cages and open eyes. This (along with The Weird Tale) is a book for fans of the genre and those interested in literary criticism of the genre. Joshi has begun the exact discussion the genre needs to be having.
Helpful
 Report
Sean Buckley
2.0 out of 5 stars Largely drivel.
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2024
Verified Purchase
This book is, as it turns out, its own weird tale. It started out as an interesting enough discussion of weird writers and their weird works. But it quickly devolved into a condescending and self-masturbatory exercise of shooting fish in a barrel of critical fallacy. Joshi seems to presume, without providing any validation, that some of the popular writers he scathingly critiques present themselves and their works as appropriate subjects of formal literary criticism to begin with. Although Joshi spends a surplus of pages skewering Stephen King’s popular works (and even the literary competence of King himself), it is well known that King has long rejected the legitimacy of critical theory and its Daedalian practitioners (e.g., Joshi). In another discussion, Joshi propagandizes his own atheist beliefs while mocking William Peter Blatty’s arguably flawed Catholic propaganda in The Exorcist. And then, paradoxically, Joshi takes copious opportunities to ridicule several writers who, in his view, fail to adequately explain or justify the existence of their weird phenomena. Hmmm. At this point I feel that I’m at risk of “continuing the cycle of abuse,” so I’ll stop here.
Helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars There's no one better suited to analyze this genre
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2016
Verified Purchase
Joshi brought Robert Aickman to my attention. I doubt I would have heard of him on my own, so I thank him for that. He also performs a 30-page hatchet job on Stephen King, which is well worth the price of the book. If you've never read literary criticism, this isn't a terrible place to start--but try to overlook his fawning of Lovecraft.
Helpful
 Report
Philip Challinor
5.0 out of 5 stars Critical
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2001
The Modern Weird Tale examines the philosophy (or lack thereof) behind the works of Shirley Jackson, T E D Klein, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert Aickman, Anne Rice, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tryon, William Peter Blatty and Thomas Ligotti, with an interesting chapter on Robert Bloch's Psycho and some of its loving offspring by Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Harris. Joshi states in the introduction that the exclusion of authors like Richard Matheson and Thomas Tessier (to name but a couple) was prompted by his feeling that his book was already long enough. I cannot agree. Joshi is the most able and articulate literary critic to deal with supernatural horror in literature since the advent of H P Lovecraft, and his carefully argued critiques are desperately needed now that gross-out soap opera has all but pushed the good stuff off the shelves. I was a little disappointed with some of the emphasis in this work - thirty pages on Stephen King and only seventeen on Robert Aickman; an entire chapter devoted to William Blatty's sanctimonious potboilings while writers of the calibre of K W Jeter and Jonathan Carroll are relegated to the "excess length" department - but, after all, however much one may deplore the triumph of bestsellerdom, it's naive at best to ignore it. And even among the bestsellers, Joshi finds items worth bothering with - sometimes, indeed, items we would certainly be much worse off without. Even Joshi's deplored Stephen King is commended for Rage, The Running Man, Gerald's Game and some others. The chapters on the great writers - Jackson, Klein, Aickman, Campbell - are as thorough and rewarding as anything in The Weird Tale, although Joshi's antagonism towards Aickman's (admittedly unenlightening) theoretical views means that Aickman seems to get a little less than his due as a writer. Joshi has, for example, completely missed the point of Aickman's brilliant "Ravissante", and his paragraph on the story ends, in effect, with "so what?" Still, The Modern Weird Tale is at least as good a read as the earlier book, and contains almost as many pointers to interesting material of which the reader may not be aware. Perhaps the best I can say is that, having got through its 260 pages in a day, I immediately went and bought Joshi's critical study of John Dickson Carr - a writer I have never read - purely for the enjoyment of reading what Joshi has to say about him.
19 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

J. Everington
4.0 out of 5 stars Subjective But Interesting View of Modern Horror
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 16, 2012
Verified Purchase
I do enjoy books about the theory of horror fiction, particularly those that focus on newer authors - most academic textbooks are slanted towards older, 'gothic' works. There are few such books around, but S.T. Joshi's are among the best.

'The Modern Weird' is the follow up from 'The Weird Tale' and 'The Evolution of the Weird Tale', and it is mainly concerned with authors from Shirley Jackson onwards. Joshi basically groups the writers into two camps - those he likes (people like Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, and TED Klein) and those he doesn't (mainly 'bestseller' authors such as King, Anne Rice etc.) There are also some writers discussed that it is downright odd to classify as 'weird' - Thomas Harris?

The main flaws in this book show when Joshi discusses writers he doesn't like - he seems to think he is skewering them with objective points, whereas viewed from the outside the subjectivity of his tastes is obvious. Thus Stephen King is castigated, in part, because his characters are middle-class people with middle-class woes. "Who cares about people like this?" Joshi says, without every wondering how that sentence would sound applied to any other social group... Similarly The Exorcist explicit Christian viewpoint doesn't square with Joshi's atheism, and so by his logic must be a flawed book...

The most annoying problem when Joshi critisizes an author he doesn't like is when he points out 'flaws' that he is happy to ignore when applied to writers he does like. So some of Stephen King's stories come under fire for not explaining how and why the supernatural in them came to be - a claim that could be made against no end of weird fiction, including lots of those featured here.

Fortunately, Joshi is far, far better at explaining why he loves writers he loves - the chapters on Ramsey Campbell, TED Klein and Shirley Jackson alone are worth the price of the book. Here he really shines, highlighting themes and connections that I missed even on books I've read loads of times. I've never read any Thomas Tyron, but Joshi's discussion of The Other and Harvest Home really makes me want to - his writing is infectious in these sections, erudite but not dry, pointing out strengths (and weaknesses) of books with clarity and accuracy. (Only the chapter on Robert Aickman is somewhat disappointing, largely because Joshi seems unsure quite what to make of him...)

So - a good book to argue with, but a better one to be inspired by.
4 people found this helpful
 Report
Fumi
4.0 out of 5 stars Subjective reading yet strangely compelling
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2014
Verified Purchase
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it was quite refreshing to see certain American writers who I admired as a young man cast in a new (and not altogether flattering) light.

S.T Joshi certainly knows his material but I think he holds one or two writers in too high a regard. However, as much as I hate to admit it, a lot of his criticism rings true. That's probably because I'm viewing their work as a middle-aged man and not the teenager I was when I first read them.

Be warned: King, Straub, Barker and other big name authors receive a dressing down they will probably never forget. I'm all for criticism but I shudder to think of how they felt when they read this book.
One person found this helpful
 Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report