Новинки Дэвида Дж. Скала

Bram Stoker, despite having a name nearly as famous as his legendary Count Dracula, has remained a puzzling enigma. Now, in a psychological and cultural portrait, David J. Skal exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who conjured an undying cultural icon. Stoker was inexplicably paralyzed as a boy, and his story unfolds against a backdrop of Victorian medical mysteries and horrors: cholera and famine fever, childhood opium abuse, frantic bloodletting, mesmeric quack cures, and the gnawing obsession with “bad blood” that inform every page of Dracula. Stoker’s ambiguous sexuality is explored through his lifelong acquaintance with Oscar Wilde, who emerges as Stoker’s repressed shadow self—a doppelgänger worthy of a Gothic novel. The psychosexual dimensions of Stoker’s passionate youthful correspondence with Walt Whitman, his punishing work ethic, and his slavish adoration of the actor Sir Henry Irving are examined in scholarly detail.

Late in Claude Rains's distinguished career, a reverent film journalist wrote that Rains "was as much a cinematic institution as the medium itself." Given his childhood speech impediments and his origins in a destitute London neighborhood, the ascent of Claude Rains (1889–1967) to the stage and screen is remarkable. Rains's difficulties in his formative years provided reserves of gravitas and sensitivity, from which he drew inspiration for acclaimed performances in The Invisible Man (1933), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Casablanca (1942), Notorious (1946), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and other classic films. In Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice, noted Hollywood historian David J. Skal draws on more than thirty hours of newly released Rains interviews to create the first full-length biography of the actor who was nominated multiple times for an Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor. Skal's portrait of the gifted actor also benefits from the insights of Jessica Rains, who provides firsthand accounts of the enigmatic man behind her father's refined screen presence and genteel public persona. As Skal shows, numerous contradictions informed the life and career of Claude Rains. He possessed an air of nobility and became an emblem of sophistication, but he never shed the insecurities that traced back to his upbringing in an abusive and poverty-stricken family. Though deeply self-conscious about his short stature, Rains drew notorious ardor from female fans and was married six times. His public displays of dry wit and good humor masked inner demons that drove Rains to alcoholism and its devastating consequences. Skal's layered depiction of Claude Rains reveals a complex, almost inscrutable man whose nuanced characterizations were, in no small way, based on the more shadowy parts of his psyche. With unprecedented access to episodes from Rains's private life, Skal tells the full story of the consummate character actor of his generation. Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice, gives voice to the struggles and innermost concerns that influenced Rains's performances and helped him become a universally respected Hollywood legend.

Глобальное исследование жанра "хоррор" во всех его проявлениях. Дэвид Дж.Скал, американский культуролог, известный специалист по "мрачной" фантастике, написал книгу, поистине захватывающую дух и леденящую кровь.

The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. Most of us can recite without prompting the salient characteristics of the vampire: sleeping by day in its coffin, rising at dusk to feed on the blood of the living; the ability to shapeshift into a bat, wolf, or mist; a mortal vulnerability to a wooden stake through the heart or a shaft of sunlight. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commidity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all.

In "Screams of Reason," David J. Skal explores our perennial fascination with demented doctors, crazed clinicians, and technology-obsessed fiends. From 19th-century Romantic literature to Dr. Strangelove and Hannibal Lecter, the mad scientist proves himself to be a figure of myriad masks and guises -- a far more interesting archetype than the nerd-run-amok of B-movies would indicate. "Screams of Reason" is an exploration of the prop-laden laboratories of '30s Hollywood, the mad-science mystique that colors the cult of the computer, the pseudo-science folklore of UFO abductions, and the demonization of doctors and medicine in the brave new world of HMOs and managed care.

This informative and entertaining pop-culture reference guide covers all aspects of vampirism--from the infamous lore about garlic, mirrors, and wooden stakes to fascinating descriptions of little-known books and films on the subject. Skal's look at the dark creature will recapture the imagination of millions and covers hundreds of topics related to vampires.

This entertaining survey mixes behind-the-scenes Hollywood anecdotes with intriguing social analysis. Skal ( Hollywood Gothic ) considers the archetypes depicted in Dracula , Frankenstein , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Tod Browning's Freaks as responses to the Great Depression that contained metaphors of class warfare. Scientific sadism in films of the 1940s drew on partial knowledge of the Third Reich, he argues, while movie monsters of the '50s personified Bomb-bred mutants or Cold War brainwashers. Skal links 1960s films' anxiety about sex and reproduction to the introduction of the Pill and Thalidomide, and suggests that horror flicks of the '70s and '80s show signs of the post-traumatic stress syndrome suffered by many Vietnam veterans. Though he analyzes Stephen King's novels, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video and Famous Monsters magazine, his book might have been richer had he delved into more non-Hollywood aspects of pop culture, such as heavy metal music. Illustrations not seen by PW.