NorthStar 2. Reading and Writing. Student Book

Although many of the books and films discussed in the pages which follow are now taught routinely in colleges, I read the books, saw the films, and formed my conclusions pretty much on my own, with no texts or scholarly papers of any type to guide my thoughts. It seemed that very shortly I would get to see the true color of my thoughts for the first time. That may seem a strange phrase. Further along in this book I have written my belief that no one is exactly sure of what they mean on any given subject until they have written their thoughts down; I similarly believe that we have very little understanding of what we have thought until we have submitted those thoughts to others who are at least as intelligent as ourselves. So, yeah, I was nervous at the prospect of stepping into that Barrows Hall classroom, and I spent too much of an otherwise lovely vacation in St. Thomas that year agonizing over Stoker's use of humor in Dracula and the paranoia quotient of Jack Finney's Body Snatchers. In the days following Bill's call, I began to think more and more that if my series of talks (I don't quite have balls enough to call them lectures) on the horror-supernatural-gothic field seemed well received-by myself as well as by my students-then perhaps writing a book on the subject would complete the circle ...»