The monster, shown.

January 27, 2024 10:40 AM

RIP, David John Skal. The novelist, horror scholar, NPR interviewee, occasional movie writer and guest died at 71.

Previously.

posted by doctornemo (7 comments total)

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His horror scholarship has been so influential for me. It's devastating that there's not going to be more of it.
posted by darchildre at 10:45 AM on January 27 [2 favorites]

RIP + thank you, Mr. Skal - his book Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween was helpful to me when I was trying to figure out the origins of some of the 19th c. All Hallows (and by extension, as it turned out, other holidays) street mayhem I was coming across in D.C. newspapers of the era when doing research.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:29 PM on January 27 [4 favorites]

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Now I gotta read a bunch of books about Dracula.
posted by Artw at 1:10 PM on January 27

The Monster Show is an absurdly good.book, and I loved it when Skal would pop up on DVD extras and the like. He was a great voice on horror and sf, and film in general.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:38 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

Because horror has historically been such a disreputable genre, Horror Studies came together pretty late as a critical formation, and, as such, I don't know if Skal even thought of himself as part of it. And his work is, of course, part of the foundation of it, along with Wood, Carroll, etc.

RIP, Legend

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posted by cupcakeninja at 1:56 PM on January 27 [9 favorites]

🏺
posted by clavdivs at 4:17 PM on January 27

A few days ago, I started reading Dark Carnival, the biography of Tod Browning that he co-wrote. I like his writing style and look forward to delving deeper into his scholarship.
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posted by the sobsister at 8:40 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]