In his provocative book about the Gothic, Mr. Edmundson notes that the genre flourished in the years after the French Revolution. Those drafty castles with their dark secrets, the vampirish counts and the leering clergymen were all embodiments of the ancient regime, the old feudal order haunting the unsteady world of the new. Modern innocents are lured into that realm and nearly overwhelmed by it, until they exorcise its demonic control. The past is finally passed. The disgusting is contained, controlled, overcome. But today, Mr. Edmundson argues there is no clear resolution to our Gothic tales. Their haunting addictions and demonic figures keep reappearing in rock videos, computer games, television talk shows and horror films. But the villainy is ambiguous...No sooner do we start to hate the wife abuser on a talk show than we learn that he too is a haunted victim of abuse or a recovering addict. We are all villains and all victims.
New York Times - Edward Rothstein
Edmundson's book has a simple yet visionary thesis. Americathe patientis infected with a psychological virus that fosters a death-worshipping attitude toward existence...Edmundson's clarity of vision, airtight logic, and captivating prose...succeed in convincing the reader of his thesis...[He] is strongly conversant with classic Anglo-American literature, movies and television. Part of this book's intellectual charm is that he draws on such a heterogeneous range of supporting examples, from Oprah to Hitchcock, from Wordsworth to Robert Bly, from Wes Craven to Keats.
Paul Di Fillippo Book World
I never would have thought that Forrest Gump, Sigmund Freud and O.J. Simpson had anything to do with one another. But Mark Edmundson turns them into one big, dysfunctional family in his provocative new book about contemporary American culture...The strength of Edmundson's analysis is his ability to use the concept of the gothic sensibility to tie together seemingly disparate strands of contemporary culture and show how our view of reality is shaped by them...I suggest Nightmare on Main Street to readers who want to understand the stories America tells itself.
News & Observer - Greg Beatty
One cannot but admire the forward pressure of the argument, the breadth of reference, the passion with which it is conducted, and, at times, the passages of analysis.
Canadian Review of Literature - Francis Devlin-Glass
Absorbing...The Gothic thrives, Edmundson argues, in a world in which 'those in authoritythe supposed exemplars of the goodare under suspicion,' a world in which cynicism ('the conviction that the worst truth that you can come up with about any person or event is the most consequential truth') is a given...Drawing upon his considerable knowledge of American and European literature, Edmundson does a nimble job of situating the current Gothic craze in context with philosophical developments, while at the same time assessing its social consequences...Nightmare on Main Street is a provocative and often illuminating book.
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
[A] compelling explanation of our ever more ghoulish obsessions.
The New Yorker - Jeffrey Toobin
Edmundson's book has a simple yet visionary thesis. Americathe patientis infected with a psychological virus that fosters a death-worshipping attitude toward existence...Edmundson's clarity of vision, airtight logic, and captivating prose...succeed in convincing the reader of his thesis...[He] is strongly conversant with classic Anglo-American literature, movies and television. Part of this book's intellectual charm is that he draws on such a heterogeneous range of supporting examples, from Oprah to Hitchcock, from Wordsworth to Robert Bly, from Wes Craven to Keats.
Washington Post Book World - Paul Di Fillippo
I never would have thought that Forrest Gump, Sigmund Freud and O.J. Simpson had anything to do with one another. But Mark Edmundson turns them into one big, dysfunctional family in his provocative new book about contemporary American culture...The strength of Edmundson's analysis is his ability to use the concept of the gothic sensibility to tie together seemingly disparate strands of contemporary culture and show how our view of reality is shaped by them...I suggest Nightmare on Main Street to readers who want to understand the stories America tells itself. Greg Beatty
Edmundson's book has a simple yet visionary thesis. Americathe patientis infected with a psychological virus that fosters a death-worshipping attitude toward existence...Edmundson's clarity of vision, airtight logic, and captivating prose...succeed in convincing the reader of his thesis...[He] is strongly conversant with classic Anglo-American literature, movies and television. Part of this book's intellectual charm is that he draws on such a heterogeneous range of supporting examples, from Oprah to Hitchcock, from Wordsworth to Robert Bly, from Wes Craven to Keats.
Paul Di Fillippo
Washington Post Book World
Absorbing...The Gothic thrives, Edmundson argues, in a world in which 'those in authoritythe supposed exemplars of the goodare under suspicion,' a world in which cynicism ('the conviction that the worst truth that you can come up with about any person or event is the most consequential truth') is a given...Drawing upon his considerable knowledge of American and European literature, Edmundson does a nimble job of situating the current Gothic craze in context with philosophical developments, while at the same time assessing its social consequences...Nightmare on Main Street is a provocative and often illuminating book.
Michiko Kakutani
One cannot but admire the forward pressure of the argument, the breadth of reference, the passion with which it is conducted, and, at times, the passages of analysis.
Francis Devlin-Glass
Canadian Review of Literature
[A] compelling explanation of our ever more ghoulish obsessions.
Jeffrey Toobin
According to some critics, most of today's popular culture can fall under the enveloping shroud of a "Gothic" rubri. For a witty, lucid but fanciful essay in this vein [read] Nightmare on Main Street ...This is fascinating, smartly-written stuff. The Independent
What do Richard Nixon, Freddy Krueger, O.J. Simpson, and Edgar Allan Poe have in common with one anotherbut not with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Ralph Waldo Emerson? Answer: The former express our nation's cult of gothic guilt and fear; the latter are potential models of redemption.
Edmundson (English/Univ. of Virginia) argues that the gothic mindset, exemplified in lurid classics of the late 18th century (e.g., Walpole's The Castle of Otranto and Lewis's The Monk) dominates contemporary American culture. From these works he distills categories that he finds ubiquitous in modern pop culture, including protagonists equally divided between good and wicked selves, scenarios in which dungeons or other underground scenes of sadomasochistic horror figure prominently, the hidden past that refuses to die (in recovered-memory syndrome), and so forth. Racism is, above all else, the part of the American past that refuses to die, haunting us in fiction (Toni Morrison's Beloved), in the news (O.J.), and in cinema. Edmundson has written an entertaining and thoughtful book, but his overly elastic thesis occasionally gets the better of his good judgment. He is prone to write outlandish things, making his book at times a lurid bit of American gothic itself. His arguments often fall into the categories he criticizes: Poe, for example, is Emerson's evil twin in the American tradition (his America seems divided between angels and incubi). Though he justifiably scorns the recent angel craze as an expression of phony transcendence, he also presents Shelley, Emerson, Whitman, and even Nietzsche as angels of a sort (he calls them "visionaries") who might deliver us from our abject need. One might say that this book's thesis belongs in the American tradition of cultural pessimism, the very malady for which it purports to be the cure.
Even though Edmundson's main thesis is overdrawn, his book is rewarding. It has many startling insights, shrewd observations, and considerable narrative momentum.