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Title: A Condescending view of the genre
Review: This book seems as if it were written to impress a tenure committee. The author clearly doesn't like horror literature, and his constant jibes at the works he discusses, though occasionally amusing, make one wonder why he has spent so much time on the subject. As you might expect from a critic who doesn't "get" the genre, his readings are shallow. M. R. James, for example, is portrayed as merely a skillful purveyor of gore. Worse, Kendrick reads all the works as having the same meaning. In his view, an attachment to such literature is puerile.I did learn a few things from this book--for example, the history of horror in the theater was mostly new to me, and probably will be to many genre addicts. On the whole, though, the author simply knows less about his subject than most of his readers will.
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