Campbell, Ramsey | Michael A. Morrison (essay date 1991)
Michael A. Morrison (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: "Patterns, Demanding to Be Read . . . ," in Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction, No. 2, Fall, 1991, pp. 4-6.
[In the following excerpt, Morrison celebrates Waking Nightmares and Dark Feasts as evidence of the continuing development of Campbell's skill as a writer.]
If you're a Campbell enthusiast, you already know you want [Waking Nightmares]; if not, I recommend it as an introduction to his recent work. Read in conjunction with the thirty stories in his twenty-five-year retrospective Dark Feasts (1987), these nineteen tales, all published during the Eighties, confirm his continuing growth and mastery.
The first thing one notices is that Campbell is now an even better stylist. He has finally curbed the mannerisms critic R. S. Hadji calls his characters' "obsessive rhetorical denials". And he is now able to focus precisely and to great effect the...
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