I am currently rereading possibly the greatest book in the history of words and letters. I just bought a special original hard-back copy that set me back a considerable amount of money, even though I'm close to dead broke. I wouldn't want an original copy of any other book, though.
The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers is a book. At first it appears to be just a collection of short stories, all amateur reviewers of this book call it that. The irony that you realize as you read it, is that it is not the actual book "The King in Yellow". The actual "King in Yellow" is supposed to be a script for a play that the book concerns itself with. The contents of the play are not made clear to the reader, but it's effects are. The play will cause anyone who reads it to go completely insane. Every time you see a copy of the play on someone's desk or in someone's library in this book, you immediately start to mistrust them and become apprehensive. They're obviously insane...what horrible things have they done that you don't know about yet?
Eventually you realize that in all of the stories, the book is a common character and you start imagining that the stories take some sort of chronological order, but you can't place them.
Spoiler: After you've read this book as many times as I have, you catch on to a pretty chilling fact. The book is the play, the play is the book. It's all one gruesome disfigured entity looking at you as you read it. You're infected too, you've read the King in Yellow.
Obviously this book spawned the cliche of the "thing will turn you crazy" media. The movies, Cigarette Burns and In the Mouth of Madness are just the aftereffects caught in the contrails of this masterpiece.
As to the Eponymous "King in Yellow"? He has returned.
-KiY
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks