Peter Straub Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Bernadette Lynn Bosky

SOURCE: "Mirror and Labyrinth: The Fiction of Peter Straub," in A Dark Night's Dreaming, edited by Tony Magistrate and Michael A. Morrison, University of South Carolina Press, 1996, pp. 68-83.

In the following essay, Bosky examines Straub's body of work.

Peter Straub's fiction is notable for its combination of unity and variety: the continuing exploration of specialized themes and a characteristic tone within works that cover a range of settings, genres, and styles. While this is not necessarily unusual—in fact, it characterizes most good artists in any field—it may be less common than it should be among writers of the modern American Gothic, especially due to economic pressures to stay in one genre-marketing niche. Straub is not prolific, but each piece of work, especially from Ghost Story to the present, is a significant new step in the development of his oeuvre; Straub is not so much looking for his voice...
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