In Danse Macabre (1981), King suggests that twentieth-century horror fiction puts the ordinary and the horrible "cheek-byjowl." Horror depends on what King terms "an Apollonian society . . . disrupted by a Dionysian force." Horror is "an invitation to indulge in deviant, antisocial behavior by proxy—to commit gratuitous acts of violence, indulge our puerile dreams of power, to give in to our most craven fears." Nonetheless, King reassures us, the horror genre is politically conservative: "The writer of horror fiction is neither more nor less than an agent of the status quo."

King describes his eponymous Nevada mining town with affection. Many vestiges of Desperation's civic pride have survived Tak's Dionysian dismantling operation. It does not matter that the residents are engaged in an industry that is "an affront to God." One is outraged that Tak has hung a dead dog on the sign reading "DESPERATION'S CHURCH & CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS WELCOME...