Gordon Theisen is a freelance writer with a Ph.D. in English literature from Binghamton University. In this essay, Theisen discusses King's use of a wide variety of popular media genres and how magic plays a key role in the novel and popular literature.

Song of Susannah sometimes seems like an unwieldy bag stuffed with ideas taken from a variety of different popular literary and movie genres. Stephen King draws from spaghetti western-era Clint Eastwood as a model for his hero, Roland Deschain, and western movies, in general, for the lengthy shootout in stanza 7. He also includes creatures and plot devices from countless monster movies and horror novels, including vampires, an army of wolves, bizarre machinery, trances, demonic possession, split personalities, and magic totems with which a character might turn any passerby into a virtual slave. He creates a separate fantasy realm called Mid-World with its own...