The Exorcist: A Terrifying Classic of American Horror($14.40Value)

Description

Originally published in 1971, The Exorcist is now a major television series on FOX. It remains one of the most controversial novels ever written and went on to become a literary phenomenon: It spent fifty-seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, seventeen consecutively at number one. Inspired by a true story of a child’s demonic possession in the 1940s, William Peter Blatty created an iconic novel that focuses on Regan, the eleven-year-old daughter of a movie actress residing in Washington, D.C. A small group of overwhelmed yet determined individuals must rescue Regan from her unspeakable fate, and the drama that ensues is gripping and unfailingly terrifying. Two years after its publication, The Exorcist was, of course, turned into a wildly popular motion picture, garnering ten Academy Award nominations. On opening day of the film, lines of the novel’s fans stretched around city blocks. In Chicago, frustrated moviegoers used a battering ram to gain entry through the double side doors of a theater. In Kansas City, police used tear gas to disperse an impatient crowd who tried to force their way into a cinema. The three major television networks carried footage of these events; CBS’s Walter Cronkite devoted almost ten minutes to the story. The Exorcist was, and is, more than just a novel and a film: it is a true landmark. Purposefully raw and profane, The Exorcist still has the extraordinary ability to disturb readers and cause them to forget that it is “just a story.” Published here in this beautiful fortieth anniversary edition, it remains an unforgettable reading experience and will continue to shock and frighten a new generation of readers. "There are not many readers who will be unmoved. Written in a literate style, The Exorcist is as superior to most other books of its kind as an Einstein equation is to an accountant's column of figures." -- The New York Times "Wonderfully exciting!" -- Newsweek "Suspense that never lets up!" -- Publishers Weekly "A powerful, astonishing book!" -- Newsday "Absolutely superb! " -- Cleveland Plain Dealer "Immensely satisfying! Holds its readers in a vise-like grip worthy of Poe." -- L.A. Times "Wonderfully exciting. Blatty maintains headlong thrust until the reader winces; no more, a part of us says, but of course we want more, because Blatty handles the horror so well." -- Newsweek "Chilling!" Anthony Burgess, Author of A Clockwork Orange "Up until dawn I was with The Exorcist." -- Cosmopolitan "I consumed The Exorcist as if it were a bottomless bag of popcorn." -- LIFE Magazine "A fantastic and deeply religious novel that will touch the reader to his very soul." -- Abilene Reporter-News " The Exorcist should be read twice; the first time for the passion and intensity of the story, with a second reading to savor the subtleties of language and phrasing. Read the book! It's an experience you will never forget!" -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch "The suspense is almost unbearable!" -- Ashville Citizen-Times  In January 1968, I  rented a cabin in Lake Tahoe, California to start  a novel about demonic possession that I'd been thinking  about  for many years. I'd been driven to it, actually: I was a writer of  comic novels and farcical screenplays such as A Shot  in the Dark  with almost all of my income derived from films; but because the  season for "funny"  had abruptly turned dry and no studio would  hire me for anything non-comedic, I had reached James Thurber's  stage of desperation when, as he wrote in a "Preface to His Life,"  comedy writers sometimes take to "calling their home from their  office, or their office from their home, asking for themselves, and  then hanging up in hard-breathing relief upon being told they  "weren't in.'" My breaking point came, I suppose, when at the Van   Nuys, California, unemployment office I spotted my movie agent   in a line three down from mine. And so the cabin in Tahoe where I  was destined to become the caretaker in Stephen King's terrifying  The Shining, typing my version of "All work and no play makes  Jack a dull boy" hour after hour, day after day, for over six weeks as  I kept changing the date in my opening  paragraph from "April 1"  to April something else, because each time I would read the page  aloud, the rhythm of the lines seemed to change, a maddening  cycle of emptiness and insecurity -- magnified, I suppose, by the  fact that I had no clear plot for the novel in mind --  that continued  until I at last gave up the cabin  and hoped for better luck back  "home," a clapboard raccoon-surrounded  guest house in the hills  of  Encino owned by a former Hungarian opera star who had  purchased the property from the luminous film actress, Angela  Lansbury, and where  I finally overcame the block by realizing  that  I was starting the novel in the wrong place, namely the Georgetown  section of Washington, D.C., as opposed to northern Iraq. Almost