Writing in 1990, Noël Carroll called The Exorcist “a book that quite conceivably can lay claim to being the inaugural work of the present cycle of horror fiction.” 2 William Friedkin’s 1973 film adaptation, which Blatty wrote and produced, continues to top lists of “best” and/or “scariest” horror films to this day. The death of William Peter Blatty in January of this year was met with a flurry of tributes, none of which failed to acknowledge his most famous work, The Exorcist master of horror Stephen King went so far as to call the 1971 best-seller “the great horror novel of our time.” 1 But Blatty’s novel was recognized as an important contribution to the genre long before the author’s death. Portions of this paper were delivered at the 2013 Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association conference, under the title “The Exorcist at Forty: The Forbidden Pleasures of Resistant Reading.”
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