Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic (edit title)

Once we've terrified ourselves reading Anne Rice or Stephen King, watching Halloween or following the O. J. Simpson trial, we can rely on the comfort of our inner child or Robert Bly's bongos, an angel, or even a crystal. In a brilliant assessment of American culture on the eve of the millennium, Mark Edmundson asks why we're determined to be haunted, courting the Gothic at every turn-and, at the same time, committed to escape through any new scheme for ready-made transcendence.