Stories
The first four stories are loosely connected by three main devices:
- A play in book form entitled The King in Yellow
- A mysterious and malevolent supernatural entity known as The King in Yellow
- An eerie symbol called The Yellow Sign
These stories are macabre in tone, centering on characters that are often artists or decadents. The first and fourth stories, "The Repairer of Reputations" and "The Yellow Sign", are set in an imagined future 1920s America, whereas the second and third stories "The Mask" and "In the Court of the Dragon" are set in Paris.
The other stories in the book do not follow the macabre theme of the first four, and most are written in the romantic fiction style common to Chambers' later work. Some are linked to the preceding stories by their Parisian setting and artistic protagonists.
Read more about this topic: The King In Yellow
Famous quotes containing the word stories:
“All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.... For me “style” is matter.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“If you like to make things out of wood, or sew, or dance, or style people’s hair, or dream up stories and act them out, or play the trumpet, or jump rope, or whatever you really love to do, and you love that in front of your children, that’s going to be a far more important gift than anything you could ever give them wrapped up in a box with ribbons.”
—Fred M. Rogers (20th century)
“Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)