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:
“We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)
“I am surprised at the way people seem to perceive me, and sometimes I read stories and hear things about me and I go “ugh.” I wouldn’t like her either. It’s so unlike what I think I am or what my friends think I am.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)
“There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)