THE KING IN YELLOW
The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The first half of the book features highly esteemed weird stories, and the book has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler, S. T. Joshi, and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural. There are ten stories, the first four of which, “The Repairer of Reputations”, “The Mask”, “In the Court of the Dragon”, and “The Yellow Sign”, mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. “The Yellow Sign” inspired a film of the same name released in 2001. (More from Wikipedia)
The name of a 2011 album by the Dead Milkmen, The King in Yellow is taken from one of my favorite collections of stories; it is by Robert W. Chambers and includes one of the best 19th Century weird-fiction stories (it has been widely anthologized), “The Yellow Sign”. Besides being the title of the collection, The King in Yellow is also said to be a hauntingly beautiful play that is referenced in several stories in the book. The play has the ability to drive its readers insane, particularly those who peruse Act 2; with only a handful of quotations and limited details on the story line, the play stays in the background but gives the stories a truly sinister air. The King in Yellow (the imaginary play that is) is an analogue of the forbidden book that was invented by H. P. Lovecraft called the Necronomicon, and Lovecraft handled it in much the same way in his stories.
(July 2012)
