Books: Dream Ghoul

THE LATE GREAT CREATURE

by BROCK BROWER

300 pages. Atheneum. $6.95.

Anyone who doubts the extent to which terror has been trivialized has only to plot the limp trajectory from Frankenstein to The Munsters. Or they can read Brock Brower's remarkable comic novel which, among other things, demonstrates just how difficult it has become to be a monster.

Popular tastes, inflationary economics, the scissors and blue pencils of outrageous editorial fortune, all conspire against topnotch depravity. In addition, journalism brings more actual horror into the home than gothic tales could ever manage. The threshold of shock keeps rising, and with it that numbness characteristic...

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