SOURCE: A review of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, in Booklist, Vol. 89, No. 21, July, 1993, p. 1918.

In the following brief review, Olson responds favorably to Nightmares and Dreamscapes, noting King's successful imitations of such writers as Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler, as well as such television shows as "The Twilight Zone" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

When you're reading him, you can think that Stephen King is the best writer in America. [Nightmares and Dreamscapes, his] first collection of shorter stuff in eight years, includes plenty of reasons for harboring that litcritically heretical thought. Mind you, nothing in it suggests King's about to go toe to toe with Updike, Mailer, Bellow, et al. But which of them has, all at once, his color and vitality, his sheer joy in words and the power of the imagination? Okay, he's a "genre writer," but one who's brilliantly revivified the visceral poetry and allure of...