Magistrale, Tony and Michael A. Morrison, ed. Dark Night's Dreaming : Contemporary American Horror Fiction. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PS374.H67 D37 1996

The Exorcist is based on the book of the same name written by William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the screenplay. Chapter 6, “Casting Out Demons: The Horror Fiction of William Peter Blatty” details Blatty’s inspirations for writing the novel and his thoughts on the reaction to his work. Even the book had an enormous impact, spending 55 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. From this, the more serious intentions of the story can be understood without the visual stimulations of the movie to distract.

Douglas E. Winter writes that Blatty brought a new legitimacy to the horror genre, that he “ushered the reign of Stephen King and the stylized horror genre in the late 1970s and early 1980s” (84). Blatty was raised as a Roman Catholic, having attended a Catholic grammar school, a Jesuit high school, and a Jesuit university – Georgetown. Before writing The Exorcist, he had already published 8 books and produced 11 film scripts, and was known as a comedy writer. It wasn’t until 1971 that he wrote the book based on a successful exorcism he had read about in the Washington Post in 1949. Blatty said, “It seemed a validation of what we were being taught as Catholics, and certainly a validation of our hopes for immortality. Because if there were evil spirits, why not good? Why not a soul? Why not life everlasting?” (qtd. in 87). It was this confirmation that Blatty tried to evoke through his novel, though he concedes that “the real point of the book is nowhere to be found in the film” (qtd. in 91).

Winter praises The Exorcist as a book that confronts religious issues in a thought-provoking manner. He also discusses the social undertones of the story, of women's liberation and the rebellion of youth. The popularity of the book can be attributed to its sensationalism and to the pronounced taboos, but Blatty's real intention, as shown by Winter, was to reveal his hopeful attitude of what the exorcism implies about the justification of religion and the afterlife.