EVERYONE LOVES A GOOD TRAIN WRECK: WHY WE CAN’T LOOK AWAY
Eric G. Wilson
Farrar, Straus and Girour
How can you like that stuff? It’s a question many horror fans have heard from well-meaning parents, friends, spouses and others who turn away from the gore, the gloom and other dreadful things.
In his new book Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can’t Look Away, Eric G. Wilson, a professor of English at Wake Forest University, frames his conflict over his morbid fascination as an internal struggle between “Look” and “Don’t look.”
“Don’t look,” say the well-meaning scolds, but also some of the scholars that Wilson surveys in this slim, compelling book. An interest in the darker side of life leads to a lack of compassion, they argue. Wilson…