“Free will was not a factor.”
Horror in the ‘real world’, whatever that may be. Here the monster is a rabid dog, a kind dog that didn’t want to harm anyone but made the mistake of chasing a rabbit into a bat cave. Naturalistic, pessimistic and not entertaining in the ordinary sense of the word, it’s a good example of one of the things that make King great; he doesn’t write what the reader wants him to, but what the story demands.
“It was a pleasure to burn” (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)
Oh, another story about a young girl with awesome powers, some might smirk. Yes, but aside from the simplest of summaries, Firestarter is vastly different from Carrie. More mobile, more complex and more of a normal thriller. One of his most mainstream books, you might say. Whereas Carrie is perhaps distancing itself from the reader somewhat in its experimental form, Firestarter takes you along on an adventure, an involving story, vividly told, with a moral dilemma as a bonus. King the storyteller.
“Lots of steps. Long way to go.”
Two of the Bachman books describe competitions where the loser risks to lose his life. The Long Walk is very powerful work, telling the story of a hundred young men setting out on a marathon “promenade” – a competition held yearly by the government – which only one of them will finish. As in Rage, the interest lies not only in the dark and violent situation but in what people talk about along the way.
“What a talent God has given you, Johnny.”
As with Firestarter, some might dismiss it as “another King story about ordinary people, blessed or cursed with unusual powers”. As before, this is an entirely different story, with some recurrent motifs. Another of his pet subjects, religious mania that serves as an instrument of truth, is also present here, if discreetly. One of King’s own favorites, from what I’ve read. The town of Castle Rock is introduced here.
“It was a face guaranteed to make barrooms arguments over batting averages turn bloody.”
This face belongs to Randall Flagg, one of King’s most famous incarnations of evil and corruption. He makes his first appearance in The Stand. This 1200 page novel is the favourite of many fans, and although I would personally rank at least IT and Misery higher, it sure is powerful. A true epic, turning america into a post-apocalyptic battleground for a very biblical Good and Evil. Both mystical, almost Tolkienish, and ruggedly realistic, it is still unique in the way it blends different levels of reality so seamlessly (lousy metaphor, please suggest a better one).
NOTE: The first edition was a measly 800 pages, but it was restored to its intended length in 1990.
“I came to you because I want to tell my story” (The Boogeyman)
The first collection of King short stories, previously published in magazines of very varied style and quality. Here are some genuine classics, such as Quitters Inc, Children of the Corn, The Boogeyman and Strawberry Spring. And let’s not forget one of his most beautiful stories, The Last Rung on the Ladder, which is very far from horror. Several of the stories here have been turned into bad films.
The forewords by King and John D. MacDonald are both wonderful.
As early as 1977, King began publishing novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, both as a way to get out stories that the publishers didn’t think was Kingesque enough to publish and to find out if he could “do it again”; start from scratch and work his way up. Although Bachman did get some attention – one critic said that Thinner was the sort of book King would have written if he’d only could – the books sold a lot better after the truth was revealed. In 1985 King chose to go public with his alter ego, before someone else could prove that he was Bachman.
“…when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.”
The Catcher in the Rye on acid, perhaps. A student flips out and holds his class prisoner at gunpoint. The situation quickly develops in a quite different way than to be expected, and under those weird circumstances some interesting truths come out, about the students and about other things. The first draft was written as early as 1967, and it is a “young” book in both good and perhaps not so good ways.
“In the Overlook all things had a sort of life.”
The ultimate haunted house novel, right up there with the masterpieces by Shirley Jackson and Henry James, and as psychologically complex. As much a story about a haunted man as a building, it portrays the gradual going-insane of Jack Torrance – one King’s most memorable characters – in a hotel that’s not as empty as it supposed to be.
“The town new darkness”
Basically Dracula, set in 1970’s New England, with remarkably believable results. This book has what you expect from a King novel, but also some chapters that are unlike most of what I’ve read by him; chapters that describe the small town – as an almost sentient being – and those living there, in a wonderfully poetic way, with both distance and affection.
Writer Ben Mears returns to his childhood town, where he finds both love and horror. He is not the only newcomer, it seems. The mysterious Mr Straker and Mr Barlow have set up shop in town and also acquired the dreaded Marsten House – the setting of dark deeds in the past and quite probably haunted. When people mysteriously begin disappearing and dying, Mears and a handful of others try to make a stand against an ancient evil.
What should be either corny or at best tongue-in-cheek is somehow neither, but instead truly chilling.
The memorable Father Callahan is presented here – to lie dormant until the final three books of the Dark Tower series.
Copyright © 2024 Palaver's Stephen King blog
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
