Stephen King Re-visited

Just how random is life?

I have spent almost all my freetime in the last year reading my old books all over again. Started on Stephen King a month ago. Started with Carrie in fact, his first book. Didnt like it at all. Pyrokinesis is possible says Stephen King. Big deal. I remember switching off the movie version in the gory opening scene some time ago. His second book Salems Lot was more promising at the beginning - evocative imagery and realistic writing, enough to forget that he wrote this one thirty years ago. But the premise was so shallow it was ridiculous - Oh my God, Vampires exist! So what. Firestarter, Dead Zone and Christine went the same way, I simply could not discover what had made me like this author all those years ago.

Night shift was better, King should stick to short stories. Stories like "The last rung of the ladder", "The ledge", "I know what you need", "I am the doorway", "The man who loved flowers" and "Quitters Inc" were excellent, reminding me of some of the better episodes from Twilight Zone, the ones which made you think a bit. In fact I have seen TV versions of Quitter's Inc and The Ledge. Skeleton crew, the other collection of short stories, had less interesting stories, although "The raft", "The reapers image" and some of the others were okay. The first story called "Mist" was some 150 odd pages long - some short story! But it was alright, I actually liked the ending being left in limbo. Better than his interminable novels.

And then I read Needful Things. His best novel that I have read recently. Less of explicit horror (horrible horror that is) and more of psychological brinkmanship so to speak, as the reader is forced through some spirited fight scenes between people. I have seen the movie of this one some time ago and it too was excellent, probably the only watchable King movie. The most believable premise so far - if the devil existed, he would probably be someone like this one.

It is surprising that I had forgotten all of these stories completely, though I had read them some 15 years ago. Anyway, I wondered how his newer stories were, the ones I hadnt read earlier. Picked up Dreamcatcher from the local library. Truly horrible. The story was appalling, the characters, compared to his seventies and early eighties books, were totally lifeless and it had a 1000 pages of rubbish to wade through. I skimmed and speed read through it. Completely avoidable.

The Running Man wasnt too bad. At least it was short. But King's vision of the future is not off the mark at all, what with all the reality shows running on TV. I still did not enjoy it much. Maybe the lingering after taste of Dreamcatcher spoilt the show. I seem to remember the movie, starring Arnie, being very different from the book.

It was Different Seasons, a novella collection, that I liked the most. King's novellas are always better, less detail in his irrelevant verbiage, and they get over faster. But this one had no horror at all, just real life stories and it had me wishing King wrote such stories all the time. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank redemption was a thoroughly enjoyable story about prison life. Apt pupil was not so good but still better than everything else I had read except Needful Things. King has missed his calling - he should have written psyco thrillers. Real life horror is so much superior to made up horror.

The third novella, "The Body" has to be King's best work by far. So good that it made me think of my own childhood, something I hadnt done much of recently. King writes really well about children, they are his best characters in all the other books I had read too. This story was like a reminiscence of the author himself, written in the first person, talking about his childhood friends. So well written that I ended up recalling my own school friends, searched for them on the internet, found them and started an email correspondence. That has got to be some powerful story, right?

So the fourth novella of Different Seasons, "The breathing method" came as an anticlimax. An excellent story in its own right, as good as the best in Night Shift, but I took three days to read its 50 pages. I was in another place mentally, you see.

Strange how a random act of reading a book can lead to totally unforseen conclusions. So is life random? Or is the seed of every future event burried in our past?

I have started on The Stand. Let us see how it pans out - all 750 pages of it! Every book by King would be much improved if they were cut down to about a third of the length.

(Finished The Stand with difficulty. Horrible. Pages and pages of inconsequential bilge that I speed read through. Twenty years of separation between Stand and Dreamcatcher havent made any difference - same rubbish.
September 3, 2007 9:59 PM )