This last month I've read three books by Stephen King: On Writing, Misery and From a Buick 8. All three were very different, and not necessarily in a good way.
Book 1: On Writing by Stephen King
This book is a memoir/instructional guide about and for the craft of authorship. King recounts his childhood, his commercial success and his near death experience all within the context of his love for writing. Although at first, the whole thing seemed a bit narcissistic, On Writing developed into a pretty interesting read.
The part that most influenced me was a bit on how writing is an archaic form of telepathy. If I imagined a room and wrote about it in detail, and someone else, somewhere else, read what I had written, they, more or less, could imagine the same room. This exchange, as King points out, requires no verbal communication and is therefore a form of telepathy. A romanticized notion, perhaps, but King's goal in bringing this up was to stress the idea that good writing is a careful balance of details. Write about what's important in a scene; don't go overboard or don't leave too much out.
King continues on in a weave of details about his life and writing habits that left me admiring his discipline. According to this book, he writes and reads for 4 to 6 hours every day of the year, including all holidays and birthdays. He claims that the only instance where he ever stopped writing for any period of time was after a reckless driver rearranged the lower half of his body and just about killed him.
A long time back, I read The Gunslinger; the first book in the Dark Tower Series and also the first King book I ever read. It was like a nightmare fever dream - a David Lynch meets Clint Eastwood sort of ordeal. I finished it, gave it a - "meh" - and didn't continue with the series. Then, just last year, a friend said that King's On Writing was a must read for all wanna-be authors. He bought me a copy and suddenly I felt obligated to read it despite my prior experience with King.
It was a quick read and I, like my friend, would certainly recommend it for anyone aspiring to become an author. King, after all, is a multiple best-seller. He has had many of his books adapted to film and, therefore, certainly has some valuable things to say about being a successful writer. However, everyone's writing process and influences are different, so it can't be expected of this book to make you an instant bestseller. It simply has some good nuts-and-bolts style instructions buried within a real-life, rags-to-riches soliloquy.
It also got me thinking that I should maybe give King another chance. Within a section on character design in his memoirs, he discusses Annie Wilkes, the antagonist from his novel Misery. I was intrigued by the sounds of the character, as King claims she is his most impressive creation, and decided to read that one next.
Book 2: Misery by Stephen King
This book terrified me out of my darn cocka-doody wits! I saw a scene from the film when I was younger and remember thinking it wasn't going to be entertaining. An author, Paul Sheldon, is trapped in a isolated house after a car accident renders him crippled. His caretaker, Annie Wilkes, is a psychotic ex-nurse and big-time fan of his romance books. How bad can that be? Oh sweet God!
I started reading with the impression that the book was going to be a little dull. The entire thing takes place in a single location, Annie Wilkes' mountain house. How could an entire novel with only one setting be any good? King was right. In this case, it's all about the characters.
Annie Wilkes was the most horrifyingly, psychotically depraved character I've ever read of. At first you wonder what the big deal is. She's keeping Paul against his will, but she's keeping him alive and things don't seem too bad. Then, King slowly starts to turn up the crazy. In one scene, Paul accidentally spills a bowl of soup. Annie gets upset at his carelessness and cleans the mess off of the floor with a mop and bucket. Paul says "sorry" - Annie says, "No big deal. Here's your medicine. Why don't you wash that pill down with this" - and then she makes him drink the dirty mop water. Pretty shocking. It's quite clear at this point that she's bat-shit crazy.
That scene was the first step down the road to a depraved character unmatched in modern literature. The stuff Annie Wilkes does later on just keeps topping itself with horror. These events are peaks of insanity in an already subtly insane character. Much like getting a foghorn blasted in your ear at intervals as your plane is falling from the sky with both engines on fire.
The tension of Paul Sheldon's plight to escape this evil woman's clutches are extremely entertaining and for the parts that drag a bit, there's King's unique prose. Also, despite a few necessary red herrings at the end, the characters act logically within the context of the story and things flow nicely. That always bothers me when I'm reading a book and some character or another does something completely unrealistic or some event completely breaks the flow of a book for the sake of plot progression. This book is a definite must-read.
Book 3: From A Buick 8 by Stephen King
With Misery finished, I was excited to read another one of King's books. I was given From A Buick 8 as a present from a cousin and decided to try that one next. If it was anything like Misery, I knew I would love it.
Well...I didn't. It sucked. Basically it's a story about a car (a Buick 8-cylinder) that some cops find. It has a portal to another dimension in the trunk. Weird stuff comes out of the trunk. No great danger if you don't stand close to it. Um...that's about all.
I'm surprised at the big differences between these two books (Misery and From A Buick 8). King is solidified as a great writer in my mind after having read Misery, no matter the garbage From A Buick 8 represents, but still...
I mentioned above that I hate when characters do things illogically within the context of a story. After Misery, I thought King was a safe author as far as that was concerned. However, in one scene in From A Buick 8, the cops bring in a belligerent junkie. The evil Buick, being stored in a shed behind the police station, starts lighting up all crazy. The two cops leap from their car, leave their prisoner in the back seat, and run to see what's going on. A creepy, slimy creature vomits itself from the Buick's trunk and basically just squeals around, looks ugly, gets bit by a dog and gets shot to death by a bunch of screaming cops. The cops head back to the car and discover the belligerent junkie has kicked out the back seat window and escaped. Where is he? It turns out that instead of running away from the cop station, like any one not in this book would do, he decides to come back and see what the hell is in that awesome shed surrounded by cops, filled with glowing other-dimensional light and ringing with gun shots!
"Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought him back." King repeats this phrase throughout the book until you feel like you're going to shit your own head out of someone else's ass. It felt like I was reading a completely different author. I'll tell you what comes out of the Buick's trunk since you really want to know - *spoiler alert!* - a giant bat that's already dead, a giant fish that's already dead, some leaves, some bugs, and a giant humanoid with tentacles for brains that gets killed a paragraph later. Now I'll tell you what didn't come out of the Buick's trunk - anything with a purpose, anything dangerous, anything that explained why the hell there was an abandoned Buick 8 with a portal to another dimension in the trunk. Every time something poured out from the other dimension, King described it as "looking totally like [insert object you are familiar with], but not really at all like that." Don't waste your time with this one.
Summary
King's a good author, no doubt, and I'll be reading more. I've got Bag of Bones on order next and I've heard good things about Carrie and The Stand, but, as I've heard it said and only now believe, King is either hit or miss.
On Writing - I recommend for anyone with a stalker-like interest in King's semi-dull, personal life or anyone wanting to be a writer and willing to dig out a couple gems of knowledge from a memoir by one of the highest selling authors of all time.
Misery - highly recommended for anyone wanting to learn how to write entertaining stories in a single setting or anyone who enjoys psychologically twisted tales of horror.
From a Buick 8 - Don't waste your time. Curiosity kills cats like this book killed its own plot development - efficiently.
i think stephen king tries to pose terrifying what ifs, like what if you did find a car with a gateway to hell, which is good intent. the scariest things are the things you don't understand, but it's been my experience that he explains almost every other aspect of whatever his hook is so thoroughly that there's no wonder. the only thing he doesn't explain is where it comes from, which becomes awfully insignificant. the other thing that's important is if you have these inexplicable horrors, which you should, they should be in some way emotionally and intimately disturbing to the characters. sounds like this car was not.
ReplyDeleteDane,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thanks for coming by my place and for leaving a comment. I thought I'd return the favor.
I've not read much King, aside from Bag of Bones and some excerpts from On Writing. For what it is, I thought Bag of Bones was pretty good, though the narrator (it's a first-person narrative) occasionally got on my nerves. Sometime, I'd like to read The Shining, and your review of Misery has made me curious about it, too. But then I think I'll be done with him. It's not a snobby thing; there are just too many other things out there that seem more valuable to read.
Thanks again for coming by.