Misery (aka On Writing, Version 1.0)

[I told you that would be fast....here we are, just over 24 hours later, and Misery is done]

I know that I start to sound a bit like a broken record on this blog when I go on about how you don't actually need a terrifying alien clown or a bunch of vampires invading a town or a violent writer going crazy in a hotel or whatever in most of Stephen King's horror books to create the horror.  But bear with me a minute when I say that you don't actually need Annie Wilkes for Misery.  Because I know that this sounds absolutely absurd from one perspective (how else would you wind up with the basic scenario?), but from another perspective, it makes complete sense to me.  Sure, she is a psychopath with severe mental health issues and a penchant for the grotesque.  But she is also Paul's muse, albeit something of a practical version of one.  She is an editor and a facilitator for the creative process.  She offers advice that might seem to stem from her naivete.  However, as Paul starts to think over the advice that she has provided, he realizes that she is right: perhaps Fast Cars was not such a great project, perhaps his first draft of Misery's Return was not convincing, perhaps Annie (and therefore, perhaps readers in general) are not fooled by poor work.  The perverse situation in which Paul finds himself under her care creates the almost perfect scenario for him to write; at one point, he notes that before finding himself Annie's prisoner, he would avoid writing for the most mundane reasons, like having a headache, but while he is there, he maintains a steady schedule and is productive to an unprecedented degree.  He acknowledges that he plays Scherherazade both for her and for himself.  So muse, editor, facilitator, Shah...call it what you will, but Annie helps Paul reach his creative potential.  And when she has fulfilled this role, he kills her.  LITERALLY.

Mind you, in doing so, she reveals herself to be a complete headcase, and part of what makes this novel work, I think, is Paul's reaction as her antics get further and further out of control.  His near-panic when the troopers rescue him is grounded in hysteria, and rightly so.  The deterioration of his body is made very obvious when the troopers are looking him over in this scene, and the reader is reminded of how visceral the experience of writing this novel has been.  When the original state trooper comes out to investigate Annie's house, Paul is described as 'a man with blue eyes bulging from his white and whiskery old-man's face...staring at him from behind a window, moaning through closed lips, hands rattling uselessly on a board laid across the arms of a wheelchair' (p. 259).  This is in contrast with the Paul that we hear about from before the accident, a fun-loving, free-wheeling guy who even considers picking up the attractive bank attendant before continuing on his post-book journey.  Is part of this novel, then, about the fear of getting older too?  That he won't be able to finish his 'great novel' not only because of Annie, but because he simply won't finish it?  In the previous paragraph, before this description of Paul as old, is the following:

The truth of everything was so simple in its horridness; so dreadfully simple.  He was dying by inches, but dying that way wasn't as bad as he'd already feared.  But he was also fading, and that was an awful thing because it was moronic

This problem of fading, this could happen at any age, to anyone.  And it could suck away creative talent.  In fact, the Paul described in the very final section of the book has faded.  He can no longer write, he can no longer support himself (literally, in terms of mobility), he finds it hard to walk a mile, and he even cowers at his housekeeper and cat.  At the end, he finds a creative spark, but just enough to get started (and to stop him from drinking so that he doesn't lose his creativity).

I realize that I am getting a bit ahead of myself here: let's go back to the title of the book, and Paul's book Misery.  Misery is the main character in the novel, and perhaps it describes the entire process of writing the novel in the first place: it is misery.  Misery's Return, the name of Paul's next book in the series, seems almost like a joke when considered in this context.  However, with the misery, he also finds himself deeply invested in the process and the story, and ultimately he is fulfilled by the experience.  Perhaps that bird from Africa that he saw as a child was not so sad after all.

I found many parallels in this novel to other Stephen King works, some of which were very weird.  Like, who thought that the thumb pie from Thinner would return?  Or a killer lawnmower like in 'The Lawnmower Man'?  There were also a few hints of 'The Drawing of the Three,' but perhaps that is not surprising, considering how closely these two novels were written together (in fact, did you realize that King had four novels that were published in 1987 alone?  Four?  That is insane.  And this was the year after IT).  Keflex (penicillin) is featured in both novels, for instance, which is kind of weird.  What really resonated with me in both novels was the imagery of the ocean coming in and out: in 'The Drawing of the Three,' this is a literal ocean, since almost the whole novel takes place on the beach.  In Misery, the waves on a set of pilings was likened to the pain that Paul felt as he needed his Norvil, a pain that would then gradually abate, hiding the pilings again.  King has said that this book was very much about addiction, with Annie serving as a stand-in for his own problems at the time.  This time around, I actually found the addiction issue less salient; after all, Paul becomes addicted to his Norvil, but he also does need it to keep his pain at bay.  By contrast, Eddie Dean in 'The Drawing of the Three' was a real addict, a person who had to be ripped out of his own world to stop using heroin (and even then still tried to trick Roland to get back).  Misery, to me, felt much more like an expose on writing and how wracking the process can be--Annie Wilkes or no.

One last thought: is this the first book with no mention of the supernatural at all?  Cujo didn't need any supernatural plot driver, even though there were some references to a general evil descending on the town.  But that doesn't even happen in Misery: it is simply a person who is crazy.  Maybe this is the first novel where King is hinting that the supernatural in his other books is something of a cover that hides what is really terrifying: everyday people who don't act as they should.