The Running Man

I am going to start right away by saying that I did not really like The Running Man that much.  However, I'm glad that I read it, because I think that you can see a number of different themes that SK was confronting around this time and some that would become important in his later works.

Things that I didn't like:

1) The countdown.  Especially because if you think about it, nothing actually counts down in this story, not even the explosion at the end. 

2) The protagonist.  Maybe this just felt hackneyed because I had just read Cujo, where the characters are fleshed out (okay, maybe too much so).  But this guy just seemed kind of like a jerk for no reason.  Now, I realize that he was living in a society that gave him reasons to be angry, but he seemed less angry at those causes and more just generally angry.  That didn't appeal to me.  There was something about the 'as a man, I need to go earn my family money' idea that was too simplistic for me.

3) The future.  I felt like the future in this story was somewhat vague and not all that sketched out.  Basically, everything, everywhere is a disaster, unless you are rich (which most people are not).  Everyone else is dying of awful diseases or appearing on fatal game shows.

Now, some people might say that SK was prescient in predicting the obsession that we have now with reality shows, and I will give you that.  But he already did that in The Long Walk (which is kind of like The Running Man with a slightly different cast and set of rules).  And he's often prescient, which is probably part of why he is considered to be a masterful writer and observer of society.  

Perhaps part of why this novel didn't work so well for me is that stories set in the near future rarely age well. The Running Man supposedly takes place in 2025, so not all that far away, but everything has turned into chaos.  We hear about this in little bits, like France is under martial law, but we don't know why.  Also, would it really be likely that everywhere would fall apart?  I don't know.  Most importantly, people are restricted in their use of information and access to it.  That part seemed kind of strange now, considering how much information is currently at our fingertips and how that has changed our society--I realize that this is an unfair way of evaluating a book, but I just couldn't get my head around the fact that there seemed to be very few technological developments (FreeVee was basically cable, but with only one channel and mandated in everyone's homes, and I think the cars could kind of float or something) but pretty much everything else was the same.  It didn't feel like a coherent world vision of the future, like you might find in Margaret Atwood, for instance.  The Long Walk was better in my view, perhaps because it didn't need to describe the whole society in detail, so it provided fewer chances for the reader to question the coherence of the future being presented.

Some things that will come back later:

1) Sewers are icky.  There is a scene where the protagonist escapes through the sewers and I was suddenly reminded of scenes from IT.

2) They've after you!  Of course, we have already seen this in Firestarter, among others, but what struck me about this iteration was the fact that the protagonist constantly thought that the Hunters were following him and needed to plan his mistake.  This reminded me very much of Father Callahan's experience as recounted in The Wolves of Calla, which is the fifth Dark Tower book, so we have a ways to go.  The way in which SK described the gradual realization that the people outside were not simply bystanders but actual threats is very similar to how Father Callahan figured out that the 'low men' were after him and went on the run.  There is a pretty big gap in terms of time for this idea and I wonder if it will appear in other books as well.  None leaps to mind in this case.

Speaking of chronology, there is also a question of which order SK was writing these things.  I don't know that it was in publication order; in fact, that seems unlikely.  There were some common themes between this one and Cujo, the most notable of which was the fact that the father was ultimately helpless to aid his child, despite his best intentions (and in this case, the mother of his child).  The reason that this seems particularly pertinent is that the next book is The Gunslinger, which was one that SK worked on for a very long time, dating back to 1970 in fact.  Yet it also has some common themes with this and other contemporaneous works (running, for instance).  Look for a new post soon, I suspect that The Gunslinger will go quickly.

Cujo

Strange fact: there is not a hard copy of Cujo to be had easily in the greater Tampa area.  Both libraries at which I am a member had lost their copies.  So I now own a used copy of Cujo.  My dog looked disconcertingly happy when I took it out of the package.  Here's hoping that he didn't get any ideas from the cover (he is a small poodle instead of a giant St. Bernard, so things should be okay).

LOTS OF SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH FROM ALL OVER KING'S OEUVRE: This was another book that I had not read before, although I had a vague understanding of the plot--I suspect that many people have a vague understanding of the plot.  It feels like SK has finally confronted a theme that he has been dancing around in his previous books: the death of a child.  Children had died already in his books, such as in 'Salem's Lot.  In Roadwork, the child died before the book started.  More often, though, children were saved, because of their supernatural abilities such as in Firestarter and The Shining.  But this one had a far more graphic and direct depiction of a child dying of dehydration, which is a pretty awful way to go (maybe not worse than mauled by a rabid St. Bernard, although honestly both are really awful).  This theme, of course, will be a huge one in the next few novels, particularly Pet Semetary (unfortunate accident) and IT (So. Very.  Many.  Children.  Dying).  I suspect that part of this was King's fear about his own life.  After all, he was a father, but one who must have felt some concern at his own actions, particularly as someone who drank a lot.  I have always thought that Jack Torrence (the author) in The Shining must be a manifestation of his own fears about parenting and addiction.  This novel seem to be reflecting a much greater fear that children can die and that sometimes, there is nothing that you can do about it, even if your intentions are good.

I have to say that I spent about half of this book feeling very sorry for Cujo.  I mean, the dog really only needed a rabies vaccination to fix the entire problem.  Not to mention that I couldn't believe that no one was really paying attention to the dog as he was becoming sick (until Brett started trying to monitor things from afar when he was in Connecticut, which is a good long way from Maine).  SK does include some scenes that imagine what the dog must have experienced during the onset of rabies, which only made me feel worse about the whole thing.  I think that SK is a dog person.  Dogs in his story are generally very loyal (Oy from Dark Tower!), and he even offers an apology for Cujo at the end of the book by noting that it wasn't his fault that he contracted rabies.  He was a good dog.

I read some reviews on Amazon of Cujo and would agree with some of the commentators that the story is inconsistent, particularly about the supernatural.  Cujo is set in Castle Rock, which is the same place where The Dead Zone took place and Jimmy identified a serial killer named Frank Dodd.  These characters and events were referenced in Cujo, implying that there was a general soupcon of evil in the air, which was then shifted over to Cujo.  It also seems to have hung out in the closet of the child, Tad.  Evil spirits hanging out in a closet seems somewhat random.  I felt like SK might be finally confessing that while the supernatural could be scary, what was far more scary was the kind of horrifying events that could not be explained through the supernatural, such as a serial killer running around a small town.  He didn't quite get there though, not so long as there were potential supernatural monsters in the closet.

(It's worth noting that King himself has stated that he barely remembers writing this book because he had a serious drinking problem at the time, so I will allow him the inconsistency).

(Also, what kind of name is Tad?  This really bugged me.  There was no indication that it was short for Thaddeus, which might have made sense, but not really).

I have to admit that I felt this book was more of a short story that was fleshed out into a novel by adding approximately eight billion details about the characters.  Sure, this may have developed the characters more completely, although part of me felt that it really didn't.  Certainly, there were times when the description seemed overly excessive, such as when we learned all about the life history, dreams, and ambitions of some police guy who showed up for barely any time at all (Masen).  An entire ad campaign concerning cereal was maybe not such a vital part of the plot.  But it still moved along at a brisk clip and it didn't feel too drawn out on the whole (except that life history of Masen part).

What Cujo most reminded me of was Misery, particularly the need to describe long periods of time in a way that remained compelling.  After all, Tad and his mother Donna stayed in their car for almost two days as they waited for help (or at least for the rabid dog to disappear) and that could get really old, really fast.  However, like I said, the novel really didn't drag, and I think that SK avoided that by featuring events every time he went back to the car.  I thought that his description of Tad's death was very effective, particularly right before (when Donna was sure that he was dying) and when Vic (Donna's husband) discovered his child dead.  The New York Times Book Review described this outcome as a modern Erlkönig, which I just loved.  Except with a rabid dog and a dead car instead of an evil sprite and a galloping horse.

The other parallel that reminded me of Misery occurred when the cavalry showed up in the form of Sheriff George Bannerman, only to almost immediately die at the hands of the monster.  There is a very similar scene in Misery, at least in concept, even if the actual details differ.

MORAL OF THE STORY:  be sure that your pets are up to date with all of their vaccinations.

Danse macabre

I think that Danse macabre is the longest time I have spent with a Stephen King novel in a very long time.  Not because it was long or that I had to slog through it.  I have just had a lot on my plate for the past little while.

I think that my favorite part was when SK talked about the movies that had genuinely frightened him and he mentioned The Blair Witch Project.  Now, I can write a lengthy list of movies that have terrified me in my day (I didn't even get through The Exorcist), not to mention that SK's novels terrified the crud out of my on a regular basis.  But I was not in any way frightened by The Blair Witch Project.  Not one bit.  Admittedly, I did not see it in theater because I was convinced that it would scare the pants off of me, but when I did finally see it on DVD, it did nothing.  So nyeah.

Other than that, I found SK's explanations of horror interesting.  He identifies three main archetypes: the Frankenstein (or 'The Thing Without A Name'), the werewolf, and the vampire.  For King, all modern horror descends from these archetypes.  A reasonable summary and he brings it all together in a compelling way.

I was particularly interested in his discussions of what makes people want to read (or write) horror.  For King, it is the knowledge that such terrifying creatures do not really exist--it is the mundane that provides solace in this situation.  I still think that part of what makes horror work is that even when terrible events happen, there is an explanation beyond the mundane experience.  True horror occurs when there can be no supernatural explanation and when the outcome is purely horrific.  Indeed, a number of King's books would be transformed from horror to tragedy if only the supernatural elements were removed.  Imagine The Shining where a man simply goes insane and tries to kill his family or It with a serial killer instead of a supernatural clown.  Of course, there are King novels without the supernatural (brain tumors or Misery).  But these are few and far between.

One section that interested me in particular was his summary of Dark Shadows, the single most ridiculous television show that ever aired.  I am a big fan.  You can't go wrong with a Gothic horror story set in soap-opera format combined with Technicolor costuming and make-up.  Certainly, many of the plot lines hinged around complete gibberish.  But there were the occasional moments of real horror that the show somehow managed to capture.  For instance, when Barnabas first appeared and kidnapped Maggie Evans, her walking around the house in a trance featured some very effective moments.  There was also the ghost of Barnabas' brother appearing as a speechless ghost, his face wrapped in bandages so that we saw none of his features.  But yes, most of it was pretty ridiculous.

Why the phrase 'They all float down here' is terrifying

Floating is weird.

Drastic plane rides call for drastic measures

I caved.

I bought 'The Wind Through the Keyhole.'  Yes.  Out of order.

On a related note, I am traveling to Australia tomorrow.  That is a very long flight.

My logic was that I have read other SK novels before, so this isn't really breaking the rules.  Okay, it is.  But I still would argue that a flight halfway around the world calls for lots of reading material.

Roadwork

Okay, I will admit it.  I needed a SK hiatus.  It just got to be too much with the '1970s America is really screwed up and what can be done' vibe.  And when I read the blurb for Roadwork, it seemed very much to be about how screwed up 1970s America was and how there was no rational response to what was happening.  I feel like if you are going to set a novel around Nixon/fuel crisis, that kind of response is somewhat inevitable.  When this is the umpteenth SK book in a row to confront these issues, sometimes you need a hiatus.

However, it turned out that I liked Roadwork more than I thought I would.  At its core was less the disintegration of American society and more the disintegration of a man whose life starting unraveling when his son died of a brain tumor.  You may be asking, 'What is the deal with all of these brain tumors?'  I was too.  I think in part they are terrifying because in SK's world, there is nothing that can be done about them.  In fact, this novel was particularly explicit in its description of the size of the tumor (a walnut) and how it was so deeply buried in the brain that nothing could be done.  So in part they are scary because they are 'inoperable' (a word that came up a lot in SK's description)--which is to say that we are hopeless in the face of such things.  But I think that the other scary part is the fact that they alter a person's behavior in ways that cannot be controlled.  Now that is a scary thought.  Forget vampires overriding your village or clowns in your sewer or pets coming back from the dead.  Losing control of your brain, and therefore your behavior, is a terrifying notion.

Of course, there are other recurring themes.  For instance, Vegas is evil (why all the Vegas hate, SK?).  The story is set in Maine...again, SK, if you don't want people to know that you are writing under an alias, set your story in New Jersey or something!*  One of the images that stuck with me the most was the constant dreams that the main character had about his son dying.  This reminded me very much of the Dark Tower series, where Roland keeps seeing Jake die and can't save him.  Perhaps this is where the idea initially came from.  In this case, it was made even more sad by the fact that Barton (main character) simply couldn't move on from this death.  He recognized that he should and even commended his wife--in a backhanded way--for managing to do this.  But he was unable to get anywhere.

I think that what most resonated with me from this novel was the idea that here was a grown-up acting in completely non-grown up ways.  Rather than confronting problems head-on, he came up with drastic responses or drastic non-responses.  For instance, he lost his job because of something that he needed to do and didn't.  He threw a hammer and broke his TV, even though he liked the TV and there was no rational reason for this response.  He wound up in a shoot-out/explosion with local authorities because he should have moved on with his life and didn't.  I'm pretty sure that virtually all of us has felt like this sometimes.  Probably we just did what we needed to do.  Maybe sometimes we let it slide and didn't do something that we should have done.  It probably didn't turn out as drastically as this scenario.  But I felt that Barton's motivations were surprisingly realistic and down-to-earth.  Sometimes we don't want to do things, but because we are grown-ups, we have to.

Perhaps most salient in this novel is the importance of Barton's identity, which he loses piece by piece.  He loses his job, which he has had for decades, in part because of a highway extension.  He is about to lose his home.  His inaction causes him to lose his wife.  Before all of this, he has lost his role as a father.  What is his identity by the end of this novel?  I don't think that even he knows and that is why he takes the extreme action that he did.  Throughout the book, we have narrations of the voices in his head, where he refers to himself by different names (it doesn't become clear until later that they are his middle name and the middle name of his son).  This composite personality arises because he no longer has a well-defined role to play.  In his final conversation with his wife, he feels that she is acting like a paperback novel: newly-divorced woman becoming independent by returning to school.  In other words, she has an identity for him, even if it is cliche.  But as the book continues, his identity is almost entirely lost.  Even when he seeks to make amends--becoming the benefactor of a charity, for instance--he is rebuffed.  I think that this is the reason that losing the house becomes such a catastrophic event for him: it is the only trace that he has of his former identities.

*Wikipedia says it is set in the Midwest.  Bollocks.  From the chapter set on December 31, 1973: 'He wondered what Olivia was doing now.  She hadn't tried to call back, although if she had he would probably have weakened and taken the call.  Maybe she had stayed in Vegas just long enough to get the money and had then caught a bus for...where?  Maine?  Did anyone leave Las Vegas for Maine in the middle of winter?  Surely not.'  (467 in The Bachman Books).  This doesn't definitively place the story in Maine, but after reading it, that was my assumption.

Firestarter

Hey, how have you been?  I know, it's been a while.  I took a brief SK break over the past month or so and cleaned my palette by reading some other stuff: Joyce Hall Oates, Margaret Atwood, The Hobbit.  You know, the usual.  And now, back to SK.

I'm glad that I took the break, actually, because Firestarter really felt like a blend between many of his previous novels.  Kind of like Carrie meets The Dead Zone and combines it with elements of The Stand, with a teeny bit of The Shining thrown in.  To whit:

• We have a girl with telekinetic powers (Carrie)
• We have a man with weird, undefined psychic abilities (The Dead Zone)
• The government is evil and will imprison people that they feel are a threat, in direct violation of constitutional freedoms (The Stand)
• The complexities of parent/child relationships, combined with elements of addiction (The Shining)

And there you have it.  At one point, I almost wanted to yell at the book, 'I totally see where this is going, SK!'  Except that I didn't see where it was going.  I was wrong.  And maybe that's what makes these books cool.  They are often similar, but they are not the same.  He has a good way of taking the story in a direction you are not expecting.

Although elements of this book are a little too close to parody at times.  For instance, there is a mad scientist.  He is nicknamed, 'The Mad Scientist.'  He looks like a mad scientist.  Hm.  'I totally see where this is going, SK!'  And in this case, I did.

In defense of Firestarter, SK definitely succeeded in creating several very vivid images of the events that occurred.  Some of these really stuck with me, perhaps more than in previous novels.  It's amazing to me that I can still remember--years later--images from some of his books and I think, in part, that this is why he has remained such a popular author.  In Firestarter, there was the discovery of Vicky's body, the exploration of the room in which the experiment was held, and the character of John Rainbird.  Oh, and I do have to say that the death by garbage disposal did freak me out a bit because I am absent-minded and one of my great fears is that someday I will do something dumb involving my garbage disposal and my hand.  Way to draw on those every-day fears, SK!

I don't think that I realized when I started this project how directly these early books were tied to events in the US, and particularly a fear of how far the government might go in overreaching its power.  In fact, that would seem to be what the past few have been about--even The Long Walk is essentially based on this theme, even if we don't know the situation that caused that society to emerge.  When I was younger and reading SK's books, I guess I somehow missed these novels and stuck instead to the ones with terrifying vampires and clowns in the sewer (if you're curious, the book spine of It is still freaking me out, sitting in my bookcase, even though I have rationalized that actually, It is more of a pseudo-monster than a claw emerging from the sewer).  So that would make four in a row exactly on this theme.  I guess when you churn out novels as quickly as SK did at this time, it would make sense that common elements would be shared between them.

Fun fact: in the movie version of Firestarter, Heather Locklear played Drew Barrymore's mother.  That seems wrong.  I just did the math, and that means that Heather Locklear would have given birth to Drew Barrymore at age 13/14.  Hollywood, you are cruel.