Or, the book Stephen King doesn’t want you to read.
I certainly hadn’t, before tracking down a copy online. Rage has been out of print for years – it was last published as part of the Bachman Books collection in 1985. This is at King’s request, and after finally reading it, I can see why he chose that path. Rage is an ugly book about an ugly subject, written with a complete lack of social conscience and maturity. It is also riveting stuff.
Rage was the first novel (novella, really) written by King’s “dark half,” Richard Bachman. You may wonder why a writer of horror fiction needs a dark pseudonym. If so, you should read some of the Bachman books. We’ll be covering them all here, but these are the novels in which King lets loose, channeling the impulses he puts in check in works under his own name. It’s not an uncommon practice, and in fact Rage makes sly mention of one of the most famous practitioners, Donald Westlake, who wrote books about unrepentant bad guy Parker under the name Richard Stark.
In King’s case, Bachman is his outlet for gleefully irresponsible nightmares, stories in which the evil that’s always poking at the corners of his world is given free rein. I usually find myself engrossed in King’s stories, turning pages to find out what happens next. Bachman’s stories leave me with a sick pain in my gut, and a palpable fear of getting to the end, because I know it’s not going to turn out well.
Rage was the first, and King seemingly perfected that sickening style right away. It’s the story of Charlie Decker, a junior at Placerville High School in Maine, who decides one day to shoot two of his teachers dead and take a class hostage. He doesn’t quite know why he does this, but over the course of a few hours, he examines his own motivations and those of his classmates.
Within a few pages, it was clear to me that King is right to keep this out of print. The scenes of Charlie shooting his teachers are stomach-churning, the sequences in which Charlie talks with hostage negotiators are terrifying, and the ending, in which the students all gang up on one of their own and batter him into a coma, doesn’t justify the repulsive setup. It’s a completely irresponsible piece of work, wielding images of great power in service of nothing.
And yet… the writing here is alive, more alive than I can remember ever seeing from King. Descriptions breathe, Charlie’s inner monologue is astonishing, and King stays away from all of his clichéd writing tricks. There’s a little Holden Caulfield to the proceedings, but when King digs into events from Charlie’s home and school life, it’s stunning stuff. And when the situation starts to crumble around Charlie’s ears, it’s intense in a way a book like ’Salem’s Lot just isn’t.
The stakes are higher here, you see. This is truly dangerous material, and that high-wire act pumps life into King’s writing.
I wonder if he felt that while writing it. Rage is a book that pulses with real blood, one that comes from a place King could only visit under another name. Richard Bachman is that sick voice that lives in all of us, and whenever King slips into his clothes from now on, it will be to explore what it feels like to have this uncontrollable monster beneath one’s skin, to have depths one is terrified of sinking to. (He will most literally take on that theme in 1989’s The Dark Half.)
As for Rage, I’m not sure I ever want to read it again. I can only imagine how King feels, reading it now. It’s a sick little book, one that never earns its harrowing premise, but it’s captivating, and the writing leaps off the page in ways I’ve never seen from him. It’s an interesting paradox. Rage is the work of a young writer feeling his way around his conscience, hiding behind another name and letting his demons loose. It is a book without boundaries, and that freedom is both damning and liberating. It’s painful and powerful, so much so that its author has taken it back, scared of the force it commands. That alone makes it worth tracking down.
Next: The Shining
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
'Salem's Lot (1975)
Wow. At this rate, there’s no way I’m going to get this done in a year…
So after years of short stories and one slightly longer one, Stephen King finally delivers his first real god-amighty novel. ‘Salem’s Lot is more than 600 pages long (in paperback), and for the first time, King’s prose is allowed to breathe. The results are pretty impressive, even if he’s still feeling his way around the tricks of his trade.
So many of King’s career-long obsessions first rear their heads here. In Ben Mears, he has created his first archetypal King hero. For one thing, Mears is a writer, a novelist in search of inspiration. I expect from this point forward I’ll be able to keep count of how many King heroes fit that description. I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head. If nothing else, King’s career has been about the exploration of author to the fiction he creates, and to the readers of that fiction. Think Misery, think The Dark Half, think the Dark Tower series.
Also, we get King’s first use of a small Maine town as not only setting, but major character. For hundreds of pages, ‘Salem’s Lot is about the town itself, and King introduces more than a dozen of its inhabitants, each adding to the world he’s spinning. It’s well-written stuff, and in later chapters, it enables him to tell his story from many different points of view. The Lot lives and breathes – it has a history, one that becomes important in the final pages, and it has a soul. In some ways, the book is about how the souls of these small towns are snuffed out by time and neglect. King just gives those forces physical form.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The book opens with a man and a boy, whom we later learn are Ben Mears and Mark Petrie. They are on the run from something, but a news story about Jerusalem’s Lot (the town’s full and proper name) convinces them to go back. I criticized King for using news clippings and flash-forwards in Carrie, since I felt it ruined the suspense. But it works here. We’re immediately intrigued.
The book proper details Ben Mears’ arrival in the Lot months before, and we get to know the town through him. We meet Sheriff Parkins Gillespie, and teacher Matt Burke, and landlord Eva Miller, and drunken tenant Weasel Craig (who shares a history with Eva), and town busybody Mabel Wertz. Early on, there’s a remarkable chapter in which King details one day in the life of the town, jumping from character to character, giving us the big picture by showing us smaller ones. He obviously cares about these characters, and we end up feeling the same way.
Ben strikes up a romance with young Susan Norton, and the scenes with her family are nicely done. Susan’s mother is another King cliché, overbearing and unreasonable, but King creates a nice character in her father Bill. Ben, as it turns out, grew up in ‘Salem’s Lot, and has returned to write a book about the Marsten House, a supposedly haunted mansion on the hill. When Ben was younger, he found the body of Hubert Marsten – a suicide, hanging from the rafters. Sharing this story brings Ben and Susan closer.
What’s surprising about this book is how naturally it shifts from an American small town tale to a story about vampires. And make no mistake, this is a story about vampires. Richard Straker is King’s Count Dracula, setting up shop in a haunted house and slowly taking over the town. The shift comes about halfway through – for a while, King teases you, and you’re not sure whether he’s really going to bring out the vamps, but he does.
And at that point, the book kind of sinks a little for me. There are some fantastic scenes in the latter half, including the death and resurrection of Susan Norton, and Ben’s breakdown after he stakes her. But these characters we’ve come to know and respect are having conversations about vampires, and accepting the idea that their town has been overrun by creatures out of Bram Stoker. It strains credulity somewhat, but because the second half of ‘Salem’s Lot is such a ride, it’s forgivable.
In the final analysis, ‘Salem’s Lot is about the death of a small town. Ben and Mark, a plucky kid who instantly believes in the bloodsuckers, return to the Lot and set it on fire, recalling a similar blaze that nearly wiped the town out in 1951. It’s a striking ending, but a fitting one – you can all but see the wide-angle shot of Ben and Mark as the camera fades to black and the credits roll.
King will go on to examine many more small Maine towns (most notably Castle Rock, which he will return to again and again). He’ll also give us many more tortured, heroic writers. But Ben Mears and Jerusalem’s Lot are fine first stabs, and they anchor a decent second book. It sets the tone and template for a lot of what’s to come.
Next: Rage.
So after years of short stories and one slightly longer one, Stephen King finally delivers his first real god-amighty novel. ‘Salem’s Lot is more than 600 pages long (in paperback), and for the first time, King’s prose is allowed to breathe. The results are pretty impressive, even if he’s still feeling his way around the tricks of his trade.
So many of King’s career-long obsessions first rear their heads here. In Ben Mears, he has created his first archetypal King hero. For one thing, Mears is a writer, a novelist in search of inspiration. I expect from this point forward I’ll be able to keep count of how many King heroes fit that description. I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head. If nothing else, King’s career has been about the exploration of author to the fiction he creates, and to the readers of that fiction. Think Misery, think The Dark Half, think the Dark Tower series.
Also, we get King’s first use of a small Maine town as not only setting, but major character. For hundreds of pages, ‘Salem’s Lot is about the town itself, and King introduces more than a dozen of its inhabitants, each adding to the world he’s spinning. It’s well-written stuff, and in later chapters, it enables him to tell his story from many different points of view. The Lot lives and breathes – it has a history, one that becomes important in the final pages, and it has a soul. In some ways, the book is about how the souls of these small towns are snuffed out by time and neglect. King just gives those forces physical form.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The book opens with a man and a boy, whom we later learn are Ben Mears and Mark Petrie. They are on the run from something, but a news story about Jerusalem’s Lot (the town’s full and proper name) convinces them to go back. I criticized King for using news clippings and flash-forwards in Carrie, since I felt it ruined the suspense. But it works here. We’re immediately intrigued.
The book proper details Ben Mears’ arrival in the Lot months before, and we get to know the town through him. We meet Sheriff Parkins Gillespie, and teacher Matt Burke, and landlord Eva Miller, and drunken tenant Weasel Craig (who shares a history with Eva), and town busybody Mabel Wertz. Early on, there’s a remarkable chapter in which King details one day in the life of the town, jumping from character to character, giving us the big picture by showing us smaller ones. He obviously cares about these characters, and we end up feeling the same way.
Ben strikes up a romance with young Susan Norton, and the scenes with her family are nicely done. Susan’s mother is another King cliché, overbearing and unreasonable, but King creates a nice character in her father Bill. Ben, as it turns out, grew up in ‘Salem’s Lot, and has returned to write a book about the Marsten House, a supposedly haunted mansion on the hill. When Ben was younger, he found the body of Hubert Marsten – a suicide, hanging from the rafters. Sharing this story brings Ben and Susan closer.
What’s surprising about this book is how naturally it shifts from an American small town tale to a story about vampires. And make no mistake, this is a story about vampires. Richard Straker is King’s Count Dracula, setting up shop in a haunted house and slowly taking over the town. The shift comes about halfway through – for a while, King teases you, and you’re not sure whether he’s really going to bring out the vamps, but he does.
And at that point, the book kind of sinks a little for me. There are some fantastic scenes in the latter half, including the death and resurrection of Susan Norton, and Ben’s breakdown after he stakes her. But these characters we’ve come to know and respect are having conversations about vampires, and accepting the idea that their town has been overrun by creatures out of Bram Stoker. It strains credulity somewhat, but because the second half of ‘Salem’s Lot is such a ride, it’s forgivable.
In the final analysis, ‘Salem’s Lot is about the death of a small town. Ben and Mark, a plucky kid who instantly believes in the bloodsuckers, return to the Lot and set it on fire, recalling a similar blaze that nearly wiped the town out in 1951. It’s a striking ending, but a fitting one – you can all but see the wide-angle shot of Ben and Mark as the camera fades to black and the credits roll.
King will go on to examine many more small Maine towns (most notably Castle Rock, which he will return to again and again). He’ll also give us many more tortured, heroic writers. But Ben Mears and Jerusalem’s Lot are fine first stabs, and they anchor a decent second book. It sets the tone and template for a lot of what’s to come.
Next: Rage.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Carrie (1974)
So this is how it begins. With a teenage girl menstruating in a high school locker room shower while her classmates throw tampons at her.
Carrie was Stephen King’s first book, the only one he’s ever written as just a jobbing author, instead of a New York Times bestseller. It’s a slim volume – 252 pages in the Pocket Books paperback edition I have. That would barely count as a novella to King these days, but in his first stab at a long-form work, King gets in, makes his point and gets out, with a minimum of fuss. That focus lends Carrie an almost searing intensity, which works in its favor. Honestly, you wouldn’t want to spend much more time than this watching this story unfold.
Carrie is an uncompromising, ugly, difficult book. It’s the story of Carrie White, an unpopular girl poisoned by her ultra-religious, domineering mother, and ridiculed endlessly by her peers. We first meet her in that high school locker room – she gets her first period at 16, and has no idea what’s happening. Her mother Margaret, a strict Christian, has never told her about menstruation, believing it to be a mark of the devil. The other kids react as horrible kids would, taunting her and tossing sanitary napkins. (“Plug it up! Plug it up!”)
But, as King artlessly tells us on the second page, Carrie White is telekinetic, meaning she can move objects with her mind. And here King seems equally interested in telling us two different stories. The first (and infinitely more interesting) one is about Carrie herself – about that one person in every high school who exists to be the butt of jokes. Her mother is dangerously religious, fanatical to a degree I would have trouble accepting if I hadn’t read news reports of people just like her, and growing up with her mom left Carrie scarred and unable to fully blossom.
This story is also about sexual awakening, and that element of the novel is also fascinating. We have several depictions of women waking up to their own sexual power, and in Billy Nolan, the sexually dominant older boyfriend of popular girl Chris Hargensen, King creates his first real villain. Nolan uses sex as a power play, as a weapon. And when he and Chris drop two buckets of pig’s blood on Carrie White at the school dance, King describes the thrill as almost sexual. His examinations of this theme are well done.
But it’s the other story, the one that wants to be a dry elucidation of telekinesis as a phenomenon, that drags the book down. The narrative is constantly interrupted by excerpts from reports on “the Carrie White affair,” and bits from character Susan Snell’s autobiography. These sections actually foreshadow the main plot, over and over, and too far in advance. I would have preferred it if King had allowed the story to unfold naturally. In the end, I’m not really interested in the potential worldwide impact of telekinesis. I’m really only interested in its effect on one girl, and her small town.
I’m not sure if King took any pleasure in telling this story. He spends about 100 pages building up Carrie’s confidence – Sue Snell, feeling bad about the locker room incident, convinces her boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the dance. This simple act of kindness builds her self-esteem to such a level that one gets the feeling she would have been fine, would have grown up free of her mother’s influence. But then, the pig’s blood, and the carnage, as Carrie, betrayed and damaged beyond repair, uses her power (flex) to destroy her town, killing more than 400.
The bloodbath is so much worse because King brings us inside Carrie’s head. We feel her pain, her anger, her betrayal, and that is to King’s credit. But I wish there had been some shaft of light in this story. It’s clearly – clearly – not the work of a writer who wants to sell millions of copies of his work. This is a dark and disturbing little book, and King writes it as if he were possessed by the story. Like he had to tell it, and in order to tell it, he had to go to these pitch-black places.
As for the writing itself, it’s not bad. King introduces that trick he does to parenthetically
(oh god oh god what was that)
bring us into his characters’ minds, and it must have seemed fresh in 1974. But Carrie is not a very intricate book, and despite some chilling run-on sentences during scenes with Carrie’s mom, the writing is fairly straightforward. King will get better, but for my money, he will rarely get more disturbing, or more direct. Latter-day King, the one who sells millions each time out, might have tried to expand this story, and while that may have led to more interesting character moments, the razor-sharp power of this tale may have been diluted in the process. Carrie is a little book that hurts a lot.
Next: Salem’s Lot
Carrie was Stephen King’s first book, the only one he’s ever written as just a jobbing author, instead of a New York Times bestseller. It’s a slim volume – 252 pages in the Pocket Books paperback edition I have. That would barely count as a novella to King these days, but in his first stab at a long-form work, King gets in, makes his point and gets out, with a minimum of fuss. That focus lends Carrie an almost searing intensity, which works in its favor. Honestly, you wouldn’t want to spend much more time than this watching this story unfold.
Carrie is an uncompromising, ugly, difficult book. It’s the story of Carrie White, an unpopular girl poisoned by her ultra-religious, domineering mother, and ridiculed endlessly by her peers. We first meet her in that high school locker room – she gets her first period at 16, and has no idea what’s happening. Her mother Margaret, a strict Christian, has never told her about menstruation, believing it to be a mark of the devil. The other kids react as horrible kids would, taunting her and tossing sanitary napkins. (“Plug it up! Plug it up!”)
But, as King artlessly tells us on the second page, Carrie White is telekinetic, meaning she can move objects with her mind. And here King seems equally interested in telling us two different stories. The first (and infinitely more interesting) one is about Carrie herself – about that one person in every high school who exists to be the butt of jokes. Her mother is dangerously religious, fanatical to a degree I would have trouble accepting if I hadn’t read news reports of people just like her, and growing up with her mom left Carrie scarred and unable to fully blossom.
This story is also about sexual awakening, and that element of the novel is also fascinating. We have several depictions of women waking up to their own sexual power, and in Billy Nolan, the sexually dominant older boyfriend of popular girl Chris Hargensen, King creates his first real villain. Nolan uses sex as a power play, as a weapon. And when he and Chris drop two buckets of pig’s blood on Carrie White at the school dance, King describes the thrill as almost sexual. His examinations of this theme are well done.
But it’s the other story, the one that wants to be a dry elucidation of telekinesis as a phenomenon, that drags the book down. The narrative is constantly interrupted by excerpts from reports on “the Carrie White affair,” and bits from character Susan Snell’s autobiography. These sections actually foreshadow the main plot, over and over, and too far in advance. I would have preferred it if King had allowed the story to unfold naturally. In the end, I’m not really interested in the potential worldwide impact of telekinesis. I’m really only interested in its effect on one girl, and her small town.
I’m not sure if King took any pleasure in telling this story. He spends about 100 pages building up Carrie’s confidence – Sue Snell, feeling bad about the locker room incident, convinces her boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the dance. This simple act of kindness builds her self-esteem to such a level that one gets the feeling she would have been fine, would have grown up free of her mother’s influence. But then, the pig’s blood, and the carnage, as Carrie, betrayed and damaged beyond repair, uses her power (flex) to destroy her town, killing more than 400.
The bloodbath is so much worse because King brings us inside Carrie’s head. We feel her pain, her anger, her betrayal, and that is to King’s credit. But I wish there had been some shaft of light in this story. It’s clearly – clearly – not the work of a writer who wants to sell millions of copies of his work. This is a dark and disturbing little book, and King writes it as if he were possessed by the story. Like he had to tell it, and in order to tell it, he had to go to these pitch-black places.
As for the writing itself, it’s not bad. King introduces that trick he does to parenthetically
(oh god oh god what was that)
bring us into his characters’ minds, and it must have seemed fresh in 1974. But Carrie is not a very intricate book, and despite some chilling run-on sentences during scenes with Carrie’s mom, the writing is fairly straightforward. King will get better, but for my money, he will rarely get more disturbing, or more direct. Latter-day King, the one who sells millions each time out, might have tried to expand this story, and while that may have led to more interesting character moments, the razor-sharp power of this tale may have been diluted in the process. Carrie is a little book that hurts a lot.
Next: Salem’s Lot
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Welcome to my nightmare
Stephen King released his first novel, Carrie, in 1974, the year I was born. When I was 12, I read my first King book, Skeleton Crew. It's a short story collection, so it was easier for me to sink my teeth into than some of his longer works. And it scared the shit out of me.
I had other favorite authors before King. Douglas Adams, for example, remains pretty high on my list, even though I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was about 10. But from age 12 to probably age 19, I was obsessed with Stephen King. I'd read anything he put out. He was my first gotta-read-everything writer, and no matter how silly his books got, or how much I felt he was doing it for the money sometimes, his work remains important to me.
I lost track of King some time ago. I think I read From a Buick 8, his shorter 2002 story about a haunted car (Really? Another haunted car?), and gave up. I know I've missed later works like Duma Key and the well-reviewed Under the Dome, and I've never read the last four Dark Tower books. But something about his writing still calls out to me. I know, I know - he can be fairly pedestrian at times, and his strictly scary novels have gotten rote. But I think King has always been about so much more than just spooks and chills. Odd as it may be to say about a guy who has written nearly 60 novels and story collections, I think King's a real writer, and he deserves critical analysis.
That's what The King Review will endeavor to provide. This is kind of an impulse thing for me, but I've decided to re-read all of King's books, and then take on the ones I haven't yet devoured. I was in college last time I read books like Salem's Lot and Pet Sematary (although I know The Stand by heart), and I really want to revisit them. So here's my excuse to do so.
As I finish each book, I'll analyze it here. This means this will be a very sporadic blog, so no need to check back too frequently, but I think I can do it all in a year. I'm doing it chronologically, from Carrie to the new story collection Full Dark, No Stars (and whatever else King writes between now and then) and I'll include what I remember of my initial impressions from my teen years, too. (As a side note, I'll be saving the Dark Tower stuff for the end. I know those seven books are scattered throughout King's timeline, but I want to read them all at once, and from what I remember of them, they seem like a good way to cap off this experiment.)
Yes, I have a million other books to read, but I think this will be fun. Hope you agree. Now, if you'll excuse me, for the first time since high school, I'm going to read Carrie. I'll let you know what I think when I'm done.
I had other favorite authors before King. Douglas Adams, for example, remains pretty high on my list, even though I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was about 10. But from age 12 to probably age 19, I was obsessed with Stephen King. I'd read anything he put out. He was my first gotta-read-everything writer, and no matter how silly his books got, or how much I felt he was doing it for the money sometimes, his work remains important to me.
I lost track of King some time ago. I think I read From a Buick 8, his shorter 2002 story about a haunted car (Really? Another haunted car?), and gave up. I know I've missed later works like Duma Key and the well-reviewed Under the Dome, and I've never read the last four Dark Tower books. But something about his writing still calls out to me. I know, I know - he can be fairly pedestrian at times, and his strictly scary novels have gotten rote. But I think King has always been about so much more than just spooks and chills. Odd as it may be to say about a guy who has written nearly 60 novels and story collections, I think King's a real writer, and he deserves critical analysis.
That's what The King Review will endeavor to provide. This is kind of an impulse thing for me, but I've decided to re-read all of King's books, and then take on the ones I haven't yet devoured. I was in college last time I read books like Salem's Lot and Pet Sematary (although I know The Stand by heart), and I really want to revisit them. So here's my excuse to do so.
As I finish each book, I'll analyze it here. This means this will be a very sporadic blog, so no need to check back too frequently, but I think I can do it all in a year. I'm doing it chronologically, from Carrie to the new story collection Full Dark, No Stars (and whatever else King writes between now and then) and I'll include what I remember of my initial impressions from my teen years, too. (As a side note, I'll be saving the Dark Tower stuff for the end. I know those seven books are scattered throughout King's timeline, but I want to read them all at once, and from what I remember of them, they seem like a good way to cap off this experiment.)
Yes, I have a million other books to read, but I think this will be fun. Hope you agree. Now, if you'll excuse me, for the first time since high school, I'm going to read Carrie. I'll let you know what I think when I'm done.
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